The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - April 24, 2026

Episode Date: April 24, 2026

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.Early Voting Kicks Off in Special Election to Complete Brandon Creighton’s Term in Texas SenateWhat to Know About the Upcoming May 2 School Board ElectionsHouston City Council Votes to Revise Police-ICE Cooperation Policy Following Clash with AbbotVenezuelan Illegal Immigrant Released in 2023 Now Suspect in Houston Workplace MurderRoblox Uvalde Shooting Simulation Sparks Addition of Online Child Safety Interim Charge by Texas House SpeakerPaxton Sues Democratic Fundraising Platform ActBlue for Allegedly Allowing Fraud, Foreign DonationsKemah Mayor Seeks to Settle Disputed Probate Case, Fraud Allegations Over Stepfather's WillFirst round of TEFATexas' Ten Commandments in Classrooms Law Upheld by 5th Circuit, SCOTUS Appeal ExpectedFort Worth ISD New Board of Managers Approves Staff Cuts, Affecting 25 Schools

Well, howdy folks. Welcome back to this week's episode of the Texans Weekly Roundup. I am the Texans managing editor Rob Lauchess. Joining me today are the Texans senior reporter Holly Hanson, the Texans reporter Meredith Dyer, and the Texans reporter Mary Aliso Barr. How's everybody doing today? Doing well. Bright-eyed mushroom tail. That's good to hear. I don't know about y'all, but in Austin, we've had nothing but rain. rain and rain over the past few days. So it's nice to finally get an escape from that. I'm loving it honestly. Oh, is it made its way over to you now, Mary-Aise? Oh yeah, it's been it's been boring almost all week and it creates quite the cozy atmosphere. I enjoy it, especially with how long it's been since we've gotten an actual downpour. It's pretty fun.

Now, it's less cozy when you're running back and forth between Houston and Austin, which I've been doing for four days. straight now. I'm not finding the cozy side of this right. Yeah. It's about posting up at the Ruskas to get a Kalachi under the ony. That's right. That's where the aesthetic comes in. My favorite part of Ruskas, though, is when the roosters out there by the gas pump and you're trying to fill up. That's so awesome. That's always a tough one. I drove from Austin to DFW in the rain a couple of days ago. And I couldn't see for like large parts. It was like very much like you're looking to make sure the lines are still there kind of thing. And I saw someone hit the median because they were trying to just like zip through. And it was, yeah, not as a normal driving. But I do

love the rain. We all know that. I love cold weather. And I love the rain. And that drive is a killer too. Because between Austin and DFW, it feels, between Austin and Dallas, it feels like a 10-hour drive. So that's a toughie. Well, Mary Elise, if you'd like to kick us off on this week's crop of stories, early voting has kicked off in a special election for a Texas Senate district. Give us the rundown on that. Yeah, early voting, like you said, kicked off on Monday for this special election. I think it's always important to cover these special elections closely because most folks don't realize that they're going on, right? because it's not on the regularly scheduled days that most folks are familiar with going to the polls on.

But this is for Texas Senate District 4, and so it will essentially determine who's going to represent this southeast Texas area for the next nine months. So Senate District 4 was left open after former state Senator Brandon Creighton was selected to serve as the Texas Tech University Systems Chancellor and Chief Executive Officer. that was in the fall of 2025 when he selected. So it left the district with this unexpired term lasting until January 2027. So we've got two candidates that are aiming for this short term. We've got Republican Brett Ligon and then Democrat Ron Angoletti. And they're also both running in the November general election. So they're both running this special election and then they're also will be facing off in November.

for the separate term. The Democratic candidate ran unimposed in the March primary, his March primary, while the Republicans successfully fended off an opponent, U.S. Air Force veteran and businessman Charlie Miller. So Charlie Miller got 25% of the vote there, and then Ligon got 75%.

The Democratic candidate was, interestingly, listed in February among what the Texas Democratic Party called the newest partners of their Texas Together campaign. So they said that he was among this list representing the most well-funded and earliest launched coordinated campaign in Texas Democratic history with a combined $30 million investment from a number of donors. So he focuses campaign pretty much on addressing Texas family's needs, as you could see if you go to his campaign website, helping them navigate broken systems.

he said, and then also using his experience as an educator, a father, special needs advocate, and a small business owner. So it just talked about, you know, his experience in those different areas and how he can kind of bring that into office here for Senate District 4. One quote he has on his campaign that's pretty obvious when you jump on there. It says, I don't lead from the far left or the far right. I lead from where families live. Then on the other hand, we have the Republican candidate. He came into this voting period. with some pretty strong endorsements from Creighton himself, United States Representative Morgan LaTrell,

Texas Land Commissioner, Don Buckingham, six different Republican Texas House reps, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and Governor Greg Abbott. They all put their support behind him in the Senate District for race. He really focused on issues such as public safety, border security. He said protecting Texas children, specifically in the online sphere and reforming property taxes and then flood mitigation or responding to flooding disasters properly.

So this special election date was announced back in October 2025, and so the state was set then by Governor Greg Abbott. A little bit about the district. It is a Republican stronghold. It's got an R-70% rating from our Texas partisan index. It does cover different portions of. Harris County, Galveston, Montgomery, and Jefferson counties. And then it does include all of Chambers County. So a special election is interesting because the person who's going to win this,

recent headlines have, or recent happenings have made us realize that this person will probably not be appointed to a committee during the interim because we saw in the Senate District 9 race where a Democratic candidate won. There was a bit of back and forth there with Taylor and who won that race and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. And Patrick cited precedent and explained that he didn't put remit on any interim committees because that has never been the way that things operate. And he was citing precedent there. And so indicating that moving forward, someone that wins a special election with this timing

is not going to be placed on a committee. So that kind of suggests that for this election, it's going to be more so of like a political win for the party that wins here to using campaigning and such versus a legislative victory where this person's going to be really hands-on with legislation. So we'll see how this pans out, but early voting has kicked off, and Holly I'll hand it over to you real quick. No, I just had a question about Remit, even though he didn't get appointed to that committee and it seems to have precedent. Didn't he kind of translate that into a fundraising message and working to get everybody kind of riled up about it, right? Right. He did. And, you know, Patrick said, I think the

Remet knew about this beforehand that he was well aware. So we don't really know exactly what the communication was like there. But it is definite that Remet used it for campaigning and successfully so, because a lot of folks who voted him in were upset that, oh, he's not going to have. have a hand in these committees and studying legislation during the interim. So it definitely was effective. Well, thank you for giving us the rundown on that, Mary Elise. As you said, the way that this is used as a political win, even if it doesn't translate to a legislative victory, is pretty exciting to see as we really get into runoff season. But Meredith, from what I understand, this is not the only upcoming election. There is something going on for Texas school boards.

Give us more information on that. Yeah, so there are quite a few school districts that are holding elections May 2nd. In my article, I started out with just some background about school board elections because sometimes there's so many different types of elections and so many different people running for everything, but just a little quick reminder of like when these happen, what the term links are, what their responsibilities are. So there's just a little bit of background about that. So school board elections can happen in May or in November.

And then similar to other positions, if a seat is vacated, they'll have a special election that's held before one of those uniform election dates. Normally, there's three or four year terms, and they'll stagger them just to make sure there's some stability amongst the board. So, like, everybody's not up for election at the same time. Yeah, just some of their responsibilities are choosing the superintendent for the district, adopting a budget, setting tax rates, communicating with the community. I think that's the one we see most often is, like, public comments from community members

about more controversial things that happen within the school district. You kind of see the videos of them at school board meetings. And they can have at-large elections or they can have district-wide elections. And then some of the school districts will have like a hybrid. Will they have a couple of at-large seats? And then they'll have some that are specifically for geographical districts. And so they're non-partisan elections. And then what we have in the article, I'm not going to read all of them,

is quite a few of the top major districts that are. going to be holding elections and listing out which district or position. Sometimes it'll specifically say it's an at-large. Sometimes they'll call them a place. Sometimes they'll call them a district. So we use whatever language the district uses. And we show you who's the incumbent. And then just some notes if, like, their website has polling locations or if they, some of them have interactive maps that are easier to use. And then also there are some districts that if they see that everyone or multiple, or even actually one place or position is unopposed. They will officially go through a process to certify that they're unopposed and then like effectively elected. And so they'll actually cancel

some of their election. So it's good to know like that's why there's no school board members because everybody was unopposed or this person. Yeah, they didn't have to go through that whole process, which is probably very relieving for them. So yeah, just check out, check out the coverage, see if your district's on there. And then yeah, we'll just try to keep you informed to what's going on. You know, I think that that's, it's so great that you did this piece because what I hear from a lot of people all the time is they don't really know what's going on with their local elections. And there's just so many of them across the state of Texas. I think it was a couple of years ago I tried to find out how many special taxing districts

there are in the state. And honestly, no one really seems to know the answer to that. It's, It's thousands and thousands. And some of them, like some of these emergency service districts, they have these little obscure elections. And the only place to vote is at the local fire station or something like that. At least with school boards, you have a little more visibility. But it's kind of a crazy situation in Texas to keep track of all the different elections that are happening. It just jogs your memory as well to look into those things because we obviously can't list everything.

There's every single district is not. We did a lot of them, but it just gives you an outline of what to look for, what to search for, um, understanding what you're seeing. Like that's why we give the background information is, yeah, there's, Texas is huge. There's so much going on here all the time and all these little areas. And so we're just trying to like highlight and spotlight and get everybody looking around and digging around in their own area. Absolutely.

And definitely local politics is, uh, something that more people could probably afford to pay attention to, you know, people pay attention to. You know, people pay attention to the national stuff because it's so big, but they don't pay attention to stuff happening in their own backyard. Although, Holly, sometimes there's an intersection of the local and the federal. And from what I understand, there's something like that happening on the Houston City Council right now. Tell us more. No kidding. No kidding.

This has just absorbed so much of my time as a journalist for the past two weeks. there's been this absolute firestorm surrounding Houston and the city council's ordinance that they passed two weeks ago. And this ordinance was a way to kind of limit police cooperation with ICE. And so you had these three city council members. They pushed to get it on the agenda. They got enough support, got it passed, even got Houston mayor John Whitmire to support the ordinance initially. And what had happened prior to this ordinance is police, had adopted a policy that stated that they would wait up to 30 minutes for federal agents to respond

if they had stopped a suspect for probable cause for usually a traffic violation or something like that, and if they encountered an ICE administrative warrant. And some of these city council members, you know, very, very progressive. They're very anti this immigration enforcement effort. and they don't like those ICE administrative warrants, but that just blew up. Because first of all, you had the governor's office looking at it, and the city had actually signed these agreements with the governor's office to get millions of dollars in public safety grants.

There's a couple of different figures floating out there, but it's at least 110 million, probably closer to 114 million. and it specifies in the contract that the city signed with the governor's office that they have to fully comply with ICE. It doesn't ask them to actually engage in immigration enforcement efforts, but they want full cooperation with ICE. And that would mean, you know, contacting ICE and waiting if ICE tells you to wait for them to come pick up the suspect. The second thing that happened is Attorney General Ken Paxton launched an investigation and did file a lawsuit against the city of Houston. Interestingly enough, both Austin and Dallas have some policies that are the same or similar to what Houston did, and they didn't get a lot of attention until Houston passed their ordinance.

So then everything kind of blew up, and so those two cities are also on the hot seat. Well, on Wednesday this week, Houston City Council met again, and they took up a revision of that ordinance. You had most of the Houston City Council members flip and go ahead and approve this revised version that takes away some of the limitations. You still have some of these progressive city council members, Alejandra Salinas in particular, and Abby Kamen. who really push back and are trying to persuade their council members to adopt kind of a definition or policy that would be imposed on the police department saying that police could only detain a suspect for a, quote, legitimate criminal purpose, and then they tried to redefine the, or specified that these ICE administrative warrants are civil warrants. Well, there's a number of different problems with that.

I mean, you get a civil warrant if you violated your parole conditions. So, I mean, even though that's not necessarily a criminal warrant, it could be a really serious issue. You could have, you know, a convicted murderer who's out on parole. And if he's violating his parole conditions, that's a great concern. But in the end, the council did go ahead and pass these revisions, Whitmire said his office had been working with the governor's office to come up with appropriate language. But that's not the end of the story because Governor Abbott came out after the vote and said, well, this is great, basically, that the city council did this,

but we need to know what the Houston Police Department policy is going to be going forward. And we need to make sure that that complies with the terms of these agreements to get the public safety grants. And the dynamic here is that you can have a written ordinance, but then police have their own policies within the department. And unlike on the county side where you have an elected law enforcement head like the sheriff or the constables, on the city side, you have an appointed police chief pretty much answerable to the mayor. And so, for example, in the case of Austin, you have a police chief who's answerable to Kirk Watson. who is the mayor of Austin, probably a little more left progressive, more so perhaps than

John Whitmire, who is considered by many kind of a moderate Democrat and certainly very strong on law and order criminal justice kind of policies. So the governor's office says they want to see what is the police department policy going forward because the police do have some leeway outside of what Houston City Council has passed. And so, you know, we're continuing to follow this story by the time this podcast publishes. We could have a completely new set of things to report on this, but we're going to keep following it. And thank you for following it, Holly, because none of us could keep track of this without you just keeping track of everything that's happening here.

Because as you said, it has been just a torrent of stuff going on. like all that was. Yeah, you and I were online, what, like nine o'clock last night, trying to figure out what the latest update needed to be to the most recent article we published. So it's just a dynamic situation. Absolutely. Meredith.

Did you want to jump in? Yeah, just your tweets were like for a long time. It's like they come and I'm like, wait, because it's so many different cities with similar things, I'm like, okay, this is a new one. Okay, this isn't, it just kept coming and coming. Yes, yes. Well, and it, you know, the city council meeting, I thought, you know, they brought it up in the first out of the gate. It was the first thing they talked about at the meeting on Wednesday. And I thought, you know, oh, we'll have this done about 30 minutes. Well, it was two hours of back and forth and debate and some heated rhetoric and attempts to delay the vote. And it was just, it was kind of nuts. So it's been, it's been quite a story to follow. No, and thank you for following it, Holly. But in a related note, there was also a Venezuelan illegal alien in Houston who was released in 2023, who is now a suspect in a workplace murder.

This came out, you know, right in the middle of this big, you know, this big argument over this police ICE cooperation policy. So can you give us a few more details on that? Absolutely. And a lot of people are looking at this case and saying it's related, because as you stated, you know, he had someone who came into the country in 2023. He apparently was a minor at the time. He was only, he's only, what was 18, 19 years old right now. But when he came into the country, similar to other suspects we've seen commit heinous crimes in the Houston area, he was apprehended by federal agents and then released into the country. So, a lot of people are pointing to this case, and I'll just, you know, spare you all the gory details, but basically he bludgeoned to death an older coworker at a home that they were renovating and then stole the man's truck and was apprehended for driving a stolen vehicle, basically, by police. But people also look at that, and they're also pointing to the very tragic nationally reported on murder of a 12-year-old girl, in Houston in 2024. This is the same situation where you had suspects come into the country.

They're Venezuelan nationals. They really didn't have a criminal history to speak of. So, you know, they're apprehended at the border or near the border and then released into the country without a lot of processing or vetting. And so, you know, a lot of people are talking about these cases. You know, we have this heinous murder. But they're pointing to this as an of why these ICE administrative warrants may be very relevant to criminal activity. One thing that came out in the Houston City Council meeting this week is that in March of this year, there were 22 times that police encountered someone with an ICE administrative warrant during one of these traffic stops or kind of more routine stops. And when they contacted ICE to

notify them that they have this person in custody, ICE only wanted to come and take custody of the suspect in two of those 22 stops. And the argument from the police union chief, who has talked to me about this throughout, is that ICE often has information that the local law enforcement doesn't even have. So they may be able to see that there's other concerns about that particular suspect, and ICE is not necessarily, at least in the Houston area, coming to pick up every single person who has an ICE administrative warrant. And so what they're saying is there's some nuance there, and it's not quite as dire as some people are portraying.

On the other side of the issue, you have stories, you know, make the media about, you know, the grandma or the family or someone who's in ICE custody sometimes for months at a time. a time and the concerns about that. But, you know, sometimes it's hard to get the full story. I will point out that a couple of years ago here at the Texan, we reported on several Harris County judges who were awarding sexual offenders an early termination of their probation, even though they had violated the terms of that probation. So they called it an unsatisfactory termination of probation. And the problem is, many of those were people who were being deported,

and that's the reason that the judge gave for giving them that termination of probation. Well, then if they come back into the country and, for example, are stopped, let's say, in another county, let's say, you know, Brazos County or so forth, there's really no criminal warrant out for them because of the way the judge handled their probation case. There may only be an ICE administrative warrant saying, you know, we already deported this person one, two, or three times, and so we want to collect them, but ICE would have access to more of that criminal information. Gotcha. Well, thank you very much for giving us the rundown on that, Holly. Certainly a big issue in Houston going to continue being a big issue as it has been.

been for years now. So I don't think we'll, I don't think we're ever going to run out of stuff to report on and this issue. Oh no. You'll keep rolling. Exactly. Mary Elise, turning next to you, an additional interim charge has been given to the Texas House amid child safety concerns. Tell us why. Yeah, Texas House Speaker Dustin Burroughs added an additional, a supplemental interim charge for members, to focus on in this interim, to study. And it was interesting because it has to do with the online gaming platform Roblox. Some of our listeners may be familiar with it, but it's essentially where users can create and play their own games.

The company reported recently having 144 million active players in 2025. So that was up from 85 million in 2024. they've been growing pretty well. And about 40% of those users, players are under the age of 13. So you can see why this gets tied into the issue of keeping children safe. So this was in response to, this charge was issued in response to Burroughs discovering a Robox game that simulated the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting in Evalde. So Burroughs office was contacted by state representative Don McLaughlin, and he was the mayor of Yuvalde when the shooting occurred. But he did discover this game and share this with Burroughs, shared his concerns about it.

And so that's where the supplemental charge really came from. He described it as focused on strengthening child safety and also enforcing accountability for online gaming platforms that have failed to address widespread harmful content. and risks to minors. The charge is titled Protecting Miners on Gaming Platforms, and this falls under the House State Affairs Committee's duties for the interim leading up to this 90th legislative session that will happen at the beginning of next year. As we covered on the podcast, Burroughs introduced the interim charges for the House in late March, quite a list of them that we covered,

and essentially shaping what the House members will be working on over the next several, months leading up to the session in January, preparing for writing and filing bills. The charges were broken down by committee and then have the specific instructions for members of these different respective committees to research, monitor these issues, and then craft legislation in response to their studies on these specific topics affecting Texans. So as I said, McLaughlin flagged this content he was made aware of on the Roblox gaming platform, which simulated the Rob Elementary shooting that took the lives of 21 people, which included 19 children. Burroughs said that after McLaughlin informed him of the, quote, Roblox first-person shooter game

simulating the tragedy at Robb Elementary and graphic detail. It became clear this content and the failure to stop it demands immediate action. Roblox is already involved in several different lawsuits across the country related to a alleged lack of protections for an exploitation of minors. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has actually joined multiple suits that are against the company Roblox. There's one that he's joined that was filed by Louisiana Attorney General in August, and then another by some Galvis and parents who are claiming that their daughter was, quote,

systematically groomed and sexually exploited on the platform. So Roblox is under fire with a lot of different legal challenges right now already. Roblox did give us a statement. We were able to update the story of a statement from Roblox, and they said any glorification of the tragedy at Rob Elementary School deeply concerns us. They said behaviors that promote violent extremism and depictions of sensitive real-world events are against our policies, which we work tirelessly to enforce. They said the content.

referenced by Burroughs should be, they said, excuse me, has been removed and that the users who uploaded such content are immediately banned from their platform once they are detected. Then they talked about their different tools that they use to moderate content like this. They said they're using advanced AI power detection, they're monitoring teams, they moderate at 24-7, just so just talked about all their different methods of trying to keep content like this from being on the platform for too long. They said, we take immediate action when we detect violations of our standards and work closely with law enforcement told bad actors accountable. While no system can be perfect, we work around the clock to enhance our safety

measures. So the charge asks the members of State Affairs Committee to address a topic in a couple different ways, which includes evaluating these existing safety protocols that Roblox has in place, as well as other similar platforms that they mentioned the different protocols that they have in place to try and keep kids safe and avoid this content from being on the website, but also determining their effectiveness. So to take a look at these safety protocols and determine how effective is this, is this really working and is this effective enough to avoid a scenario like this where we see a simulation of the Rob Elementary shooting. The charge also asked members to identify what the potential

civil and criminal liability might be for the third-party content developers who harm minors through these platforms. So they ask them to examine and evaluate that. What's the civil and criminal liability here for those content developers. So we'll see where this takes lawmakers as they study this topic and kind of what their determinations are. It'll be interesting to see who they pull in to discuss the topic. But Meredith Thurred over two. I was just going to comment that if you haven't spent time around kids recently, Roblox

is like, as a former teacher, it's like an obsession for some children. and the amount of time that they spend on it is so crazy. And I used to even give like stickers with Roblox because it seemed pretty harmless, like almost like a Minecraft situation. But I mean, after hearing some of the exposés and some of the allegations and lawsuits and things that have come up against them, especially with the exploitation of kids, it is wild. And it makes you just wonder why so many children are spending most of their days

when they get home after school on this platform. It's shocking. So Holly, you're going to say something. No, I was just going to say I'm so glad that Mary Elise is reporting on this because so far outside of my understanding of anything with the Roblox. I don't know if my kids played it or not, but yeah, it's like a completely foreign topic. And it looks very cute. It has these little cute characters, but the chat, like chat options and things like that

within it and the ability that people have to just masquerade as children to get other children to speak to them and do other things horrific things that have come out. It's pretty rough. I was listening to a podcast or they were walking through all the things that people do to like exploit children through video games and it's like horrible. One of the most interesting things I also think we saw was that it has exploded in popularity specifically in this decade. So it's been around since like 2006. But it used to have. I think it was maybe 10, 15 years ago, like 15 million players. Now they report to have 150 million players.

And they actually claim, yeah, don't they claim to have like half of every, like half of all American youth play Roblox? Like it's just that popular. It's just a huge game. I would believe it because I, you know, going back now like five or six years, working with students that were anyway from like kindergarten or first grade to like middle schoolers. I mean, it was just Roblox, Roblox, Roblox.

Like, what do you do when you go home after school or what's interesting to you? So it is an obsession. It is pretty wild. There you go. Well, thank you for reporting on that, Mary Elise. You also mentioned that Attorney General Ken Paxton is, I think you said, conducting an investigation into Roblox. But that's not the only action that Ken Paxton has taken this week. Meredith, Ken Paxton also filed a lawsuit against the Democratic fundraising platform

Act Blue for allegedly allowing fraudulent and foreign donations to American candidates. Tell us more about that. Yeah. So Ken Paxton is taking on Act Blue for these allegations. If you don't know, you might have heard of Act Blue or it sounds kind of familiar, but even just seeing some of the numbers as I was reporting, it is a powerhouse for the Democratic Party and for progressive candidates and causes. According to New York Times, they have processed nearly 19 billion in contributions since 2004. And in 2025, they had 1.8 billion transactions, which was a 41% increase compared to 2021. So in four years, they saw such a huge, such a huge increase. And things like 1.3 million new donors last year, and then 52 million

contributions received. So a ton of money is going through Act Blue. Ken Paxton made a statement saying that the radical left has relied on Act Blue as a way to funnel foreign donations and dark money into the political campaigns to subvert our laws and compromises the integrity of our election. So those are the allegations that he's making that they have, he said that they have blatantly ignored state law that has prohibited deceptive practices. And so this isn't the first time that Ken Paxton has had an issue with Act Blue. In 2023, he opened an investigation to see if they were enabling donor fraud in Texas. And he did claim later the next year that they had cooperated and they changed the requirements to have CVV codes on their donations on

their platform to ensure you could track where it was coming from. He said it was a critical change that can help prevent fraud, fraud, anyway, prevent fraud. But then he goes on later to send a petition for rulemaking to the FEC, detailing how he said suspicious actors had appeared to be continuing to use Act Blues donation fundraising platform to make these large number of he called straw political donations. He also made a criminal referral to the DOJ and just said amidst the Texas OAG's investigation and congressional investigation, they claimed that it had stopped their illegal operations. So the New York Times also had an article that Paxton, the one he referenced it as well,

where they had said that Act Blue's own outside counsel acknowledged that the organization's representations about donations were safeguards were not true. And so he, you know, just saying, despite them saying that they have stopped this, like they, he says that the OAG is going to be able to show that they process gift cards and prepaid debit card donations, like despite them saying that they don't do that. And so he ended by saying fair elections, you know, are the foundation of our democracy. He wants to work to ensure that no more illegal

or alleged illegal campaign donations fly under the radar. So Ken Baxter's always busy. Well, thank you very much, Meredith. I think Mary Elise, did you have something you wanted to say about this one? It was just interesting occurred to me that a lot of, I mean, when I read through James Talley, fundraising emails, they all lead you to Act Blue. And it's just interesting to have, I guess it's one of the aspects of having a current

Attorney General also running for U.S. Senate, but that the Democratic candidate in this U.S. Senate race is actively using Act Blue to fundraise for his campaign. And then you've got Paxton over here at suing them and alleging all of these things. So just an interesting tidbit about this race for sure. Absolutely, especially with James Tala Rico reporting to have raised $27 million in the first quarter of 2026 for his U.S. Senate campaign. So that's just crazy. Well, yeah, I mean, it's probably completely legal some of these transactions, but Act Blue is just prevalent all over the country. I know in Harris County, Harris County Judge Lena Hidalgo, very controversial person, takes a lot of donations through Act Blue.

And one thing she has stated over and over again is that she doesn't take any campaign contributions from people who contract with the county and get these very lucrative jobs for the county. But a lot of those entities do donate to Act Blue. it serves as kind of a pass-through, I think, when you really don't want a lot of attention on who's actually donating to your campaign. But it seems legal, and I believe it's done on both sides with different entities. Absolutely. Well, Holly, though, from what I understand, this is not the only allegation of fraud that we'll be talking about today. The mayor of Kima is seeking to settle a disputed.

probate case and is facing allegations of fraud over a handwritten will. Tell us about that. Yeah, so this is a pretty wild story. The mayor of Kema is a woman by the name of Robin Collins, and her stepfather, Harold Lee Peterson, died in 2014, and his estate was never probated. And apparently, Collins was trying to sell the property that had been his home and the home of her mother last September. And when they were about to go to closing, a title company notice that there wasn't a legitimate transfer of title. So Robin Collins didn't actually hold the title to this property,

and there was some confusion about who actually owned it. So Robin Collins did not show up to the closing. So no one knew what was happening in the day of this closing. She just didn't show up. and about a week later, she quietly filed for probate in Gallesden County. Well, the problem is under Texas law, if you don't probate an estate within four years, it's assumed to be distributed to the legitimate heirs, which would be Robin Collins' mother, but also his three biological children.

So he had three daughters. And, you know, I had gotten wind of this probate filing, and I had contacted one of the daughters, and apparently I was the person to let her know that her step-sister had filed for probate. And the family was understandably upset. They hired their own attorneys to contest this probate filing. But the probate filing surrounds a handwritten letter

that Robin Collins produced to the court that purportedly is from her deceased stepfather to her mother. and it's, you know, there's a lot of questions about the provenance of this letter. You had, you know, some witnesses say they could testify that it was in the stepfather's handwriting. You had other witnesses saying absolutely not. There's absolutely no evidence that this is a legitimate document. Well, fast forward now, they've been in mediation and a sworese contacted me last week to let me know that, although they were working on this mediation, Mayor Robin Collins, who, interestingly enough,

has hired a very high-profile attorney after the will was contested. That attorney is Michelle Slaughter, who is the former Criminal Court of Appeals Justice in the state of Texas, very well respected, but she did lose in a primary a couple years ago, and our colleague, Matt Stringer, has written quite a bit about what happened there. But so Robin Collins, you know, is asking the family in their big settlement agreement that they're working on to sign a nondisclosure agreement and to essentially repudiate their claims that this handwritten will is a fraudulent document. They want them to drop all of those claims. And at the same time, it looks like the mayor would be allowed to make her own public statement, although the family would not.

So this is an ongoing legal dispute. So we've covered Kema politics for years now. This is just an interesting little town. A lot of Texans know about it because of the Kema boardwalk. It's kind of a tourist attraction. There's, you know, roller coasters and things like that. But it's a very small town. I mean, I think there's about 3,000 or so residents in the town.

But a lot has gone on there. There's a lot pending lawsuits. against the city, which if these plaintiffs are successful, could result in millions of dollars in damages. It's already cost the city millions of dollars in legal fees to fight these lawsuits over basically property rights. So another area of reporting that just keeps on providing content for journalists. But we'll keep watching that one, too. Well, thank you very much, Holly. Yeah, There's been a lot of stuff, as you said, coming out of the city of Kima in the past few years. And, yeah, I would recommend everybody not only to read Holly's most recent piece on this,

but also Matt Stringer's most recent piece on the Court of Criminal Appeals race that is happening this year, because that is also a very interesting saga that stretches back for years. Yes, very good piece. Absolutely. turning now to a nice little crop of education-related stories. Meredith, if I recall correctly, the first round of Texas Education Freedom Account payments, is that right, went out this week, I think, or are starting to go out this week, but tell us about that. Yeah, so it's kind of interesting after watching all of it and all of the behind the scenes,

the legislative process, some people actually have received. funds in their accounts this week, some families. So over 42,000 families received the first round of Texas Education Freedom Accounts funds. So the first priority tier that they have is for low and middle income students with disabilities and their siblings. So they have a fact sheet that we've linked as well, but we also kind of walk through like, what does all of this mean? Who are these families that are getting this money? So among these families, 51% of them come from households that it's below 66,000 for a family of four, and then 49% are somewhere between 66 and 165, which is a larger range there.

63% of these students do have a disability, and the remainder are 37% of their siblings that will also qualify with them. So they're keeping families together, and Kelly Hancock, the acting comptroller, said, you know, that they've made these low and middle income students with disabilities. their first priority and this is where like the whole process is going to start. So they will be receiving them as we're recording. We're kind of in the middle. It's like the 22nd to the 24th.

So by the end of the week, these people have received emails and, you know, the process of how to access and use these funds. Governor Greg Abbott, you know, praised the TIFA program saying that this is, you know, regardless of income and location, this is a way that parents can start to make the best decision learning to find a good learning environment for their children. So additional families, obviously, there's more money to be given out. So more families will be notified in coming weeks as they go on to the second priority tier, which is families from lower incomes, not necessarily, without not factoring in the disability aspect. So they'll have to hold a lottery. And this is something

I've had in reporting in the past that when we talked to TIFA spokesperson, Travis Pillow, he was just letting us know and they made it clear like not everyone in the low income bracket is going to receive funds this round just that even though it is the largest year one commitment like a billion dollars for any state it's not going to be enough to meet the demand that it has and so he just said you know he said we're going to face a really tough period where we're going to have to turn tens or hundreds of thousands of Texas families away and tell them that we don't have money for your students in this first year so there's going to be this significant way list that will be reported to the legislature next year just to help, he said, to help them

think about funding in year two and beyond. And so anyone that receives these funding, so there are going to be holding a lottery and then anyone that does not make that lottery in the second tier, they will go onto a wait list with the rest of the families. And so as people, they have till July 15th, to confirm enrollment in a private school, choose that they are homeschooling, or to opt out. And there is, there has been some reporting about this people just because you get the funds and you have a private school that you want to go to doesn't immediately like confirm that you are going to go to that school. So depending on if they don't find the school or get accepted to the school, someone could opt out and so they just would keep going down that list.

So yeah, it'll be a, it's just very interesting to watch the year one roll out and see what's going to happen in the legislature and all these numbers. are going to be used and going to be thought over as well. It's going to get, it's going to get spicy. No, absolutely. As you said, this was one of the biggest issues at the last legislative session. It stretches back multiple years. And so seeing it finally, you know, come into, come into fruition has just been fascinating to see, you know, a multi-year process finally producing fruit. And they're going to, I mean, one thing they'll have after the year one rollout is like testimonials from people that are using it, which is, you can fight about in a legislature, but then when you have

people using it, getting their needs met, they're going to have more to bring to the table the next round two, I guess. Absolutely. And of course, we should probably expect that there's going to be more laws passed in the next legislative session to, you know, improve or expand the program. So make sure you're subscribed to the Texan.com. News to follow along with all the best state political coverage. So thank you very much, Meredith. Mary Elise, turning now to you and a sort of related issue of a multi-year education-related thing in Texas politics. A significant ruling came down this week about a law in Texas. Give us the details. Yeah, so this law has just faced a torrent of lawsuits ever since it became effective in Texas, which we,

We saw a lot of the Democratic folks who were against it arguing that this would be the case, and we're seeing that pan out here. So this is Texas's law that requires the display of donated copies of the Ten Commandments and public school classrooms. It was upheld this week by ruling of the full United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, although the plaintiffs do intend to appeal it again to the United States Supreme Court, so this is likely not over. but the Fifth Circuit's ruling on Tuesday that came down reversed what was a previous injunction

from a lower district court against implementation of the law, so blocking the law there. So this is Senate Bill 10, which we've covered quite a lot on this podcast, back when it was being discussed during the 89th legislative session. It was very controversial. But it essentially requires public schools to display copies of the King James Bible version of the Ten Commandments and classrooms if it's donated by an outside source. So like I said, that was passed during the 89th legislative session, and then Governor Greg Abbott signed into law on June 20, 2020, 25.

And then we saw just quite a lot of lawsuits being lobbed at it from different religious leaders. And in this case, this original suit was filed by several adults that were representing minor plaintiffs, and then also religious leaders, including San Antonio's rabbi, Mara Nathan, suing several school districts to prevent this law from going into effect in Texas. So this specific lawsuit that was being handled here was arguing that this law was an establishment of religion and that it burdens religious exercise by coercing their children to reverence the commandments. So that was essentially their argument there. The judge who had issued the injunction previously agreed with their claims and argued that there was a federal case that was binding on the

issue in which the Fifth Circuit had previously struck down what was a Louisiana law requiring similarly the display of the Ten Commandments in classrooms. The Fifth Circuit said, we agreed to hear Louisiana case in Bonk in the Texas case alongside it. We have since dismissed Louisiana case as unripe. They explained, they did say, you know, the Texas case is right because of differences between the laws and we can decide it. So kind of setting up their argument there. Within the summary, they address this claim that the law is an establishment of religion, arguing that the law looks nothing, quote, nothing like a historical religious establishment, quote, it does not tell churches or synagogues.

or mosques what to believe or how to worship or whom to employ as priests, rabbis, or imams. It punishes no one who rejects the Ten Commandments no matter the reason. The levies no tax to support any clergy. It is not co-opt churches to perform civic functions. These are the kinds of things establishments of religion did at the founding. SB 10 does none of them. So that's essentially was the decision there from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. the author of the legislation, as wholly shared on ex, State Senator Phil King, was applauding

the ruling. He said that they rightly upheld SB 10. He said he was honored to author it in the Texas Senate. He said affirming our right to display the Ten Commandments in Texas classrooms. He said, as I have said all along, few documents in the history of Western civilization and and American history have had a larger impact on our moral and legal code and our culture than the Ten Commandments. He continued saying, returning this historical document to public school classrooms will provide moral clarity and allow students to better understand the foundation for much of American history and law. This is a great day for Texas. And a similar message was put out by Governor Greg Abbott, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton,

Texas House Speaker Dustin Burroughs. They all said, this is a huge victim. or a huge win for Texas saying that this is the foundation of Western law, morality belongs in our classrooms. Although, like I said at the beginning, the plaintiffs are expected to attempt to take this case to the United States Supreme Court. When they put out a statement, a couple of organizations that are representing the plaintiffs put out a statement and said, you know, how it disappointed they were in the decision, saying it goes against the First Amendment. and then said, we anticipate asking the Supreme Court to reverse this decision and uphold the religious freedom rights of children and parents. So this is likely not over, but definitely a significant ruling for this law and definitely a significant decision from the Fifth Circuit

Court of Appeal. So we'll see where the plaintiffs choose to take this next and where it winds up. Well, thank you very much, Mary Elise. It's very interesting how both the The school choice issue and this Ten Commandments and Classrooms issue is one of those policies that really got across the finish line just last year after having, you know, for a while it had been trying to do something with it. And now we're seeing not only its implementation, but also all the problems that come with implementation, the flurry of legal challenges that are sure to hit any big bill like this. So thank you very much for giving us the rundown on that. Now, last but not least, Meredith, Fort Worth ISD's new board of managers amid its ongoing state takeover has approved staff cuts affecting, I think it was 25 schools. So tell us what's going on there. Yeah, so I did an article, mainly focused on Fort Worth and added in a couple of other school districts

that are making some significant cuts, which shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone as we've constantly been. sometimes it's like, it just, I feel like a broken record. It's just a lot of enrollment decline, school closures, like, that's going to happen. And it's hard for communities, and that's part of what we talk about in the article as well. So just as a reminder, Fort Worth has been under a state takeover since October. They had had one school that had a fifth unacceptable T.E.A. accountability rating. But also just in general, Mike Morath, when they did announce it, discussed just the chronic academic underperformance at large. There were many things that were going on in the district besides just

one school. And so recently, about a month ago, they named Peter Lakata as a superintendent, and then a nine-member board, which included Texas A&M University School of Law Dean, Bobby Adia. So they've had, they've been to have a little bit of time to have a couple of meetings. I think this might have been one of their first few meetings that they had. And they make a pretty large announcement and so, and people are concerned about it as well. So the main thing is that they are going to have a reduction in force that affects 19, what they call elevate campuses, which are campuses that are receiving additional staffing, coaching, leadership support, which is just a way of saying, like, these are the most needy campuses that we have to get up to standard as soon as possible.

The description sounds very similar to the new education system in Houston, which is part of Mike Miles' plan to change the academic performances in Houston. They're very, like, very tightly controlled sometimes. Houston's is very scripted. They do a lot of, like, exactly the same ways of working of, like, working with students in certain patterns and, like, having it be really, really, just like a tightly run shift there. These campuses also have additional school year schedules, so they're going to run until through the month of June. So these students will be going to school longer than other students in the district as well. And if you work at one of these schools, you can get, they advertise, this is a quote from there, 100K-based pay plus teacher incentive allotment, which would be an additional performance-based pay. So they're really trying to get people to these schools.

They're really trying to do everything they can. There's also six closures that have already been announced that will be affected by these cuts. So they didn't say exactly how many cuts they're going to be making, probably because they might not know at this point. I mean, this is a lot of schools, a lot of like restructuring, changing things. They were changing some of their leadership as well. So they're just doing a lot of shuffling there. And so, but parents and community members are concerned. They were asking for more time, like community input hearings.

They were talking about just like what it does to the, what it does to a district. when things like this happen, very concerned about teachers that they know or that their students have had. And so, but after the public comment, there was a vote at the end of the night. There was unanimous 8 to 0 that they were going to go through with these cuts. So Judson ISD also, they are closing four campuses, and they are going to have 536 position cuts, which don't necessarily mean that that many employees are getting cut, but they're cutting vacancies that they have open right now. Closures will account for more than 200 of those positions as well.

And they will have to just eliminate some. They will, some people will obviously lose positions, but they just talk about being in a transition period and people are not going to be as comfortable as they used to be, they said. One of their board of trustees was asking, like, instead of doing these cuts, could we fill these vacancies and then sell properties, which is something that's also a very, as schools,

close. This is constantly in the news about how are they selling the property. What are they doing with it? Austin ISD recently we reported wasn't able to sell a property and then it added to their deficit. So this is the loop of school districts right now. When you go to vote for your school board members, like this is what they're doing. These are the things that they're dealing with and making decisions that are hard and the community doesn't like them and they're trying to do whatever they think is best. Hayes consolidated ISD, CISD. They are cutting, I believe it's 125 positions. And so they also are trying to make up for like $12.25 million and make that up in budget reductions. And they talked about how one of the reasons

they said for their deficit was that there was inflation, which is common to be brought up. And then also no increases. They said no increases in the basic student funding allotment from 2019 to 2025. It was voted on last session in 2025, that they would increase by $55. But Hays CISD made the point to say that it was well short of the needed 1,000 or more increase per student to cover the cost of post-pandemic inflation. So they were looking for a little bit larger of an increase on that. And they're going to, they list it out. There's going to be layoffs, reassignments, reclassifying duties.

They also have 970 stipends that go to employees that they will be suspending. So this is not the first of, or this is the beginning of many of these types of decisions that will continue across the state as we see declining enrollment and a lot of school closures. Gotcha. Well, thank you very much for covering on that, Meredith. It's interesting, of course, a lot of accusations about a connection between things like the rise of the school choice issue, Texas education freedom accounts, and a lot of these bigger schools. district seeing a decline in the student population and in funding and, you know, education funding was just such a big issue last session and I'm sure it's going to be another big issue in 2027. So Holly, did you have something that you wanted to say? Yeah, it's really interesting too. I mean, you said, you know, a lot of people are pointing out there's, or accusing them of there being this, you know, correlation between the pro-school choice people and, you know, these state

takeovers, but it was on our, at our legislative preview in 2023 that Harold Dutton, Democrat out of Houston, told the audience that it was his idea to have these state takeovers because he was so frustrated with Houston ISD and they're just constant failure to meet basic, really basic academic standards. But Harold Dutton was not a proponent of school choice. He does not favor that. So I think, you know, there's a little bit of narrative pushing there and that, that opposition to these state takeovers. I feel like all the stuff with in, with an educate, it's like this ball of just so much stuff going on. And some of them, they're very clearly related and some of them just kind of pass each other and are not, you know, the correlation is

not causation. Or, you know, there's just not the case there. And so, but there's definitely key. things that always end up in that. I don't want to say mess, but it's a, I mean, sometimes it is in certain districts. Honestly, they find themselves in positions that are very messy. And yeah. Well, it's complicated. I mean, it's a complicated problem and issue. Absolutely. And that's the thing is, as I like to say, there's no, what is it? No news is good news unless you're in news. And this is going to keep producing a lot of news. So. with that, who has an interesting tweetery that they would like to share this week? Does anything good happen?

There was like a five-second video or 10 or something of an Amazon driver. It says Amazon doesn't miss a beat and it was like a crime scene. And the Amazon driver walks up and is like, I have a, and the police officer takes the package and like walks it away. But they're just like Amazon, you know, they're timed on those, you know, they timed them on how fast they do everything. They were like not about to lose their quota for the day or whatever. So he's like, flag.

I can police officer now. That's pretty funny. That's awesome. That is crazy. This wasn't an official ad. This was just like a video. No, it was like a neighbor taking a video like in their house because they'd like walk the street off and they had cars. Yeah.

It was just like a guy walking up like probably 22 or five or something. And he's like, it should be. They should use those as ads. Probably. Yeah. Absolutely. What about you? Yeah, so the tweet I found that made me laugh this morning is regarding the whole Spirit Airlines debacle.

And I don't know if our listeners know this, but a couple of years ago, a federal judge blocked a merger between Spirit Airlines and JetBlue. And the judge said, well, you know, we want to preserve the nation's largest low-cost carrier. Well, that low-cost carrier obviously has a really terrible business model and product because they are floundering and about to go under now again. But you have the administration, the current administration jumping in and looking at a bailout, looking at some loans, and also possibly having the government take something like up to a 90% take of the airline or a 90% share. So I will censor this tweet a little bit, but somebody said, I was wondering how Spirit Airlines could get any blank. And then the concept of having it owned by the government came up. And I thought that was pretty funny because, you know, how can we make it worse? I will just confess that I did once fly a Spirit Airlines flight and once was enough.

I decided we never. It didn't matter how. cheap it was, I would never fly Spirit Airlines again. Sorry. That is fair. I think it's a good, like, dinner party conversation starter is asking people their experience on Spirit Airline. Everyone has a story. Mine is long, but it was like one of the worst travel experiences I've had. And I'm pretty, I have traveled all over the world and in developing nations. It was the worst. And it was in Houston. It was the worst. Yeah. Mine was Houston to do. And it was the worst. And I, I mean, I've traveled all over the world too. And, wow, it was awful.

Yeah, I had to fly spirit in college. And it was, I was not a fan of the experience. And the plane felt like it was going to fall apart. I mean, I know that, I know that planes rattle, but that one rattled more than most. Or maybe it was just really bad turbulence, but, but the government's going to take over. So we'll see what happens. Yeah, because that'll, that'll solve the problem. I don't know. I don't know. Governments are all good at that. Well, see. Well, this one is not so funny, but it is interesting. There have been several deaths or disappearances of individuals working,

different nuclear scientists specifically. And this topic kind of started out as more of a tabloid-y situation. I think a lot of people weren't taking very seriously because, you know, so have like this pops up all the time. Like, oh, these people were. mysteriously drove off a cliff, et cetera, and they're working in this high clearance position. But now there's been enough since 2023, I think was the first one. And then there was one very recently where the individual had disappeared and then he was found.

I won't describe in what state he was found, but it's pretty disturbing. I did mention this in the 40 because there has been a congressional investigation launched to look into it. So obviously it has reached the attention of some high-level folks. There's been the congressional investigation team has sent letters to the FBI and different agencies. I mean, we'll see how effective that is. I think there's congressional investigations going on all the time, and we don't necessarily see the fruits of it very quickly, if ever. But it is significant that they're looking into this for sure. I feel like that's like a start of a movie, right?

Like the dark intro is that all these scientists have disappeared. So I hope that we'll get some information on that. Absolutely. It's like a movie script, right? It's perfect. And yeah, they're all really high clearance, high security clearance individuals. And some of them just disappeared and they don't know what happened to them, right? So I haven't followed it very closely, but that is fascinating.

My tweetery is tangentially related, but not really to Mary Alicases, in that mine is that the NASA Kennedy Space Center tweeted out that they have now created for Earth Day a website where you can, so their LAMSAT program for taking photos of the Earth from satellites has captured a lot of photos of things that look like letters. and so you can now go and you can type in your name and you'll spell out your name in things taken from satellites. That's cool. Yeah, there's all sorts of rivers and buildings and islands and geographical formations that look like English letters. So you can write out words with it. It's pretty fun. I think we'll all go do this and put it in slack so we can look at ours. There you go.

Yeah. McKenzie needs something for her, from the editor's desk newsletter. So I recommend that not only we, but everybody watching, go check it out as well. Meredith looks cool. I just did it. I'm excited. There you go. All righty. Well, thank you to all of y'all for joining us and to everybody who joined us to watch this episode of the weekly roundup. And we'll catch you all next week. 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.

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