The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - April 4, 2025

Episode Date: April 4, 2025

Show off your Lone Star spirit with a free "Remember the Alamo" hat with an annual subscription to The Texan: https://thetexan.news/subscribe/Learn more about the Data Center Coalition at: https://www.centerofyourdigitalworld.org/texasLearn more about The Beer Alliance at:https://beeralliance.com/The Texan’s Weekly Roundup brings you the latest news in Texas politics, breaking down the top stories of the week with our team of reporters who give you the facts so you can form your own opinion.Enjoy what you hear? Be sure to subscribe and leave a review! Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast.‘Go File It’: House Member Attempts Motion to Remove Speaker BurrowsAbbott Directs Texas Rangers Investigation Into 'Islamic' EPIC City DevelopmentSuperior HealthPlan Launches Internal Investigation After DOGE Hearing and CEO’s Firing, per Staff Meeting AudioSchool Choice, Education Funding Bills Hearing Rescheduled in Texas House CommitteeICE Arrests 72 Illegal Aliens, Two Gang Members in Week-Long South Texas RaidPresident Trump Announces Sweeping 'Reciprocal' Tariff PlanTexas House Approves Business Tax Exemption Increase Ahead of Budget NightVape Regulation Bills Spark Debate in Senate Committee HearingDemocratic Lawmakers Describe 'Life of Mother Act' as Necessary Step in 'Long-Term Fights'New York Stock Exchange Texas Opens, Trump Media Group First Listing

Howdy folks and welcome back to Legal Round Bits McKenzie here with Mary Lee's Cameron and Brad. How are you guys today? I wasn't gonna match you, you got some tan, I just noticed this tan. Yeah this was intentional. Yeah we actually spoke beforehand. Well we're matching with you too. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't get the momma. It's a feeling in the same vein. That's true. This is Brad's signal chat moment. Just like the Trump administration, he was, he didn't get added to our signal chat. He was the opposite. Yeah, he was the opposite. Got it. Yeah. Do you go chat on signal? I do. I don't have signal. Well, you should probably get that. Well, you probably get that. I cannot confirm or deny.

I can avoid situations like that. If signal tracts have occurred on my phone, they disappear, so they are not going to be able to track anything I've said. The number of encrypted apps I've had on my phone at any given time, it's unreal. Yeah. Unreal. Yeah. What's the one that is orange?

It's an orange app. You can put your finger over it, and it shows you one line at a time, and then the message goes away, and there's no way to see it. That sounds really sketchy. It does. I know. It's confidential. Anyway, there's somebody. I just route my VPN through another VPN through another VPN using signal and then I send that

signal through a Snapchat message that disappears. So I'm covered. I have multiple layers of encryption. That sounds foolproof. Yeah. Yeah. But it might take a while for that Snapchat message to send because there's so many hoops for it to jump first.

That's the problem. I don't get messages until 48 hours after they're sent. So I'm late getting updates on things. Well speaking of, right on time. I was a, I did a panel on Sunday and I've written to someone, a couple listeners of this Harry Podcast and one of the women who I was talking to was very sweet, very wonderful. She had great things to say. She said initially she doesn't like the banter we have in the beginning and then she said it adds a great set of color to it.

Was it she doesn't like it or she does? She used to not like the banter but she that's it okay okay so shoutouts to that person I'm sorry I forgot there's so many names thrown at me I forgot I forgot her name but I do remember you and I enjoy talking to them yeah sure yeah you know it was also the first time I've been to the Lost Pines Resort. And oh my god, it was insane. Yeah. Now I need to go spend, it's only like 10 miles away from me.

Where I live. It'll be your closed session retreat. Retreat? Yeah. I'll tell Connie and Phil, put it on the company card. No, company card. There you go. I do want to talk about merch madness.

How are things looking for your rackets, folks? Extremely negative. As they have been since the beginning. I have no clue. I just wait for the weekly update for whoever is checking saying, Cameron, you're doing good here. You lost here. Well, Final Four is what, Saturday? Uh, day the third? good here you lost here well Final Four is what Saturday usually they have the

championship on Monday which is stupid and why do they do this scheduling these sporting events have the Final Four on Friday and the championship on Sunday you should write in some payment I should yeah oh when I run for office which will never happen thankfully thankfully, but we already talked about once my platform, part of it is eliminating baseball blackouts. Well, this is now on there too. Get control of the scheduling of these things so kids can watch them instead of at 9, 8, 9 p.m. out of a school night it's ludicrous so what about what about the transfer portal does it remain under your administration no kill it kill it

fire killed the fire okay I don't really have a sophisticated we have Holly in first place who's killing it, doing a great job. I'm wondering if because from the beginning she said this was the first time doing it, but I have a hunch that this is not her first time doing it. Interesting. She is in town and she might stop by today. So we can ask her very direct questions, figure out what the truth is. My bracket is in second and I'm pretty pumped about it.

You know, we do have a significant chance of winning according to the group forecast tab on this website, which may or may not be solid. And I've been holding on to that hope for a hot minute, but my dreams could be dashed. Yeah, very quickly. So, holding on with an open hand. Rob is right behind third place We fell in fourth place. You came in fifth place Cameron is in sixth place Cameron's in sixth and some Cameron's really got a corner on the market there. Gonna make a late run here

but um I have 41% chance to win Holly has an 18% chance to win. Phil's got 15. Rob's 12. Cameron has 12 as well. So we'll see. Brian, where are your brackets? In the dumpster. Oh, wow, they are really low.

Oh, my god. Dang, I didn't think I'd get roasted over this, but here we are. You'd put the thing together. You set up the group and everything, and now here we are. Roast Stadium. It is slightly deserved, I would say. Yeah, my performance has been terrible this year. The only time, the closest I've ever come to winning a Braga pool was when Michigan made the National Championship Game in 2013

when I was a senior in high school. And I would have won it if Michigan had won, but we didn't. Lost a little. And blame it entirely on a terrible call, terrible personal foul call, on what was a clean block on Patency by Trey Burke. And they called a foul. You're remembering all the names. Of course I do.

Patency versus Mowat, very vividly. by Trey Burke and they call the foul. You're remembering all the names. Of course I do. He's reversed his moment very vividly. Under your administration, you'll issue a retroactive executive order to fix that call and then you will bring together those two teams again and they can replay. They're all pretty old at this point. Your version of Ruby and Lance Armstrong is Tour de France titles. Yep. Yeah, 100%. Well, good luck guys.

Prove those you have Brackets in the writing. I really overwin. Do you have anything to say about Auburn, another fast ride? I hate Auburn with a burning passion of a thousand sons and I hope Jaden who is an Auburn grad hears that. Well he's definitely going to. Yeah, he's definitely going to hear that. Yet is this. He's struggled as a Mac before so I want to give him an opportunity. He deserves all the worst things. Kyle is very aggressive. Well let's talk news, let's get into it. Brad, if you saw something that was forwarded, it has not happened in a long time this week.

Bubbling up. Tell us what happened. Was this Tuesday? I think it was Tuesday. It was Monday. It was Monday. I think it was Monday. Yeah.

OK. Well, the thing that happened was a member made a motion to vacate the chair, being removed the speaker from his position. That member, of course, was state representative Brian Harrison. He has been vocally opposed to speaker boroughs in every possible facet he could conjure up. It's been a constant barrage aimed at leadership.

could conjure up. You know, it's been a constant barrage aimed at leadership. And, uh, you know, he went to the back, Mike, he made a string of parliamentary inquiries, which he has done quite a bit during session. Um, usually relating to the speed at which the house is getting into legislation. Right. Right. And I think this one specifically was about the first calendar that was set. And I think this one specifically was about the first calendar that was set. And one of the multiple bills on the calendar was authored by a Democratic member, Mayhill, please, I forget the number. But it was one of eight or so, I think, bills that were on the calendar. The first one of the session, which happened on Tuesday.

So that string questioning eventually led into him making a motion to vacate the chair. And so that introduces a very strange parliamentary sequence of events. So when you've made it, boroughs refuse to recognize them. First time, or at least the last time we saw that happen on the floor was When Tom Craddock was speaker, I think in 07 his last term as speaker of the house I got a piece on on that specifically from a couple years ago when we thought it might happen

When Tony tenderholt was making a lot of preliminary inquiries from the back Mike It never did come to fruition, but you can read about that history back then. But here, Burroughs refused to recognize him. And there was some back and forth, and he eventually told Harrison that such a motion needs to be made by resolution. That itself is interesting.

First, when you make a motion to vacate, that is a privileged motion. Typically, privileged motions are recognized ad infinitum, right, because it's a privilege of the house. Sometimes you see those given become given as speeches. You get up and you talk about why X bill sucks or why action is good or bad right. Now when he's not recognized in the rules in order to challenge the ruling of the chair on that you need 76 signatures 75

seconds which effectively is a referendum on the speakership because that is the number of votes you need to become speaker and so Harrison said invited after you know they went back and forth a bit and Burroughs didn't budge, invited members to come sign his list. From what I know, from what I understand, only one person signed it and that was David Lowe, freshman Republican from Fort Worth. The reason that this is such in the weeds is because all parliamentary stuff is in the weeds, but it affects how things unfold on the floor very much. You know one point is

notable about the boroughs submitted as a resolution the rules say they must be submitted in writing but talking that parliamentary people on this they debate over whether it's you know effectively and writing there or you have to write it down specifically or if you submit a resolution in Congress When you make a motion to vacate the chair, which I guess is it's not the correct exact wording of it But it's you know, that's what everyone calls it but in Congress you have You have to do it via resolution. And so there, Burroughs, the speaker here, is citing congressional precedent.

And when you look in the rules, you have various precedents that are cited. And first, you look at how, when you're making a determination on some sort of ruling, typically you look at House precedent first. Actually, I think technically you look at the text of the words in the rules and if that doesn't clear it up you look at house precedent and then if that doesn't clear it up you look to congressional precedent. From my understanding, and maybe I'm wrong, but from my understanding this is basically moving congressional precedent up higher in terms of making these decisions, at least in this moment, right?

There's also an argument that it's all Kabuki theater, it doesn't matter, right? They just do what they want. But this was when Harrison made the motion, it was laughed out by I'd say about half the room. Much of the other half was just kind of like, really? It kind kind of was a half cocked strategy especially because only one person signed on to the the motion but It brought a lot of attention to the situation even more than already had been

You know the other facet the other fascinating aspect of this is it was the next thing that Harrison had done to try and, you know, stick his finger in the House leadership's eye. The day before at the appropriations meeting, I think this was Tuesday because the appropriations hearing happened on Monday, he had a stamp, he had the budget printed out when they passed out the budget. We'll have that on the floor next week on Thursday. And then he had a sign that said the budget nobody has read. It was like a thousand pages, the committee sub. And largely it's the same as what they've been talking about for a while.

Largely the same as what the Senate passed out. But when you have a committee sub, you of course have some changes. talking about for a while, largely the same as what the Senate passed out. But you know when you have a committee set up, you of course have some changes. So his point was that there wasn't enough time to read this, but regardless we're seeing an escalation building up to this motion to vacate by Harrison in the tactics he's deploying. You know it's effective in getting a lot of attention, especially in social media, it absolutely is. It's also pissing some members off.

And I'm not talking about members of leadership, although they're pissed off about this too. Right, I'm talking members who, and this includes when he called for a verification vote on Friday last week over the quorum when there clearly wasn't one. You know, there were members on the right, the political right, that weren't there. And they were, you know, exposed to being not there even though they were in the initial vote.

They registered as president. So, um, you know, he's rankling a lot of people and you will see what his goals are here. You know what his strategy is strategy so far has just been to constantly throw fire at ambition. Um, which should the members have been there that day? Like, yeah, absolutely worth discussing. Absolutely. Right. So that happens a lot in the house where folks will pretty lie and say, hey, yeah, they're here. They're here. They're here as their buddy. And it's just kind of how it works. But are they physically on the floor? Yeah. Well, and usually it's for like members who are, who will be there or running late for whatever reason. It's not for people who are just flat out not there. Somewhere else. Right. And will not will not be showing up. Now the other point of contention is that there was no real

solidified business to be taken up that day. They had a memorial and resolutions calendar and which you know critics on the right have been saying that why are we doing this anyway? Like this is just wasting time and then they were going to honor the past members and former speakers. So like there was no actual bills to be voted on but they still didn't have a quorum and They didn't have one on Saturday either. So And there's no rule for proxy voting in the Texas. Well, that's just something that you wrote about in Yeah, and that's actually in my tweeter II. Yeah. Okay. It's been you stole our thunder Cameron. Yeah

Yeah. Okay. It's been, you just stole her thunder, Cameron. Yeah, shoot. Um, but yeah, so this is building up to something. It might be a clash with the lieutenant governor because Harrison has been criticizing heavily the budget. Also the move, the moving picture image incentive program, whatever it is, that is a, you know, a priority of Patrick's. The Matthew McFarland email. Yep. That will be fascinating to see if that does blow up and we'll see what goes. But a very notable day on Tuesday. It's quite spectacle watching from the floor. Yeah, absolutely. And he's filed a, did you mention he filed a petition online? And I mean, not that it's going to affect anything on the floor, but he did create a petition online for people to sign to vacate the chair. Oh yeah.

Yeah. It's also housed at WindRed, which is a fundraising operation. Now you can't fundraise right now because they're in session. And I clicked on a link and it didn't have an option to fundraise. It is just a petition, but it is housed at housed at the you know that is building up his fundraising database yeah you can't collect emails so there you go we'll keep an eye on that especially with a June night coming up next week of the 10th so we'll keep an eye on all this and likely school choice very soon

thereafter. Coming to UK, where there have been a lot of updates regarding Epic City, give us the latest. Yeah, and for those listening who haven't heard anything about Epic City, I'm not sure how because it's been all over the news recently, but this East Plano Islamic Center is the sort of parent organization in conjunction with their investment firm that they created has started up this new development this real estate development that they're calling Epic City and it's been causing a lot of controversy here in the state. Multiple investigations filed most recently with Governor Greg Abbott saying that the

Texas Rangers are going to investigate potential violations of criminal law. And this epic city development is in Josephine. It's planned to include more than a thousand homes, a mosque, and schools slated to cover more than 400 acres of land. So very sizable real estate development here. In the epic city and its parent organizations have been quite consistent in saying this is for everyone,

anyone can join. It's not discriminatory, but we've seen investigations being launched not just by Governor Greg Abbott, but also Attorney General Kim Paxton. So far, we've seen the Texas State Securities Board and the Texas Workforce Commission being directed to investigate Epic City. the Texas State Securities Board and the Texas Workforce Commission being directed to investigate Epic City. There is also a cease and assist letter from the Texas Funeral Service to immediately stop all their funeral service operations at Epic City. Paxton is opening a civil investigation demand into Epic and its

investment firm, Capital, Community Capital Partners, saying that it's raised a number of concerns. So this community is, you could say, Muslim-centric. It has Islamic in the name. So that's sort of rung the alarm for many of those in our government. And with these investigations, we will see if anything comes out where there are violations of different types of statutes or laws. But we're just waiting now to see what comes of those investigations. And I encourage folks to go ahead and figure out or go look at all of Cameron's reporting because since we haven't we didn't report on this and then all of a sudden it was like okay we have five pieces up on this

exact development. So well we we just wanted to make sure that it was going to be a serious issue because we were paying we were paying attention to this for weeks now for more than a month probably, we just wanted to make sure all the I's were dotted, all the T's were crossed, and there was actually investigations occurring before we wrote about something that might turn into nothing, but it looks like it might be something. Absolutely. Okay, thank you. Brad and Irelis, this was a double whammy here. We're going to talk to both of you about this story that Texan obtained some audio and

documents pertaining to last week's Dust Up in a Doge committee hearing here in Texas with Superior Health Plan. It's a very spicy story and you all did some great original reporting. Here, tell us about it. Thanks. Yeah, this is a really interesting story. So we obtained some audio from a staff meeting that Superior Health Plan held with their parent company, Centene. And so if you remember, we covered this. Superior was called in to the Texas House Doge meeting and it was originally to discuss this lawsuit that they ran with the state of Texas where they're arguing that Texas had an unfair procurement process

that left them with much less of its market share than had previously. So there's that whole lawsuit and that's what they originally called in for. But then this hearing evolved into something different when Chairman Capriglione passed out folders that had documents which detailed how Superior had been investigating these lawmakers and had those folders and the documents are linked in the article. But so this audio was of the staff meeting where Superior, the first one that Superior held after this whole incident blew up. up and they discussed how they've launched an internal investigation and there were four key things they shared with their staff that they found through this investigation that they've started so far. And so the first one was that they've come to the conclusion that all the information that was referenced in the hearing was publicly available information available on the

internet and they didn't clarify about whether they had sought to obtain information that wasn't publicly available but that was they found everything referenced in the hearing was publicly available and then secondly they said that they found no evidence of legal violations such as information being used for blackmail or leverage purposes and thirdly that they said you know, there's been a lot of talk about private investigators, but this was all desk based research.

And the vendor that got the information wasn't in Texas. So they were saying, kind of clearing up the idea of, oh, there's an investigator following this person around. They said this was desk based, strictly of public records. And then their last conclusion was that the conduct that was referenced in this Doge hearing stopped in 2019. And they said after that, we believe that the research which was referenced was gratuitous and crossed the line

of what was necessary to do our job. But to be clear, it was legal, but not reflective of conduct that we condone. And that was, um, it's Landsbaum, his first name was Nathan Landsbaum. Yeah, he's a CEO of Markets and Medicaid for Centene, which is the parent company of Superior. So that was him speaking there. Um, yeah, so those were the four key findings of their internal investigation.

And then the new CEO or at least interim CEO Bill Jones spoke for a bit. He talked a bit about company morale and said he wants to focus on the future and said Texas is a very important market to our company. And he talked about the whole lot. So he said, I know it's probably on the top of your mind for most of you. He said, we have a commitment to continuing to provide our members the best quality health care and our employees are at the center of that commitment. And he reiterated that the procurement process, which during this lawsuit with Texas over, was flawed and unfair, but he said our approach will not change. We're heading forward in the same manner and that's as pointed as I can get on it. So we did very interesting stuff. Yeah. And Brian, you

brought in some additional reporting those stories as well. Yeah. So Mary Lee's got the recording. I got the the file that completely handed out to members. Um, you know, most of it we knew, but I think some of it had were all the members that were being investigated by this company. You know, you had publicly stated ones, current lane commissioner, Don Buckingham, Senator Charles Schwartner. And then was the other one that we knew, Capri Leon himself. Yeah yeah and then the two that we hadn't seen mentioned were representative Sergio Munoz he was specifically mentioned in a an email and then another one that we think is a

reference to Senator Chewie Hinojosa someone listed in there named Juan Hinojosa and that's yeahwie's real name. But I don't, yeah, but we're not even, like I said, we're able to confirm that that is exactly, specifically him. But you know, the general theme is, is they're investigating, uh, members of the legislature. And I think, you know, yeah, you mentioned how none of all this was publicly available information. Um, it's common for a company, an insurance company like that to investigate claimants to make sure

they're telling the truth about the claims they're filing. But what's notable here is that they're investigating lawmakers who are not claimants and who are, you know, this is extraneous to their usual operations. And so, specifically they were looking at lawmakers who were tasked with potentially regulating them. That's the issue here. That's the ethics problem. Nothing was illegal, but it's a massive, massive ethics problem. And of course the questions were raised, okay how often do insurance companies use to investigate this kind of thing when they, like how often are private investigators hired in situations to you know ensure that the claims are better be made or on the board right? But that's not the

question here. Another notable thing that they said during the meeting was Landsbaum said he said in these cases we have to be careful to only collect information needed to do the job. He said collecting personal information we don't need can lead to the impression of invasiveness and then create misperceptions about why the work was done in the first place, which is definitely what these investigations led to. So I'd encourage you to have a story. Brian Rayless is reporting this is a very spicy piece and I say that a lot and I think Rayleigh's reporting this is a very spicy piece. And I say that a lot. And I think about every story. This is a particularly spicy piece and folks should go check it out at thetexas.news.com.

Great job, you too. Thank you. We're going to take a quick ad break. its members who help deliver an annual economic impact of $35 billion and provide over 200,000 jobs to hard-working Texans. From local tax revenue to direct economic investment to charitable contributions, their members are heavily invested in the success of our communities and our state. The Beer Alliance is dedicated to ensuring the safe distribution of alcohol throughout Texas. For more information, visit BeerAlliance.com.

And we're back and we have a special guest, Holly Hanson. Hey everybody. She just magically popped in. Yeah. And just parachuted in. Yeah, it's really green screen. She's been actually here with us. Holly, what are you doing in Houston?

Oh, I had some meetings and some fun things to do so came over for a couple of days. Yeah, it's really green screen. She's been actually here with us. How long have you been in Houston? I don't know, I had some meetings and some fun things to do, so came over for a couple of days. And it's great to be here. And now I'm in Houston for a few days. Half the time I remember, he gave her permission to get in the building, I clicked the app to scan in, and half the time I don't. She's texting me like, I'm out the door, I got in the garage door, I'm at the garage door, like, Jade, go get her! And it was kind of hot out there, like, okay, we're gonna be at the door, he's super hot in here.

It's really getting warm again. What's been on Houston these days? Ooh, lots going on in Houston. There's all kinds of crazy things. There's a group trying to recall Mayor John Whitmire and which I think is probably a long shot I think they have to collect a phenomenal number of signatures within 30 days to make it happen and honestly he's pretty popular in the city right now so seems like a long shot we'll see what happens. Well and Halle reports on Warned is Houston but you are losing the ground there. It's a reform a session which is a huge huge issue in both chambers. Correct, correct. It's still ongoing. We'll see what happens. I'll probably be in Austin a lot over the next few weeks we hope and we'll see

some supposed take place maybe on the house floor soon. What's your over under on whether or not you know what I think there's a pretty good chance this session you know we hear that there's some negotiations going on in the background and there's a big push for it especially when people are looking at the kinds of things that happened with criminal justice in Houston and Harris County in particular but also in other parts of the state where people are really concerned about some of these really dangerous repeat suspects getting out on bond repeatedly. And I just want to give judges those tools to perhaps detain some of these people.

There's actually those two SJRs, two resolutions that would amend the state constitution. There's the other one that regards violent felonies committed by illegal aliens. So that one would mandate the detention of an illegal alien charged with a felony without bail. So that one, you know, we'll see. But there's a lot of push, a lot of pressure on some of those Houston Harris County representatives because of the Jocelyn Nungre story. We'll see what happens. And of course, these constitutional amendments have a higher threshold by which they can pass the legislature, which creates a little bit of difficulties for some of these issues that do have a broad majority of support.

Still not that. You can't have just a simple amendment. Yeah, you've got to get the two-thirds. So you need at least 12 Democrats to join every single Republican in approving these. And then it's not done because then it goes to the voters. In this political climate, come on! I'm sure it can happen. Yeah. I have agreed to optimism. I can't be trusted.

That's a good time. Awesome. Well, Holly, thanks for joining us and letting us pull you in the room here. Sure. Yeah, sure. This is where... Get to work. Atta girl! Welcome back to Austin. Thanks. Thanks.

Okay, well we're back and Holly's still here and Cameron's gone. So did I know what was going to happen five minutes ago? No. Are we rolling with the punches? Absolutely. Are we glad Holly's here? 100%. A little switcheroo. So Cameron ran over to the Capitol for an education, like a very big education committee situation where they're going to be talking about committee subs for the big house, the Texas two step. Isn't that what it's called in the house? Oh yeah, they are called that.

I forgot about that. Yeah. They're not as committed to the bit as Paul Bettencourt was on the property tax stuff where he'd say it in literally every press release or anytime you ever talked about it. In all capital letters. For sure. With a lot of exclamation points. Yes and maybe some bolding in there. He does use all the tools at his disposal. That's how you keep a theme alive. That's exactly right. Just like him and his Trump impression. Cameron jumped out for that and we were like Holly you're here, come join us.

Right after we said fight Holly she's still here. You could have told a more interesting story like I you know fought Cameron for the seat. I mean we could have we could have played that but here we are. Here we are yeah that's very very true I missed an opportunity. Well we were gonna have Cameron talk about school choice education financing but we kind of talked through that already. Brad do you want to give a quick rundown just of what the house is Dealing with and why it's important Cameron be over there. Yeah, so they're they're having a formal meeting which in a formal meetings Typically where they just

vote out bills that have been already considered in a public hearing and So they're doing that today with HB 2 and SB 2 with a committee sub for SB 2 There's some differences in those committee subs. Not a ton, but you know Cameron would know the differences. I do not have that knowledge. I can tell you all about property tax relief though. They do go hand in hand. Yes, but this is, so this is a big deal. Um, you know, there's a lot of uproar about this hearing not being live streamed.

And you know, the reason is that formal hearings are never live streamed. Uh, and so, you know, you can argue with that all you want, but that's how it's been. And so even for this, um, they have it, they don't have a live stream. Although Cameron, I think it's planning on live streaming when he gets there, if he gets there on time. So, um, there you have it. There you go. Yeah. Godspeed to Cameron. Yeah. The day I'm hearing that this is going to get brought to the house floor is April 15th, uh, not confirmed yet in a formal calendar, but they were definitely putting this behind consideration of

the budget. The week following the budget. Yep, so we'll see if that comes true, but April 10th is the day I'm hearing. There we go. Bradley, thank you. Mary-Lise, we're coming to you. An operation was conducted by ICE in South Texas recently. Let's talk border. Yes, so another operation that ICE is conducted in Texas. They arrested 72 illegal aliens, which included two gang members, and 61 of them are criminal aliens. This was a week-long operation, so it was from March 16th to March 22nd in Harlingen in Cameron County, and they said that this was to bolster public safety, national security, and border security. So there were 11 different charges that were doled out to these individuals.

And three of the criminal aliens were charged or convicted with a sex offense or a child sex offense, such as aggravated sexual assault of a minor, possession of child pornography or rape. And there were two that were charged for an aggravated felony or other offense, such as homicide, aggravated assault, or domestic violence. And the ICE Enforcement Removal Operations Acting Field Office Director said that the results are a clear indication of ICE's commitment regarding the role we play in keeping our community safe by locating, arresting,

and ultimately removing at-large criminal aliens who are posing a public threat to safety and other immigration fugitives. There were seven of the 61 criminal illegal aliens that were convicted or charged for alien smuggling, which is a topic we've talked about a lot in this podcast. And then there were another seven that were charged with driving while intoxicated. And like we said, the two of these 72 that were arrested were documented gang members.

Uh, ICE did not clarify which gangs these, um, individuals were from. And yeah, so this, another operation, uh, conducted by ICE. We'll probably be talking about these every week now on this podcast, these operations that ICE will just announce, Hey, we, we did this and the city in Texas, and this is how many individuals were arrested. These are the crimes. So we'll keep, keep an eye on that. Per usual.

Per the usual. That's exactly right. The next story we have on our docket is a story from Cameron about Trump. crimes. So we'll keep, keep an eye on that. Per usual. Per the usual. That's exactly right. The next story we have on our docket is a story from Cameron about Trump's tariffs and encouraged folks to go read his story, but a very interesting press conference and what he declared was a make America wealthy. Again, a press conference, Trump said that jobs and factories will come roaring back and that the tariffs will bring about a golden age for the country.

He called them reciprocal. That was a big theme of this press conference saying that, hey, this is we're only enacting these because of actions done back to the United States. Cameron does detail, of course, this is not a cut and dry issue where there's just a groundswell of full on support from both parties. It's not the nature of this kind of move. We have Chuck Schumer, of course, leader, Senate minority leader, declaring the Democrats will fight these tariffs to the nail. A number of Republicans also leading out to the executive order have also voiced their opposition, specifically signing on to a Democratic resolution to block Trump's

Canadian tariffs. What's interesting here is you also have a huge community of Republicans who are very supportive of this move. So I'd encourage folks to go read that. And of course, Texas being the power that it is within the states, it will absolutely be affected by this negatively or positively. So go check out that story from Cameron Bradley. We're going to come to you. The house passed part of its priority property tax plan, which, you know, school choice and the ESA bill and the school funding bill, you said not in your real house,

but property taxes, so let's talk about it. Boy, I can over talk on property taxes. Please don't. So exciting. Also, this is the first time, guys. We've got a female majority. We have a female majority on the podcast. Whoa, Brad.

In person. You're outnumbered. This rocks. Wow. This so rocks. This is an hour. This is a big moment. So don't bore us with this whole tax thing.

You know what I'm saying? Brad's face when we said that, we need to have a zoom in on his face. He did look quite, uh. The moment of horror. Yeah, exactly. You want me to actually talk about this? I was just going to say, why don't you start, Brad? So it wasn't very exciting on the house floor.

It was a foreground conclusion. We knew it was going to pass. HDR1 and HB9, part of the house's property tax plan. The other part is HB8, which is more compression. HB1 or HJR1 and HB9 effectively would just increase the business personal property tax exemption from $2,500 to $250,000. The BPP exemption is on an exemption tax exemption on all property owned by business including inventory that is not the land on all property owned by business including inventory that is not the land on which it sits the business or the the building it owns so you're doing a really good job thank you I appreciate that so the

that was increased it's aimed specifically at small businesses you know they pay taxes on inventory, you know, when you have a smaller business that inventory, you know, when you have a large corporation the inventory is massive, like the 250k exemption is going to do nothing for them. But for small businesses this can be a really big thing. And so that passed, there were two attempts to amend them, both by West Ferdell, a Republican from Brady, a freshman. He wanted to increase that to a million dollars and then tried to increase it when that failed, tried to increase it to 500 million.

Morgan Meyer, the chairman who introduced these, authored these, he said that he wasn't opposed to the idea of giving more tax break there, but they had a carefully negotiated deal, or at least financially, in the budget. There's a certain amount of money allotted for this in the budget with the Senate, and so they didn't want to disrupt that by changing the number and thus increasing the amount of money they're spending on this. So those two amendments failed. These two things passed overwhelmingly. I think only like a dozen or so Democrats voted against these ultimately. And they passed final reading today on Thursday.

So now we'll go over to the Senate. There you go. Bradley, you did a great job. Thank you very little. I do feel the need to affirm him more than I usually would because he is outnumbered so significantly on this podcast currently. Yeah, he really does to be affirmed. He really does love words of affirmation, so. Is that your love language, Brad? Huh. Not in the slightest.

He would rather me say mean and insulting things to him so you're doing a good job. His love language is sarcasm? Yes. I like it. You're exactly right. My love language is get me out of here. That is such a good one.

Oh no. I think we should drag this out as long as possible. Let's milk it. I'm gonna look at Twitter now. Okay. That would stop me if we were fully in the majority. That's true. That's what you get for podcasts. Well Holly, let's talk about one of your stories this week. This is a very interesting nexus of the political infighting in the legislature, which happens behind the scenes every session, and a very big legislative issue that has gone on and been discussed pretty broadly for a couple of sessions now. Still, there's a lot of money that has found itself off of the local revenue or tax rolls.

Right, well, we're talking about taxes. Yes. That's something we could talk about. Absolutely, so walk us through it. Yeah, so there's these programs in the Texas law that allows a 100% property tax exemption to property apartment owners and developers who set aside a certain percentage of their units for either low or moderate income folks. And there's a lot of caveats to that. But there's

been some complaints. They did reform part of the law during the last session in 2023. It was a big fight. And the concern is they're taking a lot of tax revenue away from, for example, your local school district, your county government, your city government, your municipal districts. They're all being deprived of this tax revenue without having to say in whether or not these properties are removed from the tax rolls. And so again, they reformed it somewhat last session. Now they're coming back because there's another part of the code that they're calling a loophole and trying to reform this. And what

they want to do is have more stringent requirements for providing actual low-income housing or moderate-income housing. They also want to have audits, not only of the new properties that might be coming off the tax rolls, but also existing properties that were already operating under this program. And the allegation has been that a lot of these apartment owners, developers, they don't actually have to reduce their rents. When they look at what they call the local market average and then the average median income for just that area or area median income, sometimes they can actually raise the rents,

even though they've gotten this property tax exemption that can be extended for up to 99 years. So a lot of concerns about it. So you had Representative Gary Gates has been on this issue for a couple of years now. He had a bill to implement some new reforms in this other side of the code, having the audits, having the more stringent requirements. But there's been the usual kind of horse trading in the background. And his bill had a hearing in the Intergovernmental Affairs Committee a couple of weeks ago, but was not given a vote. It's not been brought up back in the committee for a vote.

However, a competing bill was brought up. Now, this bill has an interesting history. It was introduced by the committee chairman, Cecil Bell, Jr. And it is a duplicate of one introduced by another representative, Rafael Anchia. And some folks have pointed to the fact that Anchia is the co-founder of a group that invests in these properties, they develop them, they manage them, they own them. And so the concern is that he has an interest in this and a conflict of interest perhaps.

But Bell introduced the same bill and that was heard in committee last week and voted out that day. So that's been sent to calendars while Gary Gates bill which has a lot more reforms attached to it is still waiting to be brought back up. In the article if people would like to go and read the article that we published this week you can see there's an interesting timeline here and some emails that went back and forth between committee members and some some interesting emails that went back and forth between committee members and some

interesting meetings that took place and a lot of concerns about which or whether or not Gates bill is going to come forward. Also to note, Gates bill has been given a lower number indicating it perhaps has the blessing perhaps of the speaker. Well, not necessarily. Yeah. Interesting part of that is it was given when feeling was still speaker and still in the right right right so you can read between the lines say okay that was something feeling agreed to for gates to get his vote for speaker it's probably wasn't as explicit as that oh that's how the speakers stuff works, right? But yeah, those were the first two priority bills filed.

Right. 20 and 21. HB21, yes. Well, he had one other one, 20. Oh, right. Yeah, he had two of them. Yes. But that was while feeling was still Speaker and was still in the race.

Correct. Which is the interesting part of that kind of transition between Speakerships, right? Exactly. Bill numbers. Yeah. But I think, you know, we're hearing things on the back channels not quite sure what's gonna happen with Gates bill we did see an interesting tweet today from Mays Middleton who had a bill that was a

companion to Cecil Bell's but he was I guess called out on Twitter and he responded that he hoped that Gary Gates HB 21 is the one that passes. So we will see what happens with the sausage making on this one. Yeah it's really interesting to watch all of this. I think Brad, you and I on Smith Builder Room a couple of weeks ago, a couple weeks ago? Wow it's been a while. Really talked about a lot of this behind the scenes chatter with bills and how authorship and these issues can kind of become a very territorial issue behind the scenes and a lot of folks aren't aware of it but it happens and it's a huge deal within the building during the session is

who's carrying what bills and this is just another instance of that and kind of bubbling to the surface in ways that the others did a little bit but this one's really starting to kind of come forward. Well one more point I'd make about that I talked to Gates the other day and he told me he now has 103 co-sponsors for his bill. So, he's got bipartisan support for it and he had bipartisan support in the 2023 session when he pushed some amendments that more thoroughly reformed the other part of Texas code that governs these these arrangements. And yeah, so when we're talking about whether or not your school districts are getting adequate tax revenue, this is a factor. And

as the critics of this program pointed out, they award these tax exemptions without getting the school districts input and then you know the taxpayers across the state have to make up for that with the state's allotment. Yeah absolutely. We'll go read Holly Hansen's reporting at the Texas Center to get the full skinny on everything that's going on there it is very spicy. We're gonna take a quick break and hear from another sponsor. Did you know data centers support 364,000 jobs in Texas and contribute $3.5 billion in state and local taxes? These critical facilities boost the state's economy and power essential services.

From video calls and online banking to health care and government operations, data centers are the backbone of our modern lives, driving economic growth and ensuring seamless communication across the state. With Texas households averaging 21 connected devices, the demand for data centers continues to grow. In today's rapidly advancing technological landscape and with the state's booming economy, businesses are expected to generate twice as much data in the near future, making data centers a vital investment for the future of Texas prosperity. To learn more, visit center of your digital world.org slash Texas. And we're back. And it's a story that is Cameron's who is not here because he is over doing more important things at the Capitol

than yapping around with us. But I'd encourage folks to go read his story deals with vapes and e cigarettes. Legislation specifically discusses we can a Senate committee hearing sparking some major debate. So folks go read his story at the Texan. This is SB Senate Bill 1698. Senate Bill? Senate Bill SB. I said the acronym and sometimes the criticism we receive from listeners is hey define your acronyms. What does that mean? So I was just making sure. I hate defining acron acronyms I know that's why I try and do it for you often because he'll rattle off acronyms and I'll be

like oh is that what that means okay great making sure it gets in there Mary's we're gonna come to you various Democratic lawmakers are supporting Republican legislation clarifying the state's abortion laws very interesting combination of allies here. Tell us about it. Yeah for sure. So I believe we talked about this on our last podcast episode but this is the the Life of the Mother Act has been filed and this was highly anticipated legislation because it clarifies the state's current abortion laws and there was a ton of talk about that during the the last election you

know cycle. So there's been a joint statement released by the Democratic lawmakers that are supporting this kind of explaining, okay, this is why we're supporting it. And the main themes were that, okay, we are staunchly pro-choice, but we recognize that we don't have't have the majority were not able to pass legislation that we would like to right now but this is a necessary next step they said in in a long-term fight so they were saying this is this is the next step that we need to make so we've got Senator Brian Hughes

Life of the Mother Act which is Senate Bill 31 just also one of the and Patrick's priorities. And he's got one Democratic member, Senator Carol Alvarado, who signed on as a co-author. And she's also the chair of the Texas Senate Democratic Caucus. And she wrote in this statement, she acknowledged, she said that she thinks there's some confusion around what Senate Bill 31 really does. She said, this bill doesn't go as far as what we would like. You know, we'd like to include exceptions for fatal fetal anomalies and rape or even

repeal the ban, but we don't have the votes for that as the minority party in the legislature. And the other statements are put forward, so there was, because there's House Bill 44, and so the House representatives, there's 27 Democratic members that are supporting his bill with eight Republican co-authors. And Representative Donna Howard said in the joint statement, she said that right now, pregnant women across Texas are facing a health crisis, being forced to carry dangerous pregnancies to term, risking impairment to their major bodily functions or life.

And she said that she thinks that House Bill 44 will address this maternal health crisis by putting decision-making related to appropriate medical treatment back in the hands of medical professionals, ensuring they can act on when to decide if to continue a pregnancy and if that will risk impairment to the woman's major bodily function or if it will risk her life. And Howard said that she thinks this is not an either or situation, it's a both and. We need clarification now and in the future, she would like to see a restoration of access to abortion health care for all Texans," she said. And we mentioned this before, but this Life

of the Mother Act requires continuing medical education and continuing legal education to ensure that both our medical and legal professionals are well-versed with the state's abortion laws, and this is something that these Democratic members are supporting. The representative Ann Johnson also provided an explanation in this joint statement she said that Texas is facing two crises driven by political extremism. She's saying there's one in the courthouses and another in the hospitals. So she has it you can read her full statement in the piece, but these women are

explaining why they're linking arms with these Republican lawmakers and why I think this is the next appropriate step. And we of course have been greatly anticipating the life of the Mother Act back in July 2024 when Hughes said this will probably need some clarification. So everyone was anticipating that for this session. So. Absolutely. And here it is. Yeah, here it is.

Here it is. Very interesting. Mary Elise, thank you for your coverage. Last story of the week is also a Cameron story. This week was the opening of a new stock exchange here in Texas. Very interesting to watch the New York Stock Exchange in Texas open up here and encourage folks

to go read Cameron's reporting at the Texan and give some rundown of the Trump media group being the first listing, which is also very interesting. So go check that out at the Texan. We do have to go into our Tweetery section. Holly, I don't know, you know, we can, we'll, we'll come to you last, but think of some sort of Tweetery to throw in here. Bradley, I'm very curious about yours. So I'd like to start in here. Bradley, I'm very curious about yours, so I'd like to start with you. Okay, so it's not even a midterm yet, so there's no real election other than local elections happening. There is a very high profile election going on for mayor, the mayor of Flavortown. Oh my gosh. Of what? Flavortown. Laker town?

Flavor. Flavortown. Yes. Oh. And you know who the incumbent of Flavortown is. I do not. Guy Feary. Oh.

The guy from Diners, Drivens, and Dives. Why is there, why has he been unseated? He has not been unseated. He's being challenged. He is the current incumbent mayor of flavor town He's being challenged by and this is a pretty significant one by Gordon Ramsay. Whoa Hell's Kitchen fame, right? That's this was a show the big one. Mm-hmm and So far the general election spending on this race

has amounts to 1.2 million on Ramsey's behalf and 726,000 on Fieri's half behalf. Oh. So it's heating up. It's a pretty rockin' and rollin' election. And we'll see where the chips fall on the local election date. Who do you, who's your money on? I think Ferry will win. He's got enough money to keep him afloat.

You can't take out the actual mayor of Flavortown. Flavortown. I'm of course kidding. This was in April 1st, April Fool's Day post by Ad Impact. Oh. Man, I really got you. I don't think my delivery was that good. You did. I definitely thought this was Impact. Oh. Man, I really got you. I don't think my delivery was that good. You did.

I definitely thought this was real. Yeah. I think we trusted you. Yeah, I know, right? No, it was a... I'm so disappointed. It was a spoof post by Ad Impact, who posts ads spending TV bias,

money buying TV bias, and that kind of thing during election season. It's really helpful. Really thorough and insightful when we're actually in the thick of an election. That's funny. So yeah, there's that. I will add a real one real quick. There was an article in the New York Times that came out this week with Attorney General

Ken Paxton previewing the potential clash between Paxton and Cornyn for US Senate It the article reads It's pretty funny. I think asked how he made this decision to run For US Senate. Mr. Paxton began answering the question Then he was reminded by a campaign consultant that he had not yet officially decided to run right. Mr. Paxton said campaign consultant that he had not yet officially decided to run. Right, Mr. Paxson said. They went on. I have a feeling I know who that consultant is. I will not name him, but that is a pretty comical side note there. But I mean for all intents and purposes he is running and I think it would take a pretty

significant change of pace for him to decide not to jump in. Yeah. I, if you have you guys, this is totally related to the first portion of your Tweetery. Um, do you just watch Gordon Ramsey on Hot Ones? Have you guys seen that? No, none of you have? Oh my gosh.

The Hot Ones, it's the show on YouTube. It's super famous where people, celebrities like A-list celebrities go on and eat a slate of hot wings and they get hotter by each wing and they're interviewed. Okay I've definitely seen that. It's unbelievable watching. It's the most entertaining and honestly like the interview questions are the best interview questions of any out there but Gordon Ramsay's I think has the most views of any of them ever because of course it's Gordon Ramsay he's just like swearing the entire time and like in absolute pain sweating bullets It's very funny and the host is like such a I don't know kind of calm presence

And he's just sitting there like also dying from eating the wings because he's eating the wings along with the guests But it's like so much more calm and Gordon Ramsay is just like freaking out and bringing in donuts and milk and things to try and Yeah Gordon Ramsey's just like freaking out and bringing in donuts and milk and things to try and mitigate. Yeah, it's terrible. Um, Mary-Lynn, so what do you got? Well, this is something that Cameron was teasing at the beginning of the episode, but I covered it in the 40. There was a big desktop over proxy voting for parents who were in Congress, new parents, and there was a whole debate over that. Representative Paulina Luna was kind of leading the charge there alongside a congresswoman from Colorado who recently had her son and she had to decide between, hey am I gonna bring, I think it was her eight week old at the

time to vote or am I gonna miss? And she was really wishing that she could have voted from home. So this has been a very interesting conversation because I have strong opinions about this but as so does everybody else and that's been well displayed online and speaker Johnson is speaker Mike Johnson is not having it so yeah it's very interesting yeah yeah I mean Roy, he's one from Texas that's been saying, Hey, like I'll do respect to you, but if you can't do your job, then you're going to need to choose between one or the other. So that's very, is it, is it falling largely on partisan lines or is it

kind of a split? It seems pretty split. That's so it's, it makes sense that this would be an issue that might split a little bit. Yeah. Cause they're, cause the people that are for it are labeling it as pro-family, pro-woman. Totally. And so then a lot of the like pro-life folks are like oh yeah this is a good way to promote motherhood but then got the

other side of the coin there. Yeah. Very interesting. Yeah. That's a good one. A lot of concerns about proxy notes too. Yes just generally speaking. Right, are they legitimate? Are they, yeah. Is there room for problems there? Yeah, will it be abused? Some concerns, exactly. Another instance of voting integrity, just in a different setting, right?

Totally different setting, but very, I just knocked my microphone. Very interesting. And folks, go subscribe to the Texan to get the Texan to get the 40 cent to your inbox every Thursday. Holly, do you want me to go or do you have one? I have one. I kind of scrambled really quickly and some interesting things here. Since we brought up John Whitmire earlier in the podcast. Yes, that's perfect. Covering Houston, I'm always

interested in what's going on there in the city. But there's a tweet today from Patrick Sveteck about an interesting political pairing. Houston Mayor John Whitmire is listed as a special guest for an April 22nd fundraiser for Congressman Dan Crenshaw. Oh interesting. So you know there's a lot of talk about Whitmire and where he follows. He's probably what you would call an old-school moderate Democrat. I'd argue he's still pretty much a Democrat, but, you know, he's very concerned about public safety and some of the threats to the community based on, you know, federal and local policies. The other interesting thing is,

there's another tweet from Urban Reform, a clip of Whitmire in a city council meeting yesterday saying that if the federal government decentralizes, he's asked for the US Department of Energy to be relocated to Houston. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. So he's been, you know, kind of flirting perhaps with the with the Republican side of things. He's pretty interesting guy. He's doing these efficiency audits in Houston to try

to analyze how Houston is spending. They did have a result of the audit not too long ago showing that Houston had more city employees than any other urban city in the country per capita. Wow. More than New York, more than LA? Yes, that's wild. Wild, I think. And there was a ton of duplicative programs and personnel and there were some supervisors

or managers that had two employees under them and there was a lot of things that were uncovered and so he declined to raise taxes last year saying he wanted to get through these audits first and trying to figure out what's going on with the city of Houston Wow Never fails to disappoint me So interesting. Well, Holly, thank you. You're welcome. Um, my tweeter is not really a tweeter. It's something that Tyler Norris a Somebody certainly you find around every corner in the Capitol on any given day posted posted on his social media that I asked permission to steal. Okay. So this is very much stolen

information, but he so astutely noted that in 1979 which was the 66th legislature that everyone in charge of the state government was named Bill. What? Yes. So we have William Hobby, right? We have Bill Clements, the governor. Okay, that's just that. The speaker was Bill Clayton. Okay, but get this, the President Pro Tem of the Senate was Bill Meyer. The Dean of the Senate was William Moore or Bill Moore. I can't tell this is odd. It's like in parentheses. And then the President Pro Tem interim in the interim was Bill Breckley so there's just bill bill bill

bill bill 79 would you call that a billocracy uh-huh painful that was a bad joke I heard one that was just disappointing but it's not wild so I mean you look at this's like, it shows that they know these placards all throughout the Capitol, commemorating each legislature. There's a house we have, you know, of course the governor and the speaker, both Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill. And we complain here about getting all our Daniels confused. I know.

We have so many Daniels in our little sphere. In our orbit. I know. This would be far more difficult. This would be very challenging. I know. So many Daniels in our little sphere. In our orbit. I know. This would be far more difficult. This would be very challenging. I know. No matter what, but the good thing would be no matter what day, you know, you're working in the ledge if you're a lawmaker, if you just yell out Bill, you'll get somebody's

attention and power. Sure. And of course the pun on Bill, that Bill is being brought up. That's true. Go on and on here. I'm not as good at Brad as Trina. Lots of layers. Lots of jokes. And we're grateful for that. That's true. Go on and on here. Again, it's lots of layers. I'm not as good at Brad as Trina.

Lots of layers. And we're grateful for that, Holly. We are totally grateful for that. Well, Holly, thanks for jumping in with us. You're welcome. Last minute here. A little impromptu. I know.

Yeah, I wasn't really prepared, but hey. You totally were. And Cameron is sitting over in a committee meeting ready to go live, so bless him. He ran over. I think he's a... But of all of us, he's the most equipped to physically run to the Capitol at breaking speed.

Okay. If I take off my heels, I can break it. You would disagree? That's probably accurate. Cameron runs like six minute miles long distance running. Wow. That is super impressive. So, yeah, no, I can't compete with that.

You know, it's kind of hard. He was a, yeah, he runs five miles and the time it takes me to run like two and a half. You know, it's kind of annoying. Get for him. It's amazing. Any last comments, Bradley? I've got nothing to say.

What? I'm thinking about my lunch right now. Me too. I am locked in. I'm thinking about my lunch right now. Me too. I am locked in. I'm thinking about your lunch right now too. You better not steal it. What's your lunch? There will be consequences. Hmm.

The other half of my sandwich that I had from yesterday. Did you get Thunder Cloud yesterday? No, I got Jimmy John's. Why get Jimmy John's when you could get- Because they deliver Freaky Fast and I was hungry and I wanted it Freaky Fast instead of having to go drive over there and get thundercloud. Rob went to thundercloud yesterday. I know because he offered to bring me back some. Yeah and he walked back without offering to get me any. Oh how rude. Well he offered me some and I wasn't even in the office yesterday so

um well folks thanks for listening to us for longer we'll catch you 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. 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.