The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - April 7, 2023

Episode Date: April 7, 2023

Get a FREE “Fake News Stops Here” mug when you buy an annual subscription to The Texan: https://go.thetexan.news/mug-fake-news-stops-here-2022/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=description&ut...m_campaign=weekly_roundup 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 editor@thetexan.news — they just might be answered on a future podcast. This week on The Texan’s Weekly Roundup, the team discusses: The Texas House preparing for “budget night” and the hundreds of proposed amendments from lawmakersNew developments in the murder trial of Army Sgt. Daniel Perry who shot a protester in 2020A House committee approving ballot measures to legalize sports betting and permit several casinos in TexasThe Senate voting for a cost-of-living adjustment and lump-sum payment for retired teachers in TexasThe Senate passing a ban on child gender modification, which will now proceed to the HouseThe Texas Hospital Association opposing a bipartisan bill to require itemized billing for patientsThe Texas Education Agency intervening in Austin ISD to oversee its “noncompliant” special education programThe Texas DPS seizing 70 pounds of methamphetamine in Austin on the first day of its partnership with APDThe district attorney of Nueces County facing calls for his removal over “incompetency”A federal judge returning twelve “inappropriate” books to public library bookshelves in Llano County

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Happy Friday, folks. Senior Editor Mackenzie DeLulo here, and welcome back to the Texans Weekly Roundup podcast. This week, the team discusses the Texas House preparing for budget night and the hundreds of proposed amendments from lawmakers, new developments in the murder trial of Army Sergeant Daniel Perry, who shot a protester in 2020, a House committee approving ballot measures to legalize sports betting and permit several casinos in Texas. The Senate voting for a cost-of-living adjustment and lump-sum payment for retired teachers in Texas. The Senate passing a ban on child gender modification, which will now proceed to the House. The Texas Hospital Association opposing a bipartisan bill to require itemized billing for patients. The Texas Education Agency intervening in Austin ISD
Starting point is 00:00:46 to oversee its non-compliant special education program. The Texas DPS seizing 70 pounds of meth in Austin on the first day of its partnership with APD. The District Attorney of Nueces County facing calls for his removal over incompetency. And a federal judge returning 12 inappropriate books to public library bookshelves in Llano County. As always, if you have questions for our team, DM us on Twitter or email us at editor at thetexan.news. We'd love to answer your questions on a future podcast. Thanks for listening and enjoy this episode. Well, howdy folks, Mackenzie DeLillo here with Cameron, Matt, and Rob. It's been a little bit of a hectic week wouldn't y'all say just a little bit it's been busy yeah it's been busy but in a
Starting point is 00:01:31 fun way but in a fun way it's exactly right so today things are going to be a little bit different on the podcast as we record this on thursday hayden has been all week this week and last week been covering the controversial austin trial of dan Daniel Perry, who shot an armed protester during a George Floyd protest in 2020. And Brad is on the house floor covering one of the biggest stories of the week of the session, the House Budget Day. So he's not here with us in person. But we did pre record some of his segments that we're going to splice in here so that it sounds hopefully like a pretty normal podcast. But before we get to that, we wanted to share something we're experimenting with, Twitter spaces. We went live with Brad to discuss some of the highlights from budget day so far. Here it is. Howdy, folks.
Starting point is 00:02:26 This is Mackenzie DeLulo here. We have Brad Johnson. Brad, you're on the floor. I haven't seen you all day. I know. It's been quite busy. It's budget day. Not as lengthy as you would normally expect.
Starting point is 00:02:40 Yeah. I have so many questions. I have been preoccupied for a lot of the day, so I want to run through a little bit of what you've been experiencing. For those who don't know, the Texas House is considering the house budget, the state budget today, lots of amendments to go through and a lot of been get pulled. Other times you spend, you know, 10, 20 minutes debating them. move about 250 to 260 proposed amendments all into Article 11, which is basically the budgetary graveyard for these amendments. Not specifically dead, but essentially so. Conference committee will take, when they take up the budget later between the House and Senate, most of those will just get stripped and tossed. So that's kind of sped up the process
Starting point is 00:03:48 quite a bit. And now things have slowed down a bit. We're actually debating certain amendments on Article 3 at the moment. There's a lot of attempts by Democrats to move money from the Property Tax
Starting point is 00:04:04 Rate Fund to various other purposes. One example was the 10,000 teacher pay raise that received quite a bit of debate, ultimately voted down mostly along party lines, if I recall correctly, was overall a lot different budget day than normal, certainly a lot different than what we experienced last session and they're kind of on case to a journey maybe like later in the evening but not you know not in the middle of the night like we're accustomed to yeah that's usually what we expect with budget diet is to be up late to be going for a long time to be at the capitol until 1 or 2 a. Why is that? Is it literally just because all these amendments got moved to Article 11?
Starting point is 00:04:48 And reiterate for our listeners what Article 11 is and why it is a graveyard for these amendments. Yeah, that's the main reason why I think they're moving along quite hastily. Article 11 is a section of the budget that miscellaneous provisions are placed in. Basically, it's kind of a grab bag of things. The conference committee can later choose to adopt them or toss them, which they normally do. And the provision, it allows them to move quicker than normal and not spend 20 minutes debating every single amendment. It allows them to basically punt the decision down the road.
Starting point is 00:05:33 And more often than not, that decision is to eventually scrap whatever is in the article. And how many amendments were filed this session? 388 were pre-filed. So quite a few. Okay. Yeah. I'm not sure how that sets up the last session. I don't quite remember.
Starting point is 00:05:50 But many, many amendments. And then, you know, as I mentioned, almost half got immediately moved to Article 11. Since we've been going, the ones that weren't in that initial push into that section of the budget. There have been many others that have summarily been moved to that section of the budget. So the number of amendments we're actually debating on the floor here is pretty slim,
Starting point is 00:06:20 although some are drawing quite a bit of debate. I know that one of the big items we were watching for this session was, I mean, school choice. And in the House today, we are set to have our first vote on school choice, particularly in the House, in a long time. Give us a preview of that and tell us how close we are to getting to that amendment. Actually, this is happening right now. So, April Herrera is laying out an amendment that would basically a statement vote,
Starting point is 00:06:50 up or down vote on whether the House supports any kind of school choice proposal or not. And this is pickable. It'll be a good test of where the body stands if and when Senate Bill 8, which I think is going to be today, the Senate, comes over to the House floor. This is the big story of the day. This is what everyone's watching. I'm not sure how it's going to play out, but it will be fascinating, especially to see who votes which way absolutely well brad i know that
Starting point is 00:07:29 that's literally what we've been waiting for all day i can't believe i asked you that question right as it's being brought up so i'm gonna let you go to get back to it to make sure you know what's going on so thanks for joining us folks thank you so much for joining our first twitter spaces we'll be doing more of these throughout the legislative session, and we will catch you next time. There we go. That was our first foray into Twitter Spaces. Be sure to follow The Texan at The Texan News on Twitter to stay up to date on all of our latest news and be the first to see when we have our next Twitter Spaces. Before we go to our team here in the studio, here's Hayden Sparks with a report on the latest in the Daniel Perry trial. Hi, y'all. This is Hayden Sparks. I'm a senior reporter here at The Texan.
Starting point is 00:08:08 I wish I could be with you on this week's edition of the Weekly Roundup, but I'm at the criminal courthouse in Austin covering the homicide trial of Sergeant Daniel Perry. Tensions are high at the courthouse ahead of a much-anticipated verdict in a case that involves questions of self-defense, weapons, and accusations of a political prosecution. Make sure to visit thetexan.news for more coverage on the trial. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy this edition of the podcast, and I look forward to being back with you next week. Okay, well, there you go. A little bit of a different kind of introduction to our podcast this week, but gentlemen, Rob, Cameron, Matt, thank you for joining me. It's just the four amigos today. We
Starting point is 00:08:47 have less of a crew, but everyone gets their own mic, which is really nice. You guys don't have to like swap. It's usually Cameron and Matt swapping back and forth. I feel like this could be dangerous. It could. Yeah. Rob said I can get all my little quips in. Absolutely. I'm very prepared for that. I'm very ecstatic. Prepared for some quips. Okay. Well, we are actually going to start off with you, Rob. You'll be covering Hayden's stories for us this week, kind of going over what he reported on. So there is a significant victory for supporters of casino gambling and supports wagering at the Capitol this week. Give us a brief outline of the gambling bills that passed the State Affairs Committee.
Starting point is 00:09:23 Indeed. So the House joint resolutions and the House bills that the House State Affairs Committee approved would authorize a limited number of commercial casinos in the state of Texas, and it would set up a regulatory framework for sports betting. Texas Native American tribes would be able to participate in this as well, pending the cooperation of the governor. So this is important to note that the way people talk about this, this is not simply legalizing casinos. This would allow the government of Texas to permit a certain number of casinos to operate within the state. The way that this would also work is they can't simply legalize it right off the bat because of course, gambling is prohibited in the Texas Constitution.
Starting point is 00:10:07 There are very few exceptions to this, such as, for example, church bingo. Is it an example of a sort of, I don't know if you want to call that gambling or not, but it's a sort of a game of chance and luck, as it were. But it's close enough where the legislature thought, hey, let's make an exception so these folks don't get in trouble. Exactly. So what this would do, though, is that this would put these measures on a constitutional amendment that Texans would have the chance to vote on. So we'd get to see really how many people want this, how many people don't want this. Representative Jeff Leach in the House is championing sports betting, while Representatives Charlie Guerin and John Kempel, I believe I pronounced that correctly. Kempel. Kempel, I believe I pronounced that correctly.
Starting point is 00:10:45 Kempel. Kempel. You know, close enough. Close enough. People mispronounce my name all the time. So it's my little revenge. And Kempel are spearheading this casino push. And so, you know, it's interesting because they heard testimony from people, you know,
Starting point is 00:10:59 in favor of the casinos from Las Vegas Sands Corporation, which is a big operator of casinos trying to push for it they made a lot of political donations hayden wrote a great article about it i believe at the end of last year and then you have other groups like um people from various i believe various southern baptist conventions come in and speak on um on on their opposition to casino so it's a contentious issue but leaving it up to the voters will be an interesting way to settle the issue. Would you say that they are rolling the dice, Rob? Oh my gosh.
Starting point is 00:11:30 I bet that they would be, yeah. It's terrible. I told you it was going to be dangerous giving us all mics. We just have to hope everything will be coming up aces. Oh! This is ridiculous. My Atlanta. I feel so alone here.
Starting point is 00:11:49 I need to get Maslin in here to do my foil. You got me on the pot again. I'm like everybody's favorite substitute teacher or something. I was here for Brad and now I'm here for Hayden. Oh my gosh. Well, Rob, just how close are we to having casinos and sports betting in Texas? Depends on who you ask. Because if you ask Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, he would say we're not very close at all. He said that there's very little support for casinos on the Republican side.
Starting point is 00:12:11 And if I recall correctly, he said maybe two or three votes behind it, which out of a 31 member Senate is not enough to carry pretty much any legislation. So he's showing his hand. Oh, you could say that. Yeah. So he's showing his hand? keen on making sure that his party, the ones who have the majority are the ones setting the legislative agenda and not the other way around. So while it did pass the state affairs in the house, and that's a huge step forward, right? It's going to be, it's a long way from the finish line because we'd still have to get it through the Senate, which we'll see how that goes.
Starting point is 00:13:00 And then it'd have to get the voter approval of the people of Texas. So, you know, they'll have to, as Matt said, roll the dice on that. There you go. I've got one more, Mackenzie. Oh, bring it on. Well, they'll have to see what's in the cards. Ooh, that's a good one right there. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:13:15 Cameron, what do you think about all these puns? I just sit back and enjoy it. Okay, so you enjoy it. Oh, absolutely. Well, here's the thing. They're going to have to basically hope the Republicans are going to be able to do this, which means they're going to have to put it all on red.
Starting point is 00:13:30 I swear. My gosh. The joy that's on Rob's face right now. Rob is so happy. He's just sitting over there drinking out of his fake Newstops here mug. So happy. He's going sitting over there drinking out of his fake Newstops here mug. So happy.
Starting point is 00:13:46 I'm like, no, he's going to get the last one. Speaking of the fake Newstops here mug, folks, go to the Texas Not News. Subscribe. If you're a new subscriber, you will get a fake Newstops here mug shipped to your home. So make sure you go do that. It makes all my coffee taste better in the morning when I make my coffee. It always makes it taste so much better. There have been multiple peer-reviewed studies
Starting point is 00:14:05 that would say the same thing. Indeed, we asked a couple of people in the office. One of them being you. Experts say. Experts do say. The fake Newstops here mug makes your coffee taste better. So folks, go to texan.news, subscribe today, get a fake Newstops here mug.
Starting point is 00:14:23 Cameron, we're coming to you. Okay. Thank you for not also inundating me with puns. I just appreciate that. You know, someone's got to be the steady head here. That's exactly right. Well, howdy, Brad. Okay. So we are going to hit your sections here. Talk through what pieces you wrote this week and the biggest news you have been following. As we speak, you're at the budget and watching the house do all of its craziness over there. So how's it going?
Starting point is 00:14:45 It's kind of weird because we're doing this before I'm on the House floor for the budget. But at the time of recording, I will be up on the floor for the budget. We're doing a little bit of past tense and future tense. Time travel. I don't really know what's happening. But let's talk about, let's get through your stories here. A priority bill has made its way through the Senate once again. This one's dealing with retired teachers and their state
Starting point is 00:15:10 pension system. What are the bill's details? So Senate Bill 10 outlines $4.7 billion in funding to provide retired teachers with a cost of living adjustment and another 13th check, which is a supplemental payment to the amount of $7,500. The cost of living adjustment, or COLA, will apply to pensioners age 75 or older. And for those who retired before September 1st, 2013, the adjustment will be 4%. For those who retired between then and 2021, the COLA will be 2%. So that'll just be applied to their monthly benefits from here forward. The Senate passed the bill rather quickly, and now it awaits movement in the House, and it'll probably not see much opposition, I think.
Starting point is 00:15:57 Just another example of the Senate getting its business done and its priorities passed a lot faster than the House. Why is the Senate going with this option for retired teachers? Yeah, as we discussed, the two chambers are entirely different worlds. And the speed with which they operate is very different. But the reason the Senate is going with this is they've debated, Lieutenant Governor Patrick and the senators have debated whether to provide a COLA or a 13th check. The House has been involved in this debate too, but ultimately they settled on providing both. Patrick said that he frequently heard on the campaign trail that retired teachers wanted and needed a COLA and had not received one in a decade, some earlier than that too. Like I said, the bill is not expected to face much opposition in the House. I think
Starting point is 00:16:46 this is one that we'll get whether it happens quickly through the House or later on in session, it'll get the red carpet rolled out for it. It'll pass fine. I know at our kickoff event in January the Lieutenant Governor was talking about this specific issue and had said
Starting point is 00:17:02 that either option is on the table but the COLA, the cost of living adjustment could potentially be a more long lasting solution to this as they, as legislators address this issue, like every single legislative session. A longer term way to address this, certainly. I'm not sure if it will be the only thing they have to do, you know, down the road, but yeah, certainly more long-term than a supplemental payment. Absolutely. So what are the broader implications of this? So TRS, the state's largest pension, has $54.4 billion in unfunded liabilities.
Starting point is 00:17:35 That is, put simply, money promised but not accounted for in current funding levels of the pension system. So on top of the pensionions investments that can yield returns for the system, it relies on state funding to ensure it can supply the promised benefits. And so that's why we see the legislature come back, not time and time again, but fairly frequently to provide us an injection into TRS to put it on more financially sound footing. And so, but that said that $54 billion is nothing to sneeze at. It is a lot of money that currently cannot be accounted for in,
Starting point is 00:18:15 in, in the pension system. So, but unlike Illinois state pension system, which in the story I talk about, I go into more detail on TRS is not really on the brink of collapse, even though there should be some concern. But the unfunded liability total is high.
Starting point is 00:18:32 Last session, the legislature restructured the employee retirement system in an effort to put it on sounder financial footing and did that. But there's little, if any, interest in doing that for TRS. You can see the details of that in the story, but it's certainly an interesting dynamic to follow. TRS is not going to be touched, it appears, in that way. And so, something to follow. Thank you for your coverage, Bradley.
Starting point is 00:18:56 Let's talk about a Senate bill that would ban child gender modification. It received increased discussion over the past week. What's happened? So Campbell introduced this bill as a way to end child gender modification treatments, but there was an amendment that she introduced that caused some controversy. First, the amendment would have allowed children who are already on these medications to continue those treatments even after the bill was passed. That amendment was introduced and passed. So what happened was this new amendment caused a lot of controversy and discussion online with people like Rep. Olverson posting about clarification about why it was introduced,
Starting point is 00:19:41 then individuals from the Texas GOP, like Chairman Matt Rinaldi, condemned its introduction and passing. So what finally happened was on the third floor vote, Campbell asked for a vote to remove the amendment, which did end up passing, which reversed the bill back to its original intent. Okay. So what happens now? So the bill will now head to the House where we will follow it from there. And the House has a similar bill. And so there are going to be two attempts at ending child gender modification here in Texas. Yeah. And usually how this works is one bill has more of a consensus behind it or more co-authors
Starting point is 00:20:26 and maybe have an amendment that makes it a little different than its counterpart in the opposite chamber. And that's the one that ends up making its way through the process. But if you can get two bills passed, it's pretty good. It gives the bill a better shot. Cameron, thank you for that. Matthew, tell us a little bit about the Texas Supreme Court this week. Chief Justice Nathan Hecht of the Texas Supreme Court delivered the State of the Texas Judiciary Address, identifying legislative needs for the courts as well as highlighting the judicial branch's accomplishments over the past two years. You were there. Give us some idea of what was said and what these kind of addresses bring to the table. state of the judiciary once every two years, mainly for legislative purposes so that the
Starting point is 00:21:26 lawmakers can have a good understanding of what the third branch has been up to, what they've accomplished, and what their needs are. So Hex Speech walks through a number of things, initiatives that they've taken on their own, policy proposals, administrative decisions, and things like that. Highlighted some of the general business of the judiciary. One of the interesting statistics that he cited saying in his 2019 State of the Judiciary, he reported that the roughly 3,200 judges in the state of Texas had resolved 8.6 million cases in a single year alone, which was 23 times the number of cases handled by all federal courts across the country. That gives you a bit of a perspective of just how much business there is pending before
Starting point is 00:22:20 the Texas judiciary. Hecht also walked through about, accounted about eight specific legislative issues that are pending bills before the Texas legislature. One that he started off with addressing the need was judicial compensation. According to Hecht, Texas is next to last place in the nation on compensation levels in the judicial branch behind all states except West Virginia and the territory of Guam. Interesting.
Starting point is 00:22:58 That Texas judges haven't had a race since 2013. And so they're asking the legislature to bring those up to competitive levels it's crazy 2013 was 10 years ago i know isn't that's wild i was like oh that's not that long ago no it's 10 years ago that's different now i feel old and depressed so please please don't matthew continue with your great coverage chief justice hecht then segued uh onto how legislation by senator brian hughes Hughes and Representative Jeff Leach addressing the judicial compensation would set the stage for another legislative proposal to establish new business courts. One of the courts is a statewide specialty court in which those working in it have
Starting point is 00:23:39 special expertise in addressing complex civil litigation business-related matters and kind of address the need for that, saying that whenever you end up with these complex business civil litigation matters in the regular courts, that that sort of tends to gum up the other pending business before the court. So that would help move things along and provide businesses with the subject matter expertise that the state needs and that the judiciary would benefit from it. He also turned to a lot of different legislation pertaining to the judiciary, such as legislation by Joan Huffman that was inspired by the infamous leak of the Dobbs v. Jackson draft opinion from the U.S. Supreme Court.
Starting point is 00:24:33 Huffman's bill would create a criminal offense for the unauthorized leaking of any judicial material, documents, et cetera, working drafts. Hecht said that the leak of the court's internal operations disrupt the deliberations, weakening judicial independence by subjecting judges to political pressures and intimidations and threatens public trust and confidence in the judiciary, and that these actions should be criminal under state law to prevent something similar happening in Texas courts like what happened with the U.S. Supreme Court last year. In addition to that, Hecht also put emphasis on maintaining the integrity and independence of the judiciary. He spent a considerable amount of time talking about the amount of politicizing, especially on the national level of the judiciary and claims on both sides of the aisle that judges are biased.
Starting point is 00:25:34 And spoke to some of the efforts and things that are being made to ensure that just judges remain neutral and to promote and preserve the integrity of judges' actions and everything. It's a very interesting outline. We'll have a fascinating story about the entirety of Justice Hex's remarks out on the Texan.News soon. There you go. Thank you, Matt. Okay, Brad, we are back with you. The House State Affairs Committee heard legislation this week concerning health care billing. What are the details? Representative Caroline Harris's HB 1973 would require health care vendors to provide a full itemized bill of services received.
Starting point is 00:26:13 It also prohibits providers from pursuing debt collection against a patient unless the bill has been given to those patients. Harris said at the committee hearing laying out the bill, On the campaign trail, I heard story after story of my constituents struggling to pay medical bills. I even have constituents being sued by hospitals for bills, even as low as a thousand dollars. We're hoping that this means every person who receives a medical bill has a billing code, a practical description and a price.
Starting point is 00:26:41 It's kind of the legislative successor to last session's price transparency reform that I have talked about a lot. That required hospitals to publish a shoppable list of services with actual prices, not estimates. Whereas that is on the front end of the transaction, this would apply to the back end. So what kind of reception did this bill get? So first of all, before anything was said in committee, the bill had 107 joint or co-authors from both parties. That's a lot of support. In a body of 150. Yes.
Starting point is 00:27:13 Yes. So 107 of 150 members. Pretty indicative of the bill's chances. Yeah. That said, there were some concerns voiced from various members in the committee, including Representative Tom Oliverson, Republican. He's a practicing doctor, so he talks a lot about medical issues, handles medical issues quite a bit. He actually was the house sponsor of that price transparency bill from last session. But his concerns that he expressed were specifically about the penalty
Starting point is 00:27:46 portion of the bill. There's a section in the law, in the proposed law that would require the licensing body to set for some sort of penalty for healthcare providers that don't adhere to this, this billing requirement. Overall, though, he stated agreement with the purpose of it. Outside the legislature, the Texas Hospital Association opposed the bill. We saw them, especially at the federal level, they sued the federal government when the Trump administration issued this price transparency rule back when he was in office. So overall, that kind of organization has been broadly opposed to these kinds of reforms. But they oppose this bill.
Starting point is 00:28:38 The Texas branch opposed this bill, saying that it set, among other things, cumbersome compliance costs, needing to hire people in order to supply these itemized bills. That was the same argument they made for the price transparency. Surely it costs money. The question is how much. They estimated, the representative there estimated it for Memorial Hermann, for example, it would cost about $3 to $5 million a year. Now put that in context of what Memorial Hermann brings in. It's a lot of money. It's one of the largest hospitals
Starting point is 00:29:07 in the entire state. So, got to balance pros and cons there. Different people obviously have come to different conclusions on that, whether it's appropriate or not. But Harris indicated at the end of the hearing that some changes will probably come in a
Starting point is 00:29:24 committee substitute. Aren't sure what they will be. Oliverson's concern will probably be addressed in some form but with so many members in support it's likely to move to the floor at some point and with 107 behind it that will pass pretty easily. Well that's the significance of co-authors like I want to kind of circle back to that is that if you have all these people who are willing to sign their name to a piece of legislation, not just say like, yeah, I'll vote for it when it comes to the floor, but put their name to a piece of legislation as a co-author, it indicates that the bill will pass if it has majority support. So that's why that's important, right? Is that it shows the bill would pass if it did make it to the floor.
Starting point is 00:30:03 If there was amendment offered, which which we've seen that happen before, if there's an amendment offered that turns some support to opposition, that's different. That can change the calculus, yeah. As it stands, it would pass if it were to be there. Brad, thanks for your coverage. Cameron, we're coming to you. The Texas Education Agency recently did something similar to what they did in Houston ISD here in Austin. Tell us about this intervention and what the different differentiating factors are.
Starting point is 00:30:31 Wow, I can't speak today. No, I picked up what you were saying. It's okay. Thank you. So after a special investigation, the TEA released a report that found systemic noncompliance by Austin ISD that was related to its special education program. The TEA is now recommending the appointment of a management team and conservator. The issue surrounding the special education department was due to a failure to complete evaluations of students and providing certain resources to them.
Starting point is 00:31:07 Austin ISD also failed to properly implement the corrective action for the program. And so, is this like the Houston ISD takeover? Well, not really, because Austin ISD issued a response saying that this was not a takeover as both the trustees and their interim superintendent will stay in place. Austin ISD also said they welcome the collaboration with TEA and they want the help to catch up with the long overdue evaluations. Yeah, absolutely. And that was the social media kind of storm that hit right after this was announced was this is just like Houston ISD. Yeah. And it's not a takeover.
Starting point is 00:31:57 They're essentially just going to help them fix this special education department because just digging into a lot of the numbers, there was hundreds of evaluations that they did not complete. And so apparently they need some help with those. So TA is going to try and fix this program for them and it's just going to help students all around. There you go, Cameron. Thank you. Hayden, are you ready to talk a little bit more? Yes, I am ready. The twang. His twang comes out sometimes. It definitely can come out. I don't know what makes it come out, but sometimes it does come out more than other times. I don't know. Anyway. Okay. Bradley, back to you again. The Texas Department of Public Safety's crime focused operation in Austin has begun and we've already seen some pretty major results.
Starting point is 00:32:51 What did you find out? So on late Friday night, I obtained an internal internal DPS report summarizing the agency's actions. The officers associated the agency actions on the first day of the Austin Violent Crimes Task Force operation. It included 14 felony arrests, five vehicle pursuits, four warrants, and three gang contacts, among various other statistics. But it was a pretty stark first day. There was a lot in there um probably the biggest headliner of this this report was that officer seized 70 pounds of methamphetamine it was taken during a traffic stop in which was found two individuals uh that were driving a car possessed 30 ziploc bags of the drug so that was seized and those two members arrested and booked.
Starting point is 00:33:46 A bit of an update on the overall figures through Monday. DPS provided figures to me. The arrest numbers totaled 52 felony and 31 misdemeanors. They also
Starting point is 00:34:01 stopped three large-scale street takeovers in Austinin we heard about previous instances from the car club taking over intersections in the city nothing reached that level and dps officers apparently played a role in that this time around in terms of the arrests i've been told that many of them have been summarily dismissed by the Travis County DA in terms of not filing charges on whatever the felony offense was. When I checked Monday, the two men from whom the meth was seized were no longer in the Travis County jail database. So either they bonded out, which is very possible, or it was dismissed entirely.
Starting point is 00:34:46 And so it's hard to find out those details quickly because of how slow the reporting process is. And unless you have someone on the inside telling you. But I have a feeling we'll find out soon enough how many of these these arrests made by DPS actually go to prosecution. And props to you for breaking a lot of this, keeping an eye on all of it. You've been covering this issue from the start, so we appreciate it.
Starting point is 00:35:13 Brad, thanks so much for joining us from the beyond. From the past and the present and the future. Thank you for your coverage. Matthew, back to you. Nueces County DA Mark Gonzalez will face a trial with both citizens and the county attorney seeking his removal from office. Give us some insight here. So a jury will now decide whether District Attorney Mark Gonzalez will be removed from his position as the county's chief prosecutor after a removal petition alleging he has failed to qualify for office and is incompetent, was joined by county attorney Ginny Dorsey,
Starting point is 00:35:53 which allowed the case to proceed. Now, the case was originally filed by a conservative nonprofit group called the Citizens for Defending Freedom, and their attorneys brought the case on behalf of a resident of the county, Mr. Colby Wiltsie. The original petition alleges Gonzalez had made a habit of dismissing major criminal cases, barely showing up from work. One of the interesting ways that they were able to prove that was they did a public record request on his entry logs to be able to come, I guess, through the door. You have to swipe a key card and it creates a registry. And they pulled those records and cited them in the court case. And that he also failed to give the required bond upon being elected to office. Under the Texas law, public officials typically not only do they have
Starting point is 00:36:46 to execute an oath of office, but they have to file a bond with the proper authority for so many thousands of dollars. And those bonds act as a surety. So if they ever do something illegal or improper in office, that bond can be sued. For district attorneys, they're required to place them on deposit with the Texas comptroller. And according to the petition, he didn't file it at all for a long period of time beyond the statutory required amount of time. And then whenever he finally did, he filed it, I believe, with the county clerk, according to their allegations, and not with the proper authority. And both failing to properly qualify for office, plus under Texas law, you have a grounds for removal that's just general incompetency, are some of the elements cited in this case. With the county attorney joining the case, according to their descriptions of the procedure, that that really enabled the case to move forward where a jury will eventually hear
Starting point is 00:37:55 these facts and decide whether or not the allegations meet the parameters of what state law requires for removal and decide whether or not to remove the district attorney from office. One of the other things that the conservative group, Citizens for Defending Freedom, is alleging is that Gonzalez is a member of an organization called Fair and Just Prosecution, which they say is funded by progressive billionaire George Soros and is part of the program is aimed at not prosecuting certain offenses, which they say kind of points to his actual record of not bringing certain cases, which is what they are seeking his removal or ouster over. Now, Gonzalez took to social media whenever Dorsey joined in the case in a lengthy live
Starting point is 00:38:54 video that he posted to his campaign Facebook page, which we have linked to the story where you can see some of his rebuttals to these allegations and some of the colorful terminology he used to describe the allegations against him. You can check all this out on our story on the Texan. What a good plug. I love a good plug. Thank you, Matt. Okay, Rob, coming back to you as we record this, closing arguments are underway in the homicide trial of Army Sergeant Daniel Perry. Tell us about a specific defense witness that Hayden wrote about earlier this week that provided some important testimony. So Jason Evans is an expert in photogrammetry, forensic engineering, and accident reconstruction.
Starting point is 00:39:37 And he did some interesting data analysis on seeing how quickly Perry was approaching the intersection in his car where he ended up shooting Foster. And he was also able to sort of reconstruct the exact way in which Foster was standing as he approached Perry's car. Because the real crux of this issue is, you know, was Perry driving wildly into the crowd, pull up, you know, and then shot Foster? Or was Perry approaching slowly and Foster approached aggressively carrying his AK-47? Did Perry have a reason to believe, you know, that he was about to get shot by Foster? So Evans said that the statistical error in his research was essentially negligible.
Starting point is 00:40:20 He used photographs from the scene to show Foster's right elbow was raised as he approached Perry's car. He was standing with one foot forward. This is a position that's referred to as bladed, meaning, in other words, it might look like he's, you know, approaching with his gun. Perry could have had, you know, he's approaching with his gun one foot forward, arm raised, could have given Perry a reason to be afraid, essentially. Right. That's the that's the argument from this witness. That's the argument from that side, yes. And this last week was when the state was producing, I think even into this week, a lot of their case. And then the defense has taken up its case this week and arrested, I believe, last night.
Starting point is 00:41:01 So how could this testimony impact the trial? So it's interesting because Evans said that Perry slowed down as he approached the intersection. I believe he had been around 12 miles an hour beforehand, which countered claims that he had aggressively driven into this group of protesters where not like not like into them, but drove up to them, you know, into this group of protesters where Foster had been. So it would basically the purpose of this testimony is to try and show the idea that Perry was not being aggressive. It was actually Foster who was aggressing essentially against him by showing up, walking up in a sort
Starting point is 00:41:37 of aggressive position with his gun to his car, you know. So it's funny, though, is there's an interesting interaction in the courtroom, which I would highly recommend reading Hayden's piece on the full thing. You can also see the pictures that he acquired of Evans' research. It's interesting to see. It shows you how the car was approaching. It shows you where essentially Foster was near Perry's car. But the prosecutor questioned whether or not the sort of research was reliable because he said, well, Evans didn't collect the data. He only analyzed it. And then he later wondered if Evans colleague who had collected the data, if she had perhaps just come from happy hour to which Evans responded, he didn't have any reason to believe that she was drunk when she was doing her job. So it's an interesting courtroom interaction. It was quite something. I think Hayden's tweet was like, this kind of came out of nowhere. This allegation that his coworker had come from happy hour
Starting point is 00:42:31 just kind of came from nowhere. And Hayden has a lot of information about all the witnesses that have kind of come forward and had a lot to say. I know Foster's wife, she called herself his wife, came forward on the stand. And there's another piece that we published late last week that has all the details of those witnesses
Starting point is 00:42:51 that the state brought forward. So make sure to go read. Lots of information. This is just one part of the story. So Rob, thank you for covering in Hayden's absence. Okay, we are coming down back to you, Cameron. Books and library access have been a national, both a national issues. Tell us what happened with the new ruling from a federal judge on these 12 inappropriate books. Yeah, so this went down in Willano County and 12 books were removed from public libraries there. And after a lawsuit that cited First Amendment rights, the judge ordered the books to be returned despite the original reasons for the removal. The books were originally removed because an oversight board labeled some of these books pornographic, or they implied grooming of the children, or they had CRT or LGBT issues in the books. Some of the books being My Life as a Transgender Teen,
Starting point is 00:43:48 which is written by Jazz Jennings, a book called Cast about the subtitle, The Origins of Discontent, and Shine, which has some explicit scenes in it, I'll just say. So what happens now? Well, the U.S. District Judge who issued the order said those 12 removed books will be returned and made accessible in the Lelano County Library system. And we will see how this will have a larger national impact as we mentioned at the beginning. This idea of book banning, whatever that may mean,
Starting point is 00:44:33 it has a lot of different definitions in a lot of different states. So, we'll see how this has a larger national impact now that the order has come down. In Lano County, being a county, I just pulled it up, about 21,000 people. So this is a pretty big issue that's been watched nationally being tested in such a small area of Texas. Yes. Pretty interesting to watch. So Cameron, thank you for your coverage. Hey, listeners, if you're enjoying our podcast and our up-close-and-personal coverage of the 88th legislative session from the Capitol here in Austin, subscribe to The Texan
Starting point is 00:45:05 right now while you're listening. We're not funded by corporate interests or big donors, so we rely on the subscriptions of Everyday Texans to keep doing our jobs. When you subscribe, you'll get access to all our stories as soon as they're published so that you can stay informed, up to speed, and ready to vote at the ballot box. A subscription is $9 monthly, but you can save by purchasing an annual subscription for $90, which comes out to just $7.50 per month. And as a reminder, I know I mentioned it earlier, new subscribers will get a free fake news stops here mug, by far our most popular merch item of all time. For more details, visit the texan.news forward slash subscribe or click on the URL in the description of this podcast. Rob has testified that it does, in fact, make coffee taste more delicious. So make sure to
Starting point is 00:45:49 go to The Texan and subscribe today. We are going to end our podcast with an awesome Texas history story from you, Rob, this week that you are writing for us. Tomorrow, or the day this podcast comes out on Friday, is an anniversary of one of the craziest events in the history of Laredo. What went down on April 7th, 1886? Sure. So in the 1880s, Laredo was sort of a happening town. It was pretty cosmopolitan right there on the border. There were two factions that dominated politics in Laredo.
Starting point is 00:46:20 There were the Guaraches, which were named for a certain kind of sandal worn commonly by lower class people in Mexico, who were the sort of reformist faction. They were associated with the Republican Party at the time. And then there were the Botas or the Boots, who also had their own popular following. They were more established. They were associated with the Democratic Party. So you have these more like populist reformist Guaraches and the more established Botas. And this is the political conflict that they have. So the annual election that year, which they had held for over 100 years at that point, since before the founding of the country, actually, 1767 was the first annual election in Laredo. And so they'd had it without too much trouble for 100 years. But on April 6th, 1886, the Botas dominated the races. It was it were close, but they won all but two seats. So the Botas had already had an issue where one of their council members had been shot, not by a Guarache, but by an out of town man. But it still allowed the Bota sheriff to deputize for a special case around, if I recall, 50
Starting point is 00:47:34 to 150 Botas as special deputies to help keep the peace. And the Guaraches were like, this is voter intimidation. He's giving all of these people from his own faction, this sort of power to, you know, giving them this power. It's dangerous. So tensions were already running hot. But then on April 7th, the Botas decided we're going to humiliate our opponents who we defeated in this election by having a mock funeral procession for their political faction. So they sent out funeral notices saying like, oh, for the Guarache party.
Starting point is 00:48:03 Oh, they're dead. Isn't it tragic? They're going to have this whole funeral procession. And the Guaraches sent them a notice saying, no, you're not. You're not going to do that. Party leaders tried to come to terms and stop the more hotheaded rank and file members of their party from getting into it. But on April 7th at about 5.40 PM, you had an armed procession of botas starting their procession, their funeral procession through the streets of Laredo, and a bunch of armed guaraches lining the streets to block them. No one knows who fired the first shot, but the guaraches did have a cannon filled with scrap metal that they ended up shooting at the procession. It was a crazy event. Estimates range from, I believe, the official number is either around 12 or 16.
Starting point is 00:48:46 The unofficial number of dead is closer to 30, with about 45 wounded. So the fighting continued, if I recall correctly, for about an hour or two until Colonel R.F. Bernard of the nearby Fort McIntosh arrived with two companies of the 16th United States Infantry, and they enforced martial law. The state militia and the Texas Rangers got involved. The Rangers ended up staying there for a couple of months to try and keep the peace, but it was a nasty event in the history of Laredo. But it ended up working out in the end because even though tensions ran hot, it did take time to cool, and eventually members of the old Guaraches and
Starting point is 00:49:25 Botas parties were able to come together to form the new Independent Club in 1894, which would end up dominating politics in that region until 1978. Wow. You have this sort of this explosive, it's called the Laredo Election Riot of 1886. And it's an interesting part of Texas history. I loved when I was floating story ideas for Good Friday and I was trying to figure out, okay, what could we cover from Texas history? And I shot out a couple of options and Rob immediately was like, Laredo election riot?
Starting point is 00:49:54 That sounds amazing. I was like, I got to know what that's about. Yeah. It's a fun little thing because it's a little bit of local history, this local political thing. Oh, yeah. But it's described by, I believe believe the Texas Historical Commission described it as, you know, one of the biggest one of the biggest gun battles, actually, in the history of the West. I mean, you know, approximately perhaps, you know, several dozen people were died or injured because compared to the common stereotype of the West.
Starting point is 00:50:19 Right. There weren't gunfights all over the place. Right. It was generally pretty peaceable. Not in this case. That's exactly right. which is so fun. So folks, make sure to go to the text and read Rob's awesome article. We appreciate your coverage, Rob. Thank you so much. I appreciated covering it. So thank you.
Starting point is 00:50:36 It's always fun when Rob can hop in on the coverage. Okay, gentlemen, let's talk about some tweetery this week. Cameron. Yes. What do you got for us? I try to pick fun stuff. This one came across my timeline. It was a teenager faked being a physician's assistant and gained access to two Corpus Christi hospitals. Well, the story is more like Catch Me If You Can, if you've seen that movie. Well, he's from Missouri. He committed bank fraud to purchase a $52,000 BMW to visit his girlfriend in Corpus Christi. And while he was there, he bought $41 worth of scrubs and decided I'm going to be a physician's assistant today. And so he gained
Starting point is 00:51:28 access to these two hospitals by just basically walking in there and saying, hey, I forgot my badge. I need to get a new one. And so they gave him a badge. He was getting access to intensive care units, all sorts of places within these hospitals. His story started to unravel a bit when they were asking him questions about where he went to school. And he said some school in Missouri, but the school he mentioned was an all-girls school. So people were like, wait, how did you go there? And he ended up also being able to obtain residency at an apartment complex by stating he made $28,000 a month. So he has a BMW, he has an apartment, he has a fake job. And so this teenager, he did get denied access to one children's hospital. So people were talking about in this article, like, luckily that didn't happen because this guy seems very, very sketchy.
Starting point is 00:52:40 He ended up getting arrested. He left a $3,700 bill with the apartment complex. How big was the bill? $3,700. And so one other thing is he also had a ghost gun in his possession. So again, this is some sketchy guy. Kind of reminds me of that Catch Me If You Can movie. Yeah, oh my gosh. Where he pretends to be the airline pilot.
Starting point is 00:53:10 That's what Cameron just said. That's exactly what I said. It's a great movie. This guy is a little more sketchy than that. But no, I just thought this was funny because it sounds like something out of a movie, honestly. Who stars in it? Is it Matt Damon?
Starting point is 00:53:26 Leonardo DiCaprio. Leonardo DiCaprio. Okay, there you go. Man. But yeah, that's what I got for you. I bet they're going to make some sort of like Netflix documentary or something about this guy. Yeah, well, he was posting videos on social media, flashing cash with rings, and he was still wearing the scrubs so wow actually now that i think about it there was a there was one of the things in that movie he impersonated a doctor
Starting point is 00:53:53 the part where he impersonated a doctor and they're in there and he actually gets called into the surgery and all the other doctors look at him like what do you think of this doctor and he'd been watching some uh tv show or whatnot where doctors were talking and he just started regurgitating lines and then said do you concur doctor he's like what do you mean do i concur he's like do you concur and the doctor's like uh i guess interesting well karen that's a great story yeah i feel um i feel excited to have no to know about it now i think that's very interesting and i bet they will make some sort of documentary on it of some netflix who yeah exactly well thank you matthew what about you well i have to uh i have to give the texas speaker of the texas house state State feeling credit for a tweet he made this week.
Starting point is 00:54:48 Putting the Commonwealth of Connecticut or the parking lot Commonwealth of Connecticut in its place. It was just such a Texas tweet. So there was a story about the governor of Connecticut coming to Texas. And he told reporters that, you quote, you walk around downtown Houston, which is, and he used a pretty not proper descriptive word to describe Houston as being very, very ugly. Not much there, he said before people cut him off and so uh phelan speaker phelan responded to this report saying i fully support a budget amendment tomorrow on house bill one to purchase the state of connecticut and turn it into a parking lot for the houston rodeo
Starting point is 00:55:40 you can never use the parking you can never have too much parking hashtag texas ledge like it's so texas like your tiny little northeastern state is literally like a side parking lot for us for our rodeo for our houston if houstonians could get free parking for the rodeo in Connecticut, like even though it's that many miles away, they'd probably still take it as long as it's free. It'd probably be cheaper than trying to get some of the parking near the rodeo that you can find.
Starting point is 00:56:14 That's crazy. I've never been to the Houston rodeo. No, that's not true. I have. I have been to the Houston. Really? No, that's not true. I have not. Oh. Well, make up your mind. I had to think about which rodeos I've been to. If you want to go to the Houston rodeo, you've got to get the fried cheesecake. That's one of my favorites. Oh my gosh, make up your mind. I had to think about which rodeos I've been to. You gotta go to the Houston Rodeo. You gotta get the fried cheesecake. That's one of my favorites. Oh my gosh. That sounds incredible. It's delicious.
Starting point is 00:56:30 It's not good for you, but it's delicious. You gotta get yourself some fried Oreos and fried cheesecake. It's good for the soul, Rob. It's good for the soul. And then, once you've stuffed yourself with enough fried food to feed, you know, a village, then you have to go on the roller coaster. That's when it gets really fun.
Starting point is 00:56:46 That's a little dangerous. I can't believe I haven't done this. Yeah. Well, maybe the rodeo I'll just opt out of. But the fried cheesecake I might opt in. It's pretty good. I'd like your four or five options. Like, I'll take a couple, leave a couple, you know?
Starting point is 00:56:59 Indeed. OK. Rob, what about you for Twitter? What do you got? So one of my favorite Twitter accounts today in history, today has been not only a day for the Laredo election riot, which, by the way, April 6th was the day the election was held. April 7th was the day of the riot.
Starting point is 00:57:15 But it has been a remarkably interesting day because on this day on April 6th, in 1917, the U.S. officially entered World War I. In 1830, Joseph Smith established the Mormon Church. In 1930, James Dewar invented the Twinkie. In 1722, Tsar Peter the Great of Russia ended his beard tax on Russian men because he was trying to get them to look more Western, less Russian with their beards. In 1896, the first modern Olympic Games were held. And in 1520, the painter and Ninja Turtle Raphael died in Rome. It's just an absolutely crazy day, honestly. Did you say Ninja Turtle? I did say Ninja Turtle.
Starting point is 00:57:59 Wow. Renaissance painter and Ninja Turtle Raphael. I do have a question. Would you also eat a fried Twinkie? Are they available at the Houston Rodeo i mean they must be i'm not a big twinkie fan myself one time i'm not a big twinkie fan myself i don't really think they taste like anything i'd rather get like a nice cheesecake or funnel cake is good too but i can only have so much funnel cake before what you really want to do is you want to get yourself a turkey leg the size of
Starting point is 00:58:23 like your entire arm yes that's the real thing you is you want to get yourself a turkey leg the size of like your entire arm. That's the real thing you want. You want to get a monster turkey leg because you'll be gnawing on that thing for like half an hour. It's great. I love turkey legs at the fair or rodeo or whatever it might be. Well, very good stuff. Okay. My tweet for the week, Congressman Chip Roy making some waves here, getting into the school choice debate here in the Texas legislature. Today's notable. We record on Thursday. Today, there is a budget amendment, which you all can go read about at the Texan, that specifically will make members vote on school choice. So regardless of whether it's not the big school choice bill that's coming to the House today, but it is a budget amendment that will largely tell us where the lines are drawn. And if the leadership in the House, the Senate, the governor, if any of those leaders want school choice to pass in the House, where they might have to target different members.
Starting point is 00:59:15 So it's a very big day in that regard. And it's also working its way through the Senate, which Cameron's been watching all day. So it's just a very big day in the legislature today, specifically for school choice, which is set to be the biggest issue tackled this legislative session, or the hottest issue, most controversial. So Chip Roy, big advocate for school choice, congressman here from Texas. And interesting watching him or Senator Cruz kind of wade into the fray. They choose occasionally to kind of go out the legislature for not having passed school choice. So Corey DeAngelis, a big school choice advocate who's
Starting point is 00:59:51 spent a lot of time in Texas, he does some nationally, but he spent a lot of time in Texas right now as that is where the major fight is being held, tweeted, Chip Roy quote tweeted him, and notably said, if the GOPxas legislature fails to empower parents and children with true universal choice the texas gop will be decimated i add firming the grid cutting property taxes and restoring law and order to that priority list play stupid games win stupid prizes pretty tough words there for the legislature from congressman roy this is just a huge legislature day generally it is oh i love it you have huge movement on school choice in both chambers you have the showdown in the house over the budget amendment uh you have senator creighton
Starting point is 01:00:40 bringing sb8 to the floor uh you have uh yeah, it's quite extensive on that front. And then it's budget day. So it's just, yeah, this is going to be an exciting day. Big day. Absolutely. Okay, gentlemen, before we peace out and we let y'all all get back to your coverage, Easter is this weekend. Amazing.
Starting point is 01:01:03 So excited. And it's Good Friday. We're releasing this podcast on Good Friday. Do y'all have any Easter traditions that you kind of grew up with during your, with your family? I know for me, while y'all think about that, my parents would set up Easter egg hunts like all over the neighborhood. So it would not just be in our yard. We would, we would put on like sneakers. We had headlamps. We did it at night and it was very intense. And by intense, I mean, I was like the oldest of, of, of our, uh, my siblings. And I definitely would body check here and there, but, um, it was intense. Like we did it all over the neighborhood.
Starting point is 01:01:35 It was super fun. It made it way more interesting than just like, you know, in your little yard. That's what, what the, that's one tradition. And every year we share the photo of us all getting prepped with our headlamps on to like run out the door and decimate each other. So that's one tradition. What about y'all? When I was a little kid, my parents would hide eggs and I'd go look for them. That's really great, Matt. That's a really fun tradition.
Starting point is 01:02:00 You know, we actually used to decorate eggs in my house. Oh, that's fun. We'd paint them and everything. Like with the dye and everything. Yeah, painting eggs. And they'll dip it in the water. It's always fun. Yeah, I usually visit grandma or something, go and have dinner.
Starting point is 01:02:10 Oh, fun. So it was always fun. That's awesome. Sounds like we all have similar traditions. We all sort of grew up in sort of the same country or something. Like the same basic Easter traditions. I guess I do maybe have one. I try to watch the
Starting point is 01:02:25 easter episode of uh charlie brown oh that's so good i love that and the the easter beagle yes always a classic cameron anything nothing out of the ordinary you know egg painting egg hunts the typical typical still do this or just long time? Well, I just, yeah, I set it up for myself the night before, go to bed and then wake up and just hunt down some eggs. You know. Yeah. Eat some peeps. Eat some peeps.
Starting point is 01:02:59 I'm not a peeps fan. I think peeps are, I don't know, they kind of gross me out a little bit. They're just pure sugar. They're like Twinkies for me. They don't really, there's no flavor. That's a good comparison. It's a marshmallow. Yeah, exactly.
Starting point is 01:03:09 It's just a marshmallow. There's no flavor. If I want a sweet, you know, I want it to taste like something. If I wanted a spoonful of sugar, I could just get a spoonful of sugar, you know? Spoonful of sugar. I'm just going to sing Mary Poppins. Any traditional or maybe, let's say, unique to your family Easter meals that you guys would prepare? We kind of changed it every year.
Starting point is 01:03:30 We didn't have like a tradition tradition. And sometimes it would be with grandparents. Sometimes it would just be us. But we didn't really have one. I don't know if it was like a specific thing. But sometime around this time of year, my family would typically do like a roasted leg of lamb. Oh, yeah. You know, actually, I was actually going to comment this because I currently go to a Greek
Starting point is 01:03:46 Orthodox church and they do lamb on Easter. So that's their thing. That makes me hungry. Yeah, well, here's a fun fact. The Orthodox church uses the Julian calendar, not the Gregorian calendar that the Western world adopted in the 16th century. So Orthodox Easter is actually next week. They will not align again until 2025.
Starting point is 01:04:06 So. Wow. This week, upcoming week is Holy Week for the Orthodox. And then Good Friday is next Friday. Easter is next Sunday. So. That's pretty awesome.
Starting point is 01:04:15 The more you know. That's what I was going to say. Gosh dang it, Matthew. Okay, folks. Happy Easter. Happy Good Friday.
Starting point is 01:04:21 Thank you so much for tuning in and we will 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 an email to editor at the texan.news. We are funded entirely by readers and listeners like you. So thank you again for your support. Tune in next week for another episode of our weekly roundup. God bless you and God bless Texas.

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