The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - August 15, 2025

Episode Date: August 15, 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/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.Texas Legislature to Sine Die Friday Without Quorum, Abbott to Immediately Call Second Special SessionTexas Democrats Respond to Friday Sine Die Threat, Say ‘What Happens Next’ is Up to AbbottIllinois Judge Rules Against Paxton's Petition to Enforce Texas' Civil Arrest Warrants for Quorum BreakersTexas Supreme Court Sets 'Expedited Briefing Schedule' in Abbott-Wu House Seat Vacancy CaseChemical Abortion Drug Ban Passes Texas Senate as House Remains Without QuorumTHC banTexas Senate Passes Human Trafficking Victims Affirmative Defense Amid House Quorum BustTexas Senate Passes Trio of Flood Disaster Response BillsTexas Grants Tesla Rideshare License for Robotaxi

I'm here with Cameron Abrams and Mary Elise Cosgray. Welcome you all. Thanks for having. I like the full website intro. Yeah, gotta plug it. You know, people don't know where to go. You know, they're already here. Yeah.

You know, go to the website too. That is how we can stay afloat. Yeah, that's true. Paywalls are important. Y'all, as we record this, we're one day away from what is It was probably going to be the end of the first special session of the 89th legislature. And really, 891 was just the friends we made along the way. Right, Cameron?

It's been something. Or the enemies, really. Everyone hates each other right now. Yeah. And I don't see that going away anytime soon. Yeah, maybe people made friends among people they weren't normally friendly with. that seems like what's come about

is Republicans are friendly with each other once again no more internal fighting Democrats. I wouldn't say no more. There's a little bit. There's a little bit. But there's less than there was. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. This is

redistricting fight has become, in large respect, the great unifier for the two parties. Everyone's generally on the same page, even if there is a little bit of sniping back and forth within each coalition. But here we are. What's probably going to be the last day of the first special session,

launching right into an immediate second special session with the same slate of stuff, the same fights we've had, does anything change? We'll see. Well, we're going to get a set of demands from the Texas House Democrats aren't we on Friday. So we're kind of awaiting that as well to see what they have to say once they show up.

Yeah, if they show up. You know? The Speaker of the House, Dustin Burroughs, issued a, sent out a message to all the members saying, expect to be here over the weekend. So we can get stuff moving, hopefully get it across the line fast and get done and get out of here because everyone is sick of each other. They just want to go home after multiple cycles of multiple special sessions. People are just done with this.

And capping it all off is this fight over the most part. partisan thing we do, which has, as we just mentioned, really entrenched both parties. Yeah, I don't know if we want to get into it right now, but there's so much yet to be determined as no quorum has been met in the lead up to this Friday signy die, and we don't know if Democrats are going to be coming back either. So we could be here for a long time. More special sessions, after more special sessions. Abbott has made it clear he's willing to do that. So we don't know what's going to happen.

So legislatively, we're going to start over, basically. We had some hearings. We had bills advance. The Senate passed a lot. They passed everything. Everything. But, of course, nothing has passed the House because of the quorum break. And we beat that horse to death over, you know, why,

things happened the way they did, the order in which things were advanced, obviously, Republicans moved forward with the map first because the thing keeping people in town, Democrats in town, at least at first, was the flood mitigation, flood response bills. There was no incentive for Democrats to stay in town if the only thing on the agenda was redistricting. But they flood the coop anyway and have spent the last week and a half in other states, many of which are in Illinois, others are in California, New York, they're bouncing around. They have been intentionally secretive about where they specifically are at all times. And, you know, the House Democratic Caucus has been pretty locked down in terms of general leaks and

things like that. We did see a report by ABC 13 on Tuesday, I think it was, Tuesday evening, that Democrats were going to end their quorum break. It was pretty light on details, though. It was very light on details, and there were some caveats added into the piece. Like, no decision has been made, you know, they're still thinking about it. Well, in the night that that report came out, there was a very lengthy meeting going down. between all the members, deciding what the heck they were going to do. Yeah. And so, you know, I'm not sure that that was entirely accurate, the report, if it was at all.

Yeah. I think it's also notable that House Democratic Caucus chair, Gene Wu's wife, Mieshaye, works at ABC 13. You point some, you know, connect some dots there. Yeah. Let's not to say it's entirely wrong, and we do know that quorum break will end at some point. but I don't know if there's any real sign that it's going to end on Friday. No, I, I, yeah, there's no indication will end on Friday. I think the, I know this is on our docket to talk about, but the Texas Supreme Court and them

determining what is, what, what they mean by a C.B. vacant. I think that could really open the floodgates to both Republicans and Democrats taking further action because if if they determine by fleeing the state in the manner that they have then a C is vacant then Republicans can just snap their fingers and start moving because it drops the quorum threshold yeah if this the Supreme Court says no the Cs aren't vacant then the Democrats have a further runway to continue their quorum break because they'll still be able to hang on to those seats. So I think both sides are sort of waiting on what Skodick is going to do in this situation. They've set a briefing schedule that all these arguments from both Abbott

Paxson and Gene Wu, who's the individual that's sort of targeted. By the Abbott suit. by the Abbott suit. And also the Paxton suit, but Paxton suit is wider, too. Yeah, but for September 4th. So there's still a few weeks until all the briefs need to be filed. And then there's going to be a few more weeks after that, I'm sure, until a decision is made by the justices. So we still have a long ways to go there. Because it seems like despite all the outrage that's been pouring out from both Republicans,

Democrats, both elected and just from the electorate, about wanting something to happen. It seems like both of the parties are staying within the procedural bounds of the law, right? No one seems to be suggesting anyone acting extra judiciously or outside the bounds of what is laid out in the Texas House rules or whatever it may be. Everyone's trying to stay in line, but take those, go all the way to the edge of those lines. And we'll see if either side gets frustrated and does something, you know, I don't know what that could be, but that just is a matter of how impatient people get, the more prolonged the quorum break goes on for. Yeah, it's not pleasant on either side. You know, people are friends who are, you know, staffers on the corn break right now, and they're homesick. They want to come home.

they're done with this, right? Now, of course, they're fighting something, they're fighting the maps and trying to kill it, so that's part of the job, and that's the decision that the caucus has made, but it's not easy to do. And then obviously on the other side, Republicans are mad. You know, I saw Tom Oliverson say that he doesn't give a rip about whatever demands Democrats are making. Now, you know, that's rhetoric, but that's a feeling. that is very prevalent among almost all, if not all, of the Republican caucus. Everyone is so mad at each other right now. And then you see the Speaker having to navigate this Fisher, you know, between within his chamber. You know, Republicans are generally all on the same team right now, but

that might not last long. And you've got, you know, the Speaker has to, to, I mean, first of all, I think he's actually legitimately upset with about this. Of course, why not? Why wouldn't he be? But also he has to show that he is upping the ante each time he talks from the dice. He has to say, he has to increase the amount of, you know, attention to this or increase the proposed punishments or whatnot. You know, there's talk about changing the rules to, you know, strip seniority.

Right. Well, and I, well, in what was suggested to at one point when Mitch Little went to the back mic and said, can the general investigating committee be called? And if they subpoena the corn breaking Texas Democrats, that could enlarge the scope in which DPS can act in expediting those individuals back to Austin. So that's another move they can make. still within the constitutional bounds and within the rules and procedure. Nothing that is really something that has been screamed about from those who are saying that Republicans are trying to act in this authoritarian way, whether it be at the federal level or the state level. Everyone's staying within the bounds of the law here. They're just using every little statute or procedural rule they can to try and move things forward, trying to come to some

sort of resolution on this. We'll talk more about the ins and outs of the legal stuff, legal challenges in a bit. But let's bring Mary Lisa in on this. Mary Lisa, you know, you wrote a piece about House Democrats, their response to this decision by the big three to call an immediate second special on Friday if there's no quorum. What, What did they say and what's their game plan, what does it seem their game plan is moving forward? Well, it seems like the one thing that we can be certain of is that they don't plan to make quorum again

during this special session. And so there was a statement released by Texas House Democratic Caucus leader, Gene Wu. And in the statement, they said, we will never make quorum again during the current special session. And then they also, like we mentioned a little bit earlier on, they said that they planned to issue demands for the next special session, what their expectations will look like, and obviously we'll

have to wait to see what those are. They said what happens next is entirely up to Greg Abbott. They said after they deliberated among their caucus, we have reached a consensus. Texas House Democrats refused to give him a quorum to pass his racist maps at silence more than two million black and Latino Texans. And they said, in keeping with our original promise to Texans, the first called special session will never make quorum again, defeating Abbott's first attempt at passing his racial gerrymander. So I'm sure that at least sounds like Friday we will not be seeing an appearance from a Texas House Democrats. You know, we'll have to wait to hear exactly what they're going to be asking on Friday. They said, we'll issue our demands for a second special

session on Friday and then said Abbott can choose to govern for Texas families where he can keep serving Trump and face the consequences we've unleashed nationwide. And something we talk about a little bit in this piece is how Abbott does technically have the authority to supply immediate funding through certain mechanisms by directing the legislative budget board to move around certain funds that are in the state's budget. This was used after the Uvaldi School. shooting, which we note in the story. And Democratic members are pointing to this and saying, hey, you know, Abbott, you're holding this flood relief hostage. You know, you're trying to make us look like the bad guys that are not allowing flood relief to move forward. But in fact, you could be doing

this. But of course, emergency funding isn't the only thing related to this disaster that we're trying to, the legislature is trying to get across the border now. And there's multiple proposals that are not just funding, not just immediate funding response, but that are related to responding to this disaster, passing certain preventative measures in response to the curvil floods, and so we need a quorum present to pass those, right? So as of now, we're not going to be seeing an appearance from the Texas House Democrats on Friday, but I'm sure we'll be hearing from them about what their demands are, and this is a little bit on the offside, but I'm very curious to to see, and the Democratic members do return what the social dynamic looks like between them

and the Republicans, because from what I had noticed while I was there during the regular session, there's so much, there's a lot of, like, bipartisan kind of friendship going on there. A lot of people are just chatting with each other. They see a lot of them have, like, decently good relationships. But I think that this has been such a, obviously, a divider. I'm so curious to see what that dynamic is. like, especially after they immediately return, which, you know, from what I'm hearing, the plan is from leadership to signy die Friday morning and then start the next special

later that day. So we might see enough Democrats in the chamber on Friday afternoon to get things moving. Maybe we don't, but maybe we do. But you're right, Mary Elise, the plan for the Democrats is to kill this special. And that's what they're going to use to declare victory, is to, A, show that they did kill the first special session. And B, spark this redistricting effort in other states, specifically blue states like California, to respond and counteract what Texas Republicans are trying to do. So, you know, it's, I'm hearing that the game, if all, if things go according to plan for leadership, this special session, the second one lasts until like Tuesday, and then everyone gets the heck out of Dodge. Now, every good plan is well thought out until it runs into, you know, runs into the enemy, until it meets the enemy, right?

So. Is there, is there a record for shortest special session? I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe Rob would know. Yeah, maybe Rob would know. But that's interesting because that could, you know, they've already held committee hearings on everything. Well, and they're not going to hold public hearings on, from what I'm told,

they're not going to hold public hearings on a lot of these bills. They're just going to hold formal meetings to vote the legislation out. THC is probably a bit different, maybe. because we still don't know what the House is actually going to move forward with but there's little desire to stick around for another full length 30 days and so for example the map

if they stick with the same map and they don't try and up the ante and Republicans and increase the amount of seats they want to try and get they'll just hold a formal meeting and pass the same map and that won't be public testing I can already anticipate the uproar from not having a public hearing again, just holding a formal meeting in lieu of that, right?

So how do they manage that when it's, if we're speaking about this hypothetical, where Democrats do return for the second special session, and they say we're going to hold formal meetings instead of public hearings, that could blow up the whole thing again because the Democrat House members, Democratic House members, one of their big things has been they're not, Republicans aren't letting

or aren't listening to the public on this issue. And so they want that public outcry to continue and be publicized on TLO and all the on the streaming. And they want to be able to speak about it in those hearings as well. So that could be another pivot point for setting this whole thing off again.

Yeah. Well, and that cuts both ways, right? Republicans are angry enough that they're like, we're done with this. We sat through all these hearings, and we're just going to move them out and suck it up. You know, that's going to be their disposition on this, you know, that Democrats had their time and they broke, they broke a quorum and they killed the special, and now Republicans are really, all right, we're ramming this through now. you know it's it's not we saw at the tail end of the house consideration on the redistricting map that republicans were no longer just going to sit there and get called racist they were actually you know fighting back rhetorically they were arguing more whereas in the public hearing the

informational hearings the field hearings most of the time they just sat there and didn't say much. And they let the, you know, waves of activists who were against this mid-decade redistricting just, you know, beat them over the head with it. So I don't see any appetite for Republicans to sit there and go through that again. True. And so that's why I think they'll just advance it through formal meetings. And, you know, of course Democrats will use that against them and criticize them for it. But I think we're past the point of Republicans caring about that at the moment.

Well, and I'll be interested, I know we're speaking in hypotheticals here, but it'll be interesting to see once a quorum is established, they pass the map through a formal meeting, then we finally get to the floor. What do Democrats do then? Do they stay so a quorum is met and then stage a sort of walkout during the Florida

discussion or do they stick around in every single one gives a uh they expound on their feelings towards the the the map and we could get you know a 12 hour 15 hour you know 24 hour long uh floor session on the map if they if everyone speaks well you know the other factor is does the speaker just lock the doors once everyone's there um and prevent them from doing a walk out yeah that's doable you can do that. Yeah. And they might do that. And then you will definitely see the very long, you know, proceeding on the floor about the map.

And Democrats will have their say, a lot of say. But ultimately, this mass passing. Democrats cannot kill every special session, and Republicans are determined enough to call enough, however many is needed to pass this thing. And then once we get past that, we'll get to the other stuff, right? but yeah the chances of Democrats actually being able to kill this map entirely if not zero almost zero and they know that they know that the votes are there they can't break quorum forever this map will

pass tell me if I'm wrong on this then the only thing that could kill this map is if another special special session isn't called but it is going to be called but that's what I'm saying right that's the only thing so it all falls on on Governor Abbott. Yeah. And he has promised to call a special session after special session. Well, and, you know, there was little, little desire among Texas Republicans to do mid-decade redistricting until the Trump administration started turning the screws on them.

But they've already gone through all the trouble. And so, and they're all, you know, they're emboldened now. Like, they're angry. You were seeing, like, David Spiller constantly talking on, uh, tweeting out stuff on, on Twitter. you know, reasoning for redrawing the maps, talking about the pedaway decision, all this stuff, citing the statistics about how much democratic states have gerrymandered and given themselves an advantage in the hold on congressional delegations compared to Texas. And so they're already, through the looking glass on it, like, they're moving forward.

There's no, they're not balking. They're going to push this through because they're already, they've already been through all of the, the difficult, unsavory part of this. All it's left is just to vote it out. Yeah, that's why I bring up the, what's the only play that the Democrats have and they, they're doing it because Governor Abbott is going to be calling special session after special session to get this map passed. And even the Supreme Court really,

can't really help them out in this situation because whatever way the Supreme Court, Texas Supreme Court falls on the vacancy issue, you know, Republicans can win out there with the quorum number being lowered or even just if they hold that the seat is not abandoned and the Texas House Democrats can hold those seats while in a quorum break, Abbott still has the upper hand to call more special sessions. So the writing on the law. We know how this is going to end up. It's just a question of when. So you brought up the legal stuff. Let's get into that more. First, you, we saw a very unique and kind of first of its kind lawsuit filed in Illinois by the attorney general and the speaker to try and get the law

enforcement in Illinois to basically to assist Texas law enforcement in bringing Democrats back, right? Yeah. But we saw, at least initial ruling in that case, what came out of that Adams County Court? Well, they found the court doesn't have the jurisdiction to enforce these civil arrest warrants. they the order made a lot of justifications for this reasoning one of them just being that there's geographically limited circumstances you know being in illinois versus in texas and then also there was arguments made that the jurisdiction of the court itself was not the proper place to file to adjudicate on this issue.

So, as of right now, Illinois is their law enforcement, the court and the judge that took up this issue, they're not going to be assisting Texas and locating and assisting to bring back these Texas House Democratic members who have gone to Chicago to evade the quorum here in Austin. So there is another lawsuit that is very similar that's still hanging out there in California. We haven't had any determinations on that, but if this Illinois decision is any indication, it's not going to go in Texas's direction. Yeah, you know, it that always seemed likely, right, that a court in another state would say we can't order our own people to enforce not just an arrest warrant, but a civil arrest warrant about a legislative

issue, right? Now, the Attorney General and Speaker contended in court that it was legit. And maybe we have a different decision down the road, but in terms of, you know, real politic talking discussion about this, court was always going to probably, you know. Yeah, well, because there's no criminal element to this yet. Because there are the allegations of bribery or... It's being argued that there's a criminal element, but it hasn't been decided that way. It hasn't been decided that way yet.

So that's why when we started off this conversation, that everyone's still acting within the bounds of the legal procedures that have to go on here. Everyone's sort of waiting for decisions to be made before future actions can be taken. It's not as if Texas is sending state law enforcement to another state to go gather all the Texas House Democrats. They're not doing that. They're going through the proper channels, asking the courts to do this or do that, determine if a criminal action took place or not, or if local law enforcement in these other states can intervene or not.

Everyone's staying within the bounds. And that's why it seems like it's taking so long for us to finally understand what's going to happen. And so, again, we're just going to have to wait to see if there are criminal actions that are determined by the courts to where that expands the scope, again, for which law enforcement can act. Because shifting the burden from a civil arrest to a criminal action allows for greater authority to become involved. Yeah. It's also notable that both this and the California lawsuit were filed in, you know, very red parts of their respective states. For sure. There was a bit of forum shopping going on, which is normal.

Like, they happen all the time. Both sides do it. Because they want to, they want the most favorable. venue that they can possibly find to advance the ball on whatever it is they're arguing for, right? Yeah. Okay, so we talked to Illinois in that specific case, and we touched a bit earlier on the Abbott vacancy case along with Paxton. Give us a rundown of that situation, not just, you know, the facts of the lawsuit that's

being alleged, but also the dynamic here of Paxton and Abbott, kind of at loggerheads on it. Well, it seemed that way initially, but they each filed petitions with the Texas Supreme Court. The Texas Supreme Court has consolidated those cases now. And so both Abbott and Paxon arguments are going to be taken up by the justices here. And what's interesting is they've set dates for certain briefs to be filed. So Abbott files a brief, Wu's representation files a brief, then responses are filed. And the final day is actually September 4th, which is past August 19th, which is after the end of the first special session. But as we know, there's going to be a second special session.

So this is going to be something that's continually discussed in terms of the vacancy versus abandonment, if they're present or not. this is going to be an ongoing discussion. What's interesting, though, is I got a chance to read both of the responses and the filings. And there's lots of interesting arguments being made here by both the Abbott team, the Paxton team, and Wu's representation as well. And one of the big things that this hinges on is a 2021 opinion that came out from the Texas Supreme Court that actually affirmed the ability for a quorum to be broken. But in that same 2021 opinion by the Texas Supreme Court, they do cast a bit of doubt on what is

the bear quorum rule. And so I'll just read a portion of this because I think it's warranted to understand. what this is about it says the two-thirds quorum rule protects against legislative action taken by a smaller fraction of the body but in the very same sentence article three section 10 also protects against efforts by quorum breakers to shut down legislative business and so within that that's really what we're seeing the argument in the texas supreme court with this most recent these most recent filings uh leaning on abbott mentions it uh woo present some counter arguments to that. We've seen amicus letters from Mitch Little and Briscoe

Cain that is supportive of Abbott's filing. We've also seen Reps Joe Moody and Mary Gonzalez file their own amicus brief supporting Wu's arguments in this case. So everyone's coming out with their with their sides here about the issue. But a lot of legal maneuvering. And it's something that is really going to set a precedence for Texas legislature. of action moving forward. Yeah. I really think it is because the quorum bust is a valuable tool for the minority party within the Texas legislature.

It's really the only tool, at least that does not involve, you know, negotiating or giving up stuff you want. Like that's the, it's called the nuclear option, right? But that's the most powerful tool they have, the minority has in their tool bill. But the question is, what to the extent can it be used to totally halt legislative business, which, what we're seeing right now, where nothing can move? So SCOTUS, the Texas Supreme Court has a big decision to make here. And like I said, this is going to set precedent for the legislature moving forward for generations to come, really. Well, also, it's not just a big legal question.

for them to settle, which is, of course, their job, right, to settle these legal questions. But politically, most of these Supreme Court justices have been appointed by Governor Abbott. Right. A lot of them are on the ballot next year. If they go against Abbott, does he pull kind of a, you know, Ken Paxton kind of maneuver in the election that Paxton did with the CCA judges, court criminal appeals after the after the Stevens decision, I think it's Steven's decision, yeah, related to ballot fraud in prosecution therein.

Well, that's the unique thing about the Texas elections here is we elect our Supreme Court justices, right? So they have to lobby the public to say, hey, I made the right decisions on these high-profile cases. And what comes along with campaigning is campaign financing and getting money to run a campaign, putting up the billboards and the lawn signs and the door knockers. And so it's a very complex situation. It's not just what is the letter of the law say.

We'd hope it would, it's that way. But there's all these other factors that these justices have to think about in both the short term and the long term. I'm sure it's really just rattling. their brains about what I was going. They're in a tough spot. Yeah. And, you know, that doesn't even consider what they think of the legitimacy of this, you know, a case that Abbott and Paxton are making. And the fact that this is a question that kind of needs to be answered for future quorum breaks. Yeah. Put this one aside, you know. But as you mentioned, they did a briefing on merits and that pushed this back a ruling on it what a month a few weeks yeah so this might

be moot by the time they were even scheduled to take this up right because if quorum's restored the question is does this entire thing become moot maybe maybe not I don't I don't know I don't know but I would like to see a ruling on I'd like to see a ruling too because I'm curious what what they think yeah yeah okay um I think we yeah we hit a the legal stuff. I mean, there, yeah, there is a couple, there's a lawsuit against Beto O'Rourke. Yeah. I don't think we have that on the. Well, Mary Lisa's been covering that. Maybe she can give us a rundown. Mention, mention the Beto O'Rourke stuff and just a, you know, a brief review of what's being alleged there. Yeah, well, it's been states happening pretty quickly with that

lawsuit, but I think we might have talked about the first, when Paxton filed the suit against Beto O'Rourke and his organization powered by people for allegedly he said bank rolling the Democrats quorum break and then he eventually I think it was on Friday when we had all of the news breaking just around 5 o'clock I think but he was able to get a temporary restraining order against O'Rourke and as far as I've seen you all can correct me if I'm wrong I think that's been the latest development, although actually recently Beto was alleging, but I don't know that he's taken any formal court action. He was alleging that Beto has been defying that temporary restraining order, but are either of all aware if he did anything after, he alleged

that Beto was violating that? Well, Beto has been, in his, His PAC specifically has been paying for part of the quorum bus costs. And he's not been shy about the fact that he's doing it. In fact, after the, I think after the initial TRO was issued by the Tarrant County Court, he doubled down. Beto did. So there's no question that he's funding this. The question is whether it's illegal.

Yeah. Right? And then we saw last night. Bado had filed a countersuit, and he filed it in El Paso, a countersuit against Paxon to try and basically stop the Tarrant County lawsuit, and the court abated it. They pushed it back until there's a briefing in the Tarrant County lawsuit. So lawsuits galore. It's a complicated web.

Everyone's suing everybody. You get a lawsuit. You get a lawsuit. You get a lawsuit. but I think there's a pretty sizable chance that all of this just becomes moot at some point. Well, it could become moot in one sense, but if with this Beto versus Paxton, countersuit, suit, ordeal is going on, if they move forward on that, that could lead to further actions in terms of the campaign finance issue.

because, you know, still, these Texas House Democrats, they have to pay the fines for each day they're absent. Yeah, $500 a day. $500 a day. They also have to pay the money that DPS is spending trying to locate them. Yeah. And so this is going to come out to a large number. And from what I understand in the House rules, they can't use money that was given to them in, uh campaign finance yeah right so it's going to have to come out of their personal salary and so

when that bill comes due what does the reporting look like from these texas house democratic members in terms of where that they got their money because you know not every member is you know rolling in the dough here you know they they they many of them work regular jobs uh and they have you know modest salary with their normal job where you know they're not going to be able to afford out of pocket these tens of thousands of dollars probably that it's going to come out to so where did that money come from there's going to be reporting on that and hopefully their records are clear to where when they got that money because it with these bribery and influence allegations right it's was the money being used to encourage them to break corn?

Because that's the allegation, right? And that's the thing that is illegal in this instance. And so I think... If it is bribery. If it is bribery. Those are the angles they are taking. So we're going to see reporting come out on how these fines were being paid where that money came from.

So this is something that we're just going to, again, can I have to wait and see? Yeah. Because it's got that money, that bill is going to come due, and people are going to dig into those finances when the reporting comes out. Well, I think we're interesting. Yeah, sorry, Mary Lisa, go ahead. Just kind of an interesting tidbit here with the back and forth between Paxton and Beto. As always, it's so fascinating to watch kind of, you know, two people in a lawsuit who are going back and forth at each other via X. Beto's been like posting these videos. He posted some from his rally where he was seeing,

you know, F the rules. We're going to play by our own game. And then Paxton's responding to him. But then also you've got someone else kind of jumping in, Senator John Cornyn. And this is interesting from the perspective of the U.S. Senate race. But Senator Cornyn has been kind of definitely paying attention to this back and forth between Paxton and Beto. And also, Cornyn actually filed, I think it was yesterday. his own letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and asking that the Department of Justice would investigate if there was any violations of, you know, maybe violations of bribery laws, and he specifically mentioned Beto empowered by people, but also said, you know, any other groups like this that may be responsible for funding. So he's kind of taken it to the federal level

there. It's funny to watch. Basically, you know, Cornyn's using this as ammunition in the Senate race, of course, like you said, Mary-Alee's. But, you know, there is some disagreement happening within the Republican Party, along with Democratic Party, even though they're mostly unified on this for or against congressional redistricting. But this is an example of Republicans taking swings at each other. and Paxton has been swinging back at Cornyn over it, too. Yeah. You know, this is, Cornyn's at a point in the campaign where he has to throw everything at the wall

to see what sticks and hurts Paxton, poll number-wise, because Mary Lisa reported in the 40 today about SLF finding Cornyn, what, down 17 points on average in polls. Yeah, so. 13 polls taken over the past six months. Yeah. So he's at a deficit. He's at a disadvantage and he has to use everything he can. And this is now, you know, while Republicans are mostly singing from the same tune, we see John Corny taking swings at Ken Paxton. Yeah. And then Paxton swinging back. But so, you know, as with everything, you know, politics. Politics finds its way into all of this. Oh, for sure. Especially in the situation where this is all politics. Yeah. Redistricting, of course, is the most political thing we do. So, you know, we'll see how long that lasts as viable ammunition, but, you know, Corrin is testing the waters on it. All right, let's move on.

While the quorum break has been happening and the House has done nothing because of it, the Senate has passed stuff. And we've seen a blueprint on things that are going to pass in the next special session, presumably if there is a quorum. Mary Lisa, you've been following the chemical abortion pill issue, both during the regular session and during the special. What passed? Where does that stand, that legislation stand? Yeah, well, it's, it remains in the Senate. It passed Senate State Affairs on Monday, I believe it was, and then just the other day, it passed the Senate. So this is Senate Bill 6, and it's by Senator Brian Hughes, and he filed the Upper Chamber of version of this chemical abortion pill crackdown. It's also known as the Women and Child Protection Act, but it's looking to essentially curb the distribution, the creation of chemical

abortion pills, which are often offered to Texas women via online transactions. So to kind of curb that distribution of them into Texas. So there was a committee hearing on Monday Senate State Affairs where it was heard. And there was, I think it was around four hours of public testimony of folks that came in. And a lot of the arguments on either side were kind of around the same lines as we saw during the regular session when very similar legislation failed to pass. But we saw folks come in that are, you know, 100% pro-abortion. They're saying, you know, this is just infringing on our freedom. Abortion is a human right. And saying that, you know, one argument that was being made was if this state wasn't so strict about abortion, if you weren't closing down our, you know, Planned Parenthood facilities, then we wouldn't be having to get these pills online.

And some folks that admit, you know, we wouldn't be having to get these pills online where it's a little bit more risky, right? Because this is self-administered. You're at home. And then that's something that the pro-life individuals came in and we're saying, arguing more from the perspective of just. the trauma that the woman goes through when she is given these pills because, you know, you often buy them online and then they come to you. They were saying you have no instructions. There's no health care provider that checks in with you afterwards. And there's a lot of, you know, experiences involved with that at home consumption of those pills that can be really distressing. So we had a lot of back and forth there for abortion, pro-life folks. And it did eventually

pass out of the Senate State Affairs Committee. It was brought to the Senate floor and it passed there. And so I'm, I'm sure we're going to see this refiled quickly, but I mean, as of now, it's just kind of sitting in the Senate, as are a couple of other items that, I mean, the Senate's just been marching ahead full steam. Now we're just kind of waiting for Friday, waiting to see what happens. And, you know, we did see a walkout in the Senate when the redistricting bill passed there. Of course, though, they did not manage to break corn because two Democrats, Judas Zafarini and Chui Hinajosa, remained. And, you know, we've talked, that was always going to be the case. Well, it was interesting, too. They did the walkout, the cameras and the lights,

and the microphones were all set up. They each said their piece. Then they went back into the chamber. Most of them, yeah. Yeah. You know, so it was like, they're just taking a little break To say their peace and then went back in. You know, another consequence of this quorum break, outside of just redistricting and Republicans being determined to pass this more than they ever were because of this, you know, there was talk about only passing, the legislature only passing between the two chambers,

you know, the top four issues, redistricting, whatever they do on THC, flood relief, and then the fourth one I heard was the chemical abortion stuff, and then just letting everything else go because they don't want to deal with it. Now, Republicans are mad enough now that they might say, to hell with that, we're going to pass all of it, you know?

Have they had committee hearings in the House on all the other issues? I know we've been covering chemical abortion pill. We've covered THC. Because there's all sorts of other things. I'm trying to remember. There's like water. The flooding stuff.

Yeah, the flooding stuff. They did whole hearings on that. Yeah, but like, Wasn't there water issues as well that were placed on the call? One water issue, yeah. But these other, like, adjacent issues that aren't catching headlines. Yeah. But there's 18 items listed on the special set.

Taxpayer fund of lobbying ban on there. You know, like what happens with that? You know, that hasn't moved at all in the House. But now there might be desire to ram that through just to, you know, stick one over on the Democrats for breaking quorum and bring things to a hall. Okay. Let's talk about another topic. We already mentioned at THC ban. There was the House hearing, and obviously the question is what is the House going to do? The Senate's going to pass the ban. Where is the House? What's your read after watching that committee hearing? Well, first off, this is what number hearing that we've had on this? were there any new arguments made not a whole bunch of new arguments and you start to see the same faces come out and make either supportive or opposition arguments but a little bit of a read that I could get from the lawmakers themselves is they were asking questions about how this might impact the agricultural side of things if people will be if a ban goes in place

would those who would grow it hemp for non-consumable purposes, will they be impacted? So we might see some amendments or some carve-outs more explicitly protecting the agricultural growers who are making products with hemp. There was also some questions about mental health services if a ban, if they, end up going the regulation route, placing some caveats in place to make sure if people are having negative impacts, they can get the help they need. So, again, everything's sort of on pause. So I think the legislators that were at the committee sort of knew that.

And there was hundreds of people that were signed up. And so there wasn't back and forth, but it wasn't anything really. substantive to really take a whole lot away and I think a lot of what we'll see is if a committee substitute is filed in the special a second special session to the full ban obviously that that'll indicate the changes are there but we'll also see a lot of amendments be proposed that will radically shift the ban towards something else and that's or maybe to establish a ban like if we get a committee that's more regulation, we could see the Oliverson amendment again that just makes it the ban, right?

Yeah. So lots of ifs. Yes. If this, then that. Yeah. If that, then this. And so it's kind of a wait and see period. No doubt.

No doubt. Thank you, Cameron. Mary Lees, let's quickly touch on the, another item that is going to die in this special session would probably, you know, be passed. And the next one is, you know, an affirmative event, a bill creating an affirmative. remit of defense for human trafficking victims. Quickly, run us through the details on what this bill actually does. Yeah, I feel like a lot of this podcast has been a little bit of hypotheticals, right? We're all just kind of waiting for Friday, waiting to see what happens next.

But this is another one of those pieces of legislation that will most likely die in the Senate on Friday. So this is Senate Bill 10, and it was filed trafficking. And while in captivity, they committed crimes. who were in human trafficking and so this would allow you know folks who were coerced or acted under duress or threat of imminent death or seriously bodily injuries in there um these human trafficking victims it creates this affirmative defense for them for these cases where they might have been coerced into these crimes so we had it kind of traveled through at the same pace as the chemical abortion pill one we saw it in Senate State Affairs on Monday um there wasn't too long of a hearing there

there was one invited testimony that seemed to kind of catch the attention of a few different folks, but it's Detective Joseph Scaramucci, and he was a 20-year member of the McLennan County Sheriff's Office, and he said, you know, I'm here to talk about something that's a little bit difficult. He said even the most well-intentioned law enforcement officers prosecutors can and do unintentionally criminalize the very people we're trying to save. He said, I have unfortunately done so myself. He told a story about a young woman that he had prosecuted or at least aided in the prosecution of her. And later found out that, you know, she had been in human trafficking and she had been entirely coerced and been acting under duress. And he said that really stuck with him because, you know, that had a huge impact on her life and the way it's panning out.

So then it was brought to the Senate and it passed unanimously like it did. during the regular session. And then now it's, you know, sitting there waiting. But this is this is a piece of legislation that was passed unanimously during the regular session. And then Governor Greg Abbott had vetoed it because he was worried it was too broad. And then I might be offering defense and too broad of a manner. And Senator Parker was saying that he tightened it up a bit.

So he's hoping that that's going to, it won't have the same fate as Senate 1278 of the regular session. So this is an interesting piece of legislation because it's something both for Republicans and Democrats would be able to unite on. So I don't know if it'll be kind of just thrown off the door with everything that's going on or if they're going to really be able to address it and potentially put it into law during another special session. Yeah, I think this is pretty guaranteed that this is going to pass whenever we have a quorum resort, which is obviously the operative question here. Cameron, last. one we're going to touch on it. We're a trio of flood bills passed in advance, and we see

kind of the blueprint. We might see some changes next session in terms of what specifically these bills do, but we see the blueprint. We see the parameters. Give us a rundown of what exactly is in all these. Yeah. So the Senate, they filed, like you mentioned, three bills, SB1 being the omnibus version of kind of addressing a number of issues, whether it be. requiring greater education for the local officials involved collaboration with Texas Division of Emergency Management there's also establishing a working group with meteorological data also creating an emergency evacuation plan also making sure

campgrounds that are in flood prone areas have an evacuation so all that's an SB 1 and another bill SB 2 is going to require outdoor warning sirens, which was a big topic of conversation during the committee hearings that we covered extensively on the Texan.com. I think it'll pay for them too, right? Is that is that the case? Yes. With state money. Yeah, with state money. And I mentioned that because there was the conversation about cell phone warnings versus sirens. It's with SB2, they're going to be going with the outdoor warning sirens. There was SB3 with the funding here, like you mentioned, the $50 million for the flood warning sirens.

But this is also an appropriations matching to the FEMA funds up to $200 million. So just putting more money into reassuring people that if disaster does strike, the money will be there to help people out. this includes like I mentioned the warning sign funding but also $24 million for enhanced atmospheric measurement and modeling techniques and so again something that was coming up during committee hearings that people were mentioning is how did you guys not know this was happening shouldn't there be water sensors and like what what happened with the meteorological information that was coming in they're hoping some of the extra money being put in can help put in new technology to help there.

And then there's also some money being put in to train first responders. So those are the three big bills, the Senate heard. And then obviously they pass them, can't do much else until we got in one. Well, and the House has similar. Similar. They're broadly on the same page here, right? Very much. There might be some differences here and there.

Minor things. But they're going to pass. Everyone knows this stuff's a must pass whenever we have Corby again, right? So we'll see if there's changes. There might be tweaks here and there, but it's probably going to look like this, right? Yeah, I think so. And either way, we're going to see, I think the big thing for most people to pay attention to is the, or what they're kind of wanting is a consolidation of disaster response.

because a lot of the issues that was being brought up during the hearings was the sort of patchwork. People weren't communicating. People were out. People weren't in the proper positions. And we're going to see a more top-down, streamlined structure for addressing disasters. Yeah. I think that's in the form of the, at least in part of the Interoperability Council, right? Correct.

Okay, sweet. Well, thank you all. Let's move on to tweeterie and conclude this weekly run. on the podcast. Cameron, I see something about a free sandwich on the docket. Well, I saw this video clip of this man in a pink polo walking up to D.C. police with a sandwich. I'm like, oh, you know, he's trying to help the law enforcement. Maybe they're hungry.

He rears back and throws it right in the guy's chest. A fastball, right? A basketball. Right down the middle. You know, maybe it was a meatball sub. He had a good grip on it. But he threw it at the law enforcement. ran off, they got him.

This guy in the pink poll ended up being a Justice Department employee. So it's just hilarious what's going on. I have a feeling he's no longer a Justice Department. He got fired. He got fired following this arrest. Yeah, he got arrested.

I'm reading from Washington Post tweet about this. Police alleged the man approached officers began yelling obscenities, calling them fascists. So this all comes from, what were you saying something? I was just imagining it's kind of a funny scene in my head of this man like approaching with a sandwich yelling his obscenities and then he throws a sandwich, kind of like a temper tantrum situation. Yeah. Did he do a full windup? Oh yeah.

Yeah, he had pretty good form too. You know, get the elbow, you know. But you asked me in the office yesterday like, what's going on with the? this DC thing. I'm like, do you know who Big Balls is? Explain who that is. He's the Doge employee. That was his nickname.

This is not something that's crude. This is literally what Musk and Trump and these people were calling him. This is his name. And he was beat up in D.C. That's what set this whole thing off. And I'm sure people have seen, if they're on X and have been following the DC Home Roll story here, they've seen the image of this guy, like, slumped over on the curb, like, covered in blood.

And that's the guy. I'm still laughing about the meatballs sub-fastball. I think he got beat up because he stepped in to save somebody, like a woman or something. He stepped in. Yeah, he stepped in to try and save someone. Well, you got beat up. You know that meme of the dominoes? and it's

at the front it's some guy named that getting beat up now it's Trump and then at the end is Trump you know taking over DC yeah using the National Guard

or whatever it is calling it the National Guard to police DC yeah Mary Lease what do you got JD Vance meme in UK I don't know what that is

okay well I thought that this was just hilarious because I guess some people have been complained about how many vacations J.D. Vance has been gracing his family with, and he's currently, I think, he's going somewhere in the UK because they wanted to welcome him. And it's interesting to see the news outlets are saying, either welcoming him or protesting his presence. But they have this huge, I think it's either like wall or billboard. That's just a huge picture of his face.

But it's, if you haven't been chronically online, like some of us, you might not be familiar with the J.D. Vance meme, but a lot of people have been doing different memes with J.D. Vance's face, and this is one of those where his face is, like, really blown up. But anyways, it's on this poster, but it's really funny because it's like, no one's really sure if they're protesting him or celebrating him, because basically everyone can get on board with this J.D. Vance meme. Yeah, some really interesting tweeterie for me. I haven't seen it, but I'm imagining the reactions from the two flagship newspapers in the UK. You have one, the one that's left wing, which is the Guardian, the one that's right wing, which is the Daily Mail, and them just, what if they put the J.D. Vans meme on the front page?

I hope so. That would be, that would be hilarious. Is it the one of him, like, looking like a baby, like a baby face? It's the one where he's, like, extremely blue. It looks like, like the big round head, like very red, but they also take off his hair and wind his eyes. It's that one. Okay. Yeah.

Okay. I got this week, this is just weird. I've not heard of this before. And it made me think of the old TLC show My Strange Addiction, specifically one of so were the guys in a relationship with his car. Yeah. Weird. but apparently people are more and more getting into quote relationships with chat GPT Cameron what the heck is going on here there's entire Reddit threads of people lamenting

about how even when chat GPT shifted their model from 4.0 to 5.0 it lost their thread that they had with the model they were working with and so they were getting upset that they built this relationship with chat GPT what this is you know per this was portrayed in the movie her walking you know I never saw it but it was you know it was you know it portrayed it as like this love story between the man and this AI and but when it happens in reality it's very very creepy. It was creepy in the movie, but even now it's like, gosh, what are people going to do when the AI improves even more and when they can put it into a humanoid robot or something like that? We're already seeing people fall in love over a laptop. It's just strange.

There's a, what I saw this from was a Reuters story, and I'll read the first paragraph. It says an internal meta-policy document seen by Reuters as well as interviews with people familiar with its chat bot training show that the company's policies have treated romantic overtures as a feature of its generative AI products, which are available. It's a feature, not a bug. Yeah. Well, here's the kicker, which are available to users aged 13 and older. 13.

Oh, what the heck? This is, this is awful. What are we doing? Yeah. Yeah. I, if, when I have kids, they will not be touching. the electronics until they're 18, especially with how crazy things have gotten already. Yeah.

Like, I remember growing up, I didn't get a cell phone until I entered high school. And even then, it was a flip phone. Yeah. And so with ChatGBT, BT, the way it's advanced and how it interacts with you, like, obviously, if anyone has used ChatGBT, it's still very crude. And, like, you can, I don't know, I don't get it, because you can tell it's a computer. like it's a next word generator it's not thinking yet people are falling in love with it it's I don't know if it says less about the AI and more about the our human species the human being

that we can be manipulated in this way I don't there's some deeper questions going on here we don't have the time to go yeah we'd get into a theological discussion here yeah it's very it seems seems very much like Japan and their problem. Right now of getting people to date and marry. Yeah. Because a bunch of different reasons, but it's all related to tech and people not wanting human interaction. They want the interaction with a freaking robot.

Yeah. Well, there's countries around the world that are having these birth rate issues. And that's before the advent of AI. where men aren't having relationships with women. You know, it's, you mentioned Japan, it's South Korea. We've seen some places like in some European countries that have attempted to create some government incentives,

crafting policy to try and encourage. We actually saw that in the One Big Beautiful Bill with Ted Cruz, creating those little Trump funds, you know, for people who had kids to get like $1,000. or something. So people are trying to encourage young people to have kids, you know, because it is a crisis, honestly. We're reproducing under replacement rate. AI just throws a giant monkey wrench into all of that if people are falling in love with their computer. So what does that mean? How are people going to, our government official is going to

start saying we need to do something about this AI you know shut it down or people are just going to say this is the natural course of things it's kind of some people fall in love with AI some people fall fall in love with a regular person you know who knows not great Bob not great not great and on we'll end on that you know uplifting note right of the fall of civilization and you know declining birth rates decline of humanity Maybe we'll have a better note on Siney Die slash first day of the new special session. We'll see. With that, thank you all for joining us this week.

And we'll see you on the other side. 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 the Texan. 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 the Texan. News. Tune in next week for another episode of our weekly roundup. God bless you and God bless Texas.