The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - August 16, 2024

Episode Date: August 16, 2024

Show off your Lone Star spirit with a free "Remember the Alamo" hat with an annual subscription to The Texan: https://thetexan.news/subscribe/ The Texan’s Weekly Roundup brings you the latest news in Texas politics, breaking down the top stories of the week with our team of reporters who give you the facts so you can form your own opinion. Enjoy what you hear? Be sure to subscribe and leave a review! Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast.This week on The Texan’s “Weekly Roundup,” the team discusses:Sylvester Turner Selected to Replace Late Congresswoman Jackson Lee as Democratic NomineeChip Roy Sends Letter to San Antonio Police Chief, Requesting Answers Regarding Migrant Resource CenterTexas Attorney General Threatens to Sue Dallas Over State Fair Firearm Policy, Statewide Legal Opinion RequestedTexas Senate Committee Requests Documents Related to Big Tech Election Interference InvestigationTexas Prisons Director Admits Heat Caused Three Inmate Deaths, Requests Additional FundingTexas Education Agency's 2023–2024 School Ratings 'Refresh' Temporarily Blocked by JudgeBiden Administration Barred from Enforcing New 'Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity' Rules Under Title IXUniversity of Houston Poll Shows Majority of Texans Concerned about Housing Affordability

There's a fight over the Texas lottery too and whether it's fulfilling its original purposes adequately or not. Refresh my, what was the original purpose? I think it was to fund public education. Yeah, I was wondering that as well. Yeah, this is something Connie rants about all the time. Okay. I think it was to fund public education or at least fund part of it. Interesting. There's a lot of groundwork being laid for big fights to happen in the upcoming session. I mean, there always are.

There will always be fights. Another guarantee. Death taxes and fights happening in the legislature. Even when they're not in session, we see that playing out right now. We'll do it live. We'll do it live. All right. Three, two, one.

Hello, everybody. This is senior reporter Brad Johnson. Welcome to this week's episode of the Texans Weekly Roundup podcast. I'm here with reporter Cameron Abrams. Cameron, how's it going? I'm great. Thanks for having me. Yeah, you're actually obligated as always. And we were joined this week also by Mary Elise, our newest addition, who actually just put out her first version of her new newsletter, The 40. Yep. That was something you enjoyed? Yeah, that was really fun. It's more of a relaxed way to write about politics, so I enjoyed it. Yeah, Mary-Lise has taken over for Daniel, who is departing.

Not this world, just this office. Mary-Lise, if you could give the listeners a hook to draw them in, why should they read your newsletter this week? Okay. okay um afghanistan and a reporter that is angry i'll leave it at that okay it was a great read it was really good first edition thank you anger draws a lot of eyes it. Hence the state of the news industry this week. This era, you know? It's not just this week. Before we get into the news, I want to ask you guys right off the bat an odd question. Cameron, what's your go-to karaoke song?

Oh, my go-to. This is going to tell our audience a lot about you. Well, it's quite easy for me it's link 182 all the small things okay that's a good one you know there's not a whole lot of vocal range needed for this song and lots of the hook is repeated many times so it's it's very easy to do for karaoke um i was telling you about an unfortunate incident. Doing karaoke. I used to do karaoke quite often with my friends back home in California, in Sacramento.

I will give a shout out to one of my buddies who did a very complicated song, I Would Die For You by Prince. And he absolutely nailed it. Oh, wow. Interesting. Because the point of karaoke is to make a fool of yourself yeah not to nail it yeah but he nailed it interesting mary lee's how about you okay this might be a little bit of an odd one but i really like friends in low places by brooks jefferson oh that's a good one. Country. Okay. Yeah.

Mine is a fun one. It is very much. So, um, country leaves a lot of options. Yeah. Easily accessible options. Well, for those of us less musically inclined,

well, you have the option to, are you going to sing in your natural voice? You're going to put a little twine in the vocal twisted up. Yeah. Yeah. There's room for creativity for sure yeah my go-to is don't stop believing by germany chiefly for the uh my college buddy and i would duet it okay we'd also do it uh make a man out of you from mulan that was that awesome. That was a good time.

But the line, born and raised in South Detroit, got me hooked for that back when I was where I'm from, which I won't mention here again, since that is frowned upon in this establishment. All right, with that, we will move on to what everyone's here for, the actual news of the week. Marylise, we're going to start with you. You attended the Texas 18 precinct chair meeting where they selected the replacement for the late Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee.

Tell us about what the experience was like before you run into how it actually unfolded. What was it like? It was really interesting i thoroughly enjoyed the experience it was my first opportunity to do on the ground reporting with the texan so it was held at wheeler avenue baptist church and it was packed like wall to wall it was just full of people it was a public event so it wasn't hard to get in you literally just walk in um so yeah, that was on Tuesday night. And 80 of the district's 88 precinct chairs showed up to vote. So the precinct chairs voted in Sylvester, former Houston mayor Sylvester Turner. And so how it worked was first they did a roll call to see how many precinct chairs were there because they had to meet quorum and then they announced okay quorum has been met we can proceed

with the vote so they did a roll call well first they did nominations and there were originally 18 individuals that announced that they were joining the race for cd to run for Lee's seat. So there were 18 people. But at the meeting, there were only six individuals that were nominated by the precinct chairs. So the precinct chairs went up to the microphone and they said, this is who I nominate. They each nominated, well, not all of the precinct chairs went up, but the ones that went up nominated one individual. So six of them were nominated. It was former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, Representative Christina Morales, Amanda Edwards, Leticia Plummer, Representative Jarvis Johnson, and Robert Slater. And so once those nominations

were made, they were allowed to give speeches. And so they each talked for about three minutes. And then we did a, the meeting proceeded with a roll call vote. And so that once again, the precinct chairs went up to the microphone and they announced who they were voting for. And honestly, throughout the race, I was, this might've just been me, but I was really not sure who was going to win. It seemed like Amanda Edwards and Sylvester Turner were tied for a lot of it. At one point, I even tweeted out, they were tied at 15 and I believe they're also tied at 30, but the race finished with Turner had 35 votes and Amanda Edwards had 34. So then we proceeded with a runoff. And the runoff was between Amanda Edwards and Sylvester Turner. They each gave one minute speech once again. And then they split the room in two. And this anybody that's voting for any precinct chair that's voting for Turner, go over to the left side, and for Edwards, go to the right. And so they did the vote that way.

They counted the number of empty chairs, and Turner finished off with only three empty chairs. So that means he got 41 precinct votes, precinct chair votes. And Edwards finished with 37, which means she had seven empty chairs. And when it was announced that Turner had won it was honestly a little bit crazy it felt as though everyone stood up and started like shouting and and most of them seemed as though they were celebrating it was really interesting to to see it was it was interesting as I kind of thought going into this that Turner would win somewhat comfortably. Maybe he wouldn't avoid a runoff, but he would at least be the clear favorite. But that wasn't the case after the first round of voting. Like you said, there was only one vote

separating them. Yeah, that was interesting because originally he received 30 endorsements from the precinct chairs out of the 88. And I think when everyone saw that, probably most of us thought, OK, Turner's going to easily win this. I was not expecting Amanda Edwards to do so well. She really just barely lost the race. That was interesting. So now former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner will be on the November ballot for District 18. And he's expected to win the race. I mean, the Texas Partisan Index gives the area 73%, I believe, Democratic.

So he's expected to easily win that. He may also file for Abbott's designation of a special election for the seat, which is also on November 5th. But the only individual that has announced that they'll be running in the special election is actually Sheila Jackson Lee's daughter, Erica Lee Carter. And whoever wins that special election would only hold the seat for, I believe it would be less than two months. I think I saw a tweet from Renzo Downey at the Trib who said that quoted Turner saying he's not going to run in that special election. So it looks like it will just be Erica Lee Carter as it kind of looked to be at the beginning of this clearing the field.

She's going to finish out the term of her late mother and then hand it off to, in all likelihood, Turner when he, when the next, when the successor is, you know, takes office in January when they seat the new Congress. What was his, last one, last question for you. What did Turner say in his acceptance speech or whatever it was labeled. Well, he really emphasized that he has a lot of experience and he's looking forward to bringing this experience to the position. And I think a lot of people in the crowd resonated with that. He just spoke about, he said, at one point he said, I know I'm not the youngest in the race and this was a difficult decision and everyone started laughing.

But he really emphasized that he has a lot of experience and he's looking forward to serving the district. Great. Well, it's great coverage on that. I'm glad you got the chance to go do some firsthand reporting. It's a lot of fun to get out there and get into the community wherever you are. So well done. Cameron, we'll move on to you. Congressman Chip Roy sent a letter to the San Antonio police chief about the Migrant Resource Center there. What's the story?

Yeah, so he sent this letter to essentially express concern and inquire about the connection between the illegal alien population surrounding San Antonio and some public safety issues in the district that have come up recently. The letter was addressed to Chief of Police William McManus, and it actually laid out recent incidences where there were shootings involving illegal aliens and police. And one of those instances we've actually reported on in the past was when a Venezuelan national, Jorge Cachon Gutierrez, engaged in a shootout with officers of the San Antonio Police Department when they were responding to a domestic violence call. Three officers were actually involved in the initial shooting before the SWAT team entered the apartment and found the suspect dead. So Roy lays out a few other instances in this letter. He also emphasized

that the San Antonio Migrant Resource Center is located near where many of these shootings occurred. And something that he mentioned in the letter, something that we've reported on in the past, is this San Antonio Migrant Resource Center about this influx of illegal aliens that have passed through this resource center and have entered into the greater San Antonio region. I link to all those pieces in the article if people want to check it out and get a more detailed analysis of what are the concerns Roy lays out there. And in the letter, he's seeking details on the frequency and the nature of calls for service that originate from this Migrant Resource Center, along with the outcomes of these calls.

The letter also requests data on incidents related to illegal immigrants, immigration, and asylum in specific patrol sectors, including the results of these instances. He's also inquiring about the San Antonio Police Department's involvement in cases of human smuggling or trafficking and where the department had any prior encounters with Chacon Gutierrez, like I mentioned at the top of this section, who was involved in that shooting with police officers. So Roy is giving the San Antonio Police Department until August 26th to fulfill this request that he has made in the letter. Cool. Thank you, Cameron. We're going to the next story. This is one of mine. to fulfill this request that he has made in the letter. Cool. Thank you, Cameron.

We're going to the next story. This is one of mine. This week, the issue setting Texas politics ablaze has been the state fair and its new prohibition against firearm carry during the event. The State Fair of Texas announced this new policy prohibiting license-to- to carry holders from carrying their firearms on the fairgrounds is 277 acre premises during the 2024 event later this year. That is new and it is likely a response to the shooting that happened last year at last year's event that left three people injured. I don't think anybody died, but someone was arrested and indicted for that. So in reaction to this, the GOP lawmakers have pressed the city of Dallas and the state fair to reverse its decision, and then this week the Office of the Attorney General threatened to sue over this new policy.

And two lawmakers ancillary to that requested a legal opinion from the OAG declaring that ban illegitimate. It's an interesting case here between the city of Dallas owns the land that that this is on that the state fair is going to be held on but they have contracted out to run it the the responsibilities to this 501c3 private entity this organization but it's it's a quasi-government entity even though technically under tax filings it's not so it's this gray area where you have a conflict between private property rights or the rights to decide, you know, what the rules are in the premises you're controlling versus the Second Amendment rights and the inability of a local government to restrict the ability of LTC holders to carry their firearms. So this is playing out in public, and lawmakers are weighing in quite a bit.

Governor Abbott even criticized it, but not really sure where it's going to go. But the Office of the Attorney General sent this notice letter saying you have 15 days basically to eliminate this policy, otherwise we're going to sue. And they seem fairly confident about their ability to win on those merits. And then the legal opinion that's requested by Senator Mays Middleton and Representative Dustin Burroughs, that is trying to get, it's a non-binding opinion, but it's basically legal guidance that could serve as precedent and inform decision-making across the state for all kinds of events,

not just the state fair. So this is a bigger issue than just the state fair, even though that is the feature of this. But I think we have a couple months to go before, a month and a half or so, before we hit the state fair. But this is playing out pretty publicly, and it's getting pretty brutal. Yeah, are you seeing any people respond on just the concealed carry issue or people being able to legally carry because it seems as though there's information on both sides of this argument where people lives are going to be saved if people aren't able aren't going to carry guns and then other people

argue more lives are saved when people are able to legally carry. Are you seeing those types of arguments play out as well? Oh, absolutely. I mean, anytime this issue comes up on gun restrictions, you have that discussion, that debate, that feud, basically, between these two intractable positions that, you know, there's really no consolidating there's no there's no finding a middle ground really on the core beliefs at the the center of these two ideas you know we see it play out every time there's a school shooting um you know schools are gun-free zones already and shootings happen that's the contention the right makes and the left says well well, if we had more gun restrictions,

you know, there would be fewer, there would be less ability to get a hold of guns with which you can go shoot up an event or a public place or a school like that. So, I mean, yeah, those debates are absolutely happening. Will that debate that you just laid out, will that play out as being a factor in maybe the legal arguments that are being presented in this? Or is that something tangential to what is actually being argued? I think if we actually get to a court case, I could see that playing out. That's where the merits of these arguments will actually have an effect. It's not going to have an effect on it,

really anything publicly. This debate has already played out so extensively. But in front of a judge who has to rule on this, I could see that having an effect one way or the other, absolutely. But it's going to rage on, and maybe we'll see the state fair reverse course on this. Maybe they won't. Maybe we'll see a lawsuit. Is there any precedent that you can think of recently where public pressure from lawmakers

have forced a change in a course of action by a locality like this where like paxton is saying you guys got to reverse your stance on this have you seen this play out before where an event that maybe had restricted guns or restricted something else maybe? Have you seen this play out? I'm sure it has. Nothing's coming to mind at the moment. Anything come to mind to you on this? Well, I was just thinking of what it was the true Texas project they were gonna hold the event and the event

hosting site that they were gonna have it at said they couldn't do it and then there was public pressure put on the event site and they reversed course then I don't know I I'm just trying to think like how much weight does federal lawmakers calling out something? State lawmakers. State lawmakers calling something out. Will that actually cause things to change just by putting public pressure on them? It's possible.

But I think the city of Dallas is rearing for a fight on this. I think it's going to go to court, and that's going to decide which way this goes. That's what my gut says right now, but I don't know. We'll see. It's interesting nonetheless. Moving on to the next one, Cameron. Formal document requests have been sent to a variety of big tech companies regarding an investigation.

Tell us about it. Yeah, Meta, Google, TikTok, and X have all been formally issued documents, requests, sorry, formally issued document requests as part of an ongoing investigation conducted by the Texas Senate Commission on State Affairs. The documents requests stem from a May committee hearing where testimony was offered from whistleblowers that included allegations of election interference at the big tech platforms and what was interesting is Hughes and the committee approved the authorization of the so they approved issuing subpoenas this is the formal request for documents before a subpoena is issued

this was following a motion from Senator Paul Betancourt that compels both the procurement and inspection of documents from the big tech firms, in addition to having an employee or officer from the companies appear before the committee. And during the initial committee hearing that happened in May, there was quite a bit of testimony from whistleblowers. One in particular, a former content moderator at Facebook said that while he was working for Facebook, he said, quote, the company took a particular interest in politics and would often bend or break their own rules. For example, newsworthy exceptions he goes on to say here what i observed at facebook includes interference with u.s election activities along with influence from foreign countries so very spicy allegations there i'll be very interested to follow the document case here, if the allegations show anything in terms of election interference. I

know this is an ongoing issue, especially here in Texas, but even more nationally, it's a big issue. So just something for our readers and listeners to keep their eye on. I definitely will be following this. Sounds good. Thanks, Cameron. Mary Elise, coming to you. The Texas Prisons Director publicly admitted the heat has caused three inmate deaths so far this year and requested additional funds. This was the subject of a committee hearing, I believe.

Give us the details. Yes, so last week there was a four-day hearing that was held, and it was, as you said, regarding extreme heat in Texas prisons, and the discussion was whether that's unconstitutional or not and whether that's cruel and unusual punishment. And so the hearing followed a lawsuit that was originally filed by Bernie Tide. And some of our listeners may be familiar with the movie that was made about this individual. It's called Bernie, and it's played by Jack Black. So that's the individual who filed the lawsuit, just a fun fact. And so there were a lot of different testimonies that happened. And a lot of them

were attempting to take the Texas prison's director, Brian Collier, to task. And the one that stood out to me, it was a very emotional hearing, in my opinion. A lot of emotions were running high. There was one mother named Tanya Southerds-Naranjo who directed her comments at Brian Collier and she said, can I see your hands, Brian? I want to see if the blood of my son are on them. She's a mother whose son passed away in the Huntsville prisons, allegedly due to heat. So Collier had an opportunity to testify as well. He said that providing AC and all of the Texas facilities is a key priority to him. He elaborated on how he needs additional funding to make this possible. And he did acknowledge that in the 2024-2025 budget designated by the Texas legislature, he was given

$85 million, but he did say that he needs additional funding to make this possible. Another important aspect to note is that he admitted that three inmate deaths that have occurred that were alleged to have happened because of the extreme heat. He did tell everyone there that he believes that it was due to heat that they passed away. So he admitted that those inmates died due to extreme heat. And this is an issue that's been discussed a lot in the legislature each of the last few sessions um you know this it seems like this is finally going to have enough momentum to get something across the line next session maybe that's just um you know how it looks now and maybe it ends up stalling out at that point but um this is something you know even especially like state rep ter Terry Canales has been beating the drum on constantly, others as well, but he's been a big advocate for this, to put AC in prisons across Texas. Mary Elise. I'll just add that there's a lot of background noise happening right now in our

building. They are drilling a new elevator. And if you can hear it, sorry about that, but that's what's going on. We cannot control it. So we picked apparently a poor time to record. Moving on to the next story, Cameron dealing with the TEA. A judge blocked the TEA from issuing the annual school ratings, A through F ratings. What happened? Yeah, so a Travis County district judge has granted a temporary restraining order against the TEA and its commissioner, Mike Marath, halting the release of A through F ratings for the 2023-2024 school year. The presiding judge issued the order requiring a hearing be held on August 26th of this year to make a decision on a temporary injunction. Looking at the original petition that was filed by several Texas school districts,

they argued that the TEA has, quote, failed to ensure the new STAR test is valid and reliable. They go on to say, quote, failed to provide fair notice of the measures, methods, and procedures he would use to calculate the A through F ratings. And the filing is referencing a previous ruling that prohibited the TEA from assigning retroactive performance rating scores to schools as part of the agency's, quote, refresh plan. And this refresh plan has gotten quite a bit of pushback based upon some of the methodologies that were going to be used in this accountability rating system. And one of the big things that is pointed to is how the new rating system would be implemented in regard to the method for calculating the

college, career, and military readiness scores. And the filers accuse the TEA of radically changing how this is scored. So it'll be very interesting, especially with all of the buzz surrounding public education in the state. I've had a couple conversations with the TEA over the past month, month and a half, about their new curriculum that they're planning to roll out. We are expecting another big fight in the Texas legislature about school choice. But this in regard to school ratings, currently the TA is halted from being able to issue ratings for 2023-2024. Of course, this is an issue that constantly bubbles up when talking about school funding, the school choice debate. This has been just a constant theme in this, fighting over

whether they're sufficient, whether we should even have ratings at all, are they worth it, all this stuff. And now we see more litigation. More. Sure to be another one next year, I'm sure. Yes. All right, thank you, Cameron. Moving on. One of my stories, General Motors collected and sold to insurance companies

the private driving data of more than 1.5 million Texans, the Office of the Attorney General has alleged, in a new lawsuit. The lawsuit reads, quote, For years, Defendants General Motors and its subsidiary, OnStar LLC, have unlawfully collected, used, and sold driving data it obtained through this technology. It continues, after buying a license, an insurer could access the respective driving scores of more than 16 million customers whose data General Motors sold. Unbeknownst to these customers, insurers could and did use these scores and data to make significant decisions that impacted customers' ability, customers including monthly premium increases, dropped coverage, or coverage denials. Essentially what it seems is that cars making year 2015 onward

have this technology in it that allows you to track various aspects, whether it's driving speed, erratic ability, is that erratic driving habits? Yeah, yeah yeah yeah it's like that yeah and you know on star if you know anything about that it's been marketed as this safety right feature it's a little button yeah you yeah I don't think I've ever been in a car with with an on star oh really functioning one okay but you pay you pay per month to have a on star and part of it is you know if you're if you wreck and you're in secluded area you can hit that and i think it calls 9-1-1 yeah or at least an on star operative yeah something like that but um that's how that's the way it's marketed that's the way it's marketed for safety features right yeah obviously i'm sure it supplies that

yeah they've also been using it to collect data. That they're selling to insurance providers? Insurance providers, yes. Very interesting. And that data is then used. The reason the insurance providers want it is they want more data on your driving habits. Yeah. So they can raise your rates if they think it's warranted,

or maybe if they don't think it's warranted. Maybe just because they want to. Let's say you say, I don't want to pay for Allinstar. I don't want it. Are they still going to be tracking your driving habits? I think there's some ability to, but it's much less significant. But it's still tracking? It can, yes.

Wow. Yeah. Well, so it brings up the the insurance question right like they're selling this data to insurance providers that can hike your prices that you're paying per month but it's also the something we talked about on send me some stuff um the surveillance aspect where even that that's why i asked that question about if you don't pay for it it's still tracking your data so even if you're like you know i don't want anyone tracking where i'm driving how i'm driving i just want to drive how i want to drive yeah that that is better by a model t that's what it's crazy now how how invasive a lot of this technology is.

Even when you're like, I'm going to get away. I'm going to drive as far away as I can. You're like, nope, the car's with you. They're tracking you the whole time. So just very interesting that as technology has continued to evolve, even when you're driving, you can't get away from it. Well, and, you know, the question can also be raised well did the people who purchase these cars sign a disclosure agreement or a terms and conditions you've bought in a car before you you get a hundred different pieces of paper put in front of you and ask you well sign here, initial here, sign here. It's like, you don't know what you're signing. Even if someone had read the disclosure,

here's an example of one of the disclosures. GM may use customers' information to develop, enhance, provide service, maintain, and improve the safety, security, and quality of its products, programs, and services, and for product research and marketing. Yeah, big quotation marks around the safety. Does any part of that make you think, oh, it's going to be sold to insurance companies? Of course not. But, I mean, I don't know contract law, you know, what this is going to, how it's going to actually play out in court.

But it sounds like the Attorney General's Office has a pretty good case here. But you know what that disclosure statement reminded me of? What? The South Park human centipede episode. I don't know this one. You don't know? It's a whole commentary on how ridiculous these terms and conditions are. Okay. And you know the human centipede? Yeah. Basically it's that only you're signing yourself away to apple in the episode and um yes it's pretty funny but um that's what made me think of but anyway the the suit is filed in montgomery county and the oag is seeking monetary relief of at least a million a million and one dollar that's greater than a million dollars okay well I think I think the interesting thing here the sort of meta point is we're seeing a lot

and not just GM a car manufacturer but social media companies and you know streaming platforms the terms and conditions coming in facing a lot of legal scrutiny over the past year you know we've seen Texas and Kim Paxton go after social media platforms for not being as transparent as they should be. We're just seeing it in another instance here with car manufacture. Yeah, it's a broader development of Republicans really going after corporations. Yeah. And a lot more than they used to, both politically and legally now.

Well, that's a whole other tangent. We could go down. I'd love to talk about that, but we don't have the time. We'll do a Send Me Some Stuff episode on that, which we can't do this one because we just recorded ours. Oh, well. Cameron, coming to you now. A judge's ruling will stop agencies from enforcing a new definition of sex

to include sexual orientation or gender identity. That has to do with the Title IX definition. That's correct. Federal government, give us the details. Yeah, so just a little bit of background is in April, the Biden administration and the Department of Education issued this new rule that includes changes to how federal civil rights law protects, quote, discrimination based

on sex stereotypes, sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics. And so the big crux of this was the inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity. And the most recent development here is a U.S. district judge has barred the Biden administration and the U.S. Department of Education from interpreting or enforcing the Title IX rule to include the inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity within its anti-discrimination provisions. And the final judgment expands upon actually a previous ruling granting a summary judgment against the federal government. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, he sued to challenge the Department of Education's expanding definition of sex under the category of protected classes. And so I just think this is interesting, the expansion that is going to be included across a variety of different agencies.

But it all really stemmed from that initial lawsuit in that legal challenge by Kim Paxson. This is just the latest development of it. And I'll just add here, in Paxson's press release, he states that this new legal issuance has, quote, expanded the ruling and enjoined any future agency action by Department of Education that rewrites Title IX to sexual orientation or gender identity within the statute's anti-discrimination provision. So that expansion is really the big point of this new issuance coming out. We'll see if it gets appealed. You know, on the one hand, you'd think, of course, and the other, it would go to the Fifth Circuit, which itself is not usually a typically friendly venue for the Biden administration, though I guess it kind of can depend on which set of three judges you're assigned.

Initially, it can go to en banc, and that especially is not friendly to the biden administration uh then of course the supreme court is not friendly either in some instances yeah it depends but on something significant like this probably not yeah especially given that it's a rule and we just just saw the overturning of the Chevron doctrine. Yeah. That would hurt this case, I would say. Right. But, yeah, I guess we'll see. Stranger things have happened.

They are deciding to appeal the LNG export pause, which kind of has the same dynamics around it as this, in my opinion. But they decided to appeal it anyway, so it's kind of strange. And that one especially because they've said it's not going to be in place in March of next year. So why are you fighting so hard to keep at it? Anyway, it's very strange. I'm not sure what their strategy is here. Could the presidential election have anything to do with that?

Maybe they expect Democrats to win and Democratic President Kamala Harris could do something about it. That is certainly possible. Okay, well, thanks, Cameron. Mary Elise, coming back to you for our final story of the day. Recent data from a University of Houston poll touches on housing affordability and the importance voters place on it. What are the details? Yes. Okay. So this was the fourth survey and it's a five-year series of data being collected by the University of Houston Hobby School of Public Affairs. So there was new data that was released last week

and it talked mostly about housing affordability. So the data was collected between the dates of June 20th and July 1st and it found the majority of Texans consider housing affordability to be a problem. 44% of Texans see it as a big problem and 46% see it as somewhat of a problem. Then they also asked Latinos and well they compared Latinos and Black Texans and white Texans to see what their thoughts were. The majority of Latinos and black Texans shared that housing affordability is a big problem, and only 39% of white Texans agreed with that conclusion. Then they asked individuals about government policies. What were their thoughts about government policies designed to increase the amount of housing, of affordable housing options? So 60% of renters were in favor, and a little over half of homeowners were also in favor

of those government policies. And then they asked people who identify with different parties, so they asked Texas Democrats, and they found that 68% of Texas Democrats favor such governmental policies, and only 46% of Republicans were in favor. And I definitely recommend that our listeners check out the article if you wanna read all of the data, and the actual study is linked in it so yeah and housing affordability is obviously a big issue and just in texas generally we see this bum rush of people

into the state it's causing demand for housing to go up and therefore the prices go up especially if there's a restricted supply we We see that in Austin a lot. You see it up in the metroplexes. You know, it's increasing. The wave is increasing the distance from, like, the downtown that it's causing because people are moving out to the suburbs and exurbs and all this. And we saw the legislature, big address way to address this last year was to try and make the permitting process easier you know i think national

democrats are trying or at least considering more direct approaches like uh you know, rent control or price fixing on these options for housing. So this is a very, very big issue that there's quite a wide gap between the two parties on how to address it. But clearly, this survey shows it's a big issue for everybody. Well, in March, if you remember, there was a big hoopla about Abbott. A hoopla. Remember Abbott, he quoted and commented on a post about corporate large-scale buying of residential homes. And he was attributing that to causing the scarcity in housing or the rising of prices and things.

I did a whole story on this because I was really trying to dig in and fact-check a lot of the claims that were made in this video because a lot of stuff was blown out of proportion or just factually wrong, just made up. So if you want to check that out, it's from back in March. It was a very interesting story because, like you're saying, there's lots of government intervention that can try and help mitigate what's going on with home prices or the availability of homes.

But really, the law of unintended consequences. I beat this drum constantly. The economic boom the state is getting comes at a cost, and it may be worth the cost, but there's a cost, and few people are acknowledging that fact. The big one is we have limited housing, at least at the moment. And it can be very difficult to build housing because of the permitting process. And that was the intention behind what the legislature did last year to allow it to be easier and for the market to catch up.

But, I mean, the biggest reason is just the amount of people that want to come live in Texas. Well, and the people that want to live in the metro areas, right? No one wants to go live in a small town anymore, where they only have access to a Walmart or something. They want to live in the city, especially young people, especially here in Texas, where they're trying to recruit a lot of the coastal individuals who work maybe in the tech industry who are younger they have a higher income they want to live in the city but there's just not the availability right now so we'll see if the legislature can work something out but that's one reason why we see these smaller towns especially in excerpts of

larger areas growing and trying to figure out a way to create the requisite infrastructure or attractions like even an HEB grocery store, you know? let's say a data center in a small town where it's building a data center that it's going to attract employees that are coming to Texas maybe from California and it's a great job opportunity but the local residents of that small town maybe don't want the construction going on or it's going to affect their home prices there so a whole lot of trade-offs to try and balance here yeah death taxes and balancing trade-offs three guarantees in life um great well thanks mary elise good coverage on that now we're going to start with yours grok 2.0 grok 2.0 what is that that so we talked about the derpy horse

from derpy horse the coming to a send me some stuff podcast near you but um because when you brought that up when we were recording send me some stuff i i had but um because when you brought that up when we were recording send me some stuff i i had said i came across it on twitter thinking it was an ai generated image it turned out being a real image but um the reason i bring it up is because with grok 2.0 this new release it includes image generation and so my timeline has just been flooded i see mary-elise nodding along have you it's very very good like i i've used image generation on chat gpt before and it has a difficult time rendering faces especially if you're asking it to render a face of a celebrity it's kind of it doesn't really do a good job of capturing what they actually look like but with grok my goodness like i've been seeing people do the all sorts of stuff with donald trump's face

yeah and so um have you tried this out? Have you ever tried? I have not, and I just refuse because I am an AI Luddite. But I did see a pretty funny video from one of the TechSledge Anonymous accounts of Lieutenant Governor Patrick and Attorney General Paxton tap dancing together. Yeah. It was pretty well done, pretty scary. Makes me want to just blow this whole thing up. Well, we're entering into a time where the line between fiction and reality is starting to blur. Like, what is real and what's not?

Are we in the uncanny valley? We might be soon. Oh, my God. But I think, you know, the TechSledge, they have an AI advisory council. So if they come up with a piece of legislation or whatever it may be, or maybe it's done by an oversight of one of these companies, like XAI or OpenAI, whatever it may be, to insert like a digital watermark or a pixel that has a unique code on it so people can understand like, oh, this image is AI generated. Because the potential fallout with putting an image up that shows, you know, a political candidate,

a presidential candidate doing something unsavory, and people believing it, it could have... We already see how easily people believe from some numbskull on Twitter, some reporting that has no basis in reality. And so, I mean, if I were a politician, I would be pretty afraid of what could come across the timeline. Yeah, but the advisory council is working on it. I went to a Google summit a couple months ago where they were talking about this. So it's on the forefront of everyone's minds already. um that's something i'll actually be really paying attention to i'm just curious to see how much ability there is to to prevent well there there's the ability and if people actually

use it right that's true you know because like if you're just the average person and someone sends you a crazy picture and a text and you freak out about it, who knows if that person is going to be checking if the image is real or not. I don't know. It's really fun. It's funny right now. But, again, who knows what negative outcomes could happen. Yes. Interesting. I mean, a picture is worth a thousand words. For sure. Yep, very much. who knows what it could negative outcomes could happen yes yeah interesting i mean the picture

is worth a thousand words so for sure yep very much just like the video of dan patrick and ken paxton tap dancing yeah mary lee's what you got all right so i just found this um right before we started the japanese ski jumper has broken the world record for the longest jump, longest ski jump. So I'm curious to see if this person's going to be at the Winter Olympics. I don't know what their name is, actually. Wow. Talk about terrifying.

I'm watching the video right now. Brad, you're a Winter Olympics fan. 291 meters. Oh, my gosh. I'm watching the video right now. Brad, you're a Winter Olympics fan. 291 meters. Oh, my gosh. I am. I prefer the Winter Olympics. Are you a ski jumper fan? Have you watched this event?

It's not my favorite event, but, yeah, I'll definitely watch it. Okay. I prefer the downhill slalom. Okay. Or the snowboarding, of course. Sean White. Mary Elise, do you like Summer Olympics or Winter Olympics more? That's a hard one because the Summer Olympics have gymnastics

and Winter have ice skating. But I probably would say Summer because it also has track and field. That's pretty awesome. Yeah. America's pretty good at that. Yeah. That's for sure. Yeah.

Well, we'll see if they make it with that record. Holy crap. That's just, wow. Okay. Last one I've got. There was a hearing this week for the Sunset Commission. They just had new appointments set and take over. So it'll be interesting to see how that plays out on the various agencies that are facing review ahead of next session.

But one of those agencies is the Texas Lottery Commission. And its representatives at this hearing did not have a good time. Oh. They spent the whole thing getting grilled by lawmakers. I saw Representative Matt Shaheen criticize them for allowing the use of credit cards to buy lottery tickets. It sounds like state law prohibits that, or at least an agency rule maybe. Something prohibits that, but it's still happening. And so he was getting on them about not enforcing that uh representative lacy hole was talking about uh how there's not sufficient age verification to ensure miners

aren't buying lottery tickets um and then and when you say lottery tickets do you mean like they have to go to the counter and buy a lottery or are you talking about scratchers because like isn't there like the powerball sort of thing where you're talking about scratchers. Because, like, isn't there, like, the Powerball sort of thing where you pick numbers? Yeah, I mean, that's the main one. Okay. I'm not sure if the scratch ticket, scratch-off tickets apply there.

Okay. They probably do. It probably falls under the same umbrella. I just, I don't know. Yeah. Senator Mays Middleton was grilling him on something. I was in and out on that line of questioning, but I think he spanned a lot of topics.

But, you know, the Sunset Commission is interesting because, A, it's boring up front. Nobody knows what the heck it does, why it exists, or really cares that much. But they control how these agencies operate. They can push through pretty significant changes, and we might see that. You know, one of them that's up, Texas Ethics Commission. We might see some significant changes.

Well, the big thing is with the disclosing if you're putting a post out and you're paid for it, right? Yeah. Well, that's something they already adopted. But there might be tweaks made to that, yeah. Yeah, that would sort of put it on my radar. Just campaign finance reporting generally, that's something that could happen. Yeah.

But also, you know, there's a huge fight over gambling in the legislature right now. And as we see in this, it's not just over casino gambling or sports betting there's a fight over the Texas lottery too and whether it's fulfilling its original purposes adequately or not refresh my what was the original purpose I think it was to fund public education yeah I was wondering that as well yeah this is something Connie rants about all the time okay I think it was to fund public education, or at least fund part of it.

Interesting. I don't know how effective it's been at that, but I mean the public education expenses are massive, so what the lottery commission brings in versus that is probably pretty small. But yeah, that was the original purpose, and right now they're going to have to get through this sunset process, and it's starting off not very friendly to them. Yeah. So. There's a lot of groundwork being laid for big fights to happen in the upcoming session.

I mean, there always are. Yeah. There will always be fights. Another guarantee of death taxes and fights happening in the legislature. Even when they're not in session, we see that playing out right now. Yeah. Great. Well, thanks, guys.

Thank you to our listeners for watching and listening. Maybe some other medium that we can't think of right now existing in the plane of the universe. I don't know. Just wait until everyone gets the Neuralink. It'll just be the Texan podcast beamed right into their brain. Oh, man. That gives me the kibbe-jibbies. Even more than this AI stuff.

We need to burn that down before anything happens with it. Yeah. Great. Well, thanks, guys. We will catch you next week. Thank you to everyone for listening. Great. Well, thanks, guyss. Tune in next week for another episode of our weekly roundup. God bless you and God bless Texas.