The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - August 27, 2021

Episode Date: August 27, 2021

This week on The Texan’s “Weekly Roundup,” reporter Holly Hansen joins us from Houston to talk about vaccine incentives in Harris County. Additionally, the team breaks down the election reform bill finally on the floor of the Texas House, San Antonio ISD's vaccine requirement for staff, the Supreme Court's ruling on the “remain in Mexico policy,” a new report following an internal investigation from the attorney general’s office, border wall funding, Austin business owners taking aim at the city’s implementation of a public camping ban, the Texas House looking to provide funding for virtual learning, and new rule proposals that look to punish future quorum breakers.

Happy Friday, folks. Mackenzie Taylor here on a special edition of the Texans Weekly Roundup podcast. This week, reporter Holly Hansen joins us from Houston to talk about the vaccine incentives in Harris County. Additionally, the team breaks down the election reform bill, finally making it to the floor of the Texas House. San Antonio ISD aiming to require its staff to be vaccinated. A new order from the governor taking aim at San Antonio ISD over those mandates. The Supreme Court weighing in on the Remain in Mexico policy. A new report following an internal investigation from the Attorney General's office. Border wall funding.

Austin business owners taking aim at the city's implementation of a public camping ban. The Texas House looking to provide funding for virtual learning and new rural proposals that would look to punish future quorum breakers. of a public camping ban, the Texas House looking to provide funding for virtual learning, and new rural proposals that would look to punish future quorum breakers. Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoy. Howdy, folks. Mackenzie Taylor here with Hayden Sparks, Holly Hansen, Daniel Friend, Isaiah Mitchell,

and Brad Johnson. Holly, we are so excited to have you join us today. You're coming in live from Houston, which is awesome. So thank you for joining us and taking the time. You're welcome and happy to be here. Yay. It's been a while. I think you said it was a year since the last time you've been on our podcast. It has been over a year. So I'm glad I've been welcomed back. Yeah. Well, we'd have you on every week if technology allowed. So we're grateful that this remote version of the Texans Weekly Roundup could accommodate for that.

But Hayden, we're going to start with you right off the bat with the elections bill. We finally have a quorum in the Texas House. You reported on this. And now today, Thursday, the House is finally hearing the election reform bill backed by the Texas Republican leadership here in Austin. Give us a little bit of a rundown of what's happening on the floor as we speak and what we can expect going forward. Well, as you mentioned, I am literally watching the Texas House floor right now because after one session was lost to a lack of a quorum and a good part of a second session was lost, they now have enough members to, in fact, consider this bill. And if you're wondering what's in the latest version, just head to the texan.news because Daniel Friend did an

excellent rundown of the important provisions in the bill. They're considering the Senate version that has already been passed after a filibuster from Senator Alvarado. So they are on Amendment 1 right now in the House, and it has already been a little bit tense after a quorum break. They are repeating some of the familiar arguments on both sides. And Speaker Phelan even instructed that members avoid using the term racism when referencing the motives of their colleagues or the motives behind the bill. So it has been a little bit tense already today. They are going to start wading through amendments and presenting some of the arguments, most of which we've already heard. And they're going to be picking apart legislative intent,

picking apart some of the drive-through voting requirements, some of the ID requirements for mail-in ballot applications, and the restriction on 24-hour voting in addition to the expansion of the time frame that is required for early voting. So it's probably going to be a long day in the Texas House of Representatives, and we'll have to see what ultimately comes of this bill. If they do choose to amend it, it will have to go back over to the Texas Senate so that they can approve a final version of the bill. And of course, just like during the regular session, it could end up in a conference committee report. And all of this is contingent on the House maintaining a quorum.

Of course, Democrats have done it once and twice. They could, for a third time, decide to break quorum to prevent the passage of the bill in this second called session of the legislature. Absolutely. And it is fair to say that this bill has been heard many times already. These arguments, many of them we've heard multiple times, not just in committee, but on the floor of both chambers, the House and the Senate. This is a lot of the same rhetoric, a lot of the same questions we're hearing from members of both

parties talking about this bill. This is something that has been vetted extensively. And regardless, there's still incredibly passionate opposition from Democrats. But this legislation at this point is certainly not foreign. And like you said, Daniel Friend has an awesome write-up about all the details of what's in this bill. And a conference committee report to your point, Hayden, is essentially if both chambers can't decide on a final version, if they don't pass the same version or it gets amended at some point in the process, they got to go to a conference committee. And that takes more time. So the chambers at this point are hoping to just get through the process of the clean bill and circumvent that need for a conference committee report. And we've heard,

Hayden, upwards of 60, 70 different amendments have been filed by different members, largely Democrats. So we'll see how long this debate takes. But I think it's safe to say Democrats will be trying to run out the clock on this, on this bill. They will, and it will likely take them a while to get through all of those amendments. But like you've said, these are not arguments that we haven't heard before. Of course, every version of the bill has been a little bit different, and they've amended it in committee, and it's been through several different authors by now. So every version has been a tad different, but the broad strokes purposes of the bill and some of the major

provisions are largely the same as they were before. I know they removed some of the provisions about limiting early voting on Sundays after some backlash because the authors of the bill were accused of targeting an effort by African-American churches to get out the vote on Sundays. And so they removed that portion. But some of the other major portions of the bill have remained largely intact. And at this point, it's all procedural. The substance of the bill has been debated thoroughly. If you're getting deja vu, don't worry, you're not alone. And so it's, it's really comes down to can Republicans maintain

the quorum that they need to pass this bill before the clock runs out on the second special session. And if they don't, then we may be back for a third special session where this bill is considered yet again. Absolutely. Well, Hayden, thank you for covering that for us. We'll continue to watch the happenings on the House floor. Isaiah, we're going to come to you. San Antonio ISD has been in the news this week, to say the least, and recently announced that it would require all staff members to get the COVID vaccine, but that requirement changed this week. What happened? So, if y'all recall, Abbott's order GA38, which prohibited vaccine mandates and government entities like school districts, said specifically that they can't mandate vaccines.

They were issued under an emergency use authorization. And that's what all the COVID vaccines were under until just a few days ago when the FDA approved the Pfizer vaccine. So now the Pfizer vaccine is not under an emergency youth authorization. It's just fully approved. So days before that happened on Friday, SAISD Superintendent Pedro Martinez announced this, what he entitled a clarification, saying that the vaccine mandate for staff would only apply to vaccines that are approved by the FDA.

And then just days after that, the FDA approved the Pfizer vaccine. For context for that, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had sued the district, saying that they violated GA-38 and credited his lawsuit for that clarification. Fantastic. Now, after we published this piece, there were new developments. Explain to us what happened after that. Well, after GA-38 came GA-39, which said that no COVID vaccine at all under any authorization just flatly can be mandated. So I feel like the most common metaphor that journalists tend to use for lawsuits is a fight, like a legal battle,

a legal fight. This one feels like a race. They're just kind of like edging up against each other. And so SAISD has been kosher with Abbott's orders for less than a week. And then Abbott issued, well, thanks to the FDA approving the Pfizer vaccine. But now Abbott has issued a new order that says it doesn't matter if the FDA approves it, no COVID-19 vaccine can be mandated for staff by a governmental entity. So you can probably, some more legal action in the near future. Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, as you've talked about, this school district was, you know, perhaps the first in the state that at least we know of to enact something like this. And this newest executive order from the governor, a lot of folks were just saying, okay, this is largely in response to San Antonio ISD. And as new loopholes arise or new problems come the governor's way, he's certainly evolved his response.

So on that note, thank you, Isaiah. Brad, we're going to come to you and talk about this executive order dovetailing off of Isaiah's segment there. But state officials and local governments have, in no shock, come under a lot of conflict with each other in recent weeks over COVID health policy. It really is a deja vu of 2020 in a lot of different ways. But some developments happened in that fight this week. We talked a little bit about the executive order, but talk specifically about what the governor did in response to this. Yeah, I think the big theme of, well, now a year and a half of this pandemic has been state and local government butting heads. This week, Governor Abbott, as

Isaiah mentioned, issued an executive order in response to one of those local governments, San Antonio ISD, changing up their vaccine mandates for their staff saying it only applied to FDA approved vaccines. Well, Governor Abbott's executive order kind of closed that loophole or was aimed at closing that loophole. It applies specifically to governmental entities and FDA approved vaccines. So now you have a larger, a broader prohibition on governments issuing vaccination mandates for the people that work for them and or for, you know, in the case of schools for students that attend those schools. So as we talked about in Isaiah's portion, this order is aimed at San Antonio ISD's vaccination requirement for its staff. What did the district say in response to Governor Abbott's order?

San Antonio ISD basically said that they are moving forward with their request to have all staff vaccinated by October 15th, unless they have a medical or religious exemption. I think the main takeaway here is that they change their nomenclature a bit to say, to call it a request rather than a requirement. You know, that is likely to avoid any potential lawsuits stemming from that. Now, if they're saying that it's not a mandate, it's a please do this. And so that is their response. And so you can count on them moving forward with trying to push their employees to continue to get vaccinated, although without the heavy handed response of a requirement. Absolutely. Now the governor added this issue to the special session call, right? He did, and the legislature may now move on specific legislation that addresses this. The nomenclature Abbott used was vaccine requirements and exemptions have historically

been determined by the legislature, and their involvement in this is particularly important to avoid a patchwork of vaccine mandates across Texas. I believe on the House floor today, it was already referred to committee. And so we'll see how quickly that moves through. But they must get it through by, I think, next Sunday, next Saturday or Sunday is the final day of the session. Awesome. Well, thank you, Bradley, for covering that for us Holly we're going to stay on the vaccine topic here and talk with you about Houston talk to us about the incentive program down there in Harris County in the Houston area and how much will the incentive program cost and what the

funding source is yes so Houston announced yesterday that they had voted to approve a plan proposed by Mayor Sylvester Turner a week ago to offer incentives to individuals who have not yet been vaccinated. And the incentives will total up to $150 per person. The way it will work is the person will go to be vaccinated at one of eight eligible clinics operated by the city. At the first vaccination, they'll receive a gift card for $100. When they come back for the second dose, they will receive a gift card for another $50. It was a little bit controversial during the city council meeting yesterday. City council member Mike Knox did have some questions about it. He called it bad public policy and a debacle. His question was about whether or not we were gifting money to some individuals at the expense of others.

He said he thought it was laudable to try to get people to vaccinate, but he didn't think it was fair to those who had already received the vaccine and are not eligible to receive any of these incentives. The plan is going to cost about $3.1 million, and it will only be awarded to the first 20,000 recipients beginning today. So anyone, for example, who had a vaccine yesterday, I'm sorry, today is Thursday as we are recording, but if you had the vaccine on say Wednesday, you're not eligible. But if you have it on Thursday of this week,

you are then eligible. The county is also offering incentives that there are eligible clinics to those seeking vaccines. That started a few weeks ago, and they will only get a $100 gift card. That also came up in the county commissioner's court meeting this week, where it was revealed that we would be paying $312,000, I think, to a vendor out of California to produce these gift cards. That did provoke some controversy because some of the commissioners are urging the county to use local vendors for all of their needs for the county. Of course, Harris County has also been in the news for conducting a vaccine outreach effort at a cost of almost

$11 million. And the vendor that was selected for that was a local vendor, but the company seems to be owned by a woman who is the former deputy campaign manager for Democrat County Commissioner Adrienne Garcia. She has also done work for the Democrat National Committee and for the Hillary Clinton campaign in the past. And according to her own documents posted at her website, it's just a one-person operation. So there will be some subcontracting or hiring of employees for that program. Some of the

commissioners were trying to find out, you know, how that would be approved, but it resulted in a very contentious meeting. Both of these programs are in operation. We're told that participants cannot double dip, so they can choose one or the other. And one of the concerns that Mike Knox and some of the other city council members expressed was that there would then be a competition between the city and the county as to who could offer the most incentives to have individuals vaccinated in the area. Yeah, so talk a little bit more about that, about the opposition that we heard from, you know, city council members who were opposed to the program. Right. So Mike Knox had some pretty good comments there.

And his concern was that, well, you know, the county offered 100. So then the city now is offering one hundred and fifty dollars. And he said, now is the county going to come back and offer $200 and then the city is going to come back with $300. So, you know, he was concerned about that, although Mayor Turner insists that that will not be the case. But he did, again, emphasize that it seemed unfair to be providing this incentive to some individuals at the cost of other individuals. And Mayor Turner actually agreed with him on the unfairness of it, but he said it was in everyone's best interest. Turner also said he had city employees who have not gotten vaccinated. And he said, I will tell

you in short order, they will, they will. And so it seems like, you know, there's a lot of pressure to to get folks vaccinated who work for the city and county governments, but also individuals in the community. Absolutely. Now, explain to us a little bit, you know, compare and contrast because other localities have instituted similar incentives. How does this the city spending compare to the county's incentive and vaccine outreach programs? Well, this program from the city, again, is going to cost about $3.1 million just for these incentives. And it looks like the county's incentive program is about $2.3 million. Both entities are modeling after programs that have operated in Los Angeles County and the state of New York, and the costs are not nearly as high. And their argument is that they're using federal funds provided through COVID relief, CARES Act funding,

and some of the other federal programs. But I think Councilmember Knox and some of the other federal programs, but I think Council Member Knox and some of the others have argued at the end of the day, it's still all taxpayer dollars. Well, Holly, it's so great to have you back. Thanks for joining us. And we're so grateful to have you in Harris County covering all this for us. Thank you.

Yay. Hayden, we're going to come right to you and zoom out a little bit from local to federal. Let's talk about a recent U.S. Supreme Court development. Let's talk about this lawsuit relating to the Remain in Mexico policy and who initiated it. Well, the lawsuit began in Texas and it was initiated by the state of Texas and Missouri. The Attorney General of Missouri, Eric Schmidt, joined the lawsuit with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, and they sued the federal government, specifically the Biden administration, for rescinding the Remain in

Mexico policy, which of course required many people traveling here from Central American countries to wait in Mexico with accommodations provided by Mexico while their cases were pending in U.S. immigration courts. The Trump administration instituted that policy in January of 2019, and Biden made a point to stop enrollments in that program when he was inaugurated very shortly after he took office. And then Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas issued an official memo on June 1 that formally withdrew the program. The plaintiffs in this case, state of Texas and state of Missouri, argued that it was arbitrary and capricious in the manner that they rescinded it and that it violated the Administrative

Procedures Act. So that is the origin of the lawsuit and the backdrop for this latest development. Now tell us how the Supreme Court ordered the implementation of Remain in Mexico. Well, this is technically a tentative ruling. I'm not an attorney, but this ruling is not a complete repudiation of the decision to resend Remain in Mexico. What happened was a federal judge in Amarillo issued an order that the federal government had to reinstate it, but he put a hold on his order for seven days so the federal government could issue an appeal. This was only a couple of weeks ago. So this has all happened in the past couple of weeks. The federal judge in Amarillo's ruling and then the Supreme Court's most recent stay. So after the federal judge in Amarillo's ruling, and then the Supreme Court's most recent stay. So after the federal judge in Amarillo made his decision, they determined, the Supreme Court determined that

his decision would be put on hold until Tuesday this week, while they made a final decision on the stay. The federal government asked the Supreme Court to stay his ruling, and they chose not to do that. It was a six to three decision. Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan dissented from the decision. They would have ruled in the Biden administration's favor. If it had been up to them, they would have granted the stay. And of course, Sotomayor and Kagan were appointed by President Obama, and Breyer was appointed by President Clinton. So no real surprise there, essentially, is what we can take from that. Well, it goes to the philosophy of these judges that they are on the same page with having an immigration policy that is based less on

hardline enforcement and more on giving the federal government leeway or what they might call prosecutorial discretion so that they can focus more on what they call push factors. In other words, things going on internationally that incentivize people to leave their home countries and come here. So they are going to have to reimplement this policy because the Supreme Court has denied a stay. So the federal judge in Amarillo, his decision will proceed. The Amarillo judge was a Trump appointee, so his background is more consistent with the philosophy of stronger enforcement deters illegal immigration, and the federal government should not revoke this policy simply because there's been an administration change.

Well, Hayden, thank you for covering that for us. We'll keep an eye on how this is implemented in the long run. Daniel, let's talk with you about a report that came out from the Attorney General's office this week. So old news, but a lot of new news too. Tell us about this report that the office released and tell us what was in it. Yes, it's a pretty hefty report that they released. It is over 300 pages long. Well, it's actually more like over 350 pages long. The report itself is 50 pages, and then there's an appendix with lots of documents that are over 300 pages. So lots of new information in this report. It's all about the criminal allegations that were made from senior officials against Attorney General Ken Paxton last fall. So almost a year ago, there were several senior aides in the Office of the Attorney General who raised some allegations against Attorney General Ken Paxton, saying that he was abusing his office and possibly

committing bribery, especially in relation to his, what they said at that time, quote, relationship and activities with Nate Paul, who is an Austin real estate developer. So there's slowly been some information to come out, but this new internal report is something from the Office of the Attorney General that is defending Ken Paxton and saying that the instances where these people who are complaining against him were supposedly – where Ken Paxton was supposedly abusing his power to benefit Nate Paul, the report is basically saying that he had the authority to act in those instances and that he was doing it in a more neutral manner as Attorney General. But this is an internal report, so is there some bias there? Probably quite a bit. Those were the immediate criticisms once it was released, right? Yes. So then let's go into the new information included in the report talk to us a little bit

about what we found out so um a lot of a lot of this information is new like i said there's over 300 pages of stuff in here uh it's definitely the biggest treasure trove of information and documents on the entire controversy since the whistleblower lawsuit was filed last November. And that's when we really saw a little bit more details about those specific complaints against Ken Paxton. Now, some of the stuff that is included in the report is what the Office of the Attorney General believes to be one of the final drafts of the criminal complaints that were filed against Paxton. Uh, so when the, the whistleblowers, uh, came out with the allegations against him,

uh, they said that they had made a criminal complaint to, uh, authorities. We weren't really sure what specific authorities that meant the office of the attorney general, uh, went through through and did their own internal investigation. And in this, they found some documents that had been printed from the whistleblowers and that they believe those to be the criminal complaints, which provides a lot more detailed information. It also lines up a lot with what the whistleblowers argued in their whistleblower lawsuit. So that is a new document that we see. Some other pieces of information that we see that is new, there is two complaints that were filed by Nate Paul with the Travis County District Attorney's Office. We knew that there had been at

least one that was a kind of the centerpiece of a lot of the accusations and a lot of the drama going on in that office. But now we actually see the details of that complaint, what allegations Nate Paul was making against authorities that he wanted investigated. We also found out that there was actually not just one complaint, but two complaints that were referred or sort of referred to the Office of the Attorney General. There are also lots of other emails and other records that are in the document itself as well. As related to the report with Nate Paul, there's also a lot of more background information

on the events that led up to the allegations against Ken Paxton, which involved the hiring of an outside counsel, Brandon Kamek, who's an attorney out of Houston. And he was brought in by the Attorney General to work on that investigation of the Nate Paul complaints that were made to the Travis County's office, and they then referred to the Office of the Attorney General. And so we see a lot more information and details about that. I could spend a lot of time going into that right now. But if you want more detailed, look at it, go look at the article on the website. Yeah, I think your article is by far the most comprehensive look at what was found in that report. So thank you for your work

on that. Let's talk about how this affects the ongoing whistleblower lawsuit. Now you've mentioned it, folks are likely familiar, but this, you know, is not the first time we're hearing about a lot of these allegations. In October of last year, we first, you know, all of this kind of first boiled over with the Attorney General's allegations against him and his office for abuse of office and bribery. That's where all this is stemming from. And there were staffers of his, very high level staffers, members of the office who came forward with these allegations. So talk to us about how this affects this ongoing whistleblower lawsuit. I have a sneaking suspicion that it's going to affect it pretty little, at least in the short term. Now, there might be effects that ripple over into the long term. We might see this report come

up in court hearings, I'm sure. It's not going to be the last time we hear about this report, but I don't think it's going to do a whole lot to necessarily sway, certainly not to sway the whistleblowers, and possibly not even to sway the courts as well, if the case gets to that point. The report itself notes that it doesn't even address the new allegations that were brought up in the lawsuit. If you go back and you look at the timeline, so the whistleblowers, you know, they made the complaint at the beginning of October, October 1st, or actually September 30th, and then they came out publicly on October 1st. But they didn't file their whistleblower lawsuit until a month and a half later, because the whistleblower lawsuit was really focused on a lot of the drama that happened in the office and the allegations of retaliation that those whistleblowers say they faced in the office.

And so a lot of that lawsuit centers around other allegations outside of the whole Nate Hall stuff and the accusation against Ken Paxton himself. So the report here doesn't actually go into any of that detail. So in that case, it's not going to really affect the merits of the whistleblower case necessarily. Now, you also have to remember that the attorneys for the whistleblowers, they did come out with a statement and they were kind of criticizing this report and basically just saying that this is just Ken Paxton defending himself in an internal anonymously written report. And so they clearly don't agree with the content of the report either. So you have a lot of criticism coming from them. So with that said, I don't know that it's necessarily going to affect Whistleblower lawsuit a whole lot. We'll see that case continue later

in September when a hearing is set in an appellate court based on the case's standing. Now, I think it's fair to say that this report provided some new information, but it was met with a healthy dose of skepticism considering the source. So we will continue to watch and see what happens, particularly with this whistleblower lawsuit. Daniel, thank you for your coverage of that. Hayden, we're going to come right to you and talk about the border once again. We have the legislature, as we talked about, officially meeting. And with that comes additional legislative items aside from the election reform bill. Talk to us about additional border funding, this border wall funding bill that we're seeing move through the legislature? Well, the backdrop for this border funding is Operation Lone Star. And that's part of Governor Abbott's broader border security efforts that he has launched this year. And the Texas

House Appropriations Committee passed a bill that would give Operation Lone Star, more broadly, it would give the governor's office a billion dollars for the purpose of border security. And it's been reported that this money could also be used for the border wall. And it's likely that he would use part of that billion dollars to fund the state's border wall project, which he launched in June. And then there are about 800 or so million dollars. We talk about these sums like it's nothing, but in the scope of a state budget, 800 million dollars for other border security necessities, such as for the Texas military department, $274 million for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. You also have a small amount given to the Jail Standards Commission.

And then $32 million would be given for, quote, indigent legal representation, foreign language interpreters for courts, and other items related to that. This funding is supplementing the existing border security funding that has been set aside in the appropriations bill in response to the extraordinary number of illegal crossings that have been reported in recent months. In the month of July, United States Customs and Border Protection reported north of 212,000 enforcement encounters. Of course, not all of those were unique individuals. Some of those were people coming multiple times back to the border. But that is the backdrop of this additional border funding that they have passed out of the Texas House Committee and that has been sent to the floor and will be considered tomorrow on the

Texas House floor. Yeah, on Friday. Now, tell us about the witness testimony. You know, during these hearings, folks come from all over the state to testify and support neutrally or in opposition to this bill. Talk to us about some of the witness testimony that we heard in the committee? Well, there were sheriffs from border counties who appeared to testify in favor of this legislation. One of those sheriffs was Sheriff Joe Frank Martinez of Valverde County, and he testified to his office being overwhelmed. And he reminded the committee that the Florida game warden is helping him with border security efforts, specifically pulling, unfortunately, pulling dead bodies out of the river of people who are trying to cross illegally. You also had Sheriff Salinas from Zabala County appeared to testify in favor of the bill. He talked about vehicle pursuits and other enforcement actions that the county is set to take. Presidio

County Sheriff Dominguez appeared. These sheriffs were trying to sound the alarm to the committee that they do need additional resources to fight illegal immigration and the crime that goes along with that. And the theme of their testimony was the local property owners there are being overwhelmed. One sheriff said he doesn't even, his wife, when he leaves the house, she doesn't even want to go outside while he is there or when he is not there because she fears for the security of her family while she's at the house. And Representative Matt Schaefer asked about the Remain in Mexico policy that we discussed earlier, if those sheriffs believed that it was effective, and they all nodded in agreement, the panel of four that was before him. So I think the message couldn't have been clearer from these sheriffs and other sheriffs that appeared to testify that they do need additional resources. And of course, there's debate about how much accountability should be tied to this money and whether the local law enforcement agencies on the border

do not have what they need to effectively protect their citizens at this time. And it's not for a lack of will, it's for a lack of resources. That's the essence of the sheriff's testimony this week. Well, Hayden, thank you for that. We'll continue to monitor and we'll likely see that bill move its way right through the legislature. Bradley, let's talk about the city of Austin. It's been fertile ground for lawsuits and the most recent one centers on the public camping ban, primarily affecting the homeless population. We've talked at length about this and you've covered it extensively. Talk to us about what the lawsuit says and who filed it. So a group of business owners, four to be exact, along with Save Austin Now, the activist

group that was responsible for the camping van reinstatement at least being placed on the ballot, they've sued the city for failing to enforce it since the May 1st election when Austin voters gave reinstatement of the camping ban approval 60%, 40%. So it was overwhelming support for it. And since then, the city has, rather than reinstate the ban immediately, they've gone with a kind of a phased approach, specifically in four prongs, each prong taking 30 days. And the most recent phase, fourth phase, began on, I think it was August 11th. And no arrests have been made on any of this since July 20th. No citations have even been made. So the large bulk of this lawsuit focuses on the city's just kind of lax approach to bringing back this camping ban enforcement. They've essentially been told not to enforce the ban and to give public campers who are camping illegally a lot of wiggle room from which to leave for a day and come back to the spot they were in. We have seen a couple of encampments cleaned up, but I know in one instance, campers have just moved right back into it.

And so it's kind of these plaintiffs are alleging the city is just kind of abdicated its responsibility. Specifically, they're requesting that the court order the city to enforce the ban. And then the business owners are requesting up to $100,000 in monetary relief for damages caused throughout this process. So that's what the lawsuit says. And we'll see where it goes in court. Now, you read through, in the process of reporting, the testimonials filed from these business owners. Tell us about some of those. Yeah, it was really shocking to see. And, you know, having covered this, I've known that a lot of this has gone on.

And, you know, a lot of problems, whether it's people ODing everywhere, encampments catching fire. But it's really heartbreaking to read these accounts from personal business owners. One of them specifically said, Stuart Duclee owns a dance studio, said that in May 2020, I was interviewing a candidate for a staffing company when a man defecated right in our planter 10 feet from where we were sitting.

Another business owner, Bob Woody, who owns a bar on 6th Street, says he has called the police every day for the last three years, three years roughly being since the public camping down, which ascended at least a large bulk of it. And he says his business has been burglarized over 10 times.

And I would say the most shocking one that I read was from Laura North, who owns a salon. And she said the negative effects to my business are nothing compared to what my two boys have had to experience. I've had to drive them through our neighborhood to and from daycare every day. On our trips, we once saw a man

try to hang himself from a power line. We saw a man try to push the head of another man into oncoming traffic. We've seen a naked man rolling around with a box on his head while others looked on and laughed my husband found a homeless woman naked in our stock paint pool in our backyard and she said that her sons are tragically becoming desensitized to this kind of thing and there's a lot more

testimonial in there i link i post link to the the filing and the uh uh filing and post it in the article. So if you want to read more, I would recommend you go do that. Very heartbreaking stuff. But they're hoping to get some relief in the form of a lawsuit. Thank you, Bradley, for covering that for us. Certainly some sobering information there. And we'll continue to follow that. Isaiah, we're going to come directly to you

now. Let's talk about this virtual learning bill that has made its way through the Texas House. First off, tell us what this bill would do. So this bill just went through its committee, and it passed it on a nine to one vote through the House Public Education Committee. The one nay vote was Alma Allen out of Houston. And the bill itself would enable districts to implement virtual learning programs that would be full time. So it would, they would be treated almost as their own campus in a particular district or charter school network, what have you. So students could attend school full time virtually. And that would get the green light from the state from this bill. I keep seeing a lot of coverage that says the bill would fully

fund virtual education. And in legislature capital insider speak, that's true because it means that the district or the state will acknowledge virtual students as part of the school's daily attendance. But the state is not giving schools a bunch of money for computers and things like that. All the bill is doing is enabling schools that get a C or a higher on the most recent student success performance rating to enable or implement these virtual learning programs. And they have to have courses that are tested, like by the star mainly, and have to meet essentially a lot of the metrics of the same rigor that a regular school campus would meet. Now talk to us about how this would be funded.

So I mentioned attendance. For those of y'all who don't know, schools get local funding from property tax revenue and they get state funding based on how many students are attending on average average daily attendance so this year for example there were a lot fewer students attending and by this year I mean the month that just ended not the one that just began so in this first COVID year really that normally would have resulted in a concurrent drop in state funding for most of the schools in the state because they have fewer students attending.

But the state has been doing this whole harmless thing where they kind of pretend that attendance is the same as it was at pre-pandemic levels to keep school funding steady. So as I mentioned, this bill is not going to give schools a bunch of money for equipment or, you know, Wi-Fi or operations for these virtual programs or anything. Districts will have to kind of operate that out of their own budget, but it of these students that are no longer enrolling in public schools, for those parents who are taking their kids out out of fear of COVID or because the school doesn't have virtual options, that could potentially put some of those students back in if districts are allowed to have these virtual options and they get the green light from the state. Now, the Texas Education Agency Commissioner, Mike Morath,

presented some data about virtual learning at the bill hearing. How well did this method of learning work last year? We've heard a lot about this over the last 12 months, 14 months, but talk to us about what the commissioner had to say. We've known for a little while now that for overall results across Texas, virtual learning was really, really not a good idea. It was not well executed. I'll put it that way. Because Marath tempered this data that he kind of expanded on more at the hearing with the acknowledgement that it mostly remote and the metric he used was they had like 25% or fewer of their student body, their students in school, um, had much starker declines in learning proficiency than other schools. So the actual numbers on that, according to Marath, districts that held mostly physical classes had almost no decline in reading proficiency and a 9% decline in math proficiency. And this is on the star. By contrast, districts that had a

quarter of their student body or less in physical classrooms had a 31% proficiency decline in math and a 7% decline in reading. He also said that elementary school reading proficiency is, in his words, the worst it's ever been since the dawn of the star test after the 2020-21 school year. There were some more specific geographical results in this, especially in Austin ISD and the Rio Grande Valley, which embraced virtual learning pretty aggressively. And the Rio Grande Valley, Marath noted, and to give it context, he called an unmitigated education bright spot before the pandemic. But the valley had the lowest percentage of students that passed the high school algebra one star. And the Austin area had the lowest percentage of passing students in the biology

star. And this is high school. And he said in the Valley that results were worse for elementary school students. But to make it work, what he recommended to make virtual learning work, Barath recommended having teachers specialize and teach either in-person or virtual students. He called them roomies and zoomies instead of, yeah, instead of doing both or, you know, hybrid learning. And we had talked to some teachers at Round Rock ISD for a story at the beginning of the 2020 school year when a lot of them left. And I remember one guy that I talked to taught a shop class and he said that the hybrid learning was pretty easy because he just films it and then he gives it to his students. And there are teachers in other subjects that were more academic that said they had a harder time because what they're teaching requires more,

they can't just film their classrooms and put it online and it gets the same experience for the kids. And so that kind of informed experiences like that from teachers informed Rath's recommendation that you've got teachers that are either teaching only in-person students, roomies, or only virtual students, zoomies, instead of, you know, for some of them essentially doubling their workload. Well, Isaiah, thank you for covering that for us. We'll continue to watch and see how this all breaks down and what the legislature ends up doing. Brad, we're going to come back to you.

Hoping that the torrential downpour that you were just in, bless our, bless our listeners ears, but is over. You said nothing but blue skies ahead, so we're glad to hear that. Let's hope the thunderstorm doesn't come out of nowhere. I'm sitting here wondering what the heck was going on. The delights of remote work. Thanks for still being with us, despite you not even being here. But let's talk about this rule proposal

from a state lawmaker. Now, House Republicans have pushed for consequences for quorum-breaking Democrats since the issue arose. And now we're seeing this come to the forefront of discussion again now that the legislature is back in action. Talk to us about this particular proposal and what it would do. So this one by Representative Cody Vosut has backing from a lot of different House Republicans. Specifically, it allows committee leadership positions to be stripped if unexcused absent, if a member is unexcused absent for more than seven cumulative days during a regular session, more than three cumulative days in a special session, or more than 14 cumulative days in the previous six months. So this would apply retroactively to the group of Democrats that flew to D.C.

Among those, I believe when I tallied it up, there were 10 of 13 Democratic chairmen of committees that were part of the group that flew to D.C. to break quorum. It also applies to vice chairs. I haven't tallied that number up, but it's quite a few of them, at least a dozen, I'd say, that this would apply to. And so this part of the House rule change would allow them to punish what has already happened. Now there is also another trigger or another provision in there that establishes kind of a trigger that would revoke chairmanships as well. This would apply going forward to any member that is a committee chair or vice chair that is unexcused absent for 72 hours after a call to house has been initiated. So basically once a call to house has been initiated. So basically once a call to house has been

initiated, which is requiring members to come to the floor, the 72-hour clock starts running and they would be required to get there before the clock runs out. Otherwise, they would automatically have the chairmanship or vice chairmanship revoked. Notably, that takes it out of the speaker's hands and also takes it out of the speaker's hands in the sense of him being able to choose, they can choose what motions to recognize from the floor and which not to. So that would, that trigger establishes that part of it. The other aspect of this that levies consequences are that would evoke seniority privileges, things like being able to choose which office you get, being able to choose which desk you get on the floor, various other things. And also institute fines, specifically two times the per diems that members get while being in session. Well, thank you, Bradley, for covering that for us.

We'll continue to watch and see how progress is made on this. This is certainly something that a lot of Republicans have support for. So we'll see where this ends up. Daniel, I'm going to pivot to you really fast and talk through a special piece that came out a lot earlier this week, a special edition of our podcast that specifically had to do with the conflict in Afghanistan and a voice here in Texas that has a lot to say on that particular topic and a lot of experience to talk from, to speak from. Talk to us about this interview that you conducted with Representative Matt Schaefer. Yeah, so I talked to State Representative Matt Schaefer, a representative out of Tyler, Texas.

He did actually serve in the military in Afghanistan back in 2010. And so he definitely has a different perspective on the whole situation there right now with the withdrawal and the chaos happening in Kabul. So it was good to sit down and talk with him about his perspective on that and also just about U.S. foreign policy in general. And we also talked a little bit about

some other things that he's been working on as well, the constitutional carry, which is going to go into effect at the beginning of September. That was his bill that he authored. And we talked about something else too, I don't remember what. Oh, the quorum breaking Democrats. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's what it was, of course. But it was an awesome interview. The representative had a lot of, just like I said, experience to draw from, incredible stories to tell. And Daniel, you conducted it very well. So thank you for doing that for us. And certainly go to thetexan.news. And you can read the article, you can watch the interview there. You can also listen to the interview anywherean.news and you can read the article. You can watch the interview there.

You can also listen to the interview anywhere where our podcast is housed, which is just about everywhere. So whatever your favorite streaming platform is, go check it out and it will be available for you there. Gentlemen and Holly, I still love having another gal on this podcast. I can't tell you, Holly, how much joy it brings me that I'm not the only female voice on this podcast today. Well, thank you so much. I'm happy to be here. Exactly. Oh my gosh, Lord knows I need it. But let's talk about, we briefly broached this up, breached the subject last week as our fun topic. And I figured we'd bring it back up because it seemed as though we had some

very strong opinions about the issue, but what is your favorite cookie or no? The question was which cookie has to go. Daniel, did you write this? This, this, this feels like a Daniel phrased question.

Maybe. Yeah. I just had a feeling. Okay, but which cookie has to go? If you had to kick one cookie off the island, chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, peanut butter, frosted sugar cookie, or a double chocolate? This is such aggressive talk.

I don't know why any cookie has to go. Holly, come on. We have to have some angle. Which was the oatmeal raisin? agree wholeheartedly with isaiah oh sugar cookie really okay that's fair i only understand the peanut butter cookie thing if you have an allergy otherwise gosh peanut butter cookies are so good. I don't know about so good. They're kind of my number two.

I feel like there's just too much peanut butter and it gets stuck in your mouth. What if you have a crunchy one? I've never had that happen with a peanut butter cookie. I feel like you've had exceptionally bad peanut butter cookies. But I'm almost wanting to agree with you because I don't really like them either. I mean, I don't know why I don't like them. Maybe there's a different reason. I thought that was why.

Maybe it's just the flavor is kind of bland. It's like, you know, if you get a chocolate chip cookie, you get little chunks of chocolate chips. It breaks up the blandness of just one single thing interesting you so you like you like you like uh goodies in your cookie yeah i would say that okay holly what's your opinion i don't know this is a hard one it i think it depends on who made the cookies because you know there's uh some really good frosted sugar cookies and there's some really terrible ones but i think i'd probably kick out the frosted sugar ones

especially if they came from the grocery store oh really okay that is a hot take i well mine might be the hotter take but i really those frosted really white fluffy cookies from the grocery store that have that thick layer of frosting i don't know what it is they taste cheap they're not great but i love them yes we do oh my gosh yes they're so good they're a weakness of mine they are way too sweet i can't i can't even if you're gonna understand that what say well i was gonna say if you've got to get one dessert from the store there's really no better option than those store-bought sugar cookies those are the best those are the only two bite brownies you know the two bite brownies those two i think are probably

the safest option the brownies are much better in my opinion interesting i mean what's your opinion i think we get rid of oatmeal raisin cookies and if someone is just really you know upset about that then we could just make some oatmeal and put raisins in it and call it a day we can just give them to get them some uh i don't need to have the same food in a cookie form. That is a wrong take. I'm sorry. That's just unacceptable. I can't believe you've got so many oatmeal raisin fans. Oh my gosh. Those are just by far the worst

cookie. Like the blandest. Objectively speaking, yes. Brad, where are you at in this debacle? My gosh, there is so much wrongness going on in this podcast right now first of all say you are so wrong oatmeal raisin is good it's not the best um you can't throw that's supposed to be an insult okay

second those store-bought sugar cookies are about the worst thing that I've ever had in my entire life. Exactly. Thank you. But see, I understand. I understand that they should be the worst thing I've ever had in my life. I understand the atrocity that they are to baking in general, and I still like them. You see, since I can't smell, I have a handicapped sense of taste. And therefore, I still think these sugar cookies are the worst thing I've ever tasted in my life. So imagine if I had the full sense of taste, how bad they would be.

Oh, man, imagine. I think that's a bit excessive. So, my third point, I would like to nominate the Oreo toothpaste flavor as the one cookie to drop from this list. But if I can't do that, then I would do double chocolate because it is just way too much chocolate in one thing. We've got to break it up. It's got to have some variety. That's a good take. So, Brad prefaced this by saying he was tasteless absolutely well you're not tasteless you just have less taste than others

i think actually it's kind of a daredevil effect where his all his other senses are a little bit sharper than ours actually you. You're probably right. So therefore, my opinion is superior. That's an interesting theory. Holly, that was savage. Oh, man. Well, I feel like we've gotten nowhere on this topic. I appreciate all your input, nonetheless.

Long live the grocery store sugar cookie. Did we really talk about this last week? I don't remember that. Very briefly. It was like Isaiah and I had a moment where we agreed about oatmeal raisin cookies, you know, general lack of special taste at all. And

that's about all we had. So it was very briefly mentioned and it very quickly devolved and I thought, well, that could be controversial. Let's talk about it this week. Okay. Well, it was very briefly mentioned and it very quickly devolved and i thought well that could be controversial let's talk about it this week okay well it was controversial so good pick yeah there you go well daniel friend thank you for uh giving us that delightful topic well folks thank you for listening through all of that chatter we appreciate you and we will catch you next week thank you all so much for listening. If you've been enjoying our podcast, it would be awesome if you would review us on iTunes. And if there's a guest you'd love to hear on our show, give us a shout on Twitter. Tweet at The Texan News. We're so proud

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