The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - August 29, 2025

Episode Date: August 29, 2025

Show off your Lone Star spirit with a free "Remember the Alamo" hat with an annual subscription to The Texan: https://thetexan.news/subscribe/The Texan’s Weekly Roundup brings you the latest news in Texas politics, breaking down the top stories of the week with our team of reporters who give you the facts so you can form your own opinion.Enjoy what you hear? Be sure to subscribe and leave a review! Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast.Cruz, Paxton Endorsements Upend Race for Texas Attorney GeneralAustin Congressman Greg Casar Announces Bid for Newly Drawn 37th Congressional DistrictCongressman Al Green to Wait Until CD 18 Special Election to Declare Candidacy, After Texas RedistrictingTexas GOP Lawmakers Join Gov. Abbott for Signing of Hostile Foreign Land Ownership BanAbortion Pill Crackdown Bill Passes Texas House Committee After Lawmakers, Pro-Life Groups NegotiateIvermectin Over the Counter Bill Passes Texas HouseAffirmative Defense for Human Trafficking Victims on Track to Gov. Abbott’s DeskRobert F. Kennedy Jr. Joins Abbott, Lawmakers to Celebrate 'Make Texas Healthy Again' BillsTexas Supreme Court Denies Paxton Restraining Order Hearing on O'Rourke in Quorum Bust Funding LawsuitA Tale of Two Speakers: Dade Phelan and Dustin BurrowsInterview: Sen. John Cornyn Discusses Border Reimbursement, Re-election, State of the GOP

Good morning, listeners. Brad Johnson, senior reporter here at the Texan Cameron. As usual. But today is a good day. It's a great day. Jaden, cue the drum. It's a good day, Cameron, because Mary Elise is here in person. We don't have to worry about the dang, Zoom video chat.

Oh, this is such a relief to just be able to sit down my laptop and I'll stress about that yeah and we can finally hear yeah shouldn't sound like come out yeah like usual i also welcome back thank you it's good to be back glad to have you i also want to say ever since you've taken over doing the intro for the podcast it's been different every time it's true starts out on a very different time so once mackenzie comes back we got to do a compilation of all your different intros for the podcast well you know like any good um Major League pitcher, you have to have a good change-up. You can't throw the same pitch every time.

You do. McKenzie is an only fastball pitcher, which works sometimes. Sometimes it doesn't. And I like that foreshadowing, the baseball reference, for something we are going to talk about. We won't spoil it just yet. Oh, we're going to talk about this. Oh, yeah. Believe you, me.

But first, let's knock out our pieces before we hit the tweeterie that everybody wants to listen. to. Mary Elise has a very problematic one down below. So it's been a busy week and we are sitting here waiting for this Thursday morning midday-ish. We're waiting for the Florida convene. They're going to have a marathon day of consideration of the abortion chemical bill ban, whatever it's called. Chemical abortion billy ban. There you. Thank you. And the bathroom bill and I think it's going to last a very long time on the floor. It might be, you know, wee hours of the morning before we get out of there. But that'll be exciting. Yeah, honestly, I'm glad. Yeah, I'm glad that the day

that I come back is going to be insane, especially with those two issues, they're so controversial, and I'm curious to see what sorts of people are in the gallery. Like, that usually brings a lot of people out of the woodwork, and just to see, like, the arguments between Republicans and Democrats and such, so. Well, we got a little preview of it yesterday with Iver-Mecton bill, and they were getting really upset. There was a lot. There was a little, fight. There was an argument between, not a physical fight, not a fist fight. A verbal altercation. Lorne Ashley Simmons and Shelley Luther were going at it in an argument off to the side at the desks following an exchange at the mics. And people were just, people are just

getting sick of each other. They just are. They've been here for months, for more than half the year. They're ready to go home. The Democrats are obviously sick of losing on the policy front every time, you know, they had the quorum break, but the map still passed. And then now Republicans are advancing these more social issue bills that we haven't seen move yet. And that's after a session that was, you know, by all accounts, pretty conservative compared to where we've been previously. Well, and I was mentioned this in the office earlier this morning is there's a big issue that has been stalled out through all this quorum break with the Ivermectin stuff yesterday with the abortion pill and bathroom bill,

that's going to be taken up today. Where has been the THC ban bill? Yeah. Well, Cameron, I was starting to hear yesterday rumblings of movement in the House on the THC compromise. I don't know if that's between House leadership and the governor, or lieutenant governor, all three, but so far it's been just a deadlock between the governor

and lieutenant governor with the governor refusing to allow a ban to go through, and the lieutenant governor refusing to allow anything but a band to go through well and what's interesting is the governor has been holding a number of the ceremonial signings and the lieutenant governor has not been at that interesting and i think that's because if they are appearing together people are going to want to ask questions about the THC band to see that how they answer differently on that I don't know that's just an observation that's a point of poignant analysis there Well done. Well done.

All right, let's get started, run through these. So first, I've talked before about what I think is going to be the most interesting, fascinating, whatever word you want to use, race of this next election cycle. And that's the race for Attorney General. I think last week we talked about Chip Roy jumping in, how that has changed the dynamics of the race. Well, over the weekend, it changed it even further. We saw Senator Ted Cruz endorse Roy. Roy, of course, is Cruz's former Chief.

of staff, something he also shares with Aaron Wrights, who is another challenge, another candidate in this race. Both of those two also were once high up in the Office of the Attorney General under Ken Paxton, which foreshadowing on that. But Cruz came out and endorsed Roy, called him the conservative. He complimented all the candidates. He said there's a lot of good choices, but my choice is Chip. and I think he's the best for the job.

Well, that caused an answer from Wrights in Paxton when Paxton came out and endorsed Aaron Wrights for Attorney General. The reason for this is obvious. Paxton had been impartial, at least mostly impartially, not endorsed anybody in this race until this point, but it shows you how opposed he is to Chip Roy being his successor. And of course, those two have butted heads. for years. Roy called for

Paxton's resignation following the whistleblowers going to the FBI in 2020 with allegations. Roy also then, during the impeachment trial, defended those whistleblowers, particularly David Maxwell, when he was getting criticized over the testimony that was given.

So no love loss between these two. And clearly, the reason Paxton had set on the sidelines until now was because Chip jumped in and Roy probably has I haven't seen numbers yet but I've heard that his name ID is significantly higher than anyone else is in this race and the day that Roy jumped in there was a poll put out that showed it was a ballot test I'd also had some fave on a fave of the candidates in the race nobody was above 12% and oddly enough Joan

Huffman was at 12% she's kind of seen as the when this race is being talked about She's the one that's just overlooked, usually. She's the one that had the highest ballot ID on this initial poll. Milton was just below, Milton and Wright's were below at 8 and 7, I think. Well, it seems like Wright's working hard to get his name idea. He's been doing tons of media hits recently. Oh, yeah, off the bat, too. Yeah, so I wonder if that number is going to change once they do another poll here in a few weeks.

Well, and then, of course, you've got Middleton, who has more money than God, to spend on this. You know, he's already put $10 million into his campaign. I wouldn't be surprised if he doubles that. Yeah. And so then you have Roy, who has been on the national stage for a while, and that has given him a pretty good name ID, from what I understand. And it makes sense.

Like, he's in the headlines a lot. And the question is, you know, does Paxton's disdain for him, or does his previous, you know, clashes with President Trump cause any issues? You've written about that. Yeah. There was an interesting, he had an interesting response when you asked him about that when he did a profile while back. What did he say? Yeah, he didn't focus on as much of saying, you know, President Trump and I disagree all the time.

He actually said, you know, we agree in a lot of areas. But he, I think he described them as swamp creatures. He said that are in D.C., he said they're actively trying to make them clash heads, always trying to kind of pit them against each other. So that's a piece we published a couple of months ago about Chip Roy and Donald Trump. But, yeah, he said, you know, it's not what meets the eye, as it always is with politics. I know Roy has made trips to Marlago to try and massage whatever needed to be massaged in that regard with Trump. And he's been trying to make good with Paxton, although I don't think that's worked. But this race is the characters involved in this, the sheer amount of money that is going to be spent in what is a lower ballot race.

And in the context of, well, this is Ken Paxton's seat, he's obviously running for Senate. It's a free-for-all. But there's a lot of intermingling and ties between each of them and in Paxton. Yeah, but I'm wondering if you put yourself in the mind of a voter who's going to be going to the poll on this, and let's say it's between rights and Roy, what do you think an average voter is thinking about? who endorsed a certain candidate, how they stand on a certain issue. What do you think it is? Because all these different things play into how someone is going to be voting in this election.

Well, it depends on the voter. And I should also say that Middleton has swept up a lot of the House Republican endorsements. He's gotten, I think, more than half the caucus right now backing him. So it, first of all, depends on who. the voter is and what they find to be important. But, you know, the one thing we've seen is that the endorsement that means more than anything else is Donald Trump's in a Republican primary, I should say. And all these candidates are going to try and get that. I think he probably stays out. Although, you know, who has a really good case to get that, the guy who's

given Trump a lot of money, which is Mays Middleton. So, I mean, then you have, though, rights worked in the Trump administration for a short time, but he did. He was a Trump appointee. Then you have Roy, who at times has been a pivotal vote for Trump to get things across the line for him. Take the OBBB, the one big beautiful bill. So it's, there's a lot of twists and turns in this race. And I think we're going to see a lot more down the road. Yeah. It's just interesting thinking about what motivates someone to vote for a certain candidate in our modern political age, right? It's not so much really how they align on issues

because most of the time in these Republican races, everyone sort of agrees on the same thing with the issues. They don't want to be the conservative choice. Yeah, so it comes down to endorsements. And who has the biggest name endorsement? Well, it comes on to two things, I'd say. That and just name recognition. and that's where the media side, especially earned media side, comes in,

and Wrights is doing a very good job so far of being everywhere. As many places as he possibly can be, doing every interview he can possibly do, raising his profile. Is the media hit the new yard sign? I guess you could say that. What was the thing that vaulted Donald Trump to the top of the Republican ticket? CNN covering him every single day. Every day. Everything he did. And plus the previous name ID he had built over decades of just being a celebrity, right?

So earned media goes a lot farther if you can get it than paid media. But it's harder to get. And so. But I also feel like there's, you know, thousands of podcasts now that you can go on, you know, and speak your mind about the issues or be bombastic about. this or that and they can clip it and put it on social media and so it just depends on if if these candidates are going to say okay I'm going to stick to the cable news shows the Fox News is or are they going to go the alternative media

route and you know hop on the YouTube shows or the podcast and things well and you know one more wrinkle of this was there was Aaron Wrights was very much considering dropping out of the race and running for Chip Roy's seat once Roy jumped in for AG He ultimately did not, and he announced he was not, after a couple days of being very silent. It was very noticeable how quiet he was. And there were rumors going around. Yep.

And the rumors were true that he was considering this. He very much did. He was pretty close to doing it. But he ultimately decided to stay in. I think he realized he had gained some momentum, and this is an open race. So who the heck knows how this plays out, ultimately. He announced that he was staying in the race with a clip from Wolf of Wall Street that is very much not safe for work. It is a very funny, a very funny clip.

And I think that shows his kind of brand of bullishness in this race, I'd say. Well, when he, I remember he responded to State Senator Joan Huffman when she jumped into the race. He had a very, pretty sassy come back to her. He wrote a response about the different candidates that were in the race. And I think that was kind of, he was kind of kicking off, okay, this is how. how I'm going to run my brand. It's going to be pretty straightforward. No filter. Yeah. Okay, let's move on to a different race that will, at least could have been interesting. Could have been. Turns out it won't really be. Yeah. Cameron, tell us what the updates are in the new

Texas 37. Well, Greg Kassar said he's going to launch a bid for this newly redrawn seat. And this is after Lloyd Doggett is saying that he will stay in the race. But if, the maps hold up, he's going to bow out. So that's what you were mentioned. It was going to set up an interesting battle between Doggett, the veteran, and Qasar, the rising star and the Democratic Party. But it seems as though Qasar is going to be the one to hold this seat because it is a very solidly Democrat district. And he made an announcement on social media. Then he held a campaign event here in Austin. Lots of local Austin officials were there.

Austin Mayor Kirk Watson, Jose Garza. There was also U.S. Congressman Joaquin Castro from a San Antonio district. So he had a lot of support there. And obviously he is the chairman of the House Progressive Caucus. He has descended to Austin to fight back against the maps, speaking at many of the hearings, holding press conferences. He has elevated his profile quite a bit over the last few years here. And so it seems like this is going to be Qasar's seat moving forward. Yeah, it was the awkwardness was bubbling up constantly because the amount of times

that Qasar and Doggett were standing next to each other at press conferences, both decrying the new redistricting that was it happened to so much and then of course every time one of them gets asked the question of well what are you going to do if you're paired together and they tried to avoid it tried to avoid it dog it at first said i'm staying in regardless and then a couple days later he comes out and says well doc it's an interesting character um if we just if i if i remember correctly he was one of the first elected officials to call for Biden to step out of the race He was the first. He was the first.

I think the first sitting elected official. Yeah, so, and he has made, he made comments earlier about how, you know, it's, you got to do what's best for the party and sort of things, like, sort of saying it's time for me to step back and let the new generation come in. So he's taken on an unusual role, something you don't normally see him, politics, right? pushing back against leadership, but then also allowing space for a younger generation of an elected official to move in. So, you know, there hasn't been a lot of comments from either of them about what they have talked about together behind the scenes, but I'm sure there was conversations had.

Well, and I forget who tweeted it one of you, too, about Senator Eckhart looking at running in the seat. Oh, yeah. So that would be, it is unlikely that everyone is just going to let Kassar take the seat without a fight. And it's because when you win the seat, you pretty much have that for as long as you want. Unless something crazy happens, it's probably great Kassars for the rest of his life if he wants it. Although I'm sure he has eyes for higher office if and when Texas becomes more competitive. FSS on the F.

Yeah, so Senator Eckhart, Sarah Eckhart is definitely looking at this, and I would not be surprised if she jumps in. Yeah, if only to raise her name, ID across the sake. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Cameron. Mary Lees, another Democratic House seats. Let's talk about that. Congressman Al Green held a press conference this week on the developments in the new map. What do you say? Yeah, so Congressman Al Green held this press conference, and he almost nearly jumped into officially,

jumped into the race for Congressional District 18, and he currently serves Congressional District 9. So he talked about this districting, redistricting. Of course, he was very against it. He labeled it as racist and kind of on same brand as what the Democrats have been saying is the issue with this redistricting. And he talked about how his home is now in the New 18. He called it. He said, I live in the New 18. I'm not moving. into the new 18 and that was a point he really wanted to drive home is that he's not moving to the new district his current home is within CD 18 he said I've lived in this house for more than 30 years this is my home and he said so to those who say I'm

moving into the 18th congressional district to run for office not so all I'm doing is staying where my constituents are and at this press conference there wasn't very much attendance there were just a couple of folks there I think maybe because it was a really last minute press conference. But it was definitely significant, right? He said that he's pretty much going to jump into the CD-18 race, but he said that he's going to hold off from officially announcing because of the special election coming up with Congressman Sylvester Turner passing away. So he said he's going to wait until that race passes to officially declare his candidacy, but pretty much, you know, gave the message. This is definitely what I'm going to do.

I mean, I live here. He said, I have never really. relationships politically with the people in the new ninth congressional district. He said the new 18th is where I have my home, my constituents. And he reiterated a couple of times, you know, I'm not going to be in a special election. He was really driving that point home that he didn't want to call, he called it mass confusion if he announced and then people would assume, okay, he's running in a special election. So he said, okay, I'm going to hold off until we have this special election. And then he talked more about the redistricting and then how he could respond currently in his current

capacity. He said we can't under-emphasize the importance of litigation and saying that he's going to be involved in several lawsuits challenging these redistricting efforts. So I have to wait until November to get his official announcement. He and Jasmine Crockett did actually file it yesterday or yesterday or the day before. So I was going to say it was fun following along to your tweets at this press conference because he brought along some props, did me? Yes. Yeah. That was pretty interesting, although as a visual learner, that was actually pretty great idea, I think. He had these white poster boards, and so he had the maps behind him of CD-18, CD-9, but he also brought along some white poster boards in a big

black sharpie, and he was demonstrating, okay, this is where I currently serve, CD-9, and then he drew a line, and then CD-18 drew a line, and then he had scissors, and it was kind of funny, watching reporters reactions are like what is going on right now but it was he cut it out at the he did oh yeah like yeah and that was definitely like um that was a moment so he cut it out he cut out um he showed okay this is how they he called it cracking stacking and packing the districts and so he cut out cd9 it was kind of moving things around and trying to demonstrate visually what it occurred with this redistricting yeah well and what republicans did was basically they moved 18 the current 18 down to Al Green's general district.

And they, one of the reasons, it was deliberate, one of the reasons they did it is because it's closer to the way the 18th congressional district looked when Barbara Jordan held the seat back in the 70s. And also they managed to pair Al Green and the entire field running for the current 18th congressional district. So RIP to all those candidates' hopes of winning the seat. Because not only are they running against an incumbent, but they're ultimately running against incumbent, right?

Not officially yet. But they will be running against an incumbent who represents most of the area that they're going to be running for already. So in what they did to Algreen's currency as they moved it to the eastern side of here. I listened back last week and I kept saying the west. the eastern side. The eastern side of Harris County, connected to Liberty County, and that goes from heavily blue to R-60 under the TPI. And that's the one that Briscoe Cain's running in. Alex Miller has announced for that seat. But this race is going to be fun to watch if there is a race, because I don't know if I'd want to go up against him and waste the money just to get

shellacked, probably. Maybe something wild happens. But, you know, Now those, like, what, 22 candidates in the race, some of whom are pretty notable figures, their hopes have been dashed by this redistricting effort. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay, thank you, Mary-Alees. Cameron, coming over to you.

We were at a bill signing this week with Republicans, Governor Abbott, signing the hostile foreign nation land bill that you followed quite a bit during session. Give us a rundown to how that went. Yeah, this was one of the more high-profile pieces of legislation. And it was particularly notable in high-profile because it failed during the 23 session. I was just about to mention that.

Sorry. No, this goes back a few years. Four years ago, they passed a bill that protected critical infrastructure, and then they attempted to broaden the scope. of this prevention of hostile foreign nations from buying Texas land with SB 147 during the 88th session, but that didn't end up passing. And there is some Republicans who came out, specifically Brian Harrison, who casted the blame on then-house speaker, Dade Feelein, for not ushering that bill through.

But we saw Dade-Feelein during the interim between the 89th, or 88. It did die. It did die. It did die. Right. Yeah. But between the 88th and 89th, there was some emphasis placed on this issue with a committee being put together to sort of study the threats is what it was called of these hostile land ownership issues. And so that sort of spurred on the momentum going into the 89th session and there was lots of debate in committees lots of debate on the floor and there was a little wrinkle that occurred when a amendment was added by representative Matt Shaheen that would sort of some were saying it created a loophole in the bill for allowing holding land. It was kind of narrowly tailored.

And we saw some disagreement. Like State Representative Mitch Little supported the amendment and spoke in favor of it at the time. There was confusion. It was confusing. Yeah. And clearly, you know, genuine differences of opinion on whether it was, you know, legit or not necessary. Yeah. So once it went back to the Senate, they didn't accept. the amendments they went to conference committee it finally passed at a conference committee went to abbot's desk they held a ceremonial signing a cold course was there spoke about texasus natural farmland oil and gas then the necessity of protecting those things with this

bill avid said this is the strongest in the nation and so we'll see what happens now that it's going to be implemented with all pieces of the legislation, especially one like this that is incredibly complicated, how it's going to be enforced. It's going to be something that comes back up during the 90th session as we see, you know, possible lawsuits filed or certain pushback coming from individuals trying to buy land and they're not able to. And so this is an issue that's going to come back up again and I'm sure there will be some perfecting bills for this during the 90th. Yeah, when you ask the governor what's next on this issue, he didn't really have an answer. You know, it got a little laugh. Which usually you pass laws and then you eventually find out

where the holes are. They need to come back and address them, right? So it's not out of the ordinary that they don't exactly know what comes next on this issue. We'll see how effective. or imperfect this bill is in both directions, right? Like, does it eventually get to the point where it does stop people who are from another country but are not agents of a foreign nation from buying land? Or does it actually, you know, have the intended effect of preventing, you know, this China from purchasing Texas land, right?

Yeah, well, you know, and that's one of the things because it is tailored towards nations that are on the threat assessment list that is published by the federal government, and that includes China, Russia, around North Korea. But it'll be interesting to see the economic impacts because there is large Chinese companies that do invest in industry here in the United States. will there be a negative impact because that money isn't flowing in? And so there's lots of overlaying issues here at play, and we're just going to have to see what happens. And like most of these issues, it's a question of priority and emphasis.

Like what's, you're going to have negative externalities on anything you pass, but is it worth the benefits that you get? Yeah, that's a question. We'll see. This was the press conference that's governor. Abbott announced he would be gerrymandering a House District 151 district for me. Carped out just for you. Yes, so I'm not sure what that looks like.

You know, if we saw Phil Jenkowski at the Dallas Morning News put out a close-up of the map, the new congressional map showing Chili Parlor and the cloakroom in two different congressional districts. Well, I want them both in my district. Yeah. Oh, this can be an issue. Yes, it could be. So we'll see how that shakes out.

That was quite a moment. That was hilarious. Yeah. There was a point where all the laughter died down, if you look at the video, died down from Abbott's initial joke. And then all the reps see me cracking up in the background. And that starts the laughing. Well, and it was perfect by Abbott because you asked an important question.

Yes. What needs to? Oh, that was brilliant. The way he maneuvered out of the question. that yeah and everyone forgot about the question right because everyone's laughing what needs to pass so we don't have a third special session yeah um you know i was expecting him to dodge it i just wasn't expecting him to dodge it in such a manner yeah but that was pretty cool it was it was awesome to see and i got more comments about that than anything else yesterday on the floor oh it's very funny

okay what's next chemical abortion chemical abortion thank you mary lease well preview what what's about to happen what you think's about to happen on on this bill coming up, and how do we get to this point? Yeah, so we've got the legislation that we talked about. We've hashed out so many times in this podcast, but it's changed, though. So it's the legislation that's cracking down on distribution, production of chemical abortion pills. And so we saw a whole dust up over it being passed out of committee. I mean, it had its committee hearing, and then there were a lot of things that went on between

that hearing, and then it actually being voted out of House state affairs. But it is going to be taken up by the House today, and that should be a really interesting and probably very lengthy debate alongside the bathroom bill. But kind of the issue that occurred, the things that were going on in between this committee hearing and passing out of state affairs were differences and opinion over an aspect of the bill that says you can receive $100,000 and damages if you file these lawsuits. And different pro-life groups were kind of clashing heads with other pro-life groups. And they were saying that this kind of turned the bill into this bounty hunter situation. And that they were- We have a financial incentive to report people rather than just doing it because it's the right thing or whatever. And one important aspect that they were noting is that anybody can file these lawsuits, right?

It's not just the family member that's affected by this abortion. It can be any random person. They were saying- Because it's a civil cause of action. Right. And we've seen this used in bills a lot. since the Arpid Act. That was the main factor of that. But it's been increasingly deployed in a lot of these pieces of legislation. Yeah. So part of the reason it caused such an issue was

there were two specific groups that were adamantly against it were the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops and then Texas Alliance for Life. And there are two groups who are usually pretty instrumental in these pieces of pro-life legislation, whether in amending it or getting it across the line or stopping it. So they're usually very involved. in these conversations. So a bit of negotiation went on to resolve a couple of the issues that these folks had with it, and they were able to negotiate with State Representative Jeff Leach, who's author of House Bill 7, which is the House version of this bill.

One change that they made had to do with this $100,000 in damages aspect. So they changed it so that if you're unrelated to the affected party, you can receive up to $10,000 in damages and the rest can go to a charity and after I mean after that change was made we saw different folks saying oh these per life groups are trying to create an opportunity for themselves that this money could go to them but that was kind of a side conversation that's happening on X right now but so if you aren't related to the affected individual $10,000 the rest goes to charity but if you are a family member whether you're the woman or her family you can collect the full $100,000 and that made Texas Alliance for Life, Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops and other

individuals who were concerned about it. It made them get on board and they shared statements after this committee substitute passed out of state affairs. They said, you know, we're throwing our support behind it now. We can endorse it. Yeah, another difference that was made is within the bill already. It prohibited certain individuals with certain criminal pass from filing these lawsuits, but they changed it to also include those that are convicted of sexual assault, stalking, or coercion of a woman. And then there were also some privacy concerns that were addressed that were raised by both pro-abortion and pro-life groups. Privacy concerns about, okay, is woman's private data information going to be released in the process of these lawsuits? And

they kind of established some guardrails that made more people get on board with it, that they feel like address the privacy concerns, like banning the disclosure of a woman's private data, HIPAA information, or compelled depositions throughout the lawsuit. The, some inside baseball on the, the competing groups, first of all, Jeff Leach told me this was the hardest bill negotiation that he's ever worked on, which is, tells you a lot, that he was just heavily involved in negotiations on the nuclear verdicts tort reform bill that was such an endeavor. So that tells you how heated this thing got probably.

And, you know, you have set the bishops aside for a minute because they're a different category of group. But you have these two competing pro-life groups, right to life and alliance for life. Then you've got the abolition of abortion group, and I think they're still opposed to this, right? Yeah, they're still opposed to it. They were telling us, they said, you know, we have the same issues with it because it doesn't, the woman is not available for prosecution under this bill. Yeah, their whole case is the only thing that needs to be done is equal protection under the law for the unborn child. And that, of course, opens the whole conversation about, you know, prosecuting the women who get the abortion and the penalties that follow therein treating this like a murder. which, well, it could be death, but not necessarily that. But you have these, anyway, back to Right to Life and Alliance for Life,

these two groups are diametrically opposed in a lot of ways, not because they disagree. They're directionally in the same, you know, the same direction on this pro-life stuff. But when you get into the weeds on how far to go or what method to use in passing these pieces of legislation, and that's where they diverge. And you see constantly, a couple years ago, one of the most popular back mics,

the old newsletter we used to do that I did was showing, I think it was in 22, comparing the Right to Life endorsed candidates in the Alliance for Life endorsed candidates side by side in all these competitive house races. And they fell on opposite sides constantly. And that does play a role in eventual legislation debate because state affairs is heavily more Alliance for Life endorsed reps on that

than right to life endorsed reps. And I don't remember the full committee membership and endorsements, but that's why this Alliance for Life concern held so much sway on this issue. It's because the reps who are on this committee making this decision, including Chairman Ken King are, you know, Alliance for Life and Doors candidates. So they're going to, of course, listen to that group more, right? Yeah.

And this is the messy business of policy here because you can go on the campaign trail and signal your pro-life candidate. But when it comes down to lines and statute and crafting policy in such a way where it's aligning with the certain mission of one group, but another group is opposed yet on the broad brushes of things, you know, everyone's pro-life, but it gets much more difficult when it comes to these really nuanced, specific issues. So, well, you know, it's a fair question to ask, should there

be, you know, $100,000 incentive to file these lawsuits? Some people would argue, yes, because then we'll get more lawsuits and stop more abortions from happening or punish more abortions, which then stops, dissuades more abortions. And the other side is, well, that's a perverse incentive. And I don't think that's a way law should be set up. So it's competing outlook on how to advance the ball pro-life-wise. And that plays out, it's not just this issue. It plays out in all kinds of issues.

Yeah, and especially on the abortion pill issue itself is much different than, and how you might think of an abortion is being carried out when a woman goes into a clinic. Because with an abortion pill, it can be shipped through the mail. It's much more done in the shadows of things. So the enforcement of that really falls on changing the culture surrounding abortion because it would take the woman herself

to say, I'm not going to go through with this or the boyfriend or the husband. Well, also the other wrinkle of this is on the bounty, as it was called, you have to have a dollar amount that's big enough to actually hit the company that's shipping these hard for them to take action to actually stop it from happening, right? So there's all these competing interests. And priorities and strategies, right? So, I mean, people look at these various debates and they think it's so simple.

Like you say you're pro-life, you should be voting for pro-life legislation. It's black and white, yes or no. Once you dig into it, it gets much more complicated. Absolutely, absolutely. Awesome. Thank you, Mary Elise. Sure. We'll see how late we're on the floor is May.

Yeah, maybe check back onto our site around 4 a.m. We might have a piece up on the abortion fell past. The tech sludge junkies, we'll be tuning in. Cameron, there was a, you mentioned it already, but there was a long debate on the floor yesterday over the Ibermectin bill. Can you run us through that? Yeah, HB25 was seeking to make the availability of Ivermectin

be over the counter. And like you said, this was a very long debate, very heated at different points. We saw probably most strikingly, when raphael an chia representative from dallas he sought to rename the bill at one point the darwin award act uh he got a lot of reaction it got a lot of reaction on both sides yeah and he said uh quote here honoring those who accidentally removed themselves from this world in a spectacular manner and it was met yeah it was met

with quite a lot of pushback um there was uh he and chia was there getting peppered with question. He was very much standing there to defend his amendment and Republicans were coming out, West Verdell, Shelley Luther speaking at the back mic, and it caused a very heated debate there, but it did eventually end up passing. And one of the interesting things that I noted in the piece is while this whole debate was going on. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the HHS secretary, he made the announcement that the agency would be rescinding the emergency use authorization of the COVID-19 vaccine. So because a lot of the conversation while this bill was being taken up was about people using Ivermectin as an

alternative treatment for COVID. And obviously, Ivermectin has become overtly politicized because of this. I always make a mention it's strange when we talk about medications in this way as being political. But that's what it's turned into. And we saw that during the floor debate. Wu spoke in opposition. He kind of challenged Republicans on this issue by saying, quote, don't do prescription through another means, which is what you're doing. Schaffner closed successfully on it. Like I mentioned, 88 to 51. so really along party lines there and she did make note of the heated debate but just very interesting and like I mentioned at the top of the podcast today sort of a

preview for what we're going to see today we're recording this August 28th so like you said Brad the the members are fed up with each other and they're ready for a fight it seems and well they're ready they're ready for an interim and short of that we're going to get a fight. Yeah. Thank you, Cameron. Mary Lees, back to you on a bill you've been covering a lot during this special. It's related to affirmative defense for human trafficking victims.

Give us the rundown of the issue, but also how to develop throughout the process. Yeah, so this is legislation that had passed unanimously out of both chambers during the regular session, but then was vetoed by Governor Greg Abbott. So this is Senate Bill 11 by State Senator Tan Parker, and it establishes an affirmative defense to prosecution for human trafficking victims who may have committed crimes while they're in captivity. And so it's now en route to Governor Abbott's desk. It's not officially been sent to him, but it's passed both chambers unanimously and is headed back to his desk. So we'll see what his response is to it. But State Representative David Cook carried it through the House.

He talked about how it ensures the victims of human trafficking and prostitution are not punished for crimes that they were forced to commit. And of course, this is a difficult issue because, you know, as Governor Abbott said when he vetoed it, that he was concerned that it was too broad and that it could, that it might be too broad and potentially allow for some people to get away with specific crimes without intending to do. so. So Senator Parker said that this is a more narrowly tailored piece of legislation. Something specific that was changed about it is that it excludes the more serious 3G offenses, which include murder, kidnapping, and sexual assault and robbery, and then while still protecting victims that were convicted under the law of parties since they were not the primary perpetrators. there was very little pushback I mean it passed unanimously in both chambers in the house when it right before it passed for second reading very little pushback

except from State Representative Nicole Collier and she wasn't as much she wasn't at all actually pushing back on the substance of the bill but more so about the politics surrounding it because she was noting that State Representative Symphronio Thompson usually carries this identical legislation and she She's carried it a couple of times with her own filed bill. But this time it was Representative David Cook. And so she was kind of asking questions of Representative Cook, you know, saying, have you ever carried this before?

Why is basically asking, why is Representative Thompson not carrying this? But after that brief back and forth, it passed unanimously. And now we'll see what Governor Abbott's response is to it. And if he thinks that it is tightened up enough for his signature. Yeah, I think it probably will. What was the issue he stated in a veto proclamation about it? He was saying that it was too broad and could potentially, if there were some crime such as murder,

that folks would be able to get away with that, and then he was where it just wasn't tight enough, but that he agreed with a general idea of it. Do you know how they narrowed that in this? Yeah, well, they took out three offenses, so three major offenses that are, like, murder. kidnapping sexual assault so that way they kind of narrowly tailored it a bit more yeah so it excludes those offenses cool thank you Maryleas camera in another press conference that you went to

from what I'm told really packed I wasn't in this one oh yeah can barely move like sardine Robert F Kennedy who I kept yesterday calling JFK let's do you know yeah yeah all right I'll just go into it. RFK came to Austin. There was a ceremonial signing of a number of make Texas healthy again legislation. Most prominently, Senate Bill 25, which has to do with food labeling and issues concerning the regulation of certain additives that are in food. so like food dies and things like that and yeah it was a pack press conference everyone wanted to get a look or get a picture of rfk junior and what was interesting is uh rfk junior he was getting

lots of nods lots of applause as he was running through all the issues that you know we're currently dealing with uh in terms of adverse health effects and he really blames the additives in our foods, you know, one of the other bills that was ceremoniously signed during this event was legislation that removes the ability to buy like sugary snacks or drinks with SNAP. So we've seen Abbott ask Secretary Rollins, I believe, to rescind some of the SNAP benefits that pertaining to these high-chloric, high-sugary items from SNAP. So this has been a focus of not just the legislature, but Abbott, in terms of trying to promote healthy eating here in the state.

And so we'll see what ends up happening because there are some other aspects to the legislation in terms of health education with students, not just in high school, but in college and how that is implemented. Also, there was a lot of pushback during the floor conversation about how a lot of the low-income students in Texas public schools rely on free and reduced lunch or free breakfast at schools and how this might impact their ability to obtain that because of some of the parameters surrounding the regulation of the products

here in the state in terms of raising the costs. And so schools wouldn't be able to provide them because of the increasing costs. So just something we're going to have to wait and see if it has both an economic impact for the schools with portions of this legislation, but then also the health impacts. If we see, you know, that's going to be much more of a lot. long-term study. You know, you're not going to see something, you know, just a year later, it was something 10 years down the line. We'll see health improvements possibly from something

like this being implemented. But, you know, I've written about this in newsletters, how this is a marked shift from how Republicans view how to handle health and how to handle what people eat. Yeah, remember when Michelle Obama was a dirty commie for wanting, healthier school lunches right right exactly and now it's a republican now it's a republican issue um and i've i've dug into the psychology of why that might be happening in newsletters before because i think it's a it's a bigger issue um and a deeper issue to a lot of people uh their their individual health in promoting uh certain lifestyles right uh so people are interested in that you know check it out on the website redacted there we go so

Thank you, Cameron. Mary Lees, there's been a very complicated, and I've been pretty confused following this fight in the courts between Ken Paxton and Beto O'Rourke. Where do things stand now, and can you walk us through how they developed? Yeah, so we've been covering this extensively at the Texan and just on this podcast in general, but yesterday the Supreme Court of Texas denied a request from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. And this request was to reverse a court order that prevented him from taking expedited action against Beto O'Rourke, who he alleged was involved in funding the Texas House Democratic quorum break. And he's saying, you know, Beto may have potentially violated bribery laws and other laws.

And so... Well, it's not really alleged that Beto was doing that. He did. He has admitted that the question is, is the bribery, right? Yeah. Yeah, true. So the alleged bribery. Yeah, Beto has been, I mean, bragging on social media, he said we've raised $1 million.

I think he said that maybe two weeks ago. So this followed a couple hours of Supreme Court order, followed a couple hours after Paxton's emergency appeal to the Supreme Court of Texas, and he requested that it vacate the 15th Court of Appeals order that came down essentially in favor overwork, but it just, it prevented Paxton from taking his expedited action against him. And so the one key thing that Paxton was asking would be reversed, which was denied by the Supreme Court, was this hearing was frozen that was supposed to take place on September 2nd. And that would have been a hearing on Beto's fundraising activity to kind of dig into this whole situation.

And so as we covered before, Paxton first launched an investigation into her work, and then his powered by people fundraising group, and that was on July 30th. And, you know, he alleged that they're violating state bribery laws, that they're funding, these runaway Democrats of the Texas House, who were gone for two weeks. And then Paxton filed a suit against O'Rourke two days later in a Tarrant County District Court,

and then he was shortly granted a temporary restraining order. The order that O'Rourke would cease his fundraising activity, that he would stop his fundraising operations for the Texas Democrats. And so this hearing would have looked at that motion for contempt against the work that Paxton later filed and his political action committee. And so it was scheduled for September 2nd, which was kind of an expedited hearing. And now that's been frozen. And that's what Paxton was asking would be reversed, the Supreme Court said, no, it won't be reversed.

Well, a notable with contempt of court is it can land you in jail. and that would be a massive fundraising boon for both Paxton and O'Rourke. Yeah. So maybe both sides are wanting that. I can tell you the Paxon side wants that. I'm sure the O'Rourke side wouldn't think it was that bad of an issue because fundraising galore. For sure.

What an opportunity that is. So where do things go from here? Is it dead dead? Are we just waiting? We're waiting. So all we know is that the process is not going to be expedited. We do not have a hearing on September 2nd. And the way I understand it is that now we will wait to see when a hearing will take place.

But as of now, nothing official has come down against Beto or against Paxton. Well, and with this and with internal discussions of punishments within the house, the longer we get out from this, the further we're removed we are, the less likely we probably see any actual significant decisions made either in the court or within the House and its rules, although I am hearing that there will be rules changes on the floor on Tuesday for House Republicans to not retroactively punish, but restrict the ability or establish punishments down the road

for future quorum breakers. And we saw the Republican... Establishing new penalties? Yeah, like docking seniority. I don't know if removing vice chair. will be on there or not. But those items were talked about and voted on in the Republican caucus meeting that happened on Monday that I reported. That was just a, is this endorsed by the caucus?

It gives it more heft moving forward, but it doesn't mean it can't be. I think the motion for a censure with retroactive punishment did not, it fell three votes short of the two-thirds line in caucus. caucus vote. You know, interesting enough too here on that. So there were, I forget, I'm not sure exactly who, but there were a couple members that were absent from that meeting. One of them in an ongoing negotiation over a different bill. And then another one, I don't know why, but just wasn't there. Maybe they would support retroactive punishments. Maybe they wouldn't, But there's also three members of the Republican General Caucus who aren't part of the caucus itself because they didn't pay dues. Those are.

Dade Phelan, who is now retiring. Ken King, who runs state affairs and has really irritated a lot of people with how much he doesn't care about. Just the way he's managed the committee. Right. He's like, I have my opinion about things, and I'm just, we're going to do that, right? And then, Brian Harrison. Interesting. So, if two or three more of those people had either been a part of the caucus to vote on this or been there, you might have cleared that two-thirds hurdle. Regardless, though, it's just an endorsement vote.

It's not going to, it doesn't mean it then gets implemented. And we'll see how things shake out. I don't think there's much desire, or at least enough desire within the House to punish members retroactively. Yeah, well, that's what I was going to mention is it seems like there's a lot of appetite from the base to want to know what is going to happen to these Democratic members who broke corn. Because it seems as though, yes, the map passed, but they were able to leave and come back, raise a bunch of money to do this. without any negative impacts to how they are conducting business now. It just seems like they've come back and they're just the average member again. So you see a lot of uproar online about what's going to happen.

You know, I think Greg Abbott adding the punishments and penalties to the special session call. But that's forward-looking, too. But it's forward-looking, but people want to look back and say, people need penalties and punishments for delaying this stuff going in. Well, and we saw Mitch Little put out a memo making the case that retroactive punishments could be part of the censure resolution. I've also seen an argument from the House parliamentarian that I tweeted out that argued it's not in the House rules and you can't. So. And you can't?

You can't. There's no basis for establishing retroactive punishments. That's the argument made. Well, you know, and then I'm sure you've seen or you've heard things like, who cares what the parliament says on this? You know, can they just move on with what they want without the blessing of the parliamentarian on this? It's possible. Probably could. Yeah. I mean, it depends on what they're talking about doing. But that's really precedence and except.

I mean, there is a stalled precedent in the House that a speaker cannot remove a chair. Now, I'm not sure if technically that then goes on to apply to vice chairs too, but I think it does. We have this fight the last quorum break, and the reason that you, the ability to remove the chairs do not, they removed language in the rules that says chairs serve at the pleasure of the speaker. And the reason they did that is because you don't want a speaker being able to, just because they dislike what a chair is. doing strip the the committee chair spot. So that's the reason that's there. People disagree on whether that's appropriate or not. But that's where that stands. And what's still hanging out in the background is the Texas Supreme Court needing to rule on. The motion to vacate. Yeah, the motion of vacate. So we're still waiting to hear after all the briefs are going to be filed.

the Supreme Court has to make a decision on what determines a seat to be vacant. Yep. And Cameron, I think you're working on a piece that looks at some of the interesting arguments being made by the governor. Yeah, I won't bring it up here because I'm still working. I'm still working on it, but yeah, we'll talk offline about it. Yeah. So stay tuned maybe for that. things develop as we think they are.

Yeah. Interesting. All right. Thank you, Mary Elise. We'll preview, shout out two pieces right now that you should check out at the Texan. First, Mary Elise interviewed at John Corning. Was that Friday last week?

Thursday? Yeah, Friday. Friday of last week. Just give us one answer that you thought was most interesting that he gave you. Probably when I was asking him about how the GOP has changed over, I mean, the last two decades, he's been in office. He was kind of kind of talking a little bit about how he thinks that the party needs to be

more welcoming to all sorts of different voters. And I thought that was interesting. An answer wasn't expecting, but I mean, yeah, the interview is pretty lengthy, so I would check it out. It's a classic debate between big tent republicanism and, for like the better term, true conservative republicanism. I don't know what you would call that. Well, it's interesting you asked them that question because I wrote about this in my newsletter this past week about how after the Romney defeat, the GOP published an autopsy saying Republicans need to tone down the rhetoric and be more welcoming to other voices.

And then who was elected president in 2016, Donald Trump. And you can very easily argue that the party did get bigger ten. Yeah, but he was much more focused on calling out certain things that are deemed very conservative, like securing the border and, like, being very bombastic in his rhetoric, with calling, you know, illegals coming across the border as criminals, and he used the word rapist in his kickoff speech after he decided. of the golden escalator and so that that's you know very charged language and not might not appear that using that the those sorts of terms is going to be part of this large umbrella republicanism but it resonated it resonated with a group of people that were like yeah we're you know it doesn't matter if you're who are traditionally republican yeah black white brown whatever you are where Americans and we want to protect American sovereignty.

Yeah. More than one way to skin a cat. Yeah. And then the other one I'll mention is my piece. Part of the title is A Tale of Two Speakers, comparison between Dade Feelein and Dusted Burroughs and how they navigated the various minefields of this Republican environment that Texas is. And it came to mind when, after I saw Thursday, Dave Feelein announced he was not running for re-election. And then two hours later, Donald Trump comes out and endorses Speaker Burroughs in a Truth Social Post. Now, he'd already endorsed Burroughs, but there are those that decried those previous disclosures of endorsements saying it's not official until it's on Truth Social. So then the Truth Social Post comes out. Now, there's no question

that the Speaker is endorsed by the sitting president and the head of the party. But Trump, notably endorsed against Dade Fielding in the 24 election. So for this to happen, these two things to happen on the same day, I thought was a pretty interesting through line, and I went through the two regimes and how things have gone, and obviously Burroughs is still only in his first term as speaker. We'll see how things go from there, and, you know, as speakerships always deteriorate.

The question is, how long is the person in the chair before they deteriorate, right? It's not a permanent job. It's not an elected position like the lieutenant governor. You have to keep 149 other members happy. And that's just an impossible task over the long term, which is why you never had a speaker serve for more than, I think, five terms. And most of them are far fewer, far less than that. But check out the piece.

It was an interesting one to write. One of those pieces that you sit back and, like, Okay, I like this one. Yeah. I don't like everything I write, but this one I liked, so. Yeah, it was a great piece. Thank you. Check that out. We'll go on to Tweeterie now.

Cameron, I see a familiar name in your section of tweeterie. What you got? Tony Busby, once again, making his... The Buzzbinator. Making his way into headlines. He knows how to pick cases. Oh, my gosh, yeah. And this one has to do with the viral car crash that was captured by the food influencers.

I don't know if you guys remember this. This was a couple weeks ago where these two food influencers are sitting in a booth, taking bites of a hamburger, just showing how delicious and succulent this hamburger. And then all of a sudden a car smashes through the window and it's, It's just a wild video. Well, apparently, Busby is representing these two food influencers and suing the restaurant because what they're arguing is the restaurant didn't properly secure the premise. And the only thing that was protecting the patrons is a thin sheet of glass.

And so... Aren't most restaurants like that? Well, I... I guess that's... They'll solve that in court. They'll solve that in court, you know. But it's just always fun to see what cases Tony Busby lands himself in, you know, because he was representing the Diddy Accusers.

He was suing someone who was suing Jay-Z, right? Yeah. Yeah. It didn't last long. No. Busby's an interesting character. Can I just say that in my campaign for House District 151, top of my priority list will be putting all food influencers in Gitmo.

oh yes yes i think glad you're saying this early on in the race there is scourge on this on this country and they need to be stopped yeah until we can figure out what the heck is going on i can get on board with that yeah sweet i got i got two supporters right here as long as you add gym influencers to that as well oh yeah because i i'm getting annoyed by the cameras on the tripods in the gym i'm trying to work out you know i'm sweaty you know i'm not looking my best if i'm walking

to the background that's captured forever that's on the internet yeah i don't want that well and a lot of a lot of this footage is used for other purposes too to like catch certain individuals in the gym which is i don't think it's fair oh yeah yeah that's a whole other rabbit hole we can go down maybe next week's treatery yeah let's set that one aside mary lees what's your problematic twittery well so we talked about cracker barrel last week right having this issue with they did this rebrand. They're really upset their customer base because they kind of did what looked like a middle school interpretation of the Cracker Barrel sign. A real minimalist.

Yeah, very minimalist. It just really screamed a millennial. But anyways, folks were really upset about this. They were like, what happened to my Cracker Barrel traditional restaurant? People were calling for Crack the Barrel. Exactly. Yeah. They really were. Now we've got two presidents who are claiming credit for cracker barrel changing course

turning around and saying okay we're going to keep our traditional logo I don't know if they're going to change the inside of the restaurant or not because they did redo that and made it look very whitewashed true millennial style anyway so I don't know if they're going to change that but it's just the yeah but both President Donald Trump

and I said two presidents it was Governor Gavin Newsom and President Donald Trump that are both claiming credit for this but Gavin Newsom is Well, and it's in line with his imitating President Trump He's gone through his own rebrand Doesn't he have a redistricting constitutional amendment to worry about

Not freaking Cracker Barrel Yeah When was the last time either of you went to Cracker Barrel? It's been over a decade probably for real Yeah I think I've been there I go there every once in a while Especially if I'm traveling

Yeah Because it's not like above McDonald's, it's better. Right. Food's better. Yeah. The environment's better. Yeah.

But you know what you're getting, which is why McDonald's is so popular because, yeah, it's not the greatest food ever, but it's pretty solid, and you know it's consistent. And you're in and out. Yep. And you're in and out.

Yeah. So I think crack barrels generally the same, although it's not fast food. I probably haven't been since I was seven. Oh, wow. Yeah. Wow.

Not a long time. What a scandal. Well, because when I go, out to eat I'd like to eat something that I couldn't cook at home crack and barrels fair enough yeah it's down home food it's comforting yeah that's true I'm gonna go with the one we've all been waiting for this morning I was getting ready to come to the office and this threw off my entire morning in fact we're recording late because this threw off my move into the office I'm sitting in my room

tying my shoes and I let my phone buzzes and I let out a very large what the heck no freaking way my roommate was still in the in the other room and he's like what mark tashara the baseball legend the texas ranger the gross new york yankee he announced a run for the 21st congressional district and that is the seat currently held by Chip Roy, who was running for AG as we talked about. Huge. But this was awesome. This was my two worlds colliding baseball and politics.

Yeah. From what I hear, he's a really nice down-to-earth guy. Notably, he was involved in the school choice stuff pretty heavily. He was working with TPF on that quite a bit. Yeah, when he popped up, I was like, He's doing something. And I didn't realize he lived in Austin. Or at least close to Austin.

It's probably maybe like Western Travis County or something. But he goes to Austin Bible Church. And so he's been here for a while apparently. And he's running for the seat. Well, I'm looking forward to hearing his stump speech. You know, and hearing what he has to say about these individual issues. Because he put out a press release, you know, pretty standard. conservative stuff

in there but just really hearing what he has to say about the issues I'm looking forward to that yeah and if he wins the Republicans

are going to win every congressional baseball game as long as he's in office oh yeah it's not going to be close yeah you know when Colin Allred was in in the seat

he's a formal NFL player of course Democrats had a big advantage but Al Red was not a professional baseball player Yeah. This is a whole other level. Oh, yeah. And people, anyone who has seen, you know, baseball's not seen as an athletic sport.

It takes a particular set of skills to be a great baseball player. That's why you don't see football players be able to pick up a bat and hit a baseball. They look ridiculous. They look ridiculous. And some of them can't throw at all. Yeah. They couldn't hit the broad side of the barn. Yeah.

so but this is this was cool it's a he might clear the field you know that this 21st district was going to be the last time it was open when chip Roy won it there were 18 candidates I think that ran for it and Roy won in a runoff it was shaping up to be maybe not quite that large of a field but pretty close to it and this might dissuade you know a lot of people from from jumping in some of the names that I had heard that were thinking about this race. Going to this were Kyle Biederman, former state rep,

Jason Isaac, another former state rep. Mark White, who is a San Antonio City Councilman. Weston Martinez, who has run for everything under the sun in this state. I think I'm missing one or two others, but there's a chance that none of those people get in now

because it's hard to be that guy. That kind of name I It's like Trump. For sure. When he was run for president, it's hard to get that kind of name ID. But, you know, maybe somebody decides I'm not going to go quietly into the night. Well, and it helps that he's cozyed up with TPPF as well. You know, that's a major name in Texas politics.

Certainly. Certainly. So that'll do it for this weekly roundup podcast. Thank you all for joining. Mary Leas, welcome back. Thank you. Your triumphant return to only go waste away on the house floor for the next 12 hours. oh so the reason that we're starting this at one instead of earlier in the day is because paperwork hadn't been sent to the calendars committee in time to get it set on the first iteration of the morning calendar of the Thursday calendar so then they had to go adjust it at one in the afternoon yesterday and because of the 24-hour posting rule now we have we have to start this afternoon and that is why

we aren't there already and we're going to be there until probably late in the evening. So that's how the process works. It's good fun. With that, we'll catch you next week.

Thank you to everyone for listening. If you enjoy our show, rate and review us on Apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you want more of our stories, subscribe to the Texan at the Texan. News. Follow us on social media for the latest in Texas politics and send any questions

for our team to our mailbag by DMing us on Twitter or shooting us an email to editor at the texan dot news tune in next week for another episode of our weekly roundup god bless you and god bless Texas.