The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - August 30, 2024

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

Show off your Lone Star spirit with a free "Remember the Alamo" hat with an annual subscription to The Texan: https://thetexan.news/subscribe/ The Texan’s Weekly Roundup brings you the latest news in Texas politics, breaking down the top stories of the week with our team of reporters who give you the facts so you can form your own opinion. Enjoy what you hear? Be sure to subscribe and leave a review! Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast.This week on The Texan’s “Weekly Roundup,” the team discusses:Cruz and Allred Hit the Road in Competitive, Expensive Senate RaceAbbott Announces Over One Million People Removed From Texas Voter RollsInterview: Gov. Abbott Talks Voter Roll Purge and ‘Repeat Offender’ Harris CountyTexas, 15 Other States Granted Temporary Stay in Lawsuit Against New Homeland Security 'Parole in Place' RuleCruz Requests Answers from Homeland Security Secretary About Illegal Immigrant Flights, Airport SecurityTexas Speaker Dade Phelan Announces School Choice Support, Other Priorities After New Chief of Staff HireTexas Department of Public Safety Finalizes Contract for 'Tangles' Surveillance ToolDan Patrick Launches New PAC to Grow, Support GOP Majority in Texas SenateUT System and Institutions Should Not Take Official Social, Political Positions, Board of Regents SaysAirplane Crash Victim Families Ask Texas Court to Dismiss Boeing’s ‘Morally Reprehensible’ Plea Deal

I'm waiting for the selfie with Dade Phelan and Dan Patrick, you know, arms around each other, be like, we built the bridge, guys, you know, we're coming together. Once that selfie gets out there. Maybe a surfing trip. Surfing trip. Hey, maybe that selfie can make peace in the middle east that's what we need i think so and howdy folks and welcome to another edition of the weekly roundup i'm here with brad and cameron the semi-original recipe in so many ways it feels as like that's where we're at these days the texan um gentlemen how are you today i I'm great. The semi-original recipe? What's that mean? Here's the thing. I should have just made a definitive statement, but I feel

anytime I make a definitive statement... Nope. Let me finish. I think anytime I make a definitive statement around a group of reporters as great as y'all selves i'm i will be subject to some sort of uh counter and i was trying to insulate myself from that but obviously that was uh for nothing as we're having this conversation right now

well when i heard you say semi-original recipe i immediately thought kfc chicken and i was thinking maybe since you're spending so much time away from america you're just craving that kentucky fried chicken i do miss fried chicken i miss chick-fil-a we think about that a friend of mine actually came over from the states i just saw her and she brought over chick-fil-a we think about that a friend of mine actually came over from the states i just saw her and she brought over chick-fil-a sauce packets they don't have chick-fil-a over there is that a serious question bradley they get mcdonald's they have all kinds of stuff from america over there it's true it's true i guess yeah and there's no there's no there's no chick-fil-a over here this is a i think that's a fast food chain that's not made its way global yet. Okay.

Hot take on KFC. Their coleslaw is amazing. Okay. Okay. What about it? It just tastes good. It's amazing. It's the best coleslaw I've ever had.

Are you a vinegary coleslaw guy or a creamy coleslaw coleslaw guy that's a good question uh well kfc is creamy so i guess creamy right yeah fair we went to kfc in budapest when we were there and because of a friend of ours said that what do you what did you say bradley i said budapest oh you're gonna okay but brad okay stop because then if i would have said budapest you would have been like oh well when you first started mentioning going over there you made it a point to pronounce it correctly and now you just have given that up brad i don't know what you want from me. I don't know how to win. Anyway, when we were in Hungary's most famous city, we'll leave it at that. We went to KFC because a friend there who's been there for a while said that

the Hungarian KFC is so much better than it is in the States. We went. we tried, we wasted one meal that we could have had some sort of local fun fair on KFC. It tasted the exact same. No unique things on the menu? No, the unique things on the menu were like California Baja summer fried chicken, like with a little extra seasoning. It was I'm sure they have some some version of that in the States, but it was like a summer special. Yeah, I'm still chasing the high of the greatest McDonald's meal I've ever had in the London airport.

Nothing has ever matched up to that McDonaldcdonald's wise what was different i don't know it just was better in every way i the mcchicken was amazing the fries were just perfect the shake was did you go earlier in the day maybe it was like there overnight oh yeah interesting maybe they just changed the oil or something or cleaned the grill. It tasted a lot different. So there's some way they make it that's different than they do over here.

Interesting. And there is something to be said for what kind of foods are allowed in Europe versus what kinds aren't and the quality that they use. You know how there's travel vloggers people who travel for the explicit purpose of going to other countries exploring and you know trying the local cuisine i want to see someone be a travel vlogger but just go to airports and try the different that probably exists exists. It probably does. Yeah. But, hey, you can quit your job and go do that.

It's clearly not one that we. That's not a beat we cover. Yeah. Maybe that could be a new beat. It's true. You'd have to branch out, Cam. Only if it's approved by you guys, I'll do it. Okay.

Well, that's good to know. I mean, that would be probably... I'll pitch it to Connie. See what she has to say. See what she says. It might be an expensive beat considering all those international flights, but, you know, we'll make it work. Okay. Well, guys, we're five minutes in. Should we get into the news?

We probably should. Sounds like a plan. Okay. Well, Bradley, we're starting with you. You attended two Senate campaign events over the weekend, Texas Senate. Give us a rundown of your observation of the two events. We had an all-red event. We had a cruise event.

What were the differences? Give us the comparison. So on Friday, I went to the cruise event at Mesquite Outfitters in Georgetown. It was a cool place. I put pictures on Twitter so you can see the inside. Kinda like a outdoorsy apparel company, I think. Deer heads on the wall. That was an interesting backdrop with Cruz speaking, basically a political rally.

But there was like 400 people there squeezed into this you know fairly small retail shop and it was it was energetic Cruz came in and gave his stump speech he was introduced by handful of Williamson County figures and people were really energized. It was, I was sitting next to this couple who came from California and they said they moved in, moved to Wilco in 2019, the same, around the same time that I moved here to start this job. And they were telling me about just how much Wilco has changed since they got here.

The reason it's notable, and I think my interpretation of why they picked us to launch his Keep Texas Texas tour there is because Wilco is very much a battleground county. Used to be really red. Cruz, when he first ran for office in 2012, won it by quite a bit. Trump won it by quite a bit in 2016. But then things started to shift. In 2018, Beto narrowly won it. Biden narrowly won it in 2020. Now Cruz is looking to turn the tide on that and take Wilco for himself, turn it red.

He emphasized we're going to turn Williamson County red. We'll see if that happens. but it's kind of a microcosm of this factor, this economic growth factor we're seeing in a lot of places, particularly exurbs of large cities, where you have people moving into the states or moving from other parts of the states. They can't afford a house property in Travis County. So they move just outside to Williamson County or Hayes County or whatnot.

And this couple had done that move from California. And they'd said just from 2019 to now, they've seen a massive shift in just how competitive Wilco is politically Just a lot of people moving there you have the Samsung plant that's a big one that's out in Taylor Yeah, it was it was interesting just being there I like being at these events and be able to see firsthand what's going on Cruz spent most of his stump speech talking about immigration that's you know I've talked a lot about the competitive advantages issue wise that these two candidates Cruz and already have for Cruz it's immigration and he's

hitting that quite a bit in Kamala Harris and Colin Allred on that issue frequently. Kamala Harris, the border czar, right? He does call her that, yes. And so he also touched on a couple other things like energy, but it was mainly about immigration, which observationally is interesting because it's Williamson County, not close to the border. So this issue plays everywhere in the state. Polling frequently shows that.

And when one of the speakers before Cruz was State Rep. Harris Davila, and when she first ran in 2022, I remember talking to her and saying that the biggest issue she was hearing about was the border and crime therein. And that's in Wolko. Same today. It's not going away. And this is the pillar of the Cruz campaign. And frankly, probably the Trump campaign as well as it has been since he launched.

But it was an interesting event then he went toward i think five or six other other towns across the state drew some large crowds and then on saturday i went to the calling all red women for all red events in dallas this was his home turf it was a really large turnout 850 people and the singular issue there was abortion and state of texas's abortion restrictions um you know where cruz has the advantage on immigration allred has the advantage on abortion i've talked about that quite a bit on the podcast written quite a bit on it as well but um he was introduced by um led up to by you know some elected officials julie johnson state rep running for all red seats avery bishop who's running against

angie chen button and hd 112 that's a big race to watch but then they brought on um ogbyns and um women who have sued the state over its abortion laws right and it was um you know when they're talking about this they focus a lot on these extreme examples and when you hear the extreme examples like it's pretty bad like one woman i forget her name she had twins and one of them died in the womb and but the other one was still alive and so according to her according to how the situation played out she wasn't able to get basically a singular abortion or removal of the dead child because the other child was alive or something like that it was it was really striking to listen

to and of course you know those are extreme examples but they're compelling they're compelling absolutely that's why they're, they're using it. And, uh, you know, it's not just the broad stream of, of situations here that, that the laws apply to, um, you know, directly or indirectly. And a lot of the case being made is that doctors don't know whether they can do X, Y the laws. They say the law is too hard to read, hard to understand. So, and we've seen a lot of discussion about that, especially with the Texas medical board trying to put out clarifying

statements on what doctors should do and a lot of the controversies like you just said yeah come down to the doctors unsure where they're able to do certain things and where they're not seen lots of discussions in the ledge about doing something about yeah they'll probably do something senator brian hughes said they'll probably readdress that yeah uh but all this is all red's big issue and this was on his home turf it was a massive turnout uh you know i talked about last podcast he's going at this a different way than beto o'rourke did in 2018. So Allred's focusing more on TV ads and controllable environments. You know, at this event, he didn't take questions

from the press. That was something Cruz hit him on in a press gaggle at his event on Friday. Allred is not running a basement campaign, but he's also not, you know, out there constantly doing what Beto O'Rourke did. So it's clearly a different strategy. And if polling is to be believed, it seems like it's working. You know, Cruz's team is very frustrated that you can't pin him down, pin all red down on anything. He's very, very committed to the talking points, very good at sticking to the talking points.

And that's a skill, you know, for a politician. So a lot more to come on this race. But as they both kind of launched their grassroots travel efforts, it was interesting to see the breakdown, the dynamic between the two, the differences. Well, what was the energy like at the two events? Like when you're, there was a lot of people at both of them. You know, these are two really different candidates. Were the people that were present at the events different from each other as well?

They were both very energized. Now, when you go to these events, they're activists. They're the really interested parties. They're not the just, I'll go pull the lever voter. Right. They're not the just, eh, I'll go pull the lever voter. So, of course, when you have these, you're generally going to have very excited crowds because that's who turns out to these things, especially so early in the race. That might change when you get later down the line. You might have voters decide to come out to an event somewhere to try and gauge their opinion, but that's not going to be a massive amount. It's these events are really driven by, you know,

the, the committed supporters either way. Yeah. Well, it was so fun too, to watch, you know, both these be scheduled so close to each other. So you could literally back to back, be at one, one day and then the next, the next day be somewhere else. So you could literally back to back, be at one day and then the next day be somewhere else. So I'd encourage folks to go read your stories, Brad, about just the differences. And I think just homing in on some of those themes that you're already seeing and have already reported on and seeing those firsthand is always really fun. So definitely go read that story from Brad at thetexan.news. camera. Another really big story right off the bat this week. Abbott announced that more than one over 1.1 million voters in a variety of different categories are flagged as quote removed, including over 457,000 deceased individuals

and over 463,000 voters on the quote suspense list. Additionally, over 134,000 voters failed to respond to an address confirmation notice, while over 6,500 are non-citizens and over 6,000 have felony convictions. Abbott highlighted a number of different election integrity laws that have aided in this effort to remove names from the voter roll or rather people that should be removed from the voter roll. He highlighted SB1. He also highlighted House Bill 1243, which increases the penalty for illegal voting to a secondary degree felony. Senate Bill 1113, which empowers the Secretary of State to withhold funds from counties that fail to remove non-citizens from voter rolls. And House Bill 574, which criminalizes knowingly counting invalid votes.

So just some big news in terms of the sheer number of voters that were removed properly from the voting rolls here in Texas. And that's just a bit of background because Brad got the opportunity to talk with Abbott. So I'll let him get into some more of the details about what Abbott had to say. Yeah, kind of a great dovetail there, Cameron. And I will say to you folks, we've said this before on the podcast, I'll say it again. We are very, very careful about the verbiage we use when it comes to non-citizens, illegal immigrants. We take that very seriously just in terms of how we determine someone's status in the country. So if you're ever wondering what thought goes into those clarifications, it's a lot of conversation.

And we have pretty clear guidelines in our company of how we tend to do that. So just something to note as well. But Brad, let's talk about this. You had a big week, great opportunity to interview the governor himself after that announcement about the voter rolls. Tell us about the interview and give us a rundown of what the governor had to say. Yeah, it was about a 10 minute interview with the governor on the topic of exactly what Cameron just discussed, the voter roll purge. I won't run through all the numbers since he already did. I will say the 6,500 number of the non-citizens, suspected non-citizens. So those are going to be two, I think 2,000 of those are going to be sent to, or

they have been sent to the Office of the Attorney General for investigation because they have at one point or another between 2021 and now voted. And so, if they're ineligible voters, they have to figure out if that's legit. They'll probably just figure out in those investigations if they are actually non-citizens or if there's some other snafu, probably non-citizens. But, you know, sometimes weird things can happen with paperwork. But the governor discussed this and I asked him what this, if this 1 million voters removed from the rolls who are ineligible, if that shows the laws passed in 2021 or since, that they were worth the political fight.

Because this was, remember, this was SB1, the top one he mentions. That's what Democrats broke quorum over, not once but twice. They did it at the very end of legislative session by walking out of the House chamber. And then they did it again by flying to D.C. for a month. And it was, I mean, Mac, you were here. It was just turmoil in the Capitol. Members coming to the floor and standing around aimlessly to see if they were going to have a quorum. And then you started to slowly see Democrats trickle back in. Eventually a quorum was restored and the bill got passed. But so I asked Abbott this. He said, quote, It shows two things. One is the absolute necessity of this legislation

passed and that I signed into law because there are so many ways in which our election integrity laws are stronger today than they were four years ago. I believe Texas has the strongest election integrity laws in America. It shows that they were needed because there were people on voter rolls who were ineligible, more than a million of them, including those who are non-citizens. He said, the other thing that it shows is that our job is not done yet, with more to ensure that nobody is going to be able to illegally register to vote, and no one's going to vote illegally. A lot of this interview was prefacing things to come. He didn't get into a ton of specifics. It's not really his style. But he did say he's talking to legislators now about what they're going to do next session

when they reconvene, how they're going to fill the holes where they exist of this law. And, you know, that I'm sure is going to be another political fight. Maybe not quite what we saw previously, but, you know, Democrats are very energized about this issue, particularly legislatively. And, you know, maybe we'll see that Democrats use what political capital they have trying to fight this stuff. Maybe it's something else that they focus on, but I think it's a pretty good guess that this will be at least among the top priorities for them going into the session. Yeah. And is there other states? I'm not sure if you've looked around the country.

Is there other states that have taken such strong action to ensure voting rolls are safe and secure as Texas has done over the past year and a half, two years? I mean, a lot of states have passed laws like this. I don't think this is an outlier. Okay. But it is one of the states that has passed a comprehensive election reform bill that had a lot of stuff in it. Part of it was we saw the reduction of illegal voting from a felony to a misdemeanor in the first version. And there was a fight last session over reinstating that as a felony and that passed.

So, you know, I think next session, another front we're going to see in the governor, not in this interview, even though I tried to get him to talk about it, he didn't take the bait. But he's commented previously on, I think it was Chris Salcedo's show, that the legislature needs to address basically the Stevens opinion by the Court of Criminal Appeals that said the Office of the Attorney General can't prosecute instances of voter fraud on his own. He has to be invited in by a da so that's something to watch i'm sure and the governor whereas previously he was silent on that is now outwardly talking about it okay um but you know as he said there's in his mind there's more to do and i'm sure they'll do something else whatever that is i'm not sure but yeah, there's something that they're cooking. Much to the chagrin and interest of our very own Holly Hansen, the governor certainly took some swings at Harris County in this interview with you. Brad, tell us about it.

Yeah, he spent probably half the interview just taking big swings in Harris County. And he called them a repeat offender. He called their officials recalcitrant. He was pretty forceful in his rhetoric on it. Basically hitting Harris County for not cleaning their rolls themselves, not taking a proactive approach, being forced to do it by the state. He also accused them of just being slow and incompetent, which they're slow all the time. Part of it is it's a massive county. How many people live in there in Harris County? Four

million people? I'm sure. Something like that. So that comes with its own problems just naturally. But it is a frequent problem. And Harris County has been since I think 2019 or so just fairly incompetent in getting their numbers in on time. You know, we're always waiting to see how these races shake out statewide because Harris County is slow. And the governor criticized them for that as well. He said that the state will have to take further action

if they don't get their acts together, either on enforcing the law as he and other Republicans who designed it see it, or just the day-to-day running. Well, what do they attribute this slowness to? Like, what's the problem? I mean, it's all kinds of stuff. You know, last year there were problems with, maybe this was 22, or maybe it was the primary. I can't. It's all runs together. But basically, they didn't give enough ballot paper to these precincts. They ran out of paper. And so that caused a judge, once again, on top of three, four years in a row, extending the poll times, the poll open periods an hour or two.

So that, of course, push back the ability to count votes. Right. Things like that, just like in general incompetence. That's not you know, you don't see Dallas County doing that. They're just as blue. Right. You know, I don't think ultimately this comes down, even though the governor is framing it, framing it that way and other Republicans have framed it that way, that this is Democrats running things horribly. You know, Travis County doesn't have this issue. Dallas County doesn't have this issue. Bexar County doesn't have this issue. So, yeah, don't attribute to malice that can be attributed to ignorance.

Right. Or incompetence. Or incompetence. Yeah. attribute to malice that can be attributed to ignorance or right or incompetent yeah so so it's like you're like you're saying there's a lot of blue counties in Texas but it seems like Harris County is having unique problem well and again part of it is just how big they are but that can only explain so much yeah and when you have someone who just they don't adequately appropriate the right amount of paper to precincts, that's a competence problem. The way Brad said paper right then was with disdain for that incompetency. He's like, when you don't have enough paper, it was beautiful. And I think, too, Harris County is not a newly huge county, right? This is something that I think they've been dealing with for a long time. There should be stopgaps in place to prevent these kinds of things from happening, especially when it comes to simple items like ballot paper being available, right? Those are the arguments against this kind of problem existing. And certainly to your point, Brad, is a trope. Every election night you see reporters saying this on social media. We're all talking about it ourselves internally. Okay,

let's place bets on when we think Harris County's election results are going to come in, right? How late the night is it going to be? And poor Holly's just sitting there refreshing the page, trying to get information from the county. So this is certainly something that is, it's become so much of, it's generalized generalized but it's a generalization because it is literally a stereotype at this point it happens every time and um you know folks talk about it for good reason we three guarantees in life brad what are they death taxes in harris county reporting their numbers late i just feel like we feel like we should take a moment for me teeing you up for that when I typically give you grief over it. I appreciate that assist.

The one other thing I want to tease on this story, and I won't give away the governor's comments. Go read the story if you want to hear it. But I asked him about the dispute over a paper ballot only system that Republicans are feuding over. You know, we saw Gillespie County do it and it caused quite a delay in their reporting. Gillespie County, pretty small county, didn't get their numbers in until it was like 1230, one o'clock in the morning. So we didn't know the result of the Troxler-Biederman race. Now that was the Republican party in Gillespie Countype county that's not i don't think that's happening

in the general election but we are seeing republicans try and do this more you know they they argue it's it's safer uh less prone to uh abuse and abbott stated that in his answer uh but he also didn't give it his full-throated endorsement. And I think if I had more time to really press him on it, I think he'd admit that, you know, the Harris County Republicans who do not want paper ballots would have a point for their county because it's so big. Imagine having all paper ballots and hand counting Harris County's votes. That would take a long time. So there's this fight going on

and check out the governor's answer on where he falls. I will say too that when we were at the Texas GOP convention as a team, following everything that was going on, a few ladies from Gillespie County were manning a booth where they specifically kind of run folks through how the paper balloting process, like the hand counting works. And they brought me over, showed me how it works. And it is a process. It is one impressive that folks are sitting down

and doing this and that they're that civically involved to sit there for hours on election night doing this. It's really impressive. But really, like you're sitting there and you're tallying and it's all vocalized to like you're talking to each other back and forth and confirming the votes and writing things down and their counters, their checkers. And it's it's you know, you're writing things down with a pencil, but you're also vocalizing it. And It's just a very fascinating process to watch. And I cannot imagine something like that for Harris County. Well, like with anything, you're going to have a tradeoff. So if you want, if you believe there are arguments made all the time that it's more secure having a paper ballot.

But that's going to come at a cost somewhere. And that cost is timeliness. So if that is your white whale that you are pushing, acknowledge the fact that there's going to be problems with that that people are going to complain about. And that namely is the speed at which you can count these things. Yeah, pretty fascinating. Thank you, Bradley. Wellley well folks i'd encourage you also to go read that story at the texan.news definitely worth going in reading it's a

transcription of the interview that brad had with the governor you can read word for word what he had to say all good stuff brad well done um mary lease was going to be joining our podcast today had some technical difficulties so i'm going to run through very quickly a story from her that we are going to cover. I'll do my best to do it some justice. But Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was granted a temporary stay in a lawsuit against the Biden administration's new parole in place program, a tale as old as time, Ken Paxton versus the Biden administration. This lawsuit was filed against the administration's new policy that Paxton alleges would allow illegal immigrants to parole in place and receive otherwise unpermitted benefits. DHS described the new rule as establishing a process for certain non-citizen spouses and

non-citizen stepchildren of U.S. citizens basically to get around the federal prohibitions against certain immigration benefits being obtained until after leaving the country and then returning again in a legal manner. Paxton led a coalition of 16 states and legal organization America First, legal often at the forefront of a lot of these suits in filing lawsuit on the 23rd. Three days later, the court declared that the claims filed by Paxton are substantial and warrant closer consideration than the court had yet been able to afford, granted a temporary stay of Biden's new program, meaning that it cannot be implemented for 14 days as the case

proceeds in court, and ordered an expedited schedule for the case. The attorney general says that it would have rewarded over 1 million illegal aliens with the opportunity for citizenship and said that his office is going to keep fighting for Texas. Very interesting story. Go read Mary Lisa's coverage at the Texan. Cameron, Senator Cruz sent a letter to Mayorkas demanding information about threats at airports due to illegal immigrants. Lots of border and illegal immigration news this week. Tell us about it. Yeah, so this letter is addressed to Alejandro Mayorkas requesting information regarding,

I'll read from the letter here, quote, ineffective management of airport security embedding of illegal aliens, raising serious concerns about whether DHS and the Transportation Security Administration have adequately protected against rising security threats caused by the Biden-Harris administration's open border policies. And in this letter, Cruz highlights a variety of different things, one of them being the Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, Venezuelan parole program, which we have reported on countless times in the past. One of those stories that we reported on was there were hundreds of thousands of

individuals being flown to the interior of the United States. Cruz also highlights that how, quote, at least 300 people bypassed the TSA and gained access to secure airport areas. And he also mentions the potential and serious threat of a terrorist attack on U.S. soil, hearkening back to a incident that we actually reported on where there was a ISIS-affiliated smuggling network that brought more than 400 illegal immigrants into the U.S. So lots of information packed into this letter. It's nearly seven pages long. I tried to consolidate that down for people in the piece we published. One of the interesting things I thought was Cruz raised concerns about the CBP One app. And if people are unfamiliar with

the CBP One app, it allows individuals to request and schedule appointments at the Southwest land ports of entry. And according to DHS documents that Cruz highlights in this letter he says quote nearly 96% of all inadmissible aliens who received an appointment through the CBP one app ended up being released into the US so that percentage being so high sort of highlights the lack of vetting possibly that can be being done through this CBP One app. Cruise is requesting all sorts of information related to that CHMV program, sponsorships, TSA, DHS, the CBP One app, just like I mentioned. So a very thorough investigation, it seems, that Cruise is attempting to handle here. But if there's any more developments, I'm sure there will be. We'll cover it here at the Texan.News.

Do y'all have a story or just an anecdote of a time when tsa really uh took you to task with something you were trying to get through security i have a story about them going out of their way to violate me but okay the face she made i was like why is this a weird quite icy i see the last time i was flying when i flew home for my buddy's 30th the back of the hand right yeah it was unfortunately very intimate but never a time when you accidentally forgot like a can of hairspray or shaving cream or something like that and then you get questioned or something? No, but they did flag my bag once for our remote podcasting mic that we have. Really?

Yeah. Yeah, they pulled that out and they're like, what the heck is this? It's a microphone. What does it look like? The brand is Rode. It's not that foreign. You mentioning or you asking us this question reminds me there was a recent tweet by the TSA, a tweet. And they said, peanut butter is a liquid. We said what we said and then of course of course there is a community note on this that gets in like all

the science about it being a subset of a non-newtonian fluid and like the viscosity of peanut butter it's just just funny you know it's like come on every time i hear stories about the tsa i just think of how perfect the south park episode is on the tsa which they in the episode is the toilet safety administration and i mean you could i'm not gonna go into details but you could you could picture exactly what they're doing yeah it's just it's tsa but in the bathroom and they are it's spot on oh lord well thank you that did not disappoint gentlemen bradley more big news it's actually been quite a big news week um a lot of big things are going on here but speaker felon's office released a readout of a meeting with the new chief of staff for Phelan's office, Mike Toomey. What came out of it?

So the office sent out an email and it had just a list of notes taken about a staff meeting in tandem with the hiring of lobbyist and former state representative Mike Toomey as his new chief of staff. A lot of it was run-of-the-mill know, let's get let's be productive and direct directives on certain things, policy, all this stuff. Let's start having conversations. So we're ready to go ahead of next session. Very much messaging aimed at the the intention of being aelan remaining speaker next session. And just most of it was standard. Let's try and make this as conservative a session as possible.

But the biggest news came within the outline policy priorities. You know, the first two aren't, don't stick out too much. Job creation, economic development this has been a focus of feeling especially the economic development for its entire time as speaker you know he was the one who really pushed for the revival or what turned out to be replacement of the chapter 313 program the tax abatements to corporations on their their school district property taxes and so they that's now the Jedi program they revamped it quite a bit they shrunk who's eligible got rid of renewable energy companies as being eligible for those abatements. And, you know, it's it's been effective in at least, you know, the number of companies

applying for this that say they want to relocate to Texas. You know, it's been effective on that front. And, you know, there's always the debate of is it actually bringing people here, companies here where they come otherwise. that's been something feeling has has harped on quite a bit then it won't got into restraining spending and cutting waste you know all government especially Republicans talk about cutting spending almost never happens you know we did see a couple of sessions ago, the legislature put in a new spending cap,

population inflation spending cap, along with the couple other limits they have. But we still see a lot of spending. And last session, they ramped it up a ton, thanks to the massive surplus and the way they structured these funds so like the Texas energy fund the infrastructure fund the water fund you know that was a way for them to get around these spending restraints and using the surplus they had so we'll see what they

do on that front then the biggest one came in the third item school choice and education funding you know that that is the most note the most notable example because Phelan has to date until this not openly backed school choice he'd maintained a neutral position saying it's gonna be up to the members. I generally know where the members are on this. And you know what? He was right. It didn't have the votes in session last year.

Then, of course, we saw the governor's political war waged in the primary, and he was very effective in that. We'll see if he has enough to get it across the line in the um the fashion he believes it needs to be in terms of a esa program uh there's gonna be a lot of fight on that and it's no it's no guaranteed something's probably gonna pass but it's not guaranteed what it's gonna look like right maybe they start from the the bill last session that died as like the starting point, right? Maybe they don't. Maybe they come up with something new.

But the other takeaway in this is it's also going to require being tied to education funding, to school funding. So that's what we saw last session. The compromise released by the governor's office and House Chairman Brad Buckley tied the ESA program to teacher pay raises and education funding increases. So they'll probably have to do something like that again. I don't see, maybe you think differently, Cameron, but I don't see a straight ESA program passing the House. Yeah. in passing the house yeah and heck maybe even the senate like every proposal um uh in the special sessions that was agreed upon by the senate and passed uh i think it it had education funding tied to it but especially in the house that's going to be a requirement yeah that what you're talking about, HB1, that was just a ginormous bill. And it had everything that you mentioned from ESAs, teacher pay raises.

Yeah, I probably agree with you, but, you know, it's just going to be a toss-up really in my mind because there's so many new members coming in that are very much pro school choice and is there a shift occurring with possibly some democrats maybe getting on board with school choice because we've seen a lot of polling recently whether it be Republicans or Democrats black white Hispanic very much pro school choice are those feelings that are being represented in polling we've seen gonna be represented by the lawmakers themselves and they press the button on that school choice bill so um i don't know um i don't want to make any predictions just yet but uh there's you know i i think if anything uh is gonna tell us what's gonna happen it was this previous election lots of pro school choice lawmakers winning so I

think that is a good sign for school choice but an ESA bill passing solely without any public school public education funding I don't know that will happen yeah well now you also have the Speaker of the House, at least for the time being, coming out specifically for this. So not only did you have when the Texas Freedom Commitment, Texas Conservative Commitment or whatever, it was one of the letters that was put out. You had two members, Ken King and Keith Bell, who voted against, voted to strip the ESAs coming out in favor of school choice. Now you have the speaker explicitly saying, this is a priority. That shows a lot of movement in this. And a lot of it is definitely

the primary, how that shook out, how successful the governor was, but also just how much the governor's hitting this issue. Absolutely. Brad, I really want to hit on this quickly before we move on to the other stories. I want to talk about this readout from the speaker, the tone that it struck, because a lot of what we're talking about here in terms of school choice passing, any other priority passing really depends on the relationship between the House and the Senate, right? And the leaders of each chamber have been at odds for quite a while now, and very publicly so. So what kind of tone did this read out from the speaker's strike? So one quote from it, there will be importance on collaboration with the Office of the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and the Texas Senate. That was emphasized as a critical

component for developing impactful policy solutions, including reviewing the Senate's interim charges to identify opportunities to build consensus. Obviously, and I've talked at length about the feud between Lieutenant Governor and Speaker, just how bad it is. We all saw that play out during the property tax fight, let alone impeachment. Right. So, um, this seems like a bit of an olive branch to some degree. How effective is it? I have no idea. Uh, you know, the Lieutenant governor just tried to oust the speaker. Right.

How much is this, uh, you know, putting lipstick on a pig, um, Or is this like a real concerted effort to try and mend the bridge with the lieutenant governor? Maybe, I don't know. It also takes two to 10 go. I'm waiting for the selfie with Dave Phelan and Dan Patrick, you know, arms around each other and be like, we built the bridge, guys, you know. We're coming together.

Once that selfie gets out there maybe a surfing trip surfing trip hey maybe that selfie can make peace in the middle east that's what we need i think so the other the other part i'd highlight on this is um quote speaker feel and emphasize that the session's agenda will ultimately be driven by House members, with his personal priorities being shaped in part by the feedback and perspective shared with the office. That is, that messaging is exactly the same as Phelan has been all throughout his time as speaker. At least outwardly, he has maintained that all of this is going to be driven by members. There will be members that take issue with that, especially on certain things one way or the other, but that's been the tone he's struck throughout his entire time as speaker. But obviously now

he's committing to this hot button third rail issue, school choice um it's hard to read this and not look at it as in some form angled at needing to keep votes as speaker you know abbott defeated a good amount of members who had voted for phelan and were allies of phelan that were against school choice so that reduces the coalition of especially rural republicans who were against school choice whom phelan needed from. So speaker fight is always about votes. I talk about this all the time. And that constantly shifts. Some members are swayed by certain policies, school choice. Other members are swayed by

sticking it to the lieutenant governor. There's a couple come to mind on that. But overall, this was a very interesting readout. A lot of name names, Brad. Well, I mean, Drew Darby's not minced any words with the governor. Neither has Stan Lambert. So those two, I'm sure, are going to do everything they can to stick a middle finger in the governor's face.

But politically, that is uh but overall you know this is good clarification clearly showing uh things are shifting got it well brad thanks for your coverage there again this is a bigger news week than we've had in the hot minute lots of stuff going on we're at the 50 minute mark boys so we're gonna like speed through the next few stories cameron coming to you. The surveillance tool Tangles is part of a multimillion dollar contract with the Texas Department of Public Safety and it's been making some waves this week. Tell us about it. Yeah, this story was first broken by the Texas Observer where they said a nearly 5.33 million contract to obtain the surveillance tool named Tangles

was part of this contract with Texas Department of Public Safety. Lots of information. I won't get into it now. The piece I was saying as I was writing it, it could take a week with the amount of information floating around about not just Tangles, but the company that acquired it, Penlink, and then the company that oversees or that actually developed the tool, Tangles, Cobwebs Technologies. Lots of information out there. I highlight that in the article. I will mention as the story broke the other day, I reached out to Texas DPS to try to get some context and clarification on some things. I did not hear back from them. If I do, I will make sure to update the article on our website.

But just for people who are interested, both the Texas Observer, like I mentioned, broke this story, but there was a previous story from the Intercept who talked about how this has been employed. This surveillance technology has been employed at add-on called WebLock, which is geofencing warrants used to obtain digital location data from Google's user database without identifying specific suspects, whereas deemed unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment. This was in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. And just to sum up, I think the big takeaway, this was noted by the Texas Observer, that users of the surveillance technology tangles do not need a search warrant or subpoena to utilize the software. So this is a developing story. If we hear back from DPS, like i said um we'll make sure to put

that information out there and i'm sure we will see this addressed in the legislature in the upcoming session um or even comments from uh lawmakers soon once this story somebody will try gets passed around so just a very interesting development um i'm very interested in surveillance technology so um something i'll keep my eye on i'm sure a topic of discussion will be in the appropriation hearings when uh dps is asking for more funding right so oh absolutely actually i'm gonna save this question for the end cameron i want you to noodle on this while we continue to speed through these stories i want you to tell me at the end of this was something you're not interested in okay that's your homework for the next five minutes is

to think about something that you are not interested in um brad dan patrick in the news talk the speaker let's talk the lieutenant governor he launched a, or made a big announcement this week. I won't spoil the punchline here, but what is the big announcement from the lieutenant governor? He announced he's creating the Texas Senate Leadership Fund, modeled after similarly named organizations at the federal level. You have the Congressional Leadership Fund. I'm sure there's one on the Senate side that I am blanking on the name at the moment. But basically, it's a PAC, a campaign fund to help your allies, particularly in your party, Republicans in this case, in their campaign work and in their races. So a notable thing about it is it's treasured by Ryan Patrick, Dan Patrick's son. About this, Lieutenant Governor said, there are other PACs where donors may

support the work done by various House and Senate caucuses and even to support the mission of House leadership. Until now, there hasn't been a place to support the work on the Texas Senate leadership in fulfilling its goals in order to ensure the resources to support the mission of the conservative majority in the Texas Senate, I've launched this new political action committee. Oh, good. There you go. Well, Brad, what do you think the purposes of this PAC could be? Well, the first thing that came to mind for me was the Senate District 27 race.

I think I've talked before about how that's kind of an under-the-radar prize for the Republicans in this general election. Obviously, you have the Senate race. You have the presidential. You have the House makeup. But this Senate district is going to impact a lot of stuff. The Republicans in the Senate are not on a slim supermajority, but it's fairly close, so they don't have much room to budge. If they lose a vote one way or the other among Republicans, it makes it harder to pass things at the supermajority because of the way the Senate operates. So if Adam Hinojosa is able to beat Morgan LaMantia, that will help Dan Patrick get what

he wants across the line. Now Democrats in the state, this is a top race for them too. They want to keep this. It's a D52% district. So it's very narrowly leaning Democrat. It's going to be very expensive. And this, in my mind, this Senate fund is going to be a way for Patrick to rally the cavalry for Hinojosa, at least in the immediate term. You know, Dan Patrick's sitting on $24 million. I would bet a good chunk of that is going to go into this fund one way or the other. And we saw La Montilla, she raised a good amount of money in the last reporting period. She also, her family are beer distributors.

And so they loaned her so far $1.4 million with more to come surely. So they do not wanna lose the seat obviously. And Hinojosa raised, I think it was like $60,000. It was not much. So that will probably change now that we're in the home stretch here and outside the primary but this is another avenue from which patrick can assist hinojosa with on the money front um the other another one actually daniel brought this up uh it could be a place for

whenever patrick retires for him to stash his campaign dollars. He said he's gonna run again. I have no reason not to believe him at the moment, but he's definitely in the twilight of his political career. He's not gonna be around forever. And he's sitting on a ton of money. So something's gonna have to be done with that. This is potentially a place to put it whenever he finishes.

The other question Daniel brought up that I do not know the answer to, maybe one of our listeners would know, does this fund have, is it subject to the moratorium, fundraising moratorium during session that officials are? I don't know the answer to that. It'd be great if someone could tell me. But if it doesn't, that's clearly a place for Dan Patrick to raise money into to get around the session moratorium. Because he can't raise it into his SPAC during session.

So a couple things notable there, but I think SC27 is the biggest one. Absolutely, Bradley. Thank you, Cameron. Last story. Let's hit it quick. The University of Texas System Board of Regents endorsed a policy stating that neither the system nor its institutions should take political or social positions. Spicy, tell us about it. Yeah.

So you really wrapped it up there in the lead in. I'll just read from the addition to this free speech statement. It says, nor is it the role of the UT system or UT institutions to adopt positions based on political or social passions or pressures. Institutions should not, in their official capacity, issue or express positions on issues of the day, however appealing they may be to some members of the university community. So just very interesting. They thought it was necessary to add this statement.

It goes on just a little bit here to say, this has no bearing, of course, on freedom of speech of individuals in the university community and only relates to official university statements, functions, ceremonies, and publications. So UT really trying to position itself as neutral on political and social issues, especially over the past six, eight months with the ongoing protests regarding the Israel-Hamas conflict. So just an interesting development there in terms of a university attempting to be politically neutral. Absolutely, especially one that's been in the news so much for facing criticisms for being exactly the opposite of that. So we'll continue to watch that policy

and how it continues to shape how what the university does. Cameron, thank you. And also that lead in was written that you said i summed it up so well was written by somebody really smart you know so i don't know who that was but it was not me um okay let's move on to the tweeter gentlemen here let's uh brad i'm really excited about this you go first so holly shout out holly hansen tweeted this today um the pacific war museum in fredericksburg welcomed a new tank to its collection. The tank is a Japanese Type 95 Hago light tank replica. I think that's how you pronounce it.

I don't know. Which was transferred from the NPO Defense Technology Museum in Gotemba, Japan. So something new to go see in Fredericksburg at the Pacific War Museum. I love that place. It's great. I've been in there three times now. And it's just there's so much history there you can't get through it all unless you spend the entire day reading everything. But, yeah, it's a great place.

And now they have one more thing to go look at. Yeah, absolutely. If you go to Fredericksburg, if you can make time to drink some wine, you can make time to go to the Pacific War Museum. It is absolutely incredible. So certainly put it on your list next time you are in Fredericksburg.

We're excited about the story. So Brad, thanks. Cameron, what you got? Well, Time Magazine published their latest edition with Bukele on the cover, where the headline is how Bukele's iron fist has transformed El Salvador and I just think it's interesting that he's in this Time magazine article they call a authoritarian leader just casting negativity on the type of work that he's done. I mean, he is pretty authoritarian. You can argue that it's been for good ends, right? Is cracking down on gang activity authoritarian?

I mean, he's instituted martial law that's pretty authoritarian. It was an incredibly dangerous country. I know. I'm not saying it's not warranted. I'm just saying they've expanded this term authoritarian to encompass anything that they dislike. They being people who are against, I don't even want to get into it here. It's accurate. It may also be used with negative connotations that aren't deserved. But like, yeah. This is not an Americanized free system of government

based on republicanism and freedom. Because you can't, right? That's the argument. I'd recommend people check out the piece. And there's also, if you want to see the other perspective, there's a great piece in the online journal IM 1776 who covers Bukele's war for peace is what they call it. So yeah, I just want to highlight that for people.

If you want insight, folks, into what the office dynamic is like on any given day, the last two minutes have been exactly that so and if you want more of it we can it guys hello enough oh lord in heaven that's where that is folks where what is uh that's even a more accurate picture of what happens in the office lord in heaven um okay well on that note thanks guys i know i don't have time for my twittery folks we appreciate you listening to our podcast each and every week and listening to us blather i think i always say blather i think it's especially appropriate this week considering the last four minutes of this podcast.

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