The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - August 7, 2026

Episode Date: August 7, 2026

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.New Poll of Texas Statewide Races Shows Talarico Leads Paxton by 2 PercentPaxton Launches Campaign Tour in North Texas, Gathering Unlikely GOP AlliesTalarico Targets Cost of Living at Campaign Tour Kickoff in Affordability-Centered U.S. Senate RaceKay Granger, First Texas Republican Woman in Congress, Passes Away at 83Federal Lawsuit Challenges Texas' Reinstated 2021 THC RulesHere’s Where Greg Abbott and Gina Hinojosa Stand in Major PollsTexas A&M Professors Sue University Over 'Race, Gender Ideology' PoliciesDon Huffines Forgoes Salary, Pledges Public Audits After Swearing-in as ComptrollerTexas Congressional Republicans Push for U.S. Senate's Passage of 'Reconciliation 3.0'Enjoy what you hear? Be sure to check out our articles at The Texan and leave us a review!Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast.

The next time I visit Hillsdale and I also visit during fair season and I try the fried butter, I will let the Texan know first. Report back. Report back about the fried butter. You guys can tell us what's going on in the most important elections in the state. And I will let you know what I think about deep fried butter sticks. Well, howdy, folks? Welcome back to another episode of the Texans' Weekly Roundup podcast. I'm your host, Senior Editor Rob Lauchess, and joining me today.

are reporters Mary Elise O'Barr, Meredith Dyer, and Isaiah Mitchell. How's everybody doing this morning? Doing great. Good. Good. Fantastic. I like the fact that y'all all answered in unison. That's the kind of order and discipline we like to see at the Texan.

But speaking of, absolutely. Oh, I'm glad to hear it. But speaking of, we are going to jump right into the news this week because so much has happened. And a couple of our reporters, if you follow them on Twitter, actually had some pretty interesting, some pretty interesting experiences seeing a couple of events and campaigns for the top of the ticket race in Texas right now, which is, of course, for U.S. Senate, between Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Republican, and State Representative James Tala Rico, the Democrat. So senior reporter Holly Hanson could not be with us on this podcast today, but there was a very interesting piece that she wrote about a poll. from Texas Southern University's Barbara Jordan Public Policy Research Center, which showed that Tala Rico had a 2% lead over Paxton in the U.S. Senate race among likely voters. So every other

non-judicial statewide Republican in this poll, it should be noted, performed at at least 3% higher than their Democratic opponent, whereas Paxton was two points behind. So this has been something that's been touted on social media a lot and a lot of campaigns. pain rhetoric. And Talariko's small lead has shown up in several polls that have been conducted recently, whereas, of course, the other Republican statewides tend to still be above. It's interesting to see that Tala RICO generally also has a higher favorability and a lower unfavorability. And of course, Tala RICO and Paxon are both well known. You know, they're not unknown quantities. Most people say that they have enough information to have an opinion on these two candidates. So, you

You know, it's going to be interesting to see if Paxton is going to be able to, you know, shift the needle on that. But of course, as we've learned over the past 10 years now, polling can sometimes be misleading. So with all of that, Isaiah, you were at Ken Paxton kicking off his campaign tour in North Texas and gathering a group of unlikely GOP allies. Tell us about how that work. Yeah, Paxton held an event that Matt's Rancher Martinez and, Allen and the people who came to introduce him included state rep Shirley Luther, Matt Shaheen

and Jeff Leach, and State Senator Bob Hall. And if you've been following Texas politics for a few years, you'd be a little surprised at that grouping. And Leach, when he took the stage, actually acknowledge that. He said, you might be surprised to see me staying in front of you tonight because Leach had a role in Ken Paxon's impeachment. in the Texas legislature. And he's also got a history of friction with Shirley Luther,

and you could see them as representative of different factions of the Texas GOP. So it was interesting to see them joining together in support of Paxton at this event. And the event there kicked off Paxton's protecting the Texas Promise Tour, which is a tour focused on affordability issues that he's carrying out across the state. Mary Lease was at the next stop of it in Houston. And in Allen, he presented a few concrete proposals that included expanding the child tax credit, tax deductions for first-time home buyers, other tax deductions for certain health-related purchases, and a $25,000 deduction for out-of-pocket medical expenses. So a few concrete ideas for improving cost of living, which is the general focus.

of the protecting the Texas promise tour. Alongside also getting at the vote, that was something that each speaker really pushed. And it's notable that that was such a big emphasis. I mean, getting out the vote is a big emphasis of any campaign. But as you say, Rob, this followed a recent poll that projected a two-point lead for Tala Rico. And I'll mention Ken Paxton was actually asked about that poll that you just referenced Isaiah at the Houston event last night. and he said his response was essentially that we are three months behind referring to his campaign.

He was saying, you know, Tala Rico had so much more time to fundraise. So he's spending, he said, two million dollars a week to gain that advantage. He said it's not really surprising if you look at it that way. He said, but we're still three months out. So we're basically three months out from the election. So kind of expressing he has some hope there, but also kind of attributing the fact that Tala Rico was able to, you know, avoid that runoff. And so he had that a little bit of extra time, kind of that edge up to start campaigning and raising money, et cetera.

But I can tell you all a little bit about this Paxton event in Houston. It was the stop number two of this tour that Isaiah was just speaking about. There were a lot of different electeds there who were speaking ahead of Paxton. And like Isaiah said, there was a lot of, I mean, I think every speaker mentioned getting out the vote, the importance of get out the vote. They all said, you know, make sure you're talking to your friends, make sure you're encouraging them to get out the vote for all the Republicans. A lot of referencing that the primary was a difficult one. There's a lot of feelings hurt. There's a lot of grudges still being held.

But they said, you know, we just have to get over these. we have to, we really have to unite, of course, that unity message. First, we saw Representative Valerie Swansea come up. She led the group in prayer. She also kind of, while she was leading the prayer, she had kind of a Snyder mark towards Tala Rica. She said, I ask you open the eyes of the voters that they would not be fooled by people who claim to believe in you, but apparently have a different Bible than the rest of us. And that was a theme that was brought up frequently was about Talarico's interpretation of the Bible and a lot of jokes about, man, he must have a different version of the Bible that any of us have. That was said a couple times. Representative Briscoe

Kane's wife, Burgundy, who is also vice president of TFRW. She went up, she spoke. She was pretty good at engaging the crowd and just talked about the importance of voting for Paxton, all the Republicans. And this was when the first individual started shouting from the crowd. but there were four different occasions of this actually and I'd be curious to know Isaiah if this happened at your event but we had four different people at different times spread out pretty evenly who would start shouting at the speaker something either pro talarika or anti-Paxon and then they get escorted out at one point there was a man who was shouting something about paxton letting pedophiles free and referencing adam hopman in the in the in the that child sex abuse plea deal that Paxton's gotten a lot of flack over. So he was referencing that. And then we saw a woman with her young children was there. It was hard to make out what she was saying.

And then two other individuals as well who were just shouting and they were escorted out. The representative, C. Toth, he's the one who beat incumbent in Crenshaw. He took the stage. He spoke. He brought up something that was brought up several times. more. He talked about Marxism. He said, Marxism is not knocking on the door here in the United States. It's running for the Senate by the name of James Talarico. Representative Cody Vesuit also spoke. He talked about socialism. He said, we need to make sure those Republicans essentially were standing in the gap and then we're sending in the gap between socialism and America and then we're sending fighters to Washington, who will help prevent that from happening. And he also said, I don't care he voted for in March. I don't care he voted for in May. We need to vote for faith, family of freedom in November. That was a very similar, like, sentiment that was expressed by several of the speakers.

Before Paxton, I'll say probably the individual who was best at engaging in the crowd, just judging from the responses of the crowd while they were speaking, was Trevor Nels, who is running to replace his brother, Troy Nels's seat. He has a particular accent and just a way of speaking to the crowd, that in a sense was kind of comedic. And he was definitely like, he was definitely working the crowd intentionally, taking lots of jabs at Talley Rico.

But he seemed to, the crowd seemed to really kind of appreciate his sense of humor. And he was the one that went right before Paxton. So there definitely, there was a little bit of a difference in energy after Nels went. I was really good at engaging the crowd. And then Paxton came to the stage. He tends to be a little bit more mild spoken.

I mean, his language online is pretty bombastic as it is if you're campaigning, of course. But in person, he tends to be a little bit more mild up on stage in general. I'd be curious if you saw that same theme, Isaiah. Also, if y'all had any disruptors. We had a pretty tame disruption. I don't even know if it merited that description. But there was a woman at the front near the stage who held up a Tala Rico for Texas sign when Ken Paxton walked on. And so that whipped at the crowd a little bit

And then she was escorted away from the stage And I think maybe out of the room It was packed in there And just to give you a little color, I guess At one point, when Jeff Leach came up to talk, He told us that Ken Paxson was outside Shaking hands with people who were waiting in line Because the line was wrapping around the building

And I thought that would actually be a pretty good picture But if I leave my little square foot of space right now somebody will immediately come in and fill it. And I don't know if they'll lock the door behind me or what. So I had to miss out on that photo up because it was so packed. But yes, similarly, Paxton, again, just to give you a little more color, there were people in the back hollering at Paxton to speak up when he took the mic. And the other speakers didn't really get that kind of request.

They tended to be a little louder, a little show some more engagement with the crowd. And yeah, as you say, Paxton is just, a bit of a milder stage presence. Yeah, I wanted to say, speaking of photos, Isaiah, if everybody listening has not checked out Isaiah's Twitter account and seen the great tweet thread he made of photos from the event, I would highly recommend it. Isaiah, you even got that woman holding up the Talariko sign, like looking right into your camera with a big grin, which I don't know if she was looking specifically at you.

Maybe she was, but it was a pretty great photo in a tweet thread. full of great photos. Something that you brought up, Mary Elise, talking about, you know, socialism, I think that's going to continue being a major theme of the 26 midterms, given the fact that Abdul al-Sayed in Michigan just defeated the incumbent congresswoman Haley Stevens in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate race in that state. And Al-S. Ayat is like more of an openly progressive, like, you know, socialist Democrat. And so that kind of rhetoric is going to, I think, continue, you know, for a lot of voters, they don't focus on the individual particularities of individual races so much as I think on like the vibe of the election as a whole. And so, you know, tying all of these different

candidates together is going to be, I think, a campaign strategy. And so I thought that was pretty interesting. But Meredith, it looks like you wanted to jump in. Well, yeah, one is the, there's a video of the protester at your event. I say, I don't know if you saw it. And it was just the slow. She had a walker. She was a little older. And it's just like this very slow, like, gentle like removal. But I had a question for you, Mary Least. You said that Paxton was asked a question about the poll. And I was curious, did he take any questions at any of these events? Because I know he's come under some criticism recently for like abrupt shorter press conferences or avoiding certain topics on his personal life and voting records and things like that. Did he take questions? Good question. He, and I think that the media appreciated this, the media that was there in attendance, we were told that there would be a gaggle afterwards, and there was. And I think he was asked maybe five questions. The only downside for first, you know, half of the folks there was that his staff directed the questions specifically to specific reporters, addressed them by name and said, okay, you can ask your question. and one of those individuals that was called on tried to ask a follow-up, they were cut off and we moved on to the next person. So that was, you know, something that is a little bit of a downside for the journalists that were present there. I mean, not for the ones who got to ask a question, of course, but I think everyone did appreciate that he did stick around for some sort of a gaggle afterwards. And he did take a handful of questions.

And he did address that question about the fact that some polls recently are showing Tala RICO on up and up. What were some of the other questions that were allowed? One of the questions that was asked was if he would like to supply additional funding to the Warren-Iron and just if he had some like additional thoughts on that. And his response was essentially I'm not quite privy to the intel that Congress has. So he said I trust President Donald Trump. But I'm just, you know, I'm going to kind of see what it's like when I get to Congress and see information I have access to. But as of now, I trust President Donald Trump

and where he's taking things. It's so interesting to hear those kind of questions because we get so caught up in all of the personal drama and all of the Texas stuff. And then you remember, oh, yeah, they're heading off to Washington, D.C., to go deal with some other things while we're busy. You know, it's campaigning.

But that's just always a reminder that they're going to have a whole other job soon, one of them. Right. Yeah. Absolutely. Something else I thought was interesting that was worth bringing up about, you mentioned, I think we mentioned Jasmine Crockett already in the Talleyco primary, is that, you know, the Republicans are really, really making an effort to show unity, right? Abbott had that great photo op of all of the nonjudicial statewide Republican candidates and Dustin Burroughs, Speaker of the Texas House for a big meeting. You know, they were all. all is saying that this is the first time they've all been assembled like this for a big campaign strategy meeting. As you mentioned, Isaiah, figures like Jeff Leach, who was one of the board of managers on the Texas House's impeachment of Paxon in 2023 and even in May before the primary runoff

was one of the people who was trying to raise awareness about this plea deal for this Waco child sex offender, you know, or man charged with sexual assault was, you know, he was, you know, was one of the figures who was promoting that, right? We have an article about that at the Texan. And so to see him coming out and, you know, he gave Paxton, I saw this, he gave Paxton a hug on stage, you know, the Republicans are really making an effort to show that kind of unity in a midterm that is likely going to be, you know, pretty tough given the fact that the, you know, incumbent president is a Republican, which usually hurts the party. Yeah, the party that controls the White House usually suffers in the midterms, of course, because people blame the party in the White House.

for all the problems. But Jasmine Crockett is not showing the same kind of love to James Talarico. And of course, Cornyn also is not getting out there and joining on stage and, you know, stumping for Paxton. But in Cornon's express, I know Mary Elise, you've written about this in the 40, you know, cornon's been willing to, you know, push back against the administration a lot more now, now that he's, you know, no longer running for reelection. But Crockett has been much more like explicitly outwardly critical of Tala Rico. And of course, Mary Lees, you had that article about the event where Tala Rico was, you know, he was, it was an event in Houston with a bunch of black Democrats, many of whom expressed a lot

of frustration that he's the one who won the primary instead of her as a black democratic woman. So I think that seeing the way that the Republicans are really trying to do this push for unity, perhaps in contrast to the, you could say the level of comfortability that the Democrats seem to have with criticizing each other a bit more openly or expressing a bit more frustration that Talleyco is their nominee.

I think that that's interesting. Maybe it betrays a bit more confidence from the part of the Democrats and a bit more caution from the Republicans. So I thought that was interesting. But speaking of Talariko, Isaiah, you were also at a Talarico event. on a Wednesday night.

So tell us about how that went, you know. Did he, what were his, what were his proposals like? Did they sound socialist to you? Well, it was helpful to see these events back to back because it was right after Paxson's event, which was in Allen, and then Tyler Rook had this event in Arlington. And his name for his tour is the New American Dream Tour. It's also, it's also focused on affordability, cost of living.

And he gave an agenda with a lot of, specific ideas. And there was actually some considerable overlap with Paxton's agenda. And in particular, in terms of like discrete proposals, both Tala Rico and Paxton suggested first time home buyer assistance at the federal level and expanding the child tax credit. And there's obviously some outliers. You know, the Venn diagram is is pretty broad. Tala Rico called for, among other things, raising the minimum wage, expanding overtime pay, repealing tax breaks that were in the big beautiful bill. And, you know, he proposed an AI dividend legislation of some kind where Americans would

receive, as he called it, royalties for AI companies using their work and creativity to generate pictures or text, things like that. So there was, it was an extensive platform that Talley-Rec represented, whereas Paxton had a four-point plan. But, yeah, it was actually hard to overlook a certain resemblance, really to just, J.D. Vance. Actually, we were just talking about this before the podcast because Talley had this big emphasis on using congressional power to make it easier to raise a family, to get married, to buy a house, to go to college, that kind of thing. And his historical antecedents for that

were things like the GI Bill, the presidency and the priorities of LBJ, stuff like that. And so Tala RICO's whole tack was to present himself as a moderate, and this happened right. after Paxton and his other allies in Allen were really working hard to present him as a radical. It does sound interesting. And what was the energy like during the event? Did you feel like a sense? I know some people online have been saying like, oh, Tala RICO's event was way bigger.

It had more energy, obviously coming from the pro-Talorico people. But how did it look to your reporter's eye? You know, it was different. It was... Well, for one thing, I mean, Tala Rico is a louder speaker. He's just got a different cadence. We've already talked about how Paxton is a bit quieter as a public speaker. Tala Rico, you know, he doesn't, he wasn't shouting, but, you know, he really projected.

And there, he gave a longer speech, as I said. It seemed to be more marshaled, practiced. You know, like I said, there was a very long list of very specific ideas. ideas. It tied at the beginning of the end with an anecdote about a citizen of Houston that he used as a sort of object lesson you could say in illustration of his ideas. And in terms of size, attendance, I don't have any precise estimates as to how many people were in either one. Because as I said, at Baxter's event, it was held inside a restaurant, which is pretty big as restaurants go, but it was packed in one room. I think it was packed at the rest of the building. And there

There was a line going outside. I don't know how many people had to be turned away. Tala Rika's event was in an arena in Arlington, and there was standing room only at the end by the time the event actually got rolling. And it was a fairly big room, and people were standing around the back, and there was a long line to take pictures of him as well. So both had a lot of energy. Much of the energy at Pax's event from the stage, really like Mary Lease pointed out in Houston,

came from a lot of people who were introducing Paxton. And at Tyler Rico's event, it was really more, you know, Tyler Rico joined the other people introducing him and ginning out the audience. Well, it sounds like it was a really interesting pair of events. And again, I would recommend to anybody who's interested, check out the tweet threads from both Isaiah and Mary Elise. Isaiah's photos, Mary Elise, got some good videos.

I think Mary Elise, much like how Isaiah got a good photo of the person being removed at Paxton's event on. Tuesday. You got a good video of the person being removed from Paxton's event on Wednesday. So all of your protester removal coverage is available, of course, here at the Texan. So thank you very much. Oh, go ahead, Meredith. I was going to have a quick question for Isaiah. Did any of the people introducing allude to the Jasmine Crockett, like the unity situation or was there anything that was kind of veiled or? Crocket did not come up.

not by name potentially, but the idea of like, you sometimes they don't say their name, right? But they say we should all fill in the blank or like just, you know, they'll kind of like say something that's a little bit like pointed in that direction or not really. I think the closest thing that I could perceive was every once in a while, an emphasis on racial issues. But that really didn't come up a lot in any of the introductions.

There were some scattered references to MLK and really not much more than that. And so one could interpret, you know, certain points in some of the introductory speeches as, you know, a salve to the whole crockett wound. But that's up to your interpretation. Gotcha. Okay. Cool. It is interesting, I think, how affordability, this is something that you've pointed out, Isaiah, in one of your articles on the gubernatorial race. But affordability is like the major.

issue of this election. And of course, economics is always a major issue of elections. But I feel like affordability has become like a super dominant issue. You know, I mean, a lot of the more, I think, out there social issues, a lot of the more progressive social issues that the Democrats pushed, I think, prior to the 2024 election, have kind of fallen by the wayside, you know, more of this like, we're going to have a lot of economic opportunity for everybody. As you mentioned, Isaiah, we're going to make it easier to, you know, get married and start a family. It does sound like, you know, a certain faction of the GOP now. This more sort of, you could call it running to the center, bipartisan, you know, focus on,

focus on affordability and economics, I think is, I think is an interesting show of sort of where the country is right now, you know. And we will just have to wait and see how that turns out. But thank you to both of you all for your coverage. And again, I would highly recommend to everybody. Check out the articles and the tweet threads so that you can feel like you were really there. I certainly wish I was. Mary Elise, turning next to you, Kay Granger, the first Texas Republican woman in Congress passed away recently at the age of 83.

Please tell us about her accomplishments and her life and what some of her congressional colleagues have had to say about her. Yeah, Kay Granger passed away at 83 years old. She served in Congress representing Texas for nearly three decades, so about 28 years. She was the first female Republican to represent Texas and the United States House representatives and the first female mayor of Fort Worth, which a lot of her former colleagues and different political individuals acknowledged and kind of honored after she passed away on Sunday. There were really Texans on both sides that were mourning the loss of her life. While she was in Congress, she was really at the mass of some really significant funding provisions. She passed away, unfortunately, while battling Alzheimer's disease, her son said. So that's understood to be the cause of her death at this time. She had announced her retirement in 2023 originally, then wrapped up her term in the winter of 2025. She had shared that she was experiencing different health challenges that were affecting her ability to be able to drive or, excuse me, travel to Washington, D.C.

And she said that those health challenges were just steadily progressing. So that's why she needed to retire. So she was the first Republican woman to lead the United States House Committee. on appropriations. So I mentioned those funding provisions. She led that from 2023 to 2024. And then also was the first woman to sit on the committee, subcommittee on defense. So a lot of first year that Granger was responsible for. Before she took on Congress in the late 1990s, she served, as we mentioned, as the first female mayor of Fort Worth from 91 to 95. But three years before her election, she kind of became well known after she

served on the Fort Worth Zoning Commission after her advocacy involving a zoning change that was related to a waste plant that was near her plant and that kind of like spotlighted her in the region, her advocacy surrounding all of that. She was in the news not too long ago because before her retirement, but after her absence during several critical votes, it was discovered that she had been residing in a senior assisted living facility in Fort Worth. And then there was all sorts of conversation around, you know, term limits for members of Congress, et cetera. So she was in the news then. And yeah, so she, that was before her retirement, but she had announced her retirement.

Her successor, Congressman Craig Goldman, responded to the passing of Granger. He just honored her life. He said Texas has lost a legend. I'm sure he's deeply saddened. He said, described her as transforming the city that she loved or referring to a Fort Worth so that she worked tirelessly to improve the lives of all those she represented. On the other side of the aisle, we saw Democratic representative, Henry Quayar, describing her as a trailblazer for both Fort Worth and just women in public service in

general. So it was definitely, you know, interesting to see the different folks that came forward to share their positive views of Granger and just the impact that she made on her city and just during her time of public service clearly impacted both Republicans and Democrats. But, yeah, she passed away on Sunday. And so her former colleagues and her, the folks in Fort Worth, I remember her are definitely going to continue to mourn this loss. Well, thank you very much for your coverage, Mary Elise. It is good to see in a time of such bitter campaigning that there is some bipartisanship for showing, you know, support and mourning the loss of sort of a titan of Texas politics, you could say, in Kay Granger. So thank you very much.

Meredith, turning next to you, a new federal lawsuit is challenging Texas reinstated 2021 THC rules. So if I recall correctly, you know, give us the updates on what's going on on the THC battlefront because didn't they just lose at court? What's going on? So, yes, there is a federal lawsuit that has come about from the most recent reinstatement of these rules. So just as a little background, there were rules in 2020 that were much more broad and exempted any kind of THC, including Delta 8, 9, 10, THCP as long as it was hemp derived. And then in 2021, there are these legal definitions that were much stricter and much more rigid came in that would limit legal THC products to containing only 0.3% Delta 9th in hemp, similar wording with the marijuana extract as well. And so when that happened, there was, surprise, surprise, a lawsuit back then for that. And so that lawsuit was filed by a

group called hometown hero, which they show up a lot in the cannabis community. They're very illegally involved and advocacy for this, they file a lawsuit that blocks those definitions from going into effect. And so then Travis County District Judge issues an injunction and orders the DSHS to remove those definitions. And then in 2022, they issue compliance with that. And so in May of this year, quite a few years later, the Texas Supreme Court reverses that injunction and restores those 2021 rules that were much stricter. And on July 31st is when all of when that went into effect, which affected what, um, stores were selling, retailers, um, people, what people were able to purchase. And obviously the legal, like criminal aspect of that of having it in your possession and

things like that. So that began being in this whole kind of, um, well, especially in that community, a really big, um, I don't know if I want to say upboard, but I guess upward, they are pretty, they're very upset, actually, upwork would be appropriate. And so there's three plaintiffs, which are a manager at, um, a smoke shop in Baycliffe and then a couple of different, uh, vendors, um, and the Austin based happy cactus apothecary is one of them. And so they are suing for, um, things like the idea that these rules are too vague. And they'd say that the line that these reinstated definitions draw cannot be determined. And so they say that the due process clause in the U.S. Constitution prohibits enforcement of a penal enactment that fails to provide

persons, and they say ordinary intelligence, fair notice of the conduct it prohibits or permits arbitrary or discriminatory enforcement. They also talk about federal laws preempting these reinstated rules like the 2018 Farm Bill that legalized hemp production. And so they also talk about the sense, they say, an unconstitutional burden on interstate commerce. And so this comes after as well, the Senate Health and Human Services Committee had this hearing last week that they saw testimony from almost exclusively negative effects of THC in the community. And so people from the cannabis community THC were upset about that hearing and felt that it was one-sided. And so it's one of those things we talk about, you know, this is

the big issue coming up. This is not the big issue. But for some people, especially when you go down and you kind of drop into a certain subculture, it is the issue for them. And they are gearing up to come to the Capitol, the 90th legislature, and to testify and to fight back against what is looking to be a, there will be a proposed ban depending on how far it gets. Because Charles Perry, who's the vice chair of that committee, said that he will be filing another THC van after the one in the 89th didn't go through. So a lot of discussion and with these rules. It's interesting with the timing of the election if that will, how many people that will affect.

Because for some people, like I said, it is their one big issue, especially in the veterans community as well. And so we will keep an eye on how many of them come and how many of them get involved in this issue. Thank you very much, Meredith. Certainly interesting to see how we go from the Texas Supreme Court reinstating those old 2021 rules. So state court's done on the federal court. So we'll see what happens on that front. And of course, if they are able to craft a new THC ban that will pass Governor Greg Abbott's muster, considering the fact that the only reason why that ban didn't go into effect,

it was passed by the legislature, but it was vetoed by Abbott. So it'll be interesting to see what happens there. Thank you very much. Isaiah, I think for you, let's shake it up a little bit and let's talk about the 2026 midterms. So tell us what's going on with where do Governor Greg Abbott, and State Representative Gina Hinojosa, the Democrat who is challenging him for the governorship, where do they stand in major polls?

What's going on there? I'm surprised you skipped an opportunity to say the word gubernatorial because it was right there, but I'm sure we get another chance. I didn't want to beat a dead horse, you know. So the gubernator himself, Governor Greg Abbott, he leads Hinojosa and most recent major polls by varying margins. And so the most recent one that I saw cited fairly widely was by an independent outlet called Wedgwood, which has Abbott leading by six points. After that, we've got the Barbara Jordan Public Policy Research Center, which we referenced before, which also has Abbott leading by six.

Then a Fox News poll, which has Abbott leading by one. Texas Public Opinion Research has Abbott leading by three. And in New York Times, the end of a poll has Abbott leading by seven. And so that's an order of most recent to least recent. So something that's interesting, if you look at the breakdown, is there's some variety between these polls about voters or likely voters that is with four-year college degrees. So in the Wedgwood poll, Abbott has a 13-point lead among respondents without a college degree. And in the Barbara Jordan Public Policy Research Center and Texas Public Opinion Research Polls,

It's actually reversed, not by 13 points exactly, but that trend is reversed. Some results from a lot of these polls, if they tend to agree with that maybe don't surprise people, is that Abbott finds strong support among respondents who are white, those who are male and those who are middle-aged, Alhinojosa leads with other racial groups and with young voters. If you look at some others, name recognition is something that some of these measured. Abbott, you could say benefits from a lot more name recognition than Hinojosa does. And that, of course, affects favorability among respondents. But just about everybody, only a negligible share of respondents in some of these polls said that they didn't know enough about Abbott to form an opinion of him.

And out of a lot of the major statewide figures in Texas, and in a category that also included Donald Trump, Gina Hinojosa actually had the lowest name recognition of this group of public figures. And this is in the Fox News poll. So, Jeannie Hinojosa responded, 19% of respondents said that they hadn't ever heard of Hinoosa. And for comparison, 4% of respondents said they haven't heard of Paxton. And 6% said they hadn't heard of Tala Rico. And this is the poll where it, I think according to their legend, a little asteris means that less than half of a percent said the same for Abbott. But in any case, it's a negligible share of respondents.

So overall, we've got some variety in the margin. in terms of Abbott's lead. But all of the recent major polls project Abbott winning, and they generally agree on which demographics will probably propel them there. Thank you very much, Isaiah. Yeah, a lot of polls going on right now. You know, so it's, as you mentioned, Abbott is still in the lead, but it's still kind of a, you said it was one to seven percent, I think, in the piece.

So, you know, still in the lead, but it's not a huge margin. And of course, most of the statewide elections aren't by a huge margin. But something interesting I want to bring up about all these polls is that if you look at our own Texas partisan index, the of the vote share of Republicans relative to Democrats, the Republicans have actually been increasing. So in 2018 to 2020, during that cycle, it was rated R-54%, meaning that between Republicans and Democrats in statewide races, Republicans took 54% of the vote. Democrats took the other 46%. And then in 2020, 2022, that increased to R-56. And then in 22-24, it actually increased to R-58%. So Republicans since 2018, since the Beto wave, have been increasing their vote share relative to the Democrats.

So I will be very curious to see if that changes after this election cycle since, of course, having the incumbent party in the White House is going to hurt the is going to hurt the Republicans, and of course, not having Trump himself be on the ballot, because there are a lot of people who drive out to the polls for Trump specifically. So not having him personally on the ballot, I think will be interesting to see what effects that that also has. So thank you very much, Isaiah. Meredith, turning next to you, there has been, speaking of another lawsuit from a group of Texas A&M University professors who are suing the university over its policies on race ideology and gender ideology. Something interesting about this lawsuit is that we published an article recently from the

Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, ranking the university as being one of the only in Texas to receive a green light for student expression. But now a group of professors are suing, claiming that their expression is being limited by the school's policies. So what's going on there? Yeah, it's the week of lawsuits for me. So, yeah, last week we were writing about A&M being the only university to receive that. Everybody else got a lot of yellow light ratings, a couple of red light, and then some of the warning category that are a little bit stricter.

So in general, you'd think that, okay, A&M, they're getting kind of accolades from this group. They're doing well. So they have been sued by the American Association of University professors and specifically for named plaintiffs, which are Texas A&M University professors. And it's about the idea of teaching race or gender ideology. So back in November, the Board of Regents, unanimously voted to change the way that the university defined these things. And that then affected what could be taught in the classroom, which is a very sensitive subject, obviously, among professors. And they changed like, yeah, prohibited actions, things. that they were able to do and not do. And the idea that there couldn't be any academic courses that teach race or gender ideology topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity unless they're approved in advance. And so they changed gender ideology, the definition to mean this. They said, this is a quote, a concept of self-assessed gender identity, replacing or

disconnected from the biological category of sex. And then race identity, a little bit longer definition, but it's this idea that you can't, they attempt to shame a particular race or identity, accusing them of oppression, racial hierarchy, kind of attributing things from the past from their ancestors or presumed ancestors or relatives, they said, to bring about intrinsic guilt. And so the plaintiffs say, you know, we have professors that teach in public policy, English, women, and gender study, American history, and all of those fields touch directly, they say, issues of race, gender, and sexual orientation. And yeah, so they say that they're prohibited from teaching particular viewpoints on the issues. They say when they, this is a quote, when they

conflict with the board's preferred ideology, regardless of whether the professor's expertise and the best pedagogical practices in their fields of study demand that these alternative viewpoints be part of the discussion. They call it in the lawsuit the censorship policy and they say that it's asymmetrical. One of the specific things that they use as an example was the idea of, like, a professor could teach about heterosexual and what they say cisgender. They call them relationships and families, but not same sex or transgender counterparts. It's also kind of interesting. They highlighted some, like, works that they say are prohibited, works such as Plato's Symposium and also the film Moonlight. And then they really made a point that Barbie was permitted, which just kind of, that was funny to me, just as someone that didn't watch a lot. lot of movies in my university classes, especially not Barbie. I did in a community college class, but once I was in university, there was no, no films. I always wonder, it makes me just kind of funny. I can't imagine Barbie being assigned. And it can be apparently at ANM. And they just give some more examples. And then they also walk through an incident that happened last year where a Texas

A&M university professor, Melissa McCool, was fired. They don't refer to her by name. They refer to her as lecture, but we have, and we link some of our reporting from the past where we followed that. It kind of blew up. State Rep. Brian Harrison posted a video and some audio and video recordings of her teaching on social media where she was talking about. She was speaking on some of these topics and a student questioned her about promoting gender identity, which she eventually told the student if they felt uncomfortable that they could leave. So that kind of did produce like a firestorm of a lot of headlines and things that people were tweeting and posting. And within a very short amount of time,

administrators were removed. Abbott called for the professors firing, which she was eventually let go in September. And then right after that, the president of A&M at the time, Mark Welsh resigned. So a lot happened. And they kind of walk through all of that and are using that as background. And yeah, they just, in a press release,

some of them speak out about their courses, not being able to be taught. And one of them called, one of the professors, it is a plaintiff called it, so that his course was cancer for noncompliance with a draconian censorship policy.

So, yeah, it's just, ironic that they received this really good rating for free speech and then get a lawsuit very shortly after. Well, thank you very much for your coverage, Meredith.

Always excited to see. I actually, I will say this. I did take a film class in high school as one of my electives. I did have a move. movie class. This was, of course, before Barbie came out. But I would not be surprised if they're still doing that film class that that teacher might have assigned Barbie as a, might have, I see, if I was

teaching film, I would have had like a Barbenheimer day. Well, a film class would be understandable, but some of the majors that they're talking about here in these like courses that would be under history or just some of the stuff, I'm trying to find the list of what they didn't have just said they were teaching on. It didn't include film. So, of course, watching films for film, but when you're like speaking about other areas, like I said, it's funny. Marylees, did you have a comment on that? I was just going to say during my short stint in community college, studying journalism, there were several films shown and I'm trying to remember what they all were, but they were definitely not related to the topic at hand.

I wasn't studying film and they weren't film classes. I think one was like English, one was another was like literacy in the media and so I guess that's kind of kind of related but I don't think the films were you give them a thumbs down rating well thank you very much Meredith really appreciate your coverage on that one Isaiah turning next to you Texas has a new comptroller Don Huffines has been sworn in as the new comptroller of Texas and if I recall correctly from your article. He is not only not taking his salary, but he is also pledging public audits

after he was sworn in. Tell us about that. Yeah, after so many years of Glenn Hager, this is the most exciting time to cover the comptroller that I've ever had during my time as a reporter. But Hufflines, yes, relinquished his salary voluntarily

when he assumed office, took the other office last Saturday. And surely after this article was published, announced a performance review, of his own office there. But on the day that he took the oath of office, he issued a statement that reiterated some campaign pledges that he made. And if you recall, the big gist of his campaign was to doge the office.

And so that's a reference to the Elon Musk's, the Elon Musk led effort, the Department of Government Efficiency, to root out fraud and wasteful spending in the federal government. Huff funds ran on a campaign to do the same thing in state finances. A lot of that is intermingled or mixed up with, you know, local finances as well. And in particular, Huffin said that he's going to try and use the capacities of the comptroller's office to deliver property tax relief to Texans. And so I'll just read you his statement here. He said cities and counties across Texas are seeing strong sales tax

collections and growing revenues. As they prepare their budgets, they should look for every opportunity to return those dollars to taxpayers through lower property taxes. And so as the comptroller. He's the chief financial officer of the state and that limits the state has a limited purview over, at least directly over what local government spends their money on. And constitutionally, that's a different story. But so how finds is using, you know, the limited powers, or plans to use the limited powers at the comptroller's office to try and ultimately achieve lower property taxes for taxes around the state. Something else that's interesting here, This is a little bit of old news, but it included the statement and support from Greg Abbott.

And I say it's old news because Abbott appointed Huffins to the office after Huffins defeated Kelly Hancock, whose Abbott's pick in the Republican primary for the office. But the history there is that Huffin's unsuccessfully challenged Abbott from the right in the Republican primary for governor 2022 in a very COVID-focused campaign. and it didn't really help their friendship a lot at the time. But now they're really projecting a lot of amity and cooperation. And so I think it's significant in an election year for Huffman's to put up this statement and to have, you know, an nice big paragraph of support from Greg Abbott. Well, thank you very much, Isaiah.

And of course, it also does tie back to the general thing we've been talking about here, which is that in a race, very focused on affordability, you know, Texans keeping their money. It's the exact same thing we're seeing with these Republicans coming together. You know, if you would have told people, you know, three years ago that Huffines and Abbott were going to be on, you know, anything approaching friendly terms, I think they would have scoffed at you. But that's the situation we are in. Also, I only thought of a good segue for this between Meredith and Isaiah y'all's pieces just now in that, of course, Glenn Hagar departed to become the next chancellor of the A&M. university system. So I wish I would have thought of that beforehand, but for the, for the listeners,

pleasure, enjoy that post hoc segue into the pieces. But Mary Elise, turning next to you, last but not least for our news for this week, the Texan got a hold of an exclusive from the Texas congressional delegation talking about a budget resolution in a letter to President Donald Trump as we record this on Thursday morning. Tell us what's going on there. Yeah, this went out first thing on Thursday morning. This is a letter we obtained over here at the Texan, showing a large amount, almost every Republican Texas member of the United States House of reps, urging the United States Senate to pass House Budget Committee chairman, Representative Jody Arrington's budget resolution, and they decided Republican priorities including election integrity, agricultural resources, defense funding within this letter.

It was addressed to President Donald Trump on Tuesday, and it was 23 members of our Texas congressional delegation, essentially just expressing their desire to see this recently past House budget resolution succeed in the Senate. They said, we write to underscore support for the House-past-Budgettresolution. So Congress and the administration can address the critical and urgent need to support our troops, strengthen our food supply, and secure our elections. They were encouraging the Senate to, quote, seize this fateful moment and adopt the resolution. So Arrington, of course, as chairman, oversaw the passage of this House resolution on July 22nd, essentially outlining the budget for fiscal year 2027. That passed by a vote of 216 to 214 in that lower chamber in the House. And then it was put on the Senate's calendar on July 23rd, but hasn't seen much significant movement.

Of course, the Chamber is conducting all sorts of negotiations, it kind of docking around over these budgetary provisions for fiscal year, 27. Also, side note, the timeline of this whole funding process was definitely impacted with the passing of Senate budget chairman, Lindsay Graham. You know, he unexpectedly passed away in mid-July. He is being replaced as chairman by a senator. Ron Johnson. So this is known as Reconciliation 3.0 because it follows the passage of the one big beautiful bill act in the summer 2025, which we've covered quite a lot. And then that $70 billion immigration enforcement funding bill that was passed in June

of this year. So that's why it's kind of known as Reconciliation 3.0. Within this, the different members of the delegation or just voicing support for a couple different topics. They talked about their support for the $67 billion in defense-related funds. They talked about the current joint U.S. Israeli war against Ron, and then they were pushing for Congress to help our, quote, brave soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who are working to protect American lives. They said Congress must provide them with the supplemental munitions. they need to finish the job and come home safely.

One also pretty significant part of this reconciliation bill. And just this letter here is the Save America Act, which has been a major priority for Trump, as we all know. He's been really pushing for this. This is the election integrity bill that requires documentary proof of citizenship, showing ID to vote in federal elections. And that's really been at the heart of a lot of the fighting, a lot of kind of the sparring between Congress and White House and recent.

weeks and in months, honestly. And that legislation has faced quite a lot of roadblocks because of the narrow margins in the Senate. There's been that pressure to affect the filibuster. But that's one reason that Trump has pushed so hard for this bill to be included in Reconciliation 3.0. And also one reason why these members of delegation highlighted this year. So you can check out the piece to read a bit more of the letter that they sent. that we do know in here the only individual from this delegation that wasn't signed on was Representative Chip Roy. He did vote for this budget resolution to pass in the House in late July.

And then also a source that's close to the matter, familiar with the matter said that it was most likely due to just time constraints the fact that his signature is on here. So I recommend reading the piece for more details on what different priorities they're supporting here and what they have to say in this letter to President Trump. Well, thank you very much for your coverage, Mary Elise. The, as you said, the SAVE Act is going to continue being Trump's major priority for the U.S. Senate. And to bring it all back, I'm pretty sure that Ken Paxton has also voiced a lot of support for the SAVE Act. It's something that if it doesn't get done before, he would win the election. I'm sure that if he does win, he is going to be pushing, pushing, pushing hard for it. So thank you very much.

All righty. A lot of news this week. A lot of polls, a lot of election stuff, but who has some fun tweetery in order to wind down the podcast? Meredith, I'm sure you have some nice apolitical tweetery I'm seeing here. Well, mine does relate to the Paxon events because the Houston Chronicles opinion editor Evan posted like a table of pens and then a witty comment saying like that it was, his pen was taken. And apparently the pen is mightier, alluding to the old saying, pen is mightier than the sword. So did you guys have to give up your pens? What was the deal?

There's a lot of jokes in the comments alluding to the whole Montblanc situation in the past with Paxton and pens and stuff. But, yeah, Mary Leith. No, it's true that he took somebody's $1,000 pen at a courthouse metal detector. Yeah, they tried to take my pens last night when we were going to your security. He said no. No, we were, it was pretty entertaining, to be honest, as we were like, I headed through security.

There were a couple older folks that were genuinely upset that their pens were being taken. And they were arguing quite a lot with security. And, like, there's one older man who was very upset about it. And his wife was just like, come on, just leave the pen behind. But he was upset. And he was like, no, this is mine. I'm not giving it up. Anyways, they asked me to leave my pens.

And then I was like, well, can media bring their pens in? And she was like, oh, yeah. So then I got to keep, I have quite the stash of pins in my purse. so I was glad to not have to give those up, although they're nothing fancy. They're nothing special. But that was entertaining. There was just a table full of pens.

Isaiah, did you have to give up your pen? I had a pencil. Oh, pencil. Okay. So pens are all good. Our pencils are fine. It's pens that are the problem. Yeah, big security guard squinted at it,

and then roughly said it was all right. Not really. I didn't know anything about, like, there was no pen drama of it that I could see. that is yeah it's just very interesting a lot of pins in the room maybe there's a pen incident that prompted security to tighten

for the Houston one I heard it was this venue's policy like I don't think it was Pakistan's team okay this venue was has a policy for some reason because I know that Houston can is you know we'll be talking about crime in Houston and things like that but pens not usually

are not usually the cause of these things John Wick is just making me one over did you just say John Wick Isaiah, I was about to say John Wick. You two are just like, you don't think of like. I haven't seen those movies in forever. Does he like stop someone with a pen?

Well, no, with a pencil. There's a line where one of the mobsters that he used to work for says, I once saw him kill three men in a bar with a pencil. So that's a funny line. But speaking of actually John Wick, this is a good segue into dogs.

So Mary Elise, I believe you have. have some dog theme tweeter, is that right? Yes, and I'm not sure how clearly to express my opinion on this, so I'll just bring it up as a general topic. But it's been all over my feed, probably because I'm engaging with it a little bit, but the debate over pit bulls and whether folks should be allowed to own them or if there should be some sort of like liability insurance that's required for the owners.

So it's just Pitbulls always seem to kind of circuit like they'll kind of be forgotten about and then they kind of come back up in the news and people are fighting over it again. You know, people with Pitbull saying,

oh, my sweet baby, you never hurt anyone. And then there's some people you're talking about how their neighbor was like ripped to pieces by one. So it's always a very interesting dialogue to watch. I don't know if you all have seen that on your feeds too or is it just,

is this just mine? I've been seeing this because I believe it was actor, John, Bernthal who was talking about pit bulls. Yes. That's one of those issues that just keeps coming back over and over and over again. I will say that I did a very quick Google search because whenever this comes up, I'd always comes up like that there's breeds like golden retrievers that don't ever have this

type of news. So I just looked up golden retriever attack and pit bull attack. And the results were so different. Pit bull attacks were very typical of what you would expect and what kind of makes the news. that they're very vicious, very crazy attacks when older people or babies or, you know, just like really horrible things. And then the golden retriever runs were all about golden retrievers getting attacked and just like sad faces of these golden retrievers that were like, so and, you know, so and so, this dog is recovering after being attacked at a dog park or like, look at this,

like, little baby, you know, this puppy's response as he sees someone getting attacked. It's just like all like the cutest, most wholesome content. So there are breeds that trend certain ways. Golden Retrievers obviously are the, they kind of are the cutest, sweetest ones that are getting attacked, apparently, which that made me sad. Do you even see that? I was like, oh, I don't know like that. I don't know. You just said it was wholesome content. Well, yeah, it's wholesome about how.

The golds are sweet dogs. Yeah. It was wholesome that they were like. Ripped to shreds. No, they weren't. These weren't ripped to shreds. They, at pit bull didn't attack them. It was just like a dog attack.

And then it was like sad faces of like the dogs that were still alive or whatever. Oh. You're going to take it dark, Isaiah, as I was gone. I was just surprised. You're talking about something that sounds really sad to me. You said, this is really awesome content. Just Google it. It's like cute pictures of golden retrievers like that.

And I don't even like dogs, sorry, or golden retrievers that much, but it was very cute. No, that's fine. But Isaiah, speaking of very, very hard opinions on features of the modern world, I see you've written something that just says modern headlights. What's modern headlight? Yeah. I mean, this video just made me laugh. It's a guy comparing driving in the 90s to driving now.

And driving in the 90s, you know, like everyone's headlights are, you know, a lot more dim. And today, like, his SUV passes him and turns on its brights. And he just like is flash banged into, just like annihilated, you know. And there's definitely going to see it more. And I drive, my car is from 1991. And I do feel like there's a kind of an arms race with these headlights because. If everybody else has one, then, well, I might as well get one too. I feel like that's kind of the mentality.

But it's just ratcheted up so much. It's gotten really bad. It's got so bad. It is. It's like an arm's race. It's like you're blinded when they drive by. Yeah, and every time I go under a bridge, especially that tunnel in Dallas, where it's actually like pretty dark all the time,

then I just have to brace myself for, you know, like to be bathed in light. like the biblical Isaiah or something same vision of heaven. It's, I think like, there's just no reason for everyone to have these headlights. I just don't get it. So I'm self-defeating if everybody has them, right? Yeah.

They're supposed to help you see, but you don't really see any better if you get blinded every time somebody like turns into your field of vision. So not too good. Speaking of blinding sensory experiences, my tweetery for this week is the State Fair of Texas has announced the 15 finalists for its 2026 Big Tech's Choice Awards for State Fair of Texas food. I don't know if you all have seen this on Twitter, but there are some

pretty exciting things that some people have made here. Like, for example, a burger patty that is made into tacos or a Flamen Crunch pizza that is topped with Flamen Hot Cheetos. So in case you're like, oh, I don't want to eat flaming hot Cheetos crumbled on top of a crumble cookie. Well, instead, you can have it with a pizza. And then I'm just going to read the description for the first dessert that they have listed here. The Barry Me in Macha, it fuses a creamy cheesecake indulgence with bold Japanese-inspired flair. It is a New York cheesecake dipped in Belgian white chocolate and rolled in crushed matcha cookies, then drizzled with more white chocolate and strawberry jam that is finished with a slice of

strawberry on top. So I don't know about if anybody here has done a lot. Not a macho fan. I'm not. I'm sorry. I don't know. Just seeing some of this stuff looks pretty great. Or like, what is this?

Like one of these is a chocolate corn dog. It is a piece of chocolate like chocolate budge that is dipped in corn dog batter and deep fried and then topped with vanilla yellow icing and served with like a raspberry sauce to simulate. the ketchup and mustard. It's the most normal looking food on the entire thing. The one I would want to try is the Texas Pecan Pralene Cheesecake

Cone. So lots of cheesecake, but lots of other stuff too. I think if you ate everything that's listed on here, that would probably be somewhere in the realm of 30,000 calories. You could probably feed small village.

But yeah, I don't know. Some of this stuff looks pretty great. Like if you fast for a week in order to try it. But I don't know, I don't know about you all, but I've been to the rodeo in Houston plenty of times. And I think my favorite was probably the deep fried cheesecake. Honestly, I think deep fried cheesecake is better than deep fried Oreos. That's my belief. Oh, never had it either.

Does anybody have any favorite fair food? The big turkey leg. I was actually going to say that as well. I love the big turkey leg. D. In Washington, our biggest fair, we have scones that are really popular, the fair scones. And you can like buy the mix. And my mom would always make them.

So that was like a random, not typical fair food because they weren't, they weren't super heavy and loaded with cheesecake or something. But fried foods is wild. I remember when we were going to school at Hillsdale, we robbed it as well in a small town and going to the fair and fried butter. I did try an Oreo, but the fried butter sticks, I was disgusted and alarmed. And it's so simple and so wrong. I'm still upset about it. I cannot say that I ever tried. I never tried the fried butter.

I can't believe it. That seems like a missed opportunity. But maybe someday, maybe for the, I don't know, whenever I find my way back to that tiny town in Michigan. Problem is I no longer have a bunch of, like all my friends and I have graduated, so I don't have people who can drive me there and people on who's where I can crash and stay the night. So the next time I visit Hillsdale and I also visit during fair season and I try the fried butter, I will let the Texan know first. Report back. Report back about the fried butter. You guys can tell us what's going on in the

most important elections in the state. And I will let you know what I think about deep fried buttersticks. So, well, thank you to everybody for joining us for this week's episode of the weekly roundup. You can catch us every Friday morning at the texan. News or YouTube or wherever you get podcasts. Thank you to all of our reporters for joining us as well. And we'll catch you all next time. Thank you to everyone for listening. If you enjoy our show, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you want more of our stories, visit us at the Texan. News. Follow us on social media for the latest in Texas politics, and send any questions for our team to our mailbag by DMing us on Twitter or shooting us

an email to editor at the Texan. News. Tune in next week for another episode of our weekly roundup. God bless you and God bless Texas.