The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - August 8, 2025

Episode Date: August 8, 2025

Show off your Lone Star spirit with a free "Remember the Alamo" hat with an annual subscription to The Texan: https://thetexan.news/subscribe/The Texan’s Weekly Roundup brings you the latest news in Texas politics, breaking down the top stories of the week with our team of reporters who give you the facts so you can form your own opinion.Enjoy what you hear? Be sure to subscribe and leave a review! Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast.New Texas Congressional Map Passes House Redistricting Committee Along Party Lines After 15-Hour HearingTexas House Democrats Flee the State to Break Quorum Over Congressional MapsAbbott Threatens to Remove House Democrats from Office for Redistricting Quorum BreakTexas House Republicans Enact ‘Call of the House,’ Issue Arrest Warrants for Over 50 Quorum-Breaking DemocratsGov. Abbott Petitions Texas Supreme Court to Vacate Quorum-Breaking House Democratic Leader's SeatTexas House Democrats' Quorum Bust Presents Unprecedented Legal BattlePaxton Launches Investigation Into Beto O’Rourke Organization for Alleged Bribery of ‘Runaway’ Democratic LawmakersFBI Approves Cornyn's Request to 'Assist' Texas Law Enforcement in Locating Quorum-Breaking House DemocratsTexas Republicans, Democrats Jockey Over Narrative Surrounding Quorum-Breaking Redistricting FightTexas Senate Proceeds With Redistricting, Other Special Session Items Amid Quorum BreakTexas House Priority Fl

Good afternoon, everybody. This is the senior reporter Brad Johnson here for the Texan News Weekly Roundup podcast. I'm joined by Cameron and Mary Lease, as usual. And we have another guest in town rolled in like a tumbleweed. Matthew Stringer. Welcome. Glad to be here. Glad to have you.

As we're recording this, there is a pretty contentious Senate congressional redistricting hearing going on right now, along with an absolute food fight in the Harris County Commissioner's Court here meeting. So a lot of stuff's happening. We've got a lot to talk about, obviously, a bunch of this is going to be about redistricting because this is the topic that's taking up all of the air, all of the oxygen, and I think will be for at least another couple weeks probably. So where we're at, Cameron and I, you and I recorded two podcasts, yeah, smoke-filled room and then an emergency podcast.

after quorum broke officially well this was before officially before it officially broke on Monday but after Democrats a large chunk of them left the state to prevent quorum in the house we saw on Monday there was no quorum I think the official count of people in attendance was 93 on Tuesday they convened again to try There were some rumblings about maybe reaching quorum, some Democrats that were in the state that were out on Monday appearing. That didn't – some did come back, but not enough. I think the number we left with there was 96, so there's four – four away from quorum. You know, there very much are some Democrats still in the state who have not showed up.

Yeah. Houston area. That's the rumor, I think, hearing. It is accurate. We'll see if anything is done officially with that. Or maybe a couple of them show up on Friday. When this goes out, the House will convene at 1 p.m. to try again. That was kind of the deadline that was given to Democrats by the Speaker and Attorney General before more drastic actions are taken.

And we'll talk about that. but this thing is just you know we've talked about this before redistricting is not something most people care about know about you know talk about but it is the national story yeah and in fact it's beyond this country's borders I've been asked a couple times timing hasn't worked out yet but the Brits want to talk about it yeah yeah so like this is this is a five-alarm fire of a of a political story and it's been fun to be right smack dab in the middle of oh yeah well texas is ground zero for a lot of different things this time it's congressional redistricting we're

seeing other states react saying they're going to redraw their maps and if this really comes to fruition with texas redrawing their maps i know these other states are already drawn such way to give Democrats their super majority representation in Congress so there's not much finangling they can do there yeah but still it's it's setting a precedence for this mid-decade mid-decade redistricting and can fundamentally reshape how the Congress looks moving forward and with the bifurcation of Democrats and Republicans not just on this issue but a lot of different issues and we're seeing people migrate to these different states.

You can see states being held by these either Republicans or Democrats for longer periods in time as democratic shift around the country and these states are reshaping their congressional maps to further cement those partisan representations in Congress. So it's going to have effects for seconds to come. Yeah, open Pandora's box for it, you know, a tit for tab. that maybe doesn't end ever until we get to the next census and have to do the regular redistricting. Matt, any takeaways from this just broadly watching this unfold? Well, I think you kind of hit the nail on the head by characterizing it as a potential Pandora's box.

I have to wonder, is this going to be going down every legislative session now until the end of the decade? Or where does it end? Yeah. It's going to be interesting to see how other states, Democrat-controlled states respond. California has been kind of interesting to watch. They've been trying to counter it, but I think they're blocked by constitutional provision that they put in place. And now they're trying to try and get around that so that they can combat Texas. Matt clearly didn't listen to our Smokefield Room podcast or the Emergency Pod because we talked about that.

I have been out in the middle of nowhere in West Texas this past week. Well, you've got to be super interested in all the legal battles that are unfolding with this, where, well, I know we're going to talk about it, but the different actions taken by the governor, by the attorney general, and the Texas Supreme Court are engaged now in this tri-part legal struggle. Yeah, I loved how well. And that's all standing in contrast to what the legislature itself is doing, and where authority lies on this issue. you. Yeah, I love how last week nobody knew what a writ of quo war and toe is. And now there's like memes on Twitter X about quote war and tow. And everyone is an expert. It is an expert, exactly. And, you know, I already knew what a writ of quo war and tow is. And I was already familiar with like chapter 66 of the civil practices and remedies code. But I didn't know. You don't need to brag about

you being in law school. You know that, right? Well, I knew about this before law school. I've, I've seen it be considered in other circumstances where, especially where a public official does something that causes them to trigger a vacancy or forfeit the office and you've got to oust them, that's one of the two primary mechanisms in Texas law. There's another mechanism under the government code for local officials, but I don't think it applies to like state lawmakers, et cetera, et cetera, but I think it applies to like district attorneys and on down. It's the statute where the rogue prosecutor law is. But I didn't know all of the intricacies about it.

I did not know that, like Attorney Adam Lowy pointed out, that the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction to hear, writs of quo war and tow, and things like that. So it's been a learning experience for me. Maryleas, what's it been like for you? Well, it's been fascinating to watch. I mean, I've never really been right in the middle of something like. this before, definitely not as a reporter. But I'm so curious to see the impact that this has on future legislative battles. If this is going to be something that we see, I think maybe Matt

just said this, but something that happens frequently, if this is going to kind of turn into a common response to a really contentious piece of legislation. It's going to be another couple of years before we see a quorum break like this. But yeah, just enjoying, you know, all the chaos and learning and observing all of the legal intricacies involved in it. So interesting. Yeah, let's try and take this a bit in chronological orders. We had the quorum, the Democrats fleeing on Sunday night. Obviously, Monday there was no quorum. Tuesday, the baseline number now is like 96, so four away. We'll see where we go on Friday. But right after Democrats left, the state, the governor came out swinging pretty hard.

I'm not sure how much we talked about this in depth on our emergency pod, Cameron. But Mary Lees, you wrote a piece on the governor's threat following the flight out of state and presumptive lack of quorum. Give us the details on that. Yeah, this was a huge deal on Sunday night because it was the first response that we saw from Governor Abbott after it was confirmed that these Democratic members had left. the state. So he wrote this letter. I think it went out around 10 p.m. on Sunday evening, Sunday night. And he essentially, the main message that people took away from this was that he

was threatening to remove Texas House Democrats from their seats if they didn't return from the quorum break before the House gaveled in at 3 p.m. on Monday. So that's the following day. He said a lot of, he had a lot of strong words from this day. He said, real Texans do not run from a fight. That's exactly what most of the the Texas House Democrats just did. So this was literally hours after the House Democrats had announced they had fled to Illinois and other states prevent a vote on this map. He said that rather than doing their job and voting on urgent legislation affecting the lives

of all Texans, they have fled Texas to deprive the House of the quorum necessary to meet and conduct business. And within his letter, he said that he believed the absences are deliberate and premeditated. And he said they're not, you know, unintended or unavoidable interruptions, like a sudden illness or family emergency that are common to dismiss a lawmaker for. But he came to the conclusion then that these members have abandoned or forfeited their seats. And he pointed to a few different, or he pointed specifically to a 2021 ruling from the Office of Attorney General, not ruling, excuse me, legal opinion. And he used that to justify him being able to revoke House members. It's a very complicated legal topic, and I think we're going to be talking more about this in-depth on the podcast.

But he talked about that through, Matt mentioned this through a quo warranto action, a district court may determine that a legislator has forfeited his or her office due to abandonment, which he said he believes they have done and leaving their seats and not being present. He said, because of that, you can remove the legislator from office, thereby creating a vacancy. Um, something that Abbott didn't mention that's an aspect of the attorney general opinion is that it's non-binding and it is advisory in nature. Some folks are pointing that out. You know, the Abbott didn't mention that. Um, but he, yeah, strong words said this truancy ends now. The derelict Democrat House members must return to Texas and be in attendance when the

house reconvenes. So that was kind of our first, uh, indicator of how things were going to go down. I mean, we still haven't seen them removed from office, and we'll get more into what that timeline might look like. Yeah, and I think when we saw this threat made originally, there was a longer saving put out after, I think Monday or Tuesday night, but the pithy remark or retort from Gene Wu and House Democrats was come and take it to Abbott to his threat. So, you know, there are a lot, there's a lot of, there were a lot of other statements put out, a lot of comments made, but I think that just sums it up better than anything else. Yeah, there's, they're Stanchthon that they have the legal footing to do this corn break and flee to these other states. They both, both sides feel like they have the, the proper channels to act in the way that they are in this current instance. So I know we keep saying we're going to get in.

into it, but there's so much more to talk about, but we want to go in chronological order. Yeah, well, Cameron, I want you to, Abbott is, he's citing the legal opinion that occurred back in 21. And you and I were talking in the office earlier about the Supreme Court's ruling back in 21 on this situation and where the authority lies. whether to break quorum and to and the ability of the house to you know bring them back yeah so in that 2021 opinion they were asked a very specific question because i've seen this opinion starting to float back around and i just want to bring this up um here is it's it's asking if the um if corn if the quorum uh if the corn busing is allowed and And let me just pull it up here, because later in the opinion, in the ruling from 2021,

it talks about this two-thirds rule. And I'll just read directly from it here. It says, quote, the two-thirds quorum rule protects against legislative action taken by a smaller fraction of the body. But in the very same sentence, Article 3, Section 10, also protects against efforts by cornbreakers to shut down legislative business. Rather than impose an absolute super majoritarian check on the legislature's ability to pass legislation opposed by a minority fraction or faction, the provision ensures that the legislature can continue to do business despite efforts by a minority faction to shut it down by breaking corn. So here in this opinion, they're trying to answer the question. that is, are they allowed, I'll do, again, I'm going to go to the text here because I think it's important. It says the question now before the sport is not whether it is a good idea for the Texas

House of Representatives to arrest absent members to compel a quorum. Nor is the question whether the proposed voting legislation gives rise to this dispute is desirable. Those are political questions far outside the scope of the judicial function. The legal question before the this court concerns only whether the Texas Constitution gives the House of Representatives the authority to physically compel the attendance of absent members. We conclude that it does, and we therefore direct the district court to withdraw the TRO. So they're saying yes, you can compel these members to come back. They say, yes, you can do that through physically arresting them, right? And what? But only within Texas. But only within Texas. And I don't know if we want to get

into that now, but John Cornyn with his letter to the FBI asking for them to assist the Texas law enforcement in tracking down these Texas Democratic members who have fled to other states, and they approved that request. So why are you giving me that pace? Oh, no, I was just, it was just the way it looks. That's just the way I look. It was more so me listening to thinking about it rather than... Oh, okay. I thought you were giving me a look like, what? No, well, the FBI, so they have national jurisdiction.

They can cross state lines. And Texas law enforcement cannot. Sure, but you have to have a reason to arrest somebody. And the problem is, is that a... Well, so that's what we can get into. That's what we're seeing with... Let's put a pin in that. We'll come back to that, because that's going to open up a whole other can of worms.

Yeah, this is going to be a fun discussion, too. So, yes. So on Monday, or Sunday night, that happens. I haven't mixed the threat. Monday, Sunday evening they do that. Monday they convene. Obviously, no quorum. The House Speaker gives a speech from the dais,

and it was quite firm, and you can tell you, it's pretty angry, you know. He's pissed off about this. He said, quote, those who answered the call honored their oath and came here ready to work for the people of Texas. Your presence speaks volumes. You understand that the issues before us, disaster recovery, fighting for the families who lost loved ones in floods, human trafficking and more, are not abstract policy debates. They are real world problems demanding immediate solutions. He echoed that sentiment in the press conference that followed, of course, after no quorum was present,

a call of the house was issued, which is a mechanism in the rules and the Constitution, I believe, that allows the speaker to set forth the sergeant-at-arms to go and bring members back who are breaking quorum. So they did that. And then a motion was approved to issue civil arrest warrants in that past. And I think it was 57 were signed. So they set those out. There's a lot of talk about how far can this extent.

It's quite obvious that these civil arrest warrants do not extend beyond state lines. And it's pretty clear that DPS, and the speaker has said it specifically in the press conference, that DPS cannot go beyond state lines to enforce this. And so that's where we get into the more creative side of things. I'll throw it to you on the corner of the thing after this that, you know, Mitch Little asked from the back mic, I believe, on Tuesday, parliamentary inquiry about whether House General Investigating Committee can meet. House GI can issue subpoenas. And then violating a subpoena is, what is it, Class A misdemeanor man?

I thought it was a class B misdemeanor. I might be wrong. But it's a criminal offense, which takes this from just purely a House rules internal legislative dispute to criminal, which then can extend beyond state lines. And that nothing has happened with GI yet that we know of. But that's what Little was getting at, that if we open this door, we can compel them to come back here and open the door for extradition from another state. triggers Article 4, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution. And then when they go and testify, when they go before the House GI Committee, they can then be brought by the Sergeant in Arms to the floor.

So, or maybe even before them, you know, it's, that's the strategy that's trying to be laid out. Nothing has happened on that end yet, and that may be why we've seen other avenues explored. So, Cameron, tell us about the Cornyn FBI request and where that stands at the moment. He made the request and it was approved. And so we don't have any more information on whether that's just intelligence gathering or if it's going to be agents on the ground. We just don't know yet. Well, we know it's been approved. So if that, that can lead to greater expansive authority in this instance where since the FBI can operate nationally across state lines, Texas TPS has to say.

to the state, this gives a broader authority, greater authority to, you know, identify where these members are and then bring them back. And I think we saw the president state that they may need to get involved. Yes, and that's, you know, it's about, that's about as encouraging as he's going to be without saying yes, do it, right? So they're still, I'm sure, trying to figure out how they're going to approach this at that level, if at all, right? Maybe they don't. What if you run into a problem with federal agents trying to arrest, you know, Texas Democrats in Chicago and state police are preventing that from happening? That would be wild, absolutely wild, because Governor Prisker said he's going to do everything he can to protect them in Illinois.

Yeah, well, I'll read directly from what Pritzker said. He said, they can say they're sending the FBI, FBI agents might show up, I don't know, put a show on. But the fact is, our local law enforcement protects everybody in the state of Illinois. Our state troopers protect anybody in Illinois and anybody who's here in Illinois. And so whether it's federal agents coming to Illinois or state rangers from Texas, if you had him broken federal law, you're basically unwellcome. There we go. I mean, he can talk about all it wants to, but if you have a criminal warrant, like at the end of the day, if the FBI isn't arresting him for obstruction of,

of serving a warrant, then they're going to go to a court and they're going to get a judge and the judge is going to say, get out of the way or you're going to go to jail. I mean, at the end of the day, if they get that criminal warrant, they're coming back to Texas. Yes. Maybe he's talking more about if there's no criminal warrant. Oh, yeah. Yeah, sure. Regardless, this has opened the door for, I don't like using the word unprecedented much because it is overused, but I think it's fair here, an unprecedented legal battle. Not just between red state and blue state, but within the state between officials.

So I'm going to lay out the Abbott petition, and then I'm going to let you guys, you two, talk about the fight and the bickering between two of the state's top Republican officials. So governor had petitioned the Supreme Court. He had floated previously about vacating seats, and he filed the quo warranto motion with a petition with the Supreme Court. The most famous writ there is in the world now. asking the Texas Supreme Court to declare, I think, right? Correct me if I'm wrong in the wording, but to declare Gene Wu, House Democratic Caucus chairman, Gene Wu's seat vacant,

which would then trigger a special election for the governor to set. But the more important thing is it would drop quorum, the quorum requirement. Yes. And one person, one seat being vacant, does that drop it to 99? Let's see, I'm not sure on the calculation, but two divided by three times 149. No, not quite. So if you drop two, the quorum number would drop to 99. But he's clearly testing the waters here because he's making a novel legal theory.

And he is, he's, he's. He's just livid, first of all, like, that's clear. Everybody's pissed off right now on both sides of this. But he's testing the waters on this. And it sparked a clash between him and Attorney General Ken Paxton. So Cameron, lay it out, and Matt, I'm sure you'll have a lot to talk about with this. Well, going to the siding of the Ken Paxton opinion, that what lays out determining the abandonment of office? Right? There's a number of things, death, resignation, removal, acceptance of another office, a number of other things.

Later in the opinion, it goes on to say, quote, we find no constitutional provision or statute establishing an exhaustive list for why a vacancy occurs or the grounds under which an officer may be judicially removed from office. So that leaves the door open here for a novel argument. Yeah. I have that right. So we then see the petition filed like you laid out. But what was happening alongside this was people were wondering what is the legal grounds because there were allegations of bribery or influence to compel these lawmakers to break corn. Well, we saw the Texas Tribune had published a story that said former US rep Beto O'Rourt and his Democratic political action committee, powered by people, had aided monetarily in supporting the Texas House Democrats' quorum breaking efforts, which then prompted a response from Paxton to launch an investigation into possible bribery.

So that is sort of hinting at, okay, they had some influence or alleged bribery for the quorum breaking. And I don't know if you want to get into the differences in how Abbott approached this with his petition directly to the Texas Supreme Court versus Paxton's approach, where there's these two different actions they were taking. One being, let me. me see you if I have let me pull it up in front of me here I'm sorry there's just

a lot here I just didn't have it pulled up directly one being what was it section 22 and the other one being section 22 the government code and the provision in the Texas Constitution is what Abbott is relying on as one allowing him the ability to file the petition and then originate it before the Texas Supreme Court. And then Paxton is citing Chapter 66 of the Texas Civil Practices and Remedies Code. And there's some very interesting interplay between these statutes and this argument that we're seeing here. Yeah, so Abbott's arguing longstanding SCOX Supreme Court of Texas President allows his

office to seek a writ of quo warranto before the full Supreme Court under its original jurisdiction which you have said already citing the court's recent enunciation house decision in support of this position you want to just give a brief summary of what that foundation and the annunciation house decision yeah the enunciation house decision was where the attorney general was seeking a forfeiture of a non-profit charter using a writ of cool warrant tow and they were arguing that because another statute tasked the secretary of state with overseeing nonprofits that that was the entity that should have originated it. And then because it wasn't common law going way, way, way back has all kinds of different

flavors, I'll say, of quo war and toe. And because that particular type wasn't outlined in Chapter 66, they were saying that by statute, you're overriding the common law and specifying which one can be used. And so the court was resolving two different issues. can file a quo warranto and whether or not by law, the legislature narrowed down what types of quote warranto proceedings can be filed. And so Abbott's citing that, meaning through that decision, allows the governor to file the quo warrant code because Paxton came out saying that he wanted the Supreme Court of Texas to not dismiss the governor's petition until Friday's

deadline passes so the Attorney General can be heard on these matters because he was taking a slightly different angle to this through Chapter 66 of the civil practices around these code. Is that correct? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So it's kind of funny. Where in the Attorney General's position, he is the one that needs to file the

call warrant tow as opposed to the governor. Yeah. So what Chapter 66 says is that the Attorney General, a county or a district attorney, may file for a critical war in tow under spells out different circumstances such as when a public official does something to forfeit their office or to revoke a non-profit status or corporation, et cetera, et cetera. And it spells it out and then it talks about filing these petitions within state district courts, which is the top trial court in the state. What Abbott cites is Chapter 22 of the government code, which talks about the Texas Supreme Court and it having original jurisdiction

to hear a petition for quo warranto, a discretionary, it has discretionary jurisdiction to hear a petition for quo warranto. And Abbott's arguing that because the Constitution and the government code allows the Texas Supreme Court to hear it, so you don't have to start at the trial court and appeal up. They can start there, end's there. that by doing that, they meant to open it up and not constrain who may originate the petition, whereas with Chapter 66, petitions that are started at the district court have to be started by the AG, a county attorney, or district attorney with jurisdiction. Yeah, but this dispute between this kind of alleged dispute, say between the attorney oh it's a dispute and the government i don't want to say it's a dispute

because they ultimately are trying to work out to the same conclusion right um it could be resolved by just having our um can pacts and sign on to the petition that abbott followed right i'm sure a lot of those justices are are hoping it becomes moot and there's actually a great example uh one of our So I went down the rabbit hole on all these cases, reading all the opinions. And there's a Texas Supreme Court in one of its recent holdings. It referenced the last time they considered a quo warranto petition under its original jurisdiction, and it was in 1996. And the case is interesting because what happened there was a state appellate judge sent a letter to the governor informing the governor that they intended to. resign in order to run for another judge ship and then the governor wanted to

appoint somebody to fill that vacancy but whenever they went to fill the vacancy the judge said like I said I'm gonna resign but I didn't say when and I'm not done yet and so the governor's general counsel along with the Attorney General at the time went to the Texas Supreme Court and filed a petition for Quo warranto asking the court to declare the seat vacant because of the resignation and the court said no they they he still has the office and so we decline the writ and so it's kind of interesting because who may originate it didn't come up but the attorney general was signed on as one of the attorneys in the case along with the governors

and then another little fun fact is on the court at the time deciding this didn't write the didn't write the ruling but on the court was then justice john cornon wow i feel like i uh just woke up and a pool of vomit from your docket just legalese you have such a beautiful beautifully descriptive words brad and i think going back to um what you asked me about um what this 2021 decision that the Supreme Court says quorum busting is allowed like if the if they don't have a quorum that's okay Abbott acknowledges that in his petition from his petition here he says legislators are elected to represent their constituents in texas by camera legislature while the governor calls a special session our constitution provides that the legislature shall meet

showing up to conduct legislative business is not cast by the constitution as optional instead by using the word shall the constitution imposes a mandate while the constitution does anticipate an ability to make an inability to make a quorum it does not suggest that an intentional lack of quorum by fleeking out of state can be used to violate the constitutional mandate that legislators shall meet so It's this question of the intentional lack of quorum by fleeing out of the state, right? Where in the 2021 opinion, it's saying that's okay, but there are constitutional questions about why that quorum has not been met. So they're going to have to answer by intentionally fleeing. And then we have these reports in an investigation launched about the influence of quorum breaking. breaking, there's all these different questions that the Supreme Court has to answer within this one petition here. Does that result in then determining that because there was influence to quorum break that constitutes the abandonment resulting then in a vacancy of a seat, that's yet to be seen. That's what we're waiting on.

So let's pull this back out from underneath the umbrella of Blackstone's Law Guide and get back to more like the, what's this mean in reality? How's this playing out politically? I actually just, Rob posted in Slack and said that the committee hearing just got a bit more contentious because Dan Chandler, who is right-wing activist who's in the chamber a lot. He's got the Confederate flags on his wheelchair. Oh, yeah. He's testifying. Some woman, obviously on the other side of this, kicked a chair at him. Oh.

Because he said, I hope that the committee redistricts to take power away from her who testified. She testified before him. So, like, this is, this leads me into the point about this entire thing is framed. everyone, they're just angry at each other on all sides of this. You know, politically, both sides are trying to win the narrative fight, and it's kind of a Mexican standoff where you have, Democrats were on the front foot with the narrative early on, before there was a map, and even before the map passed. Republicans were sitting there and just taking rhetorical bludgeoning over and over and

over again from witnesses, from Democratic colleagues. But as soon as Democrats flood the state, that gives Republicans a much better talking point that they're leaving their job. They're getting out of town because they know they're going to lose and calling them sore losers, things like that. It's now we're at the point where you have the two bases, political bases, of the two parties, really ramping up the rhetoric and pushing their elected officials to take decisive action one way or the other. So you have Abbott threatening to vacate seats. You have his senior advisor, Dave Carney, is hosting a campaign like boot camp for candidates

to run against these Democrats in special elections of vacated seats. that's there's not even if you get people to run against them those members if they run for their own seat will probably win but what they're trying to do is get a Republican challenger for every one of these seats because that mona that takes up time and effort and money from these members so that's playing that's playing out you have the Paxton threat, if by 1 p.m. today, today being the day that is going out Friday, then he's going to file these lawsuits. Then in the media, you have all the members going back and forth about, you know, should these members actually be handcuffed and brought back to the state?

Well, if that happens, that makes Democrats a lot more sympathetic than they are right now. But if you sit on your laurels as House, as, you know, the Speaker, House leadership, you're going to get criticized from your right for not doing anything. So it's like, danged if you do, danged if you don't. What do you do? And meanwhile, this corn break cannot last forever. If Republicans want to wait them out, they can and they will win. They will get the map passed.

Who knows what happens in other states? But they have the power to do that if they want. It's just question whether they have the patience. And maybe that's not the right, the best course of action. Maybe it is going forward in trying to vacate seats and open that door. But this is the internal struggle going on. Then you have Democrats, you know, how long do we wait this out? Do we wait for it to sour like in 2021 when it did?

Or do we head back, declare victory, and then try and win this in court? all this stuff is being talked about and considered behind the scenes and who knows how they how it plays out but from the beginning till the end whenever the end is this thing is imbued all the way through with politics the topic is politics pure politics the debates are about politics the motivations are politics we see Cornyn and Paxton fighting each other over this and whether they're being, Cornyn's putting out press releases saying Paxton's not doing anything.

Paxton's hitting back at him. Saying it's a state issue. Yeah, yeah. Like this is just all, I'm getting, I'm ODing on politics. Yeah. Injected in my veins. And so.

With the narrative battle, I think it's really interesting because they're each wing, what is going to be the fallout based on what sort of action is taken right because they're looking forward to midterm elections and they want to get support for their candidates and so that is are they going to gain support by images coming out of Democrats being arrested brought back to the state are Republicans going to get support for that or are they going to lose support. If they wait them out, are they going to get support for that or are they going to lose

support for that? And it all comes down to what is the narrative fallout going to be. And I don't think we know because things have been so polarized within our politics. It seems like only the extremes opinions are what we see. But there is a middle to this which normally decides elections. Do they decide midterm elections or do they only decide general elections? presidential elections right because we know the voter turnout between presidential elections is much lower yeah and it's usually only the base of support of people that the the partisan Republicans or partisan Democrat voters that come out for those midterm elections so does that play into the calculus

as well so there's lots of different factors yeah go into this Mary Lisa, I'm going to come to you on a story you wrote. One of the last top things we'll talk about with the redistricting here, although it is affecting everything. So Attorney General Paxton announced an investigation into, you know, a potential funder of the cornbread. Karen mentioned it earlier, Beto O'Rourke's powered by People PAC. Give us the details of what Paxton said about this investigation he's launching. Well, Cameron kind of beat me to the chase here, but this is an investigation that was announced by Attorney General Ken Paxton just yesterday afternoon. Well, Wednesday afternoon, we're recording this on a Thursday.

So he announced via press release that he would be launching an investigation into Beto O'Rourke's organization. It's called Powered by People. And we don't have a whole lot of details yet on, you know, the numbers behind some of the, this, but he is alleging that public reports have indicated that they're one of the top funders of this quorum bust, you know, whether that looks like paying for travel or lodging, but in general just assisting the Texas Democratic members who have broken quorum. And so he's saying that they have potentially violated bribery laws. And he said, you know, maybe the lawmakers have violated bribery laws, but power by people may have also, he said, any Democrat coward,

this is Paxton's words, any Democrat coward breaking the law by taking a Beto bribe will be held accountable. Texas cannot be bought. And so this is, you know, this happened on Wednesday afternoon. We don't have any other information on the investigation, but of course this is kind of a huge development here to see kind of coming out whose money is going into this and then also just this aspect of what laws have been broken and how much of this is I mean it's also interesting to see that this is Beethoven's organization too it's kind of a name thrown in there well and yeah he he betto replied to this investigation announcement and said quote the guy impeached for bribery is going after the folks trying to stop the theft

to five congressional seats. No comment, though, on the end. On the way. On the allegation. Yeah, no. No denial there, right? Yeah. I mean, he has said he was going to assist with the quorum break.

Maybe we'll find out financials. Well, we saw the, I came across a story from the Washington Free Beacon that went into the private chartered fly, 76 seats. private jet. They estimated it could cost up a $30,000. So we're talking a big chunk of change here to fly out of the state. And there was also an interesting comment from Representative Jasmine Crockett because there's these potential loopholes with the special session. Because during a regular session, Texas lawmakers can't accept political donations but they can during a special session yeah and

representative Jasmine Procky made this suggestion that they could actually accept political donations and record it as income essentially as another salary so as to skirt some of these campaign finance laws because within the Texas House rules they're being fined what is it five hundred dollars $500 a day $500 a day and they're on the hook for paying the fees

to send DPS out essentially and so this is going to cost a lot of money that they can't in the rules they can't use political donations from their campaign finance fund

to pay for those costs incurred so they have to pay it out of their personal finances so this is why these comments are interesting because if they're skirting campaign finance laws by getting political donations marking them as income and then how are they paying for

everything that's occurring right now and everything that's going to come as a cost after the quorum break issue is resolved there's a lot of money here where is it coming from yeah how is it being recorded how is it going to be reported yeah so there's so much here Well, in making the bribery accusations, Republicans are alleging that Democrats are being paid to break quorum. They're being paid in order for them after the fact of them getting paid to break quorum. But the question is, are they getting paid as, you know, ex post facto to get paid to finance the cost of quorum breaking? like, is it coming after the fact, or is it coming as a prerequisite to it?

Yeah. So, I mean, that's a legal fight they're going to have to make there. I did some reading last night. Okay. I read the bribery statute on Penal Code. There's one subsection that I think is there probably one that they're going to lean on, and that's 3602, subsection 3, which is any benefit as consideration for a violation of a duty imposed by law on a public servant or party official.

And what you were talking about earlier with Abbott really drilling down on the Texas Constitution saying, you know, you shall attend. I'm expecting they're going to be coming up with an argument that that's a duty imposed by law. But we'll see. Yeah, there's a lot of time for this to play out. And then, you know, maybe with at least some of this, if there is a corner store, that makes it all a good chunk of it moot. So who knows how this legal stuff ends up playing out.

Mary Lease, while this is happening, the Senate's moving forward with its own agenda and with its own map right now, which is the same map as the one the House passed. Briefly tell us what the Senate has been up to while the House is at the standstill. Well, like you said, as we're reporting, they're having their contentious hearing. But, yeah, the Texas Senate is interesting because, you know, all of our focus right now is on the Texas House, right? The quorum break. But the Texas Senate is really moving full steam ahead. They're getting things done. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick went on Fox News on Tuesday night, and he said this, here's the truth. I still have quorum in the

Texas Senate, and we will pass out the redistricting map next week. That's our legal right. That's what we're going to do, because we're now in this fight, not just for Texas, but I think for taking the country back everywhere. And something interesting that the Senate is dealing with is that hasn't affected them yet, but they do have a handful of senators that have left the state. And we saw there was a press conference. I believe it was in Boston on Wednesday that were commemorating the anniversary of the Voting Rights Act. There were some of the senators that were there. You could see through the remote press conference was Senator Molly Cook. Boris Miles, Nathan Johnson, Sarah Eckhart, Carol Avarado, and a few others.

It was kind of difficult to make out everybody's faces in this remote recording, but a couple of senators are not present. And, you know, similar to the House, the Senate does need two-thirds of its membership to be present so that they can have a quorum, which is 20 since the upper-chanderer has 30 senators. So that was kind of addressed. when the Senate was gaveled in on Wednesday, kind of back and forth there between Senator Giuse Zafarini and then Patrick kind of going back and forth and she was asking these questions.

It seemed most likely for the benefit of those watching or for those on the floor to explain what constitutes an excusable absence for members, what does it look like when we're recording votes, and what number of members do we need to have here to have quorum? So there was multiple pieces of legislation that were taken up, and one that we wrote a piece about. They had a hearing, a Senate State Affairs Committee hearing on Monday, I believe. And so this was Senate Bill 7 by Senator Mayes Milton.

And it's also known as the bathroom bill, and it's the bill that separates private spaces by biological sex. But this is one bill that was taken up on the Senate floor on Wednesday, and it was successfully passed. So pretty controversial bill there that's made a lot of headlines and the Senate is marching straight on forward passing this legislation. There were other pieces that they got through as well. So yeah, Patrick is showing no signs of slowing down. And I'm curious to see if it's going to continue this way. I mean, we've got the hearing that's going on right now.

Yeah, and I think there. they're moving forward in case the House does get a, you know, a quorum. That way, you know, they're not wasting any more time, waiting for redistricting to be done. They're getting all the stuff over to the House in their court to deal with if and when a quorum is restored. Another bill that passed the Senate was Senator Benton Courts, SB 9, I think it is, which is lowering the voter approval rate. for cities and counties from three and a half percent down to two and a half percent in line with what ISDs have. So that is a, that's a very notable property tax reform.

Senator Benton court told me that if and when the House gets a quorum, Morgan Myers, Representative Morgan Meyer is going to move that bill, same, with no, no changes, just move that bill itself. So we'll see on that end where that goes. but, Matt, let's come to you on something different. You spent some time in Kerrville this week, saw some horrific sites, and obviously you have, I think we mentioned before in the pod, your brother lives in Kerrville, so you have family ties there. Tell us a bit about what you saw in this place that's been so destroyed by the flood.

Sure. So this past week was my first time back. since the flood so it was actually my first time seeing it in person and it's you know I want to say about five years ago was the last time I saw I was I was there and I actually saw pretty significant what I thought was a significant flood the the scale and and intensity of the destruction was anything that I could even imagine before getting there. You know, as you drive along the river from all the way from center point up to through Curville to Ingram and Hunt, you know, you can still see these giant, you know,

century-old or older cypress trees that filled the river bottom, you know, many feet in diameter that are either bent over at 90 degrees or snap-like twigs or some of them you can see they've got like this worn ringed effect around them where you can see where the water topped out at because everything below like shaved the tree down you know pulled all the bark of it off and and made the the circumference of it smaller from that point down clothing still and other debris still in the tops of these very tall trees. Enormous amount of dirt and rock mood. Vehicles smashed like pancakes.

Probably one of the most just... The last time I had this feeling, I helped fight what was called the Rock House Fire out in West Texas, and this has been over a decade ago, but it was this fire that broke out in Marfa and burned like several hundred thousand acres, and I fought it all night long, just volunteering, and the next day, whenever the sun broke,

you know, it was just black and charcoal, 360 degrees, and it was like this, you know, it is this very strange feeling that you got being out in the middle of all that. It was surreal, and it was a similar feeling driving the river road from Ingram up to hunt. Man, it's difficult to put words to it, but your heart just breaks, you know, as you see how wide, how deep and how intense the floodwaters had to be to destroy houses pretty far away from the river bottom. but man the sense that you get when you're in around the corner and see Camp Mystic is just

your heart just breaks and your stomach knots up there's a lot of hustle and bustle the roadway is very busy right now as a matter of fact DPS has a checkpoint on it where they're trying to keep sightseers and that sort of thing down because there's enormous piles of debris that people with heavy machinery or they're trying to sort out all the busted tree limbs, the twisted up metal, the cars and everything like that, and there's, you know, constant, you know, stream of 18-wheelers or trucks, dump truck sort of trucks coming in and out being loaded up, trying to clear the debris out. You know, it's going to be months of constant work to get things somewhat looking normal again and it's it was interesting talking to a local you know here a month

after whenever I went through it it looked like you know a war zone just absolute devastation and they said oh it actually looks a lot better already so I can't imagine what it looked like weeks ago yeah but you know people's spirits are high you know it means a lot to the community that, you know, so many people from all over the state, all over the country, all over the world. There were people, there were first responders that came all the way from the Czech Republic, from Mexico, that helped dive into the search and rescue and eventual search and recovery efforts. You know, there's been a tremendous outpouring of charity and support, helping recovery efforts, helping everybody the flood victims.

As a matter of fact, that's something I'm still working on, is monitoring all the charity and post-disaster recovery assistance. And that's something that we're going to have to monitor and stay updated on for the months. But this is, it's going to take a long time to heal, to heal. You know, what that community experienced is just absolutely. unimaginable. Yeah, absolutely. We'll look forward to a couple of pieces you have to write related to that in the next week or so. Cameron, quickly run through us, run through with us. The bills filed in the House. We've seen the priority bills filed in the House, but not the Senate yet. What are legislators proposing off the bat here? You know, obviously stipulated.

We don't even know if it's going to, if this session's special. sessions killed and we have to go to a second yeah so we saw a number of bills be taken up in this newslet committee to address disaster preparedness and club response one being HB1 which is going to create a rapid response team and in an effort to work with regional advisory councils to help with the emergency management system that's in place it's also shoring up these coordinators that are in charge of these emergency management teams by designated certain tiered system for a number of hours completed of training.

That was a big thing that was talked about during the committee hearings. People can go check out our coverage on that because there was committee hearings that, one of them actually in Kerrville, where you could hear from the residents there just pouring their hearts out the devastation and loss of life. that had occurred in the area, heart-wrenching stories. HB2 was another bill that's going to create the interoperability council. And it's going to essentially create a more consolidated strategic plan for addressing these natural disasters.

Again, another one of those things that was brought up during the committee hearings about issues with the current sort of patchwork system that's more bottom up, Rather, this is going to create a more top-down, integrated system. Again, issues that were brought up during the committee hearings. We also saw HB18, which is going to improve the 911 system, and also work on creating greater early warning systems, improve those. Then there was HB19 that's going to help create a flood disaster plan for campgrounds. And then also HB20, that's going to create protections for charitable solicitations in response to natural disasters. So these bills really pertaining to the concerns that were brought up during the committee hearing,

very pointed in that way, because there is no quorum and some of the rules that are going on, everything was up pending. Yeah. And so we'll see what happens. Yeah. Obviously, what likelihood is that this gets postponed. hunted to the next special session, if Democrats do last, outlast, this first one. Both sides are pointing to this, the flooding stuff as using that to jab the other side. You know, Democrats at first were hitting Republicans for using the flooding stuff as leverage to keep them in town so they could pass redistricting first, which is how it was set up, of course.

And then Republicans are hitting back at Democrats now for after having broken quorum for preventing the passage of these flooding responses because there is no quorum, no business can be done. So thank you, Cameron. Matt, really quickly, because we've got to get to tweeterie. You have a, give us a preview of a story that we're going to publish, I think, on Monday morning. Sure. So this is a story about a ongoing lawsuit. out of Odessa, that, well, it's hard to, it's hard to stay on track with just the facts in the lawsuit because the more you look into the story, it branches off into different directions. And it's just, we don't have time for going down, wandering paths, Matt. It says quickly it goes in all these different directions.

It goes in all these different directions. And I love chasing out the different direction. Give us a brief, vague summary. of what this is. So there is a nonprofit in Odessa that originated out of Odessa that is for oil and gas workers called the Oil and Gas Workers Association. And in a very short amount of time within the past few years, it has gone from being a relatively small, unknown nonprofit to now having a huge national presence on the political stage from the Texas legislature, with lawmakers inviting its founder to give expert testimony to all the way to the White

House, with Donald Trump touting its support. The interesting thing is, is that the founder and the nonprofit is embattled in a defamation lawsuit, where a former board member alleges that the founder retaliated against him after he called out, well, after he left the board expressing concerns over mismanagement and claims over the membership numbers, which propelled it into national prominence. In turn, the founder filed a counter-lawsuit against this former board member for a staggering $50 million, alleging a battery of course. claims. The petition itself is an entertaining read, and ultimately a judge just recently granted the former board member's motion to dismiss this counter lawsuit under the Texas

Citizens Participation Act, which is the state's anti-SLAPP law. So now the head of this organization and the nonprofit itself are liable for attorney's fees, and I believe they'll be doing a motion for sanctions over the abusive counter-lawsuit. Now, there are also numerous other counter-third-party petitions that have been filed in the suit, dragging other defendants into it, alleging all kinds of wild things. Once again, it's a wild story.

It involves politics from the Texas legislature to the White House and just the background on how this nonprofit came about. the background on the founder of it, it's an interesting story. Yeah, and it involves a sitting congressman and potential, loosely involves, I should say, a sitting congressman and potential U.S. Senate candidate. So on Monday, watch for this and give it a read. Absolutely. Thank you, Matt.

All right, let's go to Tweetere. Matt, since you're the guest today, you go first. Well, I love to report on second amendment issues, and I noticed this morning that the U.S. Sixth Circuit upheld the federal regulations on machine guns, while the Sixth Circuit acknowledged that they are arms that are generally protected by the Second Amendment. They also said that it's within the nation's tradition to regulate machine guns as dangerous and unusual weapons, which I thought was interesting because there's actually a ruling out of a federal District Court in Mississippi that held that machine guns are actually protected by the Second

Amendment and dismissed a possession charge by a felon. I have not heard whether or not that case was appealed, but if it is, it'll go to the U.S. Fifth Circuit, which includes Texas, and that could result in a split, and you could end up seeing that potentially be resolved again by the Supreme court. But to follow up on that, there's another interesting novel. While machine gun regulations in the NFA have generally been upheld as an exercise of Congress's taxing powers, in the big, beautiful bill, they zeroed out the tax, the $200 tax on suppressors and short bow rifles and shotguns. So there's a coalition of gun rights groups that they either just filed or about to file a lawsuit challenging the NFA regulations on those particular items, because if you don't levy a tax,

then you can't have the regulations as part of the tax, or that's as the argument goes. So a lot of interesting jurisprudence coming about in the near future on Second Amendment issues. There you go. Cam, over to you. New York Times story is by Twittery, where they did profile. on Gene Wu where they say he's a self-described wallflower which is not what I would have characterized Gene Wu he seems like one of the more energetic members if anything he's always on the mic he's at the front of press

conferences he is one of the what he's the opposite of the wallflower in my But in this, you were going to say something? I'd never heard this expression before, so I had to Google it in the definition as a person who has no one to dance with or who feels shy, awkward, or excluded at a party. Well, later in the piece here, it says Mr. Wu might seem like an unlikely person to leave that fight. They're talking about this foreign break. He immigrated to the United States from China with parents as a young child and said he grew up a shy, nerdy kid who rarely received attention. Now, in his seventh term in office, Mr. Wu said, He's so cringed when people will call him honorable or representative.

When left alone, he enjoys pinkering with serios, gardening, or spending time with his two young sons. I don't know. Gene Wu seems like the face, really, of a lot of the Democrats' actions in the past, at least since I've been paying attention to Texas politics. Well, he is because he's the chair of the House Democratic Caucus, and you kind of have to be active. in that role. Now he has frequently, even before he was in that position, gone up to the back mic and lot of questions or spoken against things on the front mic. That is very much in his lane as a legislator that he has created for himself. I will say, though, he doesn't look particularly comfortable whenever he's on camera doing this, giving these speeches. He just fine

enough. He delivers the lines. But it's clear it just doesn't come naturally to him, which is fine. I don't think it would come naturally to me if I was in that position either. But he's kind of been thrust into this because inside politics, political baseball, a lot of people were really unhappy with Trey Martinez-Fisher and how he ran the House Democratic Caucus. People, before that, they wanted Chris Turner out because Democrats didn't have a good election in, I think, 2020. So they went to TMF. Well, TMF outgrew as welcome there from at least a large enough contingent of the members to boot him out. And they elected Gene Wu as kind of like a, well, we don't want anybody else that's running for this.

So we'll go with Representative Wu. And so, you know, there's a lot of members who've soured on him. too as leader of the House Democratic. Now, right now, they're all generally singing from the same tune, although Mary Elise is about to talk about something that diverts from that. But Wu has been the face and is the face and is going to be the face of this quorum break. For the time being, and Governor Abbott is making him in his mind an example. So Mary Elise, let's go to you now on your tweeterie.

yeah this is a video on x that was posted by representative anna maria rodriguez and um it was a collaboration um with representative christia morales um yes i forgot to say it ramos thank you um so they had this kind of sit down conversation um it's called keeping it real the quorum break day two um and they just have this very candid conversation about the quorum break and about other Democratic members who have chosen to come to the floor and not break quorum

and they have some strong words for them. They're specifically saying that there are Latino men that are going to the floor and they as Latino women are holding the line out of state. So it was interesting because for the most part you see a lot of unity

at least for the most part you see unity between the party, right? Like we're supporting you. the folks that have shown up on the House floor have largely been supportive of those who left the state, saying, this is me just choosing to do this, fight in my own way, but I respect their decision. They're fighting in the way they see fit. So this is fascinating to see them really unabashedly saying, criticizing their fellow colleagues who have chosen to stay behind.

Those Democrats who are on the, who have been on the floor are Terry Canales, Oscar Longoria, Mando Martinez, Joe Moody, Sergio Munoz, Richard Raymond, Phil Cortez, and Eddie Morales. Of note, they're all Hispanics, but also a lot of them are, their districts are on or near the border, and a good number of them are in Trump districts. So it's obviously a lot of different politics for them in their district than, say, Annamaria Ramos, who is in Dallas and very heavily Democratic. district there. So everyone's navigating different political lines. Well, talk about the fight over the narrative. I don't feel like calling out your fellow Democrats for your fellow Democrats that

are staying behind. Maybe you could like, you know, take it behind the scenes and be you're upset with it and don't say it publicly, but. Well, I get. Yeah, it's definitely an interesting approach. Yeah. I guess we're kind of at the point of the quorum break where people are starting to turn on each other. We'll see if that happens more with Republicans. We see Brian Harrison already from the outset hammering House leadership for, you know, quote, letting Democrats leave last week on Wednesday without, you know, not doing a call to the House then, although call the House, there has to be no courtroom prison, I think, to trigger a call of the House. I don't know. I'm pretty sure that's the case. But that doesn't mean you can't, I get, I don't know.

the doors I don't know so yeah maybe we start to see more nurse frayed and more internal fighting I'm gonna end this on this this is going to be seen as pandering but I promise I am not just pandering because I cracked up when I saw this three several days our loyal listener and tweeterie greater. He tweeted out

last night. A press release. Anonymous Twitter account three several days. Files

quo warranto petition with Texas Supreme Court seeking removal of Jerry Jones as Dallas

Cowboys owner. Let's see. We tried patience, we tried to hope, we tried that

this a legal him there. And let's see, another section label of the petition labeled Requested Relief simply reads GTFO. This went in the boys' chat, and first of all, most of them are Cowboys fans, so they were loving this. And they hate Jerry Jones. The amount of rants I've heard over at the bar about Jerry Jones is just insane.

You know, I'm not a Cowboys fan. Frankly, I'm not too fond of the Cowboys. as I'm a Lions fan, but, you know, over the years, I have developed a healthy disdain for Jerry Jones as well. It's kind of like absorbed into me by osmosis. Well, you know, we did have a Dallas Cowboys reference, actually during the bathroom bill hearing.

I don't know if y'all were watching that, but we did have one witness give a testimony was Alex Stein came in and gave, a hearing that caused a lot of anger, a lot of shouting, and apparently reportedly some tears. But he did make some comments about the Dallas Cowboys that I'll let our listeners go back and look for. Yeah, so two thumbs up for that, Zeves.

That was just, that might be your best work yet. My favorite line in it is, as of now, the filing appears to be a pointless expression of frustration by a disturbed segment of the Cowboys fan base, I'll be at one to deliver to the lens of legal process All right, and with that we've gone way over time

Jaden is going to be very furious with us, but thank you all for listening, and I'm sure we'll have a lot more to talk about next week. Thank you to everyone for listening. If you enjoy our show, rate and review us on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

And if you want more of our stories, subscribe to the Texan at the Texan. News. Follow us on social media for the latest in Texas politics and send any questions for our team to our mailbag by DMing us on Twitter or shooting us an email to editor at the Texan. News. Tune in next week for another episode of our weekly roundup. God bless you and God bless Texas.