The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - December 1, 2023

Episode Date: December 1, 2023

Show off your Lone Star spirit with a free Gonzales Flag t-shirt with an annual subscription to The Texan: https://thetexan.news/subscribe/The Texan’s Weekly Roundup brings you the latest news in Texas politics, breaking down the top stories of the week with our team of reporters who give you the facts so you can form your own opinion. Enjoy what you hear? Be sure to subscribe and leave a review! Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast. This week, the team discusses:Floria Gov. Ron DeSantis filing for Texas’ 2024 Republican primary ballotRep. Kyle Kacal changing course on re-election and announcing he will not run againOral arguments before the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals over Texas’ READER ActParliamentary procedure in the Texas Legislature and how it was tested in the 88th sessionThe Border Patrol apprehending 21 sex offenders in the Del Rio sector in under two monthsAn Edinburg man sentenced to five years in prison for smuggling methamphetamine in car batteriesThe libertarian Cato Institute ranking Texas lowest in the nation for personal freedomMark Cuban selling his majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks to casino owner and advocate Miriam AdelsonTexas voters approving $37 billion worth of bonds in the November 2023 electionA Midland woman and her Mexican brother sentenced to decades in prison for drug traffickingSeveral South Texas border officials switching parties and leaving the Democratic Party for the GOP

Happy Friday, folks. Senior Editor Mackenzie DeLulo here, and welcome back to the Texans Weekly Roundup. This week, the team discusses Florida Governor Ron DeSantis filing for Texas' 2024 Republican primary ballot. Representative Kyle Casale changing course on re-election and announcing he will not run again. Oral arguments before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals over Texas' Reader Act. Thank you. Cato Institute, ranking Texas the lowest in the nation for personal freedom. Mark Cuban, selling his majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks to casino owner and advocate Miriam Adelson. Texas voters approving $37 billion worth of bonds in the November 2023 election. A Midland woman and her Mexican brother sentenced to decades in prison for drug trafficking and several South Texas border officials switching parties and leaving the Democratic Party for the GOP. Thanks for listening and enjoy this episode.

Howdy folks, Mackenzie here with Brad, Cameron, Matt, and Hayden. On another episode of the Weekly Roundup, we were, as usual, hamming it up about something that could be good fodder for the intro for the podcast before we started recording. So I was like, guys, we need to stop talking and record i say all of my most clever things before mackenzie hits the record button all of you miss out every week so helpful christmas shopping though i have not started a stitch of my christmas shopping like at all which is strange for you because you are the christmas aficionado here i did consider myself consider myself an elf, you know, at this time of year. It's my favorite.

That's a comparison for you. It's my favorite time of year. And Hayden has bought a gift, so he's batting 100 over me. I have bought one gift, yes. And I still have 25 days. I know it's not batting 100. Okay. Don't get me wrong.

My skin just crawled. I crawled you didn't hear me matt what's going on over there well i was doing some um interesting reading post black friday um you know typically every black friday you see you know the typical battles and blood being lit at 6 a.m. on the doorsteps of Best Buy. But didn't see a whole lot of that in the news or on social media this go around. And then I started seeing a lot of reports of, you know, a lot of retail shops sitting on lots of inventory, all that sort of stuff. So it piqued my curiosity because I wanted to know what the economic impact of this Black Friday was over the previous year as sort of an economic indicator. And financial gurus are typically good about getting some preliminary data out pretty quick. So I did a look and lo and behold, numbers were actually up over last year, but I think it was going down that rabbit hole a little bit that

offered a better explanation. It was actually largely driven by online sales, including including websites that feature buy now, pay later. And in addition, it was acquisitions by credit card. As a matter of fact, they had some interesting data out for the state of Texas. This ranks in the top two, three, four, five, something like that, in states with the highest amount of credit card debt per person. So some interesting statistics there. So while Black Friday sales were up, from what it appears, it was largely attributed to online sales, buy now, pay later deals,

and shoppers putting purchases on their credit cards. Yeah. The more you know. Yeah, I know. It's wild to think about how just a few years ago black friday was marked by people just rushing to malls and now people just are online buying on amazon or whatever brand of their choice it's pretty wild there was one video on twitter i saw someone like i think a best buy opening up and just one dude strolls in and that was it there were all the stat like eight staff members were staying at the door waiting for this rush of people and just one dude wanders in wow frankly

i am not sad that that dynamic has departed black friday people said they ruined black friday good we don't need a stampede every thanksgiving the day after Thanksgiving. Now we're really getting into the weeds, but the only time I ever actually physically went to Black Friday sales in person at a mall, I decided to wear, you know, like sock monkeys, you know, the sock monkeys you have as kids? Yeah. A sock monkey onesie that a toddler would wear. And as a nearly six foot tall gal certainly people were it was red it was just to wear it just walking around the mall there's a picture of you on people of walmart somewhere 100 i was giving off every bit of that but it was a delightful time brad doesn't have a

snarky comment i'm going to quickly move on before he does brad we will start with you though oh for our news for the week. We're getting closer to the filing deadline in Texas, and the 2024 presidential field is officially forming. Who filed this week? So Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' campaign filed to put him on the Texas primary ballot this year. I guess that would be next year, represented by surrogate state rep Matt Schaefer, who's been among the first endorsers of DeSantis at the state legislative level and is very active in criticizing Donald Trump as the frontrunner and backing DeSantis as his preferred alternative.

Nikki Haley's campaign also quietly filed this week as well. And then Trump's campaign filed a couple of weeks ago. So those are the top three candidates in the race so far, and they are all on the Texas primary ballot. In filing, Schaefer said Donald Trump is rightfully focused on the bad things that happened to him at the end of his presidency and that are happening to him right now. But Ron DeSantis is focused on the future of the country, and there's a huge gap there. DeSantis is seen as the most formidable challenger to Donald Trump, who is the current front runner by a wide margin in most polls. A Texas Politics Project poll put Trump 50 points ahead of DeSantis in Texas, which is

pretty much in line with national polling we're seeing on the question. The case for DeSantis largely boils down to the belief that Trump cannot beat Joe Biden in the general election, both in what happened in 2020 and in all the distractions that come with Trump as a politician and a candidate, but also that even if Trump did win the presidency, he could only serve one more term. Those are generally the arguments that the senescence camp is making. And, you know, they're trying to tow this line of, well, Trump is beloved in the Republican Party in most circles. We don't want to step on that third rail and you know go hard at criticizing

him kind of like that's kind of the tact that Nikki Haley's taken right trying to carve out that niche but uh also trying to differentiate himself from Trump and as of now if we're going based off the polling it's not going well yeah which honestly that to me reading Schaefer's comments to you was exactly what Schaefer was doing too of like, okay Yes, you know Trump has rightfully focused on what happened to him at the end of his presidency But here's why I support DeSantis. So very similar even just rhetoric from his surrogate in Texas. They have their messaging down for sure So how did the two candidates stack up financially? The Trump campaign has raised 56 million dollars this year most of which came through a transfer from another committee.

I couldn't find it exactly, but I assume it was his previous presidential committee that they probably raised money in during and after the 2020 election and transferred it to the 2024 committee. DeSantis, meanwhile, has raised $29 million. In the third quarter of 2023, this was an interesting data point, Trump only pulled 22 max-out donations from Texans, while DeSantis had more than 200. It appears that the donor class in Texas, and likely elsewhere, is not enthralled with the former president, but does that even matter? If 2016 is any indication? Probably not. He self-funded a lot back then.

He could do it again now, although we'll see how much he's able to given certain other circumstances. But yeah, just because donors do not like someone, that does not mean the voters don't. So we shall see. So what's next for this presidential race? All eyes are on the Iowa caucuses right now. DeSantis and his team seem legitimately optimistic about winning that. Something they really need to do to reestablish some momentum ahead of Super Tuesday. There are a couple other primaries like New Hampshire and South Carolina between Iowa

and Super Tuesday, which I believe Texas is on. That's March 5th. But it's not necessarily a gauge for who's going to win the GOP nomination. The last time the GOP nominee won the Iowa caucuses was George W. Bush in 2000. Cruz won in 16, Santorum won in 12. And Huckabee won in 08. So while it isn't really a gauge for the eventual winner of the nomination, it can eliminate those down the pecking order trying to establish themselves as the challenger to the frontrunner, which is exactly what DeSantis needs and wants to do with the Iowa caucuses coming up. The biggest question, and I kind of alluded to this, comes from the politically charged

indictments against Trump. Do they help or hurt his candidacy? They certainly helped him pull away from the GOP field. In polling, it's stark. You can see it in April, around the beginning of April this year, DeSantis is polling about 15 points behind Trump. And then all of a sudden, he shoots down and Trump shoots up. And that was when the indictments were announced. So that certainly had

an effect. Does it have an effect on the general election voters? Should he win the GOP nomination? I don't know. We'll see. But also, do the millions in legal costs hurt Trump's ability to finance his campaign down the stretch? I guess we'll see. Lots to consider. Thank you, Bradley. Hayden, coming to you with some more news out of the Texas House this week. Why did State Representative Kyle Casale change his mind about running for reelection? It's always interesting when a member of the Texas legislature decides to run for re-election then changes his mind. State Representative Kyle Casale, who went to a runoff in his last

Republican primary, initially announced in September that he planned to run for a seventh term in the legislature, but just this week he decided that he would instead choose to retire. Casal announced in September that he would run for re-election, touting his record specifically on public education and other issues. This week, however, he said that he would be stepping aside. He also seemed to take a shot at the way the legislature is currently functioning. He said that there would not be any productivity coming out of pandering grandstanding or stoking divisions. This is on the heels of the school choice debate and the Ken Paxton impeachment. Interestingly enough, Casal did not take down his announcement

that he would be running for reelection from his Twitter account. So he still has pinned on his profile his reelection announcement. And he did issue a statement and his campaign did confirm to the Texan that he is not running for another term. The filing deadline for the primary election is on December 11, which is less than two weeks from now. Wow. So what was the political backdrop of Casal's decision? Casal was in a tricky position. He is in a tricky position. He backed an amendment by Representative John Rainey to remove education savings accounts, aka vouchers from the public education bill. He also voted for the impeachment of Ken Paxton, putting him on the wrong side of a lot of grassroots Republicans. Governor Abbott backed Casal in the 2022 primary, even against a primary challenger who was endorsed by Representative Ben Lamont.

Amid all of this, there was redistricting going on, and Ben Lamont thought Casal was not conservative enough. Casal had backed the expansion of Medicaid back in the 87th legislature, so there was a lot going on there, but Abbott still backed him. This time, Abbott released a slate of endorsements after the school choice vote and did not back Casal signaling that this vote had put him on the wrong side of the governor. So that possibly could have played into his decision. Yeah, absolutely. Could this be an omen for how Abbott's opponents will fare in the primary? I mean, we've talked a lot about impeachment and school choice being two of the lightning rod issues going into this primary. It's not good. Abbott's a tough competitor. He is known for his fundraising prowess and his ability to resonate with conservatives. He is passionate about school choice and school vouchers. It is not a surprise that Casal is choosing not to fight this uphill battle with the governor.

Abbott has already promised that he was going to make it difficult for people who did not support ESAs and school vouchers. section, Casal said he believes that this past legislative session, these past legislative sessions were among the most conservative in Texas history. And he took a great deal of the credit for that and said that he was proud of his track record. Yeah, absolutely. Lots to consider going into the primary is going to be fascinating. We've seen some movement in that since afterwards too. Abbott, after Casal announced announced his retirement endorsed Trey Wharton who had already declared to challenge Casal and then we saw John Harvey Slocum who ran against Rainey

in 22 announced yesterday for Casal's district so already a lot of movement following that domino falling and it's fascinating that Abbott waited until after Casal decided not to run again. Yeah, I'm not sure why that happened.

It's almost as though he was saying, I'm not going to support you, but let's wait and see before I pick a fight. We still have a little bit of time, too, with the filing deadline. So who else is entering? Who will be Abbott's chosen candidate in some of these races

where he is not endorsing the incumbent? That's going to be fascinating. Abbott is very shrewd. He does not do things on a whim. He does not lash out. He thinks about what he's going to do and he's very strategic. That's how he's maintained the power that he has maintained for many years.

Maybe he was discussing with Gasol about whether he was going to run and didn't want to explicitly come out and whack him over the head with an endorsement of Wharton and instead was like, hmm. Right. If you're announcing retirement, then I'll wait to endorse until after you retire, since

I did endorse you last session. Who knows? Abbott's passionate about school vouchers, but not to his own detriment. Yeah, absolutely. We'll see how this all pans out. Thank you, Hayden. Cameron, coming to you, the Reader Act has continued to face legal challenges. Give us the latest update on all of that's going down. Yeah, this time, oral arguments were had in the Fifth Circuit

Court of Appeals in New Orleans. And this is just another action that HB 900 has seen in this legal process. First, we saw a lawsuit that was filed on behalf of bookstores and publishers against the Texas State Library and Archives Commission, the Texas Board of Education, the TEA, or the Texas Education Agency. And these bookstores and publishers were challenging the Reader Act because it will prevent book vendors from selling sexually explicit material to public school libraries. So initially, a judge blocked the bill from going into effect. Then there was a motions panel for the Fifth Circuit that ordered an administrative stay that allowed the law to be implemented while court proceedings were being had. And we finally got an update on that this week. And so during the oral arguments, the state argued that the Reader Act is not a book ban and the law, quote, does not

force the plaintiffs to associate with the ratings. That was a big point of contention between the two sides in this debate where the plaintiffs, the book vendors, their attorney was arguing that the law is, quote, impossibly vague and continue to accuse the law of applying a, quote, arbitrary framework. And so there was an interesting point, though, that was brought up by the state's attorney, because there is a portion in the law that talks about what is called community standards. And the plaintiffs in the case were wondering, how can a community standard be applied statewide? There's different districts, there's millions of students. How would a book vendor be able to apply community standards to such a large population? But the state's attorney brought up a Supreme Court case, Miller v. California, to argue that obscene material as it relates to community standards can be taken as a statewide standard. And thus, they argued a restraint on book vendors does not violate the First Amendment protections of free speech.

So oral arguments wrapped up this week. We don't have a decision yet, but the case is now submitted to the court and we wait until a determination is rendered. Yeah, absolutely. Cameron, thank you. Hayden, our first piece published this week was from you on parliamentary procedure. Let's walk through it. What are some of your observations about how the Texas legislature functions under its rules of order? Life is too short to spend too much of it worrying about parliamentary procedure. So I'll keep this segment short. The legislature does not function under Robert's rules of order. It uses its own rules manual, but uses the same parliamentary procedure principles that are outlined in Robert's rules, many of the same principles. Legislators do not follow their own rules to a T, which can create confusion and false expectations at times on the part of members. Sometimes they need to, or they, I don't say they need to, they bend the rules to create

certain policy outcomes. They go to the limits of what is allowable under their own rules. I wrote a piece explaining some of the dynamics in the House and some of the different ways that they use their rules to accomplish their objectives. And I encourage those who are interested in that topic and interested in learning more about how the House works and how legislation reaches the finish line to head to our website and check out that article. Yeah, absolutely. Is there any insight that we can glean from how Speaker Phelan exercises his discretion from the dais? Speaker Phelan has a lot of support within the House membership.

He cannot lose the support of a majority of House members or he loses his speakership. by the public. So frankly, he can run the Senate as he chooses and does not necessarily face any repercussions from within his own chamber. Speaker Phelan has used his power in various ways this session, such as when he prohibited Tony Tenderholt from approaching the back microphone with parliamentary inquiries, or his decision not to reprimand Armando Wally for accosting Cody Harris on the House floor during a scuffle over debate on amendments. There are interesting contrasts in the way Speaker Phelan has approached different outbursts in the chamber on days such as when there were outbursts over the transgender procedures legislation when he cleared the gallery. I discuss a lot of that in the piece. And again, I recommend that people read it if that interests you. Yeah, absolutely.

How does all of this affect the actual policy outcomes? You kind of were talking about it a little bit. break the rules to manipulate policies, such as when they go on a quorum bust and try to keep the house from doing business by not showing up for floor sessions. Although there are times when there are legitimate ways to put an end to a bill, such as raising a point of order. Brad has reported on that before extensively, how points of order have been used during this legislature to kill legislation. And it has been fascinating to watch all of that play out. But nice excitement, a lot of examples of that in the article. Yeah, absolutely. And this is something that is not new. This is happens anytime there's a speaker in the house, right? I mean, the accusations of,

oh, well, you enforce this rule and not this one that happens all the time. It just is in different fonts with each new speaker that comes into the house. So not something we're very used to seeing it and it's not something that's new, but it is unique to each individual speaker. So definitely worth going and checking out at the texas.news. Thank you, Hayden. Matt, we're coming to you. The U.S. Border Patrol announced the arrest of 21 sex offenders attempting to enter the U.S. illegally in just under a two-month period. Give us the details. As the surge of illegal entrances in the United States from Mexico overwhelms state and federal law enforcement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection was forced to close off

multiple ports of entry in Texas to vehicle traffic on Monday this week, with the agency having to redirect personnel to respond to unlawful entry activity elsewhere along the Rio Grande. Among those caught attempting to illegally enter the United States during the surge and this past year, thousands possess criminal records from other countries for offenses similar to American criminal laws, including sex crimes. According to Chief Patrol Agent Juan Bernal, the Del Rio sector in Texas has apprehended 21 sex offenders in a less than two-month period. The Del Rio sector, for reference, includes just a 245-mile stretch of the southern border, along with some 47 Texas counties. Customs and Border Protection compiles data by fiscal year,

running from October 1st to the end of September of any given year, regarding encounters with illegal aliens who possess prior criminal records. Among the thousands of criminal encounters, Two hundred and eighty four were apprehended in fiscal year 2023. Had sex. They had committed sex offender related crimes prior to their apprehension by Border Patrol. Nineteen have been apprehended in fiscal year 2024 to date. So combining those 19 with the others within just the past two months, there's a total of 21. Chief Brunel praised the work of his agents in continuing to apprehend criminals, including the recent sex offenders, attempting to illegally cross the southern border. Absolutely. Matt, thanks so much for your coverage. Brad, coming to you, a case at the Texas Supreme Court between local governments involves a dispute over governmental immunity.

What are the details? In 2017, the San Jacinto River Authority, which governs water supply in that river basin, raised its rates for contracted municipalities to pay off. In order to pay off bond debt incurred by the entity. Cities of Conroe and Magnolia objected to the rate increase, citing a year of heavy rainfall that would reduce scarcity in the water supply, thereby, or should, reducing the premium paid for water. They refused to pay the higher rates and sued the SJRA over the rate increase. SJRA countersued, which a trial court dismissed, finding that the cities had governmental immunity from suit. SJRA has $500 million in outstanding bond debt, 80% of which is backed by the state,

and they are hoping to secure the payments from these cities and prevent any other cities from doing the same, objecting to paying these rate increases in order to pay off that balance. But yeah, it's in front of the Texas Supreme Court. Oral arguments will be heard on that case in January. Has the court ruled on governmental immunity before? Yes, I'm sure many, but most recently, SCOTICS ruled that ERCOT possessed immunity from suits brought into civil court and could only be filed against with the PUC. I'm unsure how that will apply to the situation as you have different kinds of entities, but still you have governmental entities involved.

The court did, however, in that case, reverse a lower court's ruling on the question. The state of Texas joined that suit they went with ERCOT. Again, it's a different circumstance. So whether that's the right or wrong decision, that's a different issue, but it would be interesting to see the court in such a short amount of time rule in opposite way on this broad question that a lot of people are wondering about. Yeah, absolutely. Where is the state on this issue? SJRA in this dispute, arguing that not only do the local governments lack immunity in this case, but that the ruling with the cities would jeopardize the state's ability to finance and build more water supply infrastructure. There is a water supply problem is probably one of the biggest in the state that nobody really knows about.

We all have heard about the power grid, right? Something similar applies to water supply. The rate at which Texas is expanding in population is seriously outpacing the rate at which we're expanding our water supply. And if I remember correctly, by 2070, we're going to have significantly more population than can be supplied with what we have in water or what we have in the queue. And it takes decades to build a new reservoir, for example, like the Marvin Nichols Reservoir, which I've written about as a particularly heated example. But it would take land in East Texas that people own out there, build a reservoir, flood it from these converging rivers, and use that to supply water to Dallas-Fort Worth.

So it's competing interests. What do you do? It's a hard question. But that is an example of why it is so difficult to build new water supply in the states. But more people are coming every day. So the city's countered to the state's contention there that it's nonsense and that the amount of money here is not even close to that $500 million that SJRA is claiming. It's a fraction of that. It's a segment.

And so it'll be interesting to see what the court does. But like I said, oral arguments are, I believe, January 9th. So next year we'll see some movement and then probably a ruling on that later on we really should use the word nonsense more often i agree yeah it's just a classic that's my takeaway from your story bradley thanks not anything pertaining no just the nonsense part yeah okay cool hayden we're coming that's probably how everyone else felt i wasn't gonna say it brad it's a very fascinating story it should be even though it isn't oh my lanta maybe we're just on your intellectual level yeah i wouldn't say that yeah i'm sitting

here thinking about whoppers that um that joe hootman sent us in a package the other day that's what i'm thinking about my mind went to Burger King Whoppers. Oh. Mine did too, but maybe I'm just hungry. Yeah. Ditto. Okay, Hayden, we're coming to you. Is it true that someone tried to smuggle meth across the border in car batteries?

Believe it or not, yes, that did happen. Wow. Federal prosecutors announced that an individual from Edinburgh faced sentencing on charges that he attempted to smuggle methamphetamine across the southern border through the Hidalgo port of entry in truck in a Dodge Ram500 in car batteries. The contraband totaled 20 kilograms of methamphetamine. The narcotics were detected by drug sniffing dogs. The individual driving the vehicle was taken into custody by border patrol. Amusingly, this person tried to say that he thought it was marijuana. But prosecutors said that that was not believable and he was basically full of it. So... And so were the car batteries.

So were the car batteries. That was good. That was very good. There were a total of eight bundles of meth concealed in his vehicle. After laboratory testing, they determined the quantity of the drugs and he was taken care of by police.

Yeah. So what sentence did this drug smuggler receive? The federal judge sentenced him to 60 months in prison plus another five years of supervised release. that this individual is from Edinburgh, and this was also the site of President Trump's recent stop with Governor Abbott, where Abbott endorsed Trump for President. Trump has said that drug dealers should be executed. It is one of his more staunch stances that he has taken, and he has often pointed to China as an example that the U.S. should follow on this policy of executing drug dealers. Our policy now is much less severe than that.

And I would also point out that there is a difference, too, between a drug dealer and somebody who runs a drug trafficking organization or a higher up in a criminal cartel. This person, it sounds like, was just, I'm not trivializing it at all, but in terms of the grand scheme of things, this was somebody who was running drugs across the border as a drug dealer. Certainly. Hayden, thank you. Cameron, coming to you. Cato, a libertarian policy think tank, ranked states according to how public policies affect individual freedoms, and they had Texas ranked in some very surprising ways. Give us the details. Yeah, that's right. This recent analysis by the Cato Institute measured how all 50 states compared on a variety of personal and economic freedoms.

And they found that Texas, while ranking near the top of the list for overall freedom, was dead last for personal freedom. I thought this was very interesting. They pointed out that Texas's criminal justice policies are, quote, generally aggressive and that their cannabis laws are not only harsh, but they said they are the worst in the country. And we saw during the regular regular legislative session, there was an attempt to make some changes to how marijuana policy is enforced in the state. But even though it did pass on the floor, this is I'm talking about House Bill 218, which would have lowered penalties for marijuana possession. It was sent to a Senate committee, but was never heard, which is typical of marijuana-related legislation in the Texas legislature. Another point of the Cato analysis is they spotlighted the state's restrictions on gambling, as well as calling educational freedom in the state, quote, meager.

And we'll hear more about some of the gambling that stripped education savings accounts out of the omnibus house education bill. So those are some points that Cato had pointed to as restrictions on personal freedom. Texas, according to Cato, dropped one spot in 2023 to 17th on the list of states with the highest overall freedom. And they said because of the state's high rating at number six for economic freedom, it was able to overcome its low personal freedom score. And just the states that topped this list for Cato on overall freedom, it was New Hampshire, then followed by Florida and South Dakota. And then not surprisingly, at the bottom of the list was New York, Hawaii, and California, my old state. So it was an interesting analysis, a bit surprising where they put Texas, but because of the state's high economic freedom rating,

it was still near the top of the list in overall freedom. Yeah. Fascinating stuff, Cameron. Thank you so much. Speaking of gambling, nice segue for us, Cam. Hayden, what is this deal that we've heard Mark Cuban struck with casino gambling mogul Miriam Adelson, who is the widow of the late Sheldon Adelson, a prolific supporter of former President Donald Trump and a prolific donor to the Trump campaign. Adelson filed SEC paperwork to sell $2 billion in Las Vegas Sands stock to go to the purchase of a professional sports team. However, the SEC filing itself did not specifically mention the Dallas Mavericks. Mark Stein, a sports reporter, is credited with originally reporting that the transaction in question would be the purchase of a majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks franchise for less than $4 billion. Notably, Forbes assesses the value of the Mavericks at just at $4.5 billion in its most recent estimate. The sale will likely

happen in the middle of the NBA season, an interesting development for an iconic North Texas basketball team. Yeah, absolutely. What is the significance of the Adelson's owning such an important icon here in Texas? Adelson, the Adelson family, Miriam Adelson, has sought and lobbied to have the Texas legislature pass a proposition to put on the ballot for Texas voters to decide whether to allow a limited number of commercial casinos in the state of Texas. We have reported on those efforts extensively here. There have been hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars contributed to Texas politicians in an effort to persuade them to see the advantages of commercial casinos and limited legalized recreational gambling here in the state of

Texas as opposed to philanthropic gambling or the state-run Texas lottery. Mark Cuban himself has said in the past that he wants to create an arena in North Texas with a casino resort complex attached. This would require an amendment to the Texas Constitution, which prohibits the construction of commercial casinos and virtually all other types of gambling except for limited exceptions that are carved out, such as the state lottery. Those lobbying efforts were unsuccessful in the most recent legislative sessions. It is clear, however, that Miriam Adelson is not giving up on her effort to really honor her husband's legacy of bringing commercial casinos and the Las Vegas Sands brand to the Lone Star State. Yeah, absolutely. Worth watching for sure, Hayden. Thank you so much. Brad, coming to you, there were hundreds of bond proposals on the November ballot. How'd they turn out? So of the like 307 or so bond proposals, there was a total of, as of data

from the bond review board, $42 billion in spending on the ballot. And of that, only $5 billion of that total was voted down. The vast majority of the total approved were school bonds or water district bonds, like MUDS, we talked about before. I have a whole list of the bond review board's data in the article that you can see how each one fared, maybe in your area if you had propositions on the ballot. Interestingly, with a lot of those MUDs, again, as we talked about, it only takes one, maybe two voters in that election to approve sometimes millions, hundreds of millions of dollars in spending. And there was one that stuck out to me that failed because there were a grand total of two voters in in that race and one went for one went against so it didn't eclipse 50 and failed

just an odd situation uh but the overall you can see that the data of look at how much was approved, broken down by type of entity. Again, it was mostly school districts as per usual. And in this case, water districts. So check it out. You might find something that was on your ballots in there. Good stuff. Cool. Great.

Hayden, coming to you, is it true that some drug trafficking story we reported on this week was a family affair? Yes, it was. Some people play board games with their families. Other engage in high-level, participated in the same drug trafficking organization. The U.S. Department of Justice announced that the two were sentenced in the scheme, which included implicated four other defendants who were sentenced as early as February of 2020. Over the course of two years, according to prosecutors, these two individuals, these two siblings, were smuggling drugs and hiring others to smuggle drugs. The Midland defendant here used her home, made her residence in Midland available to this drug trafficking organization as a type of home base for these unlawful activities. I do think it's interesting here that these two siblings

are of different nationalities. That is not something that I see very often when I'm parsing through these Justice Department news releases. The sentences in this case were severe, but some fascinating news out of, I believe, a Del Rio courthouse is where these individuals were sentenced. Talk to us about the sentence that these individuals face. Well, the Midland defendant received a sentence of 262 months, which I believe I did the math the other day. I think that's just over 20 years. And then the Mexican defendant received a sentence of 324 months. So a long time behind bars for these drug trafficking activities. Absolutely. Hayden, thank you. Matthew,

coming to you. Three South Texas local officials have left the Democratic Party in a growing trend to join the Texas GOP. Give us the rundown. That's right, Mackenzie. Project Red Texas, which is an organization that recruits candidates to run for office as Republicans, has recently announced three incumbent county officials have decided to leave the Democratic Party and join the Republican Party of Texas. The most recent official? Kennedy County Attorney Allison Strauss, who follows the Cleberg County Attorney Kira Taleb Sanchez in making the party switch. Sanchez had cited

the ongoing crisis at the southern border and a far-left swing in the Democratic Party, ideologically wise, among her reasons for changing parties. We previously reported on Carnes County Sheriff Duane Villanueva switching parties last year, and now Pecos County Sheriff Thomas Perkins has also decided to make the switch, once again citing border security and the job Governor Greg Abbott has done in being an ally to local officials faced with dealing with the border crisis. Lastly, Project Red Texas also announced Terrell County Precinct 3 Commissioner Arnulfo Serna is also switching parties to become a Republican. And according to the organization, the move further cemented Republican control of the large border county commissioner's court. There you go, Matt. Thank you so much for your coverage. Okay, before we

move on to our tweeter here, I want to highlight a few stories here from our team that does not reside here in Austin. I'm going to go with Holly Hansen here. She has a great story on Harris County Judge Lena Hidalgo facing criminal abuse of office complaint referred to the Texas Rangers. Fascinating story up there from Holly Hansen and definitely worth going and checking out. Holly, as usual, is at the forefront of all things Harris County and many stories throughout the state, but definitely worth going and checking out. Holly, as usual, is at the forefront of all things Harris County and many stories throughout the state, but definitely worth going and checking out. Kim Roberts from North Texas, the DFW area, reported on the Texas Attorney General's office arguing before the state Supreme Court here in Texas to protect pro-life laws, giving a rundown of some of these oral arguments. Definitely worth going and checking out. We've covered this extensively at the Texan. This is just another move here in this ongoing saga.

And then Seth Moorhead wrote Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex passing 8 million residents, a fascinating story on just population growth in the state and looking specifically at some North Texas numbers. So go check all of those out at the Texan.news as well. Okay, our tweeter-y section. Cameron, I want to start with you. What did you find online this week? Well, as usual, I come across a lot of different things. A lot of interesting stuff. I found this story about Jeff Bezos, who he has his hands in all sorts of things.

And for some reason, he's building a giant clock in a West Texas mountain. Matt, do you know about this giant clock? I had no clues it was happening until you just mentioned it. Oh, I also just realized you said Matt, not Mac. Continue, Matt. Matt, you know about this though yes as a matter of fact it's it's not far from me um oh wow okay well this 10 000 year clock it's gonna tick like there's different markers like on the first year 10 10, 100, 10,000.

And so apparently he has invested $42 million into this giant clock. Yeah, it's a big project. What's that? It's a big project. Yeah, yeah. I had no idea before I came across this, but... Yeah, he has a ranch just north of me uh where they do both the rocket launches and occasionally whenever they're launching a rocket

i can see it from my place um and then uh he owns part of a mountain I guess on that ranch where they're doing this clock so this is obviously a long-term project 10,000 years in the future he's expecting this clock to be around so at least he's a optimist yeah you know that's right so I just thought this was pretty interesting building a giant clock in a mountain that makes me immediately think about like um if we had jeff bezos type money what kind of oddity would we fund and build like a clock in a west texas mountain that just exists forever it's a fun one right what a legacy random in the middle of nowhere but amazing i don I don't know why, but I'm thinking of that movie, The Time Machine,

where the guy from the 1800s makes the time machine and he fast forwards and goes to a public library and there's this machine thing that talks to him or whatnot that's like a library source. And then he gets back on the time machine and goes far in the future and now it's in a cave in the mountain but that library is that ai library assistant is still there and and remembers i don't know why i'm thinking but it's fun no but i'm not i'm not a great um the audience for being asked what movies i've seen but no i'm not

okay sorry about it reference then yeah there you go um brad you said you'd build a parking garage of course yeah that's my dream how is that an oddity i mean last time i mentioned this in the podcast i got berated by you. That's not my question. It is probably in the category. That podcast happened within a few weeks of me moving to Austin and starting in the office. And it was legendary. Everyone go scroll wherever you're listening to this. Scroll all the way back to January 2021.

And I can't remember which week it was. Was it January? was okay that's helpful it was because it was one of the first podcasts that i was here in the office after starting here in the office so go back i think it was the last it was the third or fourth week of january that they had this discussion but it was very impressed that you know that. It had to be. I mean, my memory, I'm told, is not awesome. So it could be a different week. It's way better than mine. We know that. Okay, well, I'm going to want to go back and find that because we almost need to bookmark our episodes.

We do. That are particularly notable with inter-office squabbles. Although, yeah, I don't if that there's a function on i listen to my stuff on spotify i don't know where everyone else does but same which spotify does not have good search features to find it does not you have to do weird things with the with the search filters to find what you're looking for yeah well maybe i'll go back and find it now that i know the ballpark era that this was recorded in. Ballpark era.

I'm going to think about my oddity. Maybe we can come back to that at the end if we have time. It's an oddity we would build if we had Jeff Bezos type money. I think that's fantastic. Okay, Matthew, an animal fact. I'm excited about this. Tell us about your tweeter-y this week. Well, I was scrolling through formerly Twitter, now known as X, and I came across a tweet by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service noting that yesterday or Wednesday was International Jaguar Day. Not the car, but the cat with all the funny looking spots. The big cat, that is, so to speak. And that reminded me of a research paper that I'd stumbled across a while back. So I had to go and dig it up and share a tidbit of fun fact. Most people think of a jaguar as one of the big cats that you'd ordinarily see, like in Africa or maybe South America, etc.

But it is actually a native species to Texas. As a matter of fact, from probably central Texas on down to south Texas, that was part of the big cats original native range. And it was eventually because of like farming and ranching, et cetera, et cetera, and loss of habitat. It was eventually made us extinct in the state of Texas.

But we're not talking about a long, long, long time ago. We're talking about the last jaguar in Texas was killed by someone who was out hunting rabbits near, I think it was McAllen. No, Kingsville. I'm sorry. It was near Kingsville in 1947. So, uh, pretty interesting fact. Um, you know, just not that long ago, uh, the possibility of running into a Jaguar in the wild in Texas was amongst the realm of possibilities. Wow. Well, it does make sense in some way too, if Jaguars are located in South America, that they would have in some way, shape or form been seen in the American Southwest.

That's really fascinating. And I guess maybe there's a characteristic between the two cats that made, you know, mountain lions give them the ability to, you know, continue on and thrive in Texas, whereas the jaguar, for some reason, got eradicated. I don't know if it's a behavioral trait that they're just not as elusive as the mountain lions. Or just habitat. The mountain lions live in all sorts of places. They're all over the place. The mountain lion is just kind of proving to be worldwide a very enduring species. Yeah, certainly. Well, i love an animal fact thank you so much matthew hmm do we have more well let's end you love an animal facts when it's not me saying the animal facts actually i was just about to um compliment you on your in yours and say we

should end on it because it's an animal fact as well oh So jokes on you. Jokes on me. Indeed. Hayden. Yes. Let's talk about your tweetery. And I'm shocked to see that Kyle Rittenhouse is involved. Well, I will say as a reporter, there are some stories that give me a headache because I like to stick with what I know and what I can verify. Sadly, with this case, there are so many claims and so many different accusations going in so many different directions that it is hard to verify each individual thing. Last week, I mentioned that Kyle Rittenhouse is publishing a book purporting to be the tell-all of what happened with his case. He is involved in Texas politics, which is one of the reasons I

mentioned this. I did not pitch it as a story because a lot of this is social media hearsay. So I don't think this is story worthy. That's why I didn't pitch it. But I wanted to touch on it in just to mention some of the things that are going on here. Kyle Rittenhouse was involved in the incident with white supremacist Nick Fuentes in October when he issued a statement denying that he was part of any meeting with Nick Fuentes. And he said that he wanted to leave work and be away from that situation. Kyle Rittenhouse is a spokesperson for Texas Gun Rights, which is obviously a pro-gun organization here in Texas. Rittenhouse was part of actively lobbying against a bill that would have increased the age to purchase a semi-automatic rifle here in Texas to 21. Rittenhouse has been involved

in Texas politics. He is now coming out with this book that purports to tell his side of the story of what happened in Kenosha on August 25th, 2020. However, Twitter accounts that appear to be legitimate because they're interacting with other accounts that are legitimate accounts of people who were close to Rittenhouse and who were his closest allies, including his sisters and others who were close to him, are disputing many of the things that he wrote in that book. So I would encourage people to read that information, read the counter arguments and make your own decision about what is a reasonable statement of fact and what seems to align with the evidence that was presented at that trial. Rittenhouse does have civil litigation pending against him. The criminal trial was not the

end of the story. So he has a lot of legal troubles still on the horizon. There will be a lot of factual things to be sorted out during these civil trials. So I did mention the book last week. So I wanted to come back to that and just say, make sure that you are taking all of this, including all the things that have been said against him, all of the things that that have been said, making the case for him to take those with a grain of salt and vet those facts for yourself. Because when there are so many different narratives trying to be put out there about a particular person and so many caricatures about a person and the people around them, it's so important to stick to the facts. And that's really the only point I wanted to emphasize. And I just felt like I needed to come back to that since I mentioned it on the podcast last week. Yeah, certainly worth noting. And Twitter has been ablaze with some of that. And some of it's been harder to find, like it's been hidden and you've been shooting that over. And it's fascinating to watch all this discourse happen around this book. So Hayden,

thank you. I'm going to go next. So Brad and his animal facts can go last because I'm placing him at a position of honor, as I don't usually. Cool. That is true. He says cool to that. It's OK. I don't need I don't need to be thanked for that. I can just. That's fine. Hey, we're good brad yeah don't expect one great i have two um notable things that i saw on twitter this week one elon musk made headlines this week after um at a panel event basically telling advertisers who refused to advertise on x formerly known as twitter the platform that he acquired um i believe it was last year. Was it last year that that happened? Yeah. Last year. Wow. Okay. It feels like eons ago. Elons ago. I knew you were going to say that. Oh my gosh. But basically saying that these advertisers who

are opting out of advertising on X are trying to quote blackmail him. He said, go F yourself about these advertisers. I know. Wild. But also interesting to see that this is becoming more and more of a trend in an age where advertising dollars have been wielded as almost a political, I don't know, hammer in some ways of saying, OK, this is something that we disagree with, something you did politically. So therefore, us, X corporation, are going to withhold our advertising dollars or withdraw our advertising dollars from your platform. We didn't see Dana White, the CEO and president of the UFC, kind of say similar things where an advertiser, I think it was Peloton, came at them for something they

were doing saying, we disagree with either who you're letting advertise with you or some stance you took as an organization. Can you change this? And he was like, no, don't advertise with us if you don't like it, which is something that is becoming more and more popular, but we have not seen as much until recently where previously advertising dollars were king in a lot of ways where you're like, okay, we bow to the, you know, trends of what our advertisers want and need. And I think there's some middle ground being found now among organizations that may not explicitly align with some of the more corporate entities that seem to be prevailing nowadays and also facing criticism. So it goes both ways. But that was really fascinating to watch. And Elon Musk is just a wild card. So

anything he does or says is fascinating. He does live in Texas now. Another thing, Alec Murdoch, I've talked a lot about this case. His financial crimes were the subject of the latest trial he was involved in after being sentenced to serving two consecutive life sentences for the murder of his wife and son. He's now serving 27 years on top of that for the financial crimes he was unbelievably accused of perpetrating. So basically, he's just in prison. You and I could do a podcast series on Alec Murdoch just by itself. Yeah. I know. I'm, I'm reigning myself in from saying more details than that. Yeah. Special edition on the Texan of something that has nothing to do with Texas, but that we're interested in anyway.

Yeah. I would also encourage folks interested in this case at all or in the Murdoch family at all. You may have seen the Netflix special, et cetera, or just things online articles written to go listen to Judge Newman's parting word with Alec Murdoch at the very end of the sentencing. So pretty fascinating and noteworthy little speech there that he gave. That statement from the bench will probably be the epilogue to all of this because that was probably the last state courtroom sentencing of Murdoch, if I'm correct about that.

Yeah. And federal courtrooms are not live streamed. And I think they've wrapped up the federal stuff anyway. So, yeah, that was probably the last of it. Yeah. And a worthwhile one for sure. OK, Bradley, your animal fact. My animal facts. Well, it overlaps with the power grid.

So that's disappointing. My interest. There was an outage.p an outage thank you in austin about 4 000 people were out of power for a bit and it turns out it was because a rascally little squirrel bit a transformer, I assume causing the squirrel to blow into smithereens, but also breaking the power line. A transformer blowing is no joke. It was Hammy from Over the Hedge, wasn't it? Oh my gosh, I love Hammy from Over the Hedge. Had to be.

Oh, it's such a good movie. He drank an energy drink, Red Bull. The slow motion of Hammy when he's just like going normally and it's slow motion for him in that movie you know i'm talking about yeah do you know what i'm talking about the other way around isn't he going normally and everything else is slow right that's what i attempted to say yes yes i don't get the movie reference sorry mac that's okay matt you you had a really good one earlier this is now our our movie reference. It was a great movie. I agree.

Anyway, the rascally squirrel. Yeah, but it also reminded me of a story from my childhood. There was an outage very similar to this in my neighborhood one year. And I remember seeing it happen, seeing it unfold. A squirrel running across a power line. Stop. Bites the power line. Explodes.

You saw this? No more squirrel. I saw it happen. How old were you and how traumatic was this? I was in fourth or fifth grade. So whatever age I'd be. Nine or ten. Yeah.

But that stuck with me. Did this affect you as an animal lover? No, it affected me because I lived a couple streets away from my school so all the power was out oh so it was more of an inconvenience was there any emotional response you had to this or was it like oh my gosh a squirrel got blown up this is crazy this is cool or was it was that okay that's fourth or fifth grade boy that sounds sounds about right. Yeah. Matt, what do you have to say? Well, I have a fun fact about squirrels causing trouble.

Oh, dear. In 1987, a squirrel caused the stock market to crash. Oh. And it's worth a Google. But a squirrel got into the computer banks of the Nasdaq stock market and chewed on the key wire, causing a complete collapse of the stock exchange at a time, which which led to an economic downfall i'm not kidding you could go look there's this was big documented history you know that caused the stock crash you know and they find this chicken fried squirrel in the computer bank chicken fried squirrel he was just an early adopter of the occupy wall street movement oh my this is just more everything y'all are saying is only making a stronger case for why daniel hates squirrels you guys know daniel our marketing media manager here at the texan former reporter hates squirrels so he'll uh we'll need to flag this for him to listen to because he doesn't edit

the podcast anymore but also brad tell us about why you spelled squirrel the way you did in um the docket here oh i spelled it very incorrectly uh it's s-q-u-i-r-l-e yeah in the docket that is a reference to travis kelsey the greatest tight end in history who is uh you know being benevolent and helping raise the profile of a certain Taylor Swift. Of a certain Taylor Swift. As in they are dating and it is the biggest story in sports right now. Yeah, it's insane. Which is unfortunate because Travis Kelsey deserves more of the limelight.

The greatest tight end in history. Taylor can't say the same about her career. But anyway. Deep breath. Despite the fact that she was on everybody's Spotify rap yeah and was the global artist of the year oh she's good

don't get me wrong she's just not the greatest ever we're not going to debate this I'm gonna let it go just regardless go for it fight because they started dating now all these Taylor Swift fans who don't give a rip about football are looking into Travis Kelsey

and they started bringing back up his old tweets from 2009 and 10 when he was a college football player at University of Cincinnati. Your alma mater. Yeah, my alma mater. And there was one where he was talking. Start with this, because they went back to make sure that there was nothing offensive or awful that he had tweeted previously because they have adopted themselves her mother dig dig up dirt yes and what

they found was the exact opposite of that yeah he's just a he's a meathead that's what he is he's just there's not a lot going on up there he's a very pleasant dude and he uh tweeted something about i just gave a squirrel spelled very horribly wrong uh bread and he just straight smashed it i had no idea squirrels ate bread like that like what also side note i have walked the campus that he did and there is a squirrel problem there they're all so overweight because students give them food fast food all the time well well kel Kelsey way back in ye olden days was ye olden days contributing to that one of my favorites that he tweeted was it was just an all caps nap time with like 30 exclamation points it's like 21 year old Travis Kelsey yeah I just gave a squirrel a piece of bread pieces spelled with the e and i uh rotated incorrectly and it straight smashed all of it i had no idea they ate bread like that

haha hashtag crazy scandalous oh my gosh yeah it's wasn't he also like on some dating show where he said something critical about taylor a long time ago no it wasn't critical but he was on it he added a dating show around his dating life yeah that he said he but he said something along the lines of it wasn't like he was a fan of taylor's i don't remember what it was i remember all the the swifties were making it float up in twitter so you couldn't help but see it in something about it no matter how much you tried to drown it out yeah the message we should take away from this is that Travis Kelsey the greatest tight end of all time yeah is a fan of squirrels yes and I hop and naps knock down yes those are all things he tweeted about okay well we have certainly

gone too long talking about this but it was necessary okay gentlemen thank you for joining me I appreciate it folks thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of the Weekly Roundup. We'll catch you next week. 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, subscribe to The Texan at thetexan.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 an email to editor at the Texan dot news. We are funded entirely by readers and listeners like you. So thank you again for your support.

Tune in next week for another episode of our weekly roundup. God bless you and God bless Texas.