The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - December 22, 2023

Episode Date: December 22, 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:Some of the most important races in the Texas House for 2024Gov. Greg Abbott signing a bill that creates a state criminal offense for illegal immigrationThe federal government suing the Houston-area Colony Ridge development, alleging deceptive lending practicesCongressional lawmakers from Texas divided over renewing a section of the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance ActThe Texas Supreme Court dismissing a defamation lawsuit against Beto O’RourkeA Texas congressman introducing a bill to ban required diversity, equity, and inclusion statements in American universitiesA Texas appeals court ruling that electricity ratepayers cannot sue power generators over the February 2021 blackoutsThe 2024 candidates for a state Senate seat declaring one of the challengers does not meet residency requirementsA fight between the City of Dallas and the Texas attorney general over the release of a list of vulnerable municipal regulationsThe famed ‘Victory or Death’ letter making a historic return to the Alamo for exhibition

Happy Friday, folks. Senior Editor Mackenzie DeLulo here, and welcome back to the Texans Weekly Roundup. This week, the team discusses some of the most important races in the Texas House for 2024. Governor Greg Abbott signing a bill that creates a state criminal offense for illegal immigration. The federal government suing the Houston-area Colony Ridge development, alleging deceptive lending practices. Congressional lawmakers from Texas divided over renewing a section of the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act. The Texas Supreme Court dismissing a defamation lawsuit against Beto O'Rourke. A Texas congressman introducing a bill to ban required diversity, equity, and inclusion statements in American universities. A Texas appeals court ruling that electricity rate payers

cannot sue power generators over the February 2021 blackouts. The 2024 candidates for a state senate seat declaring one of the challengers does not meet residency requirements. A fight between the city of Dallas and the Texas attorney general over the release of a list of vulnerable municipal regulations

and the famed victory or death letter making a historic return to the Alamo for exhibition. Thanks for listening and enjoy this episode. Howdy folks, Mackenzie here with Brad, Hayden, Cameron, and Matt on another edition of our weekly Roundup podcast. So excited to be able to say Merry Christmas. This is our last week before we officially celebrate Christmas. I know we're all working from home this week. A lot of us are already with our families. So it's great to be able to do so remote

and still chat about the news. So gentlemen, thank you for joining. And folks, Merry Christmas. We'll certainly get into a little bit of that later on. And if you have not checked out any of our christmas content at the texan.news make sure to do so we have some really great stories up and they're also posted to our social media channels so definitely go check it out for some festive content let's go ahead and jump into the news brad let's start with you you previewed some

of the top house races to watch in next year's primary. Give us a summary. So there are many races worth watching, especially in the house in the primary next year. I kind of narrowed it down to 12, although I still don't think that does it quite justice, but we listed out 12 of the top. Among them include Dade Phelan's race against namely David Covey, his most formidable primary challenge he's had of his career. The speaker has and that's going to be a huge one to watch. There are already big names flowing in. stopped short of endorsing David Covey, but said basically Phelan's speakership should be a test for all the other members of the House in their races. We also had Chairman Matt Rinaldi of the Texas GOP side with David Covey.

Uh, I assume TLR is going to come in and help feeling, um, you know, Donald Trump even suggested he might endorse against, uh, against feeling if there was a candidate to endorse. So it's just a high profile race and obviously because of the speaker and things that have happened this year it is um one of you know high demand for feeling opponents to take out including you know ken paxton i didn't mention him in this endorsement list he backed covey uh i believe um so there's that that's the biggest one in hg 33 you have justin holland against namely katrina pearson the former trump trump spokes um that's going to be big then hg 53 andrew murr's seat he's retiring chairman murr uh that pits westford dell against

hatch smith governor abbott has yet to endorse in that race, although it will be interesting, especially with Abbott's focus on school choice because Verdell is very much for school choice. Smith put out, responded to a question recently where he wasn't exactly enthusiastic about the prospect of Abbott's school choice program. So we'll see what happens there. Rogers versus Glenn Rogers versus Michael Cot. That's a rematch. Whereas last time Abbott endorsed Rogers this year, he is endorsing old cot. Then you have HG 65 chronic team, a freshman against Mitch little,

who not only is one of Paxton's impeachment defense attorneys, but he was Temesha's campaign treasurer in her run last year. Then you've got the huge race for the succession of Tracy King Pleasanton Mayor Clint Powell, Fullerton Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin. Then you've got, I think, five Democrats running, including Rosie Cuellar, who is Congressman Henry Cuellar's sister, along with Carlos Lopez, Uvalde County Democratic Party chairman. Those are just a handful. I've got more on the site. And then you can check all the races we're watching on the War Room on the texan.news. Absolutely. All sorts of things to watch.

And to echo you, Brad, it was very hard narrowing in this down to 12. We even started saying this would be a top 10. Had to move it to a top 12, and there are still other races that are honorable mentions for sure. So Brad, thanks so much for your coverage. Hayden, coming to you, what is significant about the illegal immigration bill that Governor Abbott signed into law this week? We'll have a piece coming soon explaining some of the major milestones of border policy this year. More recently, though, Governor Abbott signed Senate Bill 4, which criminalizes illegal immigration at the state level, setting up criminal penalties ranging from misdemeanors to felonies for crossing the southern border without authorization. The enforcement mechanism

of this bill includes state police and law enforcement being allowed to arrest people on suspicion of illegal immigration. And so far as the prosecution side goes, illegal immigrants are allowed to agree to be deported. And I say deported, it's a quasi-deportation procedure whereby a judge will order someone to leave. They can do that in lieu of prosecution, but that whole system is something that is bound to create conflict. Senator Brian Birdwell, when this bill originally came up for a vote, opposed it. He's a staunch border security advocate and a conservative, but he said that he believes that the enforcement mechanism in this bill is unconstitutional and that it encroaches on the federal government's authority, which echoes arguments that other opponents of this bill

make. So this legislation has already created a dustup and it is probably one of the most aggressive measures that Abbott has signed into law on this topic. After every legislative session, we see a slew of lawsuits come into play, usually filed by groups who oppose any given measure that's been recently passed or enacted into law. Could this particular bill result in lawsuits? It certainly could. And I believe the ACLU has either already filed a complaint or is in the process of doing so. It might not necessarily result in the Biden administration suing Texas.

However, that is a possibility given the state of Arizona attempted to do something similar to this many years ago, I believe in 2010, which resulted in the landmark Supreme Court ruling delineating border security as strictly a federal responsibility. So this could set up another legal fight over that. Obviously, the jurisprudential landscape is much different than it was back when Arizona against the United States was decided. We have a more conservative Supreme Court now, which might be more amenable way to go about this. Speaker Phelan wanted more of a system where the illegal immigrants are sent back versus being incarcerated at such high costs. And I may be getting that flipped. Forgive me. The perspectives may have been flipped on that. But the enforcement mechanism of this bill is bound to create conflict between the Department of Homeland Security and the state of Texas. But the lawsuits right now look like they're going to be between private interest groups in the state. But that doesn't mean the Department of Justice and D.C. couldn't pursue legal action at some point. Well, Hayden, thank you so much for your coverage. And speaking of special session items and at least border security tangentially,

Brad, the federal government has sued Colony Ridge. The Liberty County development that's already caught a lot of heat. Give us the details. Announced on Tuesday evening by the DOJ, the lawsuit alleges discriminatory targeting of Hispanic consumers with predatory financing and other unlawful conduct. It was filed in a Houston federal court. The DOJ said, announcing this, our investigation revealed that Colony Ridge operates as a one-stop shop for

discriminatory lending. The allegations are that the development targets Hispanic buyers with Spanish language marketing. It overpromises the amount of services utilities provided, underrepresents the fees for closing and utility connection, steers them into seller finance loans with English-only worded paperwork, and does not verify the buyer's ability to pay back the loans. First and foremost, that's probably the biggest allegation here. The lawsuit filed in that Houston federal court asks the court to enjoin Colony Ridge from its current practices and ask for restitution for those affected by the defaulted loans. Colony Ridge itself did not return a request for comment for our story.

What prompted this investigation and lawsuit? So the lawsuit appears to be in response to a Houston landing investigation that found the developer repossessed nearly half of its 35,000 properties sold since 2012. The lawsuit alleges or adds that over 90% of the foreclosures in Liberty County from 2017 through 2022 occurred in Colony Ridge. Basically, the investigation found that they're not doing a lot of due diligence with who it is they give out this financing to. Similar to the housing bubble back in the mid-aughts, people are getting these loans who have no ability to pay them back. And then they're kind of SOL once the, once the, then the bank, in this case, Colony Ridge repossesses the property. And now the DOJ is opening up this, this investigation and lawsuit.

So distill this down for us. What does this mean for the development? Well, in the span of a few months, the development has fallen under critical spotlight of both the left and the right politically, a kind of unique horseshoe theory on this issue. A Daily Wire report sparked the right's criticism of the development, focused namely on it being a magnet for illegal immigrants due to the self-financing that doesn't require the involvement of a bank and thus not necessarily the proof of legal residency. And so it is a magnet. There's no question of that. But there's no definitive number of how many of its residents are illegal immigrants. It became the subject of a lot of scrutiny in the legislature during the special sessions, as you alluded to. Eventually, the legislature approved $40 million in overtime pay for Texas DPS that is supplementing the Liberty County Sheriff and patrolling the area.

And it is a mostly rural area. Colony Ridge amounts to around half of Liberty County's population and faces problems typical of rapid population growth, strained services, including overstretched law enforcement, rising crime rates, and cobbled together infrastructure. Overall, the problems just keep piling up for Colony Ridge. And during the committee hearings, the owners, developers of Colony Ridge, Trey and John Harris, basically asserted that they're doing everything by the book and they're just trying to provide a service for people that want to find somewhere to live. This opens a new door. This from the political left, alleging that they are engaging in discriminatory practices and predatory lending. We'll see if it goes anywhere, but it certainly has caught the white hot spotlight of politics, both left and right. Absolutely. Bradley, thank you so much for your coverage. And folks, as Christmas approaches, I do want to remind y'all that if you are looking for a last minute Christmas gift for a loved one or a news junkie or some sort of political animal, definitely go to the texan.news. And we have gift subscriptions available for purchase. It can send to your inbox immediately. So this is not something you have to wait for in the mail. It can be bought, purchased, and given ASAP. So

certainly a great option for those looking for a last minute Christmas gift, the texan.news. Matt, we're going to come to you now. A law that allows federal authorities to spy on foreign actors has been criticized due to past allegations that it was used to spy on U.S. citizens and officials. Now, lawmakers here in Texas were divided over a vote to renew a portion of that law for four months. Give us the rundown. The Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act, or as it's known, FISA, is a law that's been around for a while and was passed with the purpose of allowing federal authorities to monitor foreign actors' communications. However, various provisions of the law over time have been allegedly abused. One of the most well-known circumstances was the instance in which the FBI apparently used it to spy on the presidential campaign of former

President Donald Trump. And over time, other provisions have come forth, congressional investigations and media reports that have showed other provisions being used to spy on other citizens and officials as well. One portion of FISA was set to expire at the end of this year, known as the Section 702 program. There was a bitter divide shaping up in Congress over how to reform the law before it would have the necessary support to pass as a standalone bill. But Congress has a way of overcoming opposition, and the FISA 702 renewals was tacked on at last minute as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, which is commonly known as the NDAA. Most are familiar with the NDAA as the annual bill to fund, essentially fund, the military and other national defense programs. The amendment was added by a voice vote in the

Senate and then came over to the House where it held a divided vote that passed. 16 Republicans and 11 Democrats very opposite ends of this issue, with Congressman Andy Weber saying the law needed to be reformed to prevent it from being abused to, quote, violate citizens' Fourth Amendment rights, whereas Senator John Cornyn has been a staunch defender of FISA and all the various subsets of the act, saying that allegations, particularly from members of Congress, that it's been used to spy on innocent Americans simply isn't true. One of the things he stated during a hearing in which he was questioning a senior DOJ official about it was that the FN FISA stood for foreign, and that was pretty strong evidence as he suggested that the act was to only be used on

foreign actors and not domestically. Regardless of how the law is being used by federal authorities, the bill containing the renewal now heads to President Joe Biden's desk. Once signed, Section 702 will be renewed for another four months. Where it's expected, the battle will come up again. Awesome. Well, Matt, thank you so much for your coverage, checking in on some federal action there. We appreciate it. Brad, we're coming to you. The Texas Supreme Court dismissed a year-and half long defamation suit against Beto O'Rourke.

Give us those details. Kelsey Warren, CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, sued O'Rourke in March of last year following allegations made by the candidate in relation to the 2021 blackouts. In multiple mediums, O'Rourke accused Governor Greg Abbott and by extension Warren and other natural gas industry figures of extortion and bribery by way of Warren's $1 million donation to Abbott for, as O'Rourke alleged, not fixing the power grid. The court dismissed Warren's appeal of a lower court ruling that sided with Beto O'Rourke. That ruling read, just as the statements made by the

speaker were understood as opinions in part because they advance longstanding arguments on a controversial political issue, so too must O'Rourke's statements be understood and considered in light of the long-running political debate about the influence, undue or otherwise, of money in politics and the oft-repeated political arguments maligning opponents for being beholden to their campaign contributors. Warren had alleged that he was a private citizen and O'Rourke was making overt allegations of actual crimes that, of course, were just being they were just being alleged in the public sphere and not not filed in court. You know, to me, when this was first filed, these defamation suits usually are dismissed out of hand. And this one seemed to have more legs than the average one. But still, the court deemed it to be a long way from that required to prove defamation in a court of law.

So not too surprising on the outcome of this. But I think ultimately what it means is Kelsey Warren has to pay the legal fees for Beto O'Rourke that he created during this, that he took on during this lawsuit. But other than that, there's nothing really that's going to come of this. Just another example in a long line of defamation suits that we've actually had quite a bit this year that go against the person alleging defamation and for the defendant. So yeah, just continuing that trend, it seems. I'd be curious to look back and see how many times you've written on this story, kind of an insidery story, but one that's very notable just due to the players at hand. So interesting to watch it kind of finally come to a little bit of a conclusion. Brad, thank you for your coverage.

Cameron, we're now coming to you. DEI or Diversity, Equity, Inclusion departments in higher education continue to be a major point of conversation. Tell us what one Texas Congress member plans to do about it. That's right. Representative Dan Crenshaw has a plan to amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 by adding language that would say a university cannot require an employee to, quote, endorse an ideology that promotes the differential treatment of an individual or group of individuals based on race, color, or ethnicity. The legislation would also prohibit universities from compelling employees to provide DEI statements. And in an interview with National Review, Crenshaw said that we can see the utter moral bankruptcy in higher education with the spread of anti-Semitism on college campuses.

And those comments are sort of echoing what we have seen were unable to condemn some of the rhetoric that was occurring on these Ivy League campuses. So let's jump into that then. Tell us a little bit about some of these anti-Semitism accusations and concerns that Crenshaw is bringing to light here? Well, like I just mentioned, those Ivy League presidents' comments, there was also a recent Harvard-Harris poll that showed that younger generations appeared to be breaking with the older generations in their views towards the conflict in the Middle East. In this poll, when asked if they support Israel or Hamas more, 18 to 24-year-olds were split 50-50, while the support for Israel rose with age with the largest share of support among those 65 years or older at 96%. Going further into the poll, two-thirds of 18 to 24-year-olds said that they believe anti-Semitism is growing in the U.S., but when asked, quote, if a student calls for genocide of Jews, should that student be told that they are free to call for genocide, or should such

students face actions for violating university rules, 53% of that age cohort said that the group should be told that they, quote, are free to call for genocide. So some interesting numbers there in that Harvard-Harris poll showing the differential between the younger and the older generations in their views of the conflict in the Middle East. But going back to the DEI angle of what Crenshaw is proposing, this year has saw quite a few wins on the side of, let's just call it meritocracy in terms of how education is conducted in America with the U.S. Supreme Court striking down race-based affirmative action in mission policies. And then also just here in Texas, the legislature passed Senate Bill 17, which banned DEI offices at public institutions of higher education. But interestingly, recently, the University of Texas at Austin, they have rebranded their DEI division at their university as the Division of Campus and Community Engagement, which will still be this umbrella division of the school's Gender and Sexuality Center and their Multicultural Engagement Center.

And this is something we have continued to write about in the past as the UT Austin DEI programs have been reported to be dominant in many of the departments on that campus. And we can go into a lot of the different things that have happened at UT Austin. Just recently, we wrote about how there was over 100 different faculty who signed on to an open letter that was addressed to the university president saying they were concerned about free speech on the campus, but directly related to the pro-Palestinian support and the protests that have been going on. So despite what Texas and what Dan Crenshaw is attempting to do in quelling some of the DEI movements that have occurred on public university campuses, there is still a large contingency of students that appear to be breaking from what has normally been seen at universities as a meritocratic environment and rather focused on, again, diversity, equity, and inclusion. A great rundown. Cameron, thank you so much for covering all that and connecting the dots for our listeners. Bradley, we're coming to you next. There is another court ruling on a case related to the 2021 February blackouts. What did the court decide? Family members or estates of individuals who died during the 21 blackouts sued power generators separately for

damages caused by a lack of power, namely negligence in wrongful death incidents in this case here. Five cases were consolidated together and the first court of appeals ruled on them as one, overturning a trial court's ruling that the generators could be sued under tort law, specifically negligence for failing to weatherize and failing to ensure their ability to continue to provide power. The court ruled, quote, the retail customers have not directed us to any Texas authority, and we are aware of none, that transforms the contractual duties owned by wholesale power generators to the retail electric providers under the current statutory framework into tort duties

owed by the wholesale power generators to the third-party retail customers. In short, the court found that because there's no direct relationship between power generators and retail customers, there's no liability between them for loss of power and the consequences therein. Previously, there was a kind of vertical integration of the ERCOT grid before deregulation. Companies could own essentially the whole electricity supply chain. That is the generators that turn fuel into electricity, the retail electric providers that purchase that electricity and sell it to customers, and the transmission companies that deliver the power to customers through lines and poles. Now there is kind of a horizontal integration between them with money exchanging hands,

and in the case of generators and retail electric providers, the commodity of electricity for services and the direct link is between the the retail electric providers and the um the custom retail customers because that's who you pay the bill to uh deregulation forced that vertical integration to break up and so that no one company owned the entire supply chain from piston to meter. That breakup severed the direct relationship between customer and generator. It was done to kind of to reduce electricity costs by injecting more competition into the system, which it did. And it worked for two decades. Because of the problems that occurred in 21 and the massive amount of debt incurred from that due to electricity prices being at their cap for a week straight, basically. That savings basically was washed out. So now everyone's left trying of service to the generators.

In fact, one section of code specifically exempts generators from classification as an electric utility. So overall, these estates made a bunch of cases about why there was a duty to supply electricity. The court found holes in every one of those allegations, and thus lawsuits for wrongful death or negligence cannot be brought against the generators specifically. I'm not sure how that applies to these retail electric providers that actually do have the direct relationship with customers. But in this case, there is no ability to sue.

Brad, I love to, you know, on this podcast, say we don't speculate until I ask you guys directly to speculate. What's your over-under? Some of your favorite pastimes. It's really, yeah, I love, it brings me great joy. What do you think the chance, this is again, purely speculative, of us getting another sort of power outage broadly across the state might be this winter? This winter? Yes. I think the chances that we have another February 2021 incident really in our lifetimes ever again is very slim, slim to none.

We saw a just a spiral of. Poor circumstances and unforeseen problems. Just cause a calamity a total collapse although it wasn't it didn't it what the collapse wasn't as bad as it possibly could have been like we could have been out of power for weeks or months had a black start happened but the legislature and the industry has filled a lot of the holes. And so if we do end up having blackouts again, the odds are very high that it is what a blackout is in most of the rest of the country. You know, losing power for 15 minutes at a time, actual rotating outages that really in the grand scheme of things aren't that bad.

That doesn't mean there aren't still problems. I've talked a lot about the potential shortfall of electricity generation on this podcast compared with what we have in development in terms of new generation, especially thermal generation. That's another thing the legislature has tried to address, and we'll see if it'll take years before we know fully if we can do that. But the chances of another February 2021 incident happening are almost zero, but I guess it's never, there's always a chance, even if it's very small.

But, you know, weatherization itself solved a lot of issues. And we've seen that in the years since we've had cold snaps and had no issues. We haven't had rolling blackouts at all. In fact, we've only had rolling blackouts like four times in the history of ERCOT since the 70s. So it's not a common occurrence especially in texas but it's a long-winded way of answering your question in short i i do not foresee anything like that this this winter i'm saying that with the context of last year in that i don't remember how widespread this was but you know a lot of folks in austin and

throughout i think there were other parts of the state too. Maybe it was just a central Texas thing. I can't remember. We're without power, but that was for different reasons, right? That was a totally different situation. Well, if you're talking about the Austin one, that was down power lines. And that's a local outage. Transformers.

Then I think a year ago we had that cold snap and it was really cold we didn't have any any power issues um other than some isolated physical problems on on the transmission side but uh even as cold as it got, we didn't have a power outage like we did in 21 where there was a deficit on the ERCOT grid. And I'm remembering last year when that cold snap did come in and a lot of folks in Austin lost power. My husband and I were out of power for many days. But we were still working and we were like, where's warmth and where's Wi-Fi? We went to Chili's on 45th and Lamar. If you live in Austin, you know, it's a place to be. And Rob,

our amazing assistant editor came with us and we worked from Chili's on 45th and Lamar for the whole work day. It was awesome. I'm sure it was packed, wasn't it? It was packed. We waited for perhaps an hour to get in and find a spot. But once we did, we camped out. So we were part of the problem then at that point, but Chile is 45th and Lamar. It's a place to be in Austin. It really is telling you. Okay, Bradley. Well, thank you so much for breaking that all down for us and for speculating

wildly. I always appreciate it. Um, Cameron coming to you, the race for Senate district 30, um, continues to provide many different topics of conversation. Tell us about a recent accusation that one challenger is allegedly not even a resident of the district. Yeah, this race has been a roller coaster for sure. Because back in November when Senator Drew Springer made the announcement that he was not going to seek reelection, we saw that there was an initial announcement from Congressman Pat Fallon that he was going to run. And he gained all sorts of endorsements from prominent Texas officials like Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. But then that same week, he backed out and withdrew his name and said he would instead seek re-election for his congressional seat. Already in the race, even before Drew Springer announced he wasn't going to run,

we had Carrie Damore. She's a doctor out of Frisco. She said she was going to primary Springer. And she was very forthcoming in her rhetoric, calling him a liberal Texas ally of Speaker Dade Phelan. So she was coming out strong already. And then we saw another name come to the forefront, the former chairman of the Denton County Republican Party, Brent Hagenbaugh. I hope I'm saying his name correctly. But Brent Hagenbaugh, he then got all the endorsements, Patrick Abbott, former governor Rick Perry. So then we had two other names come out. We have a former Denton

police officer, Cody Clark, and we have a Air Force veteran and attorney, J.C. Arborough. Well, on the eve of the December filing deadline, Cody Clark accused Hagenbaugh of being, quote, ineligible to run because, as he said, he doesn't meet the residency requirements for SD30. Then we saw Yarbrough also say something similar. He submitted a letter to the Republican Party of Texas Chairman Matt Rinaldi calling on him to remove Hagenbaugh from the primary ballot. And then after that, we saw DeMoore jump in this as well. She filed a lawsuit challenging Hagenbaugh's eligibility for SC30, saying that it just had to be done.

Quote, integrity is everything. So what was interesting, digging into Yarbrough's letter, it's a very comprehensive breakdown of all the accusations. There's lots of documentation. I'll highlight a few things for our listeners. So in all this documentation that Yarborough provided, it shows that Hagenbaugh is a resident of and votes in elections for SD-12 and not SD-30. And in this letter, it claims Hagenbaugh has not been a resident of SD-30 for one and a half months, and that the property that he used on his

filing paperwork to establish his residency, the letter says it's been used for office purposes rather than a residency. And so Hagenbaugh does have a business in SD30 called Titus Transport. And the address he uses on the filing paperwork is right next to his business. And what's interesting is digging into this, there was a challenge to his residency in his district. And in an interview with the Texas Tribune, the former Texas Ethics Commissioner Ross Fisher said that, quote, residency is the squishiest concept in Texas jurisprudence and that it's completely subjective. So this is something that is very interesting in terms of how a court can rule on this because of the subjective nature of what qualifies as residency in a district. And just recently, the lawsuit from DeMoore was supposed to be taken up in Denton County, but the hearing was pushed to January 8th. So we haven't had a decision in the courts yet, even though we had anticipated

something coming up soon. But Hagenbaugh has already declared victory against these accusations. He was making lots of sports references in his press release. He said, quote... So many, so many sports references. I don't know. At least they were all the same sport, though. Okay. I'll give him that. Yeah, he called the accusations, quote, a Hail Mary pass.

So that was just one sports reference. But he said the attempts to have Hagenbaugh declared ineligible today fell short. So with the hearing being pushed to January 8th, we don't have a definitive answer, at least for now, but it doesn't seem as though the accusations are affecting any of the endorsements that he is continuing to accrue. As of recording this, I just tweeted out today that he got another endorsement from the Dallas Police Association. It doesn't appear anyone's backed out of their endorsement of Hagenbaugh so far. So despite the residency accusations being out there, the support has not left him. So this will be something we'll continue to follow.

And it's been interesting so far. A very high profile race with a lot of very high profile candidates. We'll certainly keep an eye on high profile endorsements. This is a big race, open Senate seat. So Cameron, thanks for breaking it all down for us. Bradley, coming to you, the city of Dallas and the office of the attorney general are sparring over the release of information related to the state's new field preemption bill. What is happening? This year, the city of Dallas sent a list of more than 100 regulations to Representative Rafael Anchia that it said would be vulnerable to elimination should HB 2127 pass. That's the field preemption law known as the Death Star Bill, actually named the

Texas Regulatory Consistency Act, lays out nine sections of code that localities may not establish regulations that exceed what's laid out in those sections. So James Quintero at the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation PIR'd Dallas for that letter, which the city then appealed to the Office of the Attorney General saying that there was certain undisclosed information that was exempt from being included in their response to this PIR. And then that process happens a lot. The OHE fields a lot of appeals from local governments on excluding certain information. Holly could go on a very long rant about this. She's been dealing that with the city of Kima. And anyway, so the Office of the Attorney General rejected that appeal, putting out a ruling that directed Dallas to release the entirety of that letter,

which then prompted Dallas to file a lawsuit against the Office of the Attorney General over that ruling. That lawsuit is pending, though it may now be entirely moot. I asked in Chia's office for the letter. I think this was Monday, which they sent to me. It's, I think, like eight pages long. And it just has a list of a bunch of regulations with charter and state code citations. Nothing really crazy.

I'm not sure why they wanted to prevent that from coming out. It was pretty milquetoast. But for some reason, they did enough to sue the Attorney General's office over. After I put that letter out from Inchia's office on social media, not more than 10 minutes later did the city of Dallas respond to my request with a copy of the letter. In all, it's fairly benign, the list is, and I'm not sure, again, not sure why they fought so hard to release it. But now it's out there and it sparked some irritation among a few in the legislature, most notably Dustin Burroughs, who authored that HB 2127 bill and fought with a lot of these big blue cities during writing and passing

the bill. But he came out and said that because of this, he's more and more looking at reforms to public information law. We'll see if that happens in 2025. But the city of Dallas certainly stepped in it with this. And given how readily I got a hold of it, it doesn't seem really worth it in my mind for them to have pushed so hard against this. But I'm sure they had their reasons, whatever those were.

So maybe we'll never know. Yeah, wild story. And certainly one of the biggest legislative moments of the year now coming to the forefront of the news again. Brad, thank you so much. Let's end this on some Texas history. Matt, we're going to come to you. The historic victory or death letter will return to the Alamo Mission in San Antonio for the second time since it was written and will be on public display for a short time. Matt, give us the details. Colonel William Barrett Travis wrote his famous plea for aid as the Mexico, as the, I'm sorry, let me restart that. Colonel William Barrett Travis wrote his famous plea for aid as the Alamo defenders faced down the significantly larger forces of Mexican General Santa Anta. Travis, who rounded off the letter with the famous three words, victory or death, wrote it on February 24, 1836, some 187 years ago. A little bit of history on the letter. Travis's descendant

sold it to the state of Texas in 1896. Fast forward to today, the Texas Librarian Archives Commission is in charge of taking care and preserving it. The commission worked with the General Land Office, which is in charge of the Alamo complex, to make the first return of the letter to where it was penned in 2013. Now, a second return will occur on February 23rd through March 24th, 2024. The letter will be taken by DPS Escort, where it is stored in Austin, back to San Antonio to the Alamo Mission. Now, I would encourage our listeners to check out our coverage of the letter's return on the Texan, where we have an exclusive statement from Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham regarding the event. And those interested in having a chance to view the letter during its second historic return to the Alamo, check out the Alamo's website for

information regarding tickets and memberships and scheduling a time to visit. Absolutely. Great story. Thank you, Matt. Let's move on to our tweetery section here. Cameron, let's start with you. This has been a big story that we've seen this week. Run us through your tweeter-y is actually a sort of lead-in to a story I'm working on right now, because we saw this week Colorado's Supreme Court disqualified Trump from being able to serve as U.S. President and cannot appear on their primary ballot in the state. And so this is really shocking to a lot of people because, as we've seen, Trump is involved in a lot of different cases across the country. This is an interesting one that is going to cause a lot of political fallout, it seems, all the way up to the Supreme Court. His campaign has vowed to appeal. And so

we'll get a judgment there. But we saw Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. He made comments about this. And then during an interview with Fox News, as they were talking about the border, he just sprinkled this in during the interview that, quote, maybe we should take Joe Biden off the ballot in Texas for allowing 8 million people to cross the border since he has been president. So that sparked a little bit of conversation online that I was monitoring. But then today, today being Wednesday, December 20th, we saw the Lieutenant governor for California suggests that the secretary of state in California should, quote, explore every legal option to remove former President Donald Trump from California's 2024 presidential presidential primary ballot. So hopefully we have an election in 2024 where the people can choose the candidate that they want to choose. And this, but I'm sure Matt can speak about this more. He's, he, he is our, uh, legal scholar. Matt, what do you think the prospects are with what's happening in Colorado and then eventually leading to the Supreme Court? Well, I would point everybody to a great tweet by Austin attorney Adam Lowy. I was going to bring him up to. Who went through to the very bottom of the Colorado State Supreme Court ruling and noticed something very interesting about it that would chill a lot of tempers and a lot of emotions across the nation if this fact was highlighted about the ruling.

But basically it says we stay the implementation of this ruling pending until January 4th. Until January 4th, unless somebody appeals, in which case it remains stayed until the resolution of that appeal. So, you know, naturally they're going to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court doesn't even have to do anything. And the Colorado Supreme Court's ruling remains stayed if SCOTUS does nothing. So it's, you know, literally, um, most people that you see out there, most opinions I'm seeing agree that, you know, if SCOTUS takes it up to address it, yeah, they're going to bat it down, but they don't necessarily even have to do that. All, all, all that has to happen for the Colorado ruling to have zero legal effect is they just simply appeal and the Supreme Supreme Court does nothing. Yeah. And, um, Adam Lowy has been a good, uh, sounding board for this issue. He's been tweeting about it a lot. I've been going to his Twitter

to get some insight and he retweeted someone who gave a pretty cogent insight into what's going on. And this retweet that Adam Lowy had put on his account was saying this Colorado decision was more about the judges seeking adulation, just showing that they have the capability to go after Trump, it seems. And it's more of a signal to their political allies rather than truly trying to remove him from the ballot just for that reason you mentioned that they have stayed the decision and it doesn't really going to have an impact on the election unless um something further happens but yeah i just i i think it's an interesting thing for uh people to see these internal you know it's not really the political divisions in the country coming to the forefront or something like this. They successfully poured gasoline on the legal tensions with this ruling.

And I'm thinking they probably shouldn't have buried that stay part at the bottom. Maybe they should have reworded it and put it up at the top. Right. Yeah. But it makes for good headlines, both for people on the left and the right. People on the left can say, look, the Supreme Court in Colorado said he's not going to be on the ballot for these reasons. And then people on the right can say, look, the left's going after our guy. Exactly.

It makes for good political conversation, and they don't let us put Trump on the ballot, we'll just cancel the primary elections and hold a caucus like Iowa. Yeah, well, that was in response to the Vakes tweet. Did you watch his video, Matt? I didn't watch his video, but I saw his tweet where he said that we're going to pull our name off the primary ballot. And they were like, well, you're not going to have to because we'll cancel the election. Yeah. So I just thought that was interesting for our listeners, some context to the whole situation. So thanks for letting me bring that up. Oh, of course. Great context and lots of headlines flying around. So important to know how this all breaks down. Thank you,

gentlemen. Hayden, let's go to you. What do you have for Twittery this week? I talked about the Senate race between Victoria Niave Criado and Nathan Johnson last week on our podcast. I said that she would make immigration and progressive issues a major part of her campaign. She followed up with that after Governor Abbott signed SB4 into law. Niava Criado tweeted, quote, today Governor Abbott signed SB4, a non-constitutional racial profiling bill. I led the charge fighting back against this bill in the Texas House. Nathan Johnson was absent on November 9, 2023, the day SB4 came to the Senate, leaving the residents of SD16 without a voice on one of the most crucial bills of the year,

end quote. So a little swipe by Victoria Nyave Criado against a Democrat that she is hoping to unseat in the coming election. And I forgot to mention earlier, by the way, when I talked about the legal opposition to SB4, the Mexican president has said that he will challenge this law. I don't know exactly how that works because I don't think he can sue Texas to strike down a law because it doesn't pertain to him as somebody who's not a US citizen, somebody who is not party to this. But the Mexican government, I believe, has signaled that it will not accept people back from the state of Texas if the state initiates these quasi-deportation proceedings. Remember, not everyone who crosses the border is a Mexican national. In fact, most of them at this point are people coming from Central America and other places around the globe. So it isn't simply a matter of Texas returning Mexicans back to Mexico, although that might be part of it. SB4 would have much more

far-reaching implications than that. Anyway, I forgot to mention that earlier when I was talking about SB4. And since my Twitter directly pertained to that, I thought I would circle back like Jen Saki and explain a little further. So good. Well done, Hayden. Way would circle back like Jen Psaki and explain a little further. So good. Well done, Hayden. Way to circle back. Matt, let's go to you. What do you got for us? One reporter, Allie Bradley, shared a post from another major border reporter, Bill Malusian, where he had obtained a copy of a U.S. Immigration Enforcement hearing notice that they're handing out to a lot of the migrants that are illegally coming across the border. And the notable thing about it is that it says confirmed appointment Thursday, January 23rd, 2031. So it gives you a little bit of perspective right now. They're supposed to be like two or 3 million, uh, cases backlogged in the immigration courts. And they are literally setting appointments for, uh, so illegal aliens are coming across or being apprehended, turn this given these documents and saying, you know, show up to your hearing in almost a decade.

So it was just kind of a striking document that that shares the shows just how overwhelmed the system is right now. Absolutely. Good one, Matt. Bradley, coming to you, what did you find this week? So I saw two tweets related to the same thing. There were estimates put out, population estimates for Texas related to the next census. Now, obviously that is quite a long way away in 2030, but the new census estimates that were put out found Texas grew by 473,000 people between July 2022 and July 2023. It's a massive increase. Until this year, Texas has been increasing about 300,000 people every year. Well, this tops that by 170,000 roughly. It's a massive increase.

And related to that, the American Redistricting Project put out estimates based on that forecast on reapportionment in 2030. And it has Texas estimated to gain four congressional seats florida would be estimated to gain three and then a handful of places gain one california would lose four new york lose three now obviously a lot can change between now and then population can shift but based on the current trend texas is on track to gain four seats. And I think this past redistricting cycle, we only gained two, which was still the most of any state. But there this is, according to this trend, doubling that. So it'll be interesting to see if that, you know, follows through, but just a massive, massive influx of people growing even more every year. And that's going to have implications for many issues on the state level, infrastructure, taxes, things like that.

So something to keep an eye on. Absolutely. something to keep an eye on absolutely okay mine this uh this week i was just scrolling through twitter mindlessly as one tends to do and i saw a tweet um from danielle fountain she's a realtor here in austin said stood next to greg this morning greg cassar getting coffee and i wanted to share how anyway she went on to talk about how she feels about his support of the Austin Police Department we can get into that in a second but what I particularly thought was notable about this photo it's very much taken as if you know this person was seeing a celebrity in a coffee shop I'm sure she held her phone from her side and snapped a

photo attempting not to be noticed it's at a coffee shop I go to all time. My literal first thought was I go to that coffee shop almost every Friday, every Friday morning with Andrew. So it's Barrett's, Barrett's coffee. Barrett's? Yes. Broadly it's Barrett's. There's a delay.

We are recording remotely. There's a delay in. You're so sassy, but Barrett's has great coffee so i was just excited i even confirmed with my husband i'm like this is barrett's right and it is those wood countertops the warehouse look in the back everything about it where the pastry uh cases it's barrett's um now a lot of the comments here said uh included mention of okay did he have any police police officers with him? Brad, can you explain to our listeners the context of why people are asking this? Well, apparently Congressman Kassar asked for an APD detail at his house here in Austin. And a lot of people took that to be ironic considering his position on

cutting $150 million from the Austin police department back in 2020. And being all for a lot of these, um, use of force investigations and indictments. It's, um, yeah, a lot of people are pointing out the irony of that. And I mean, it's fair for a congressman to want additional detail, but it's just, I should have mentioned right off the bat, Greg Kassar is a congressman representing Texas's 35th district. He is a progressive Democrat, to say the least.

He's associated with the Democratic Socialist of America. Certainly one of the more progressive members from the Texas club, the most progressive member from the Texas delegation and one of the more progressive in Congress, period. Was on the Austin City Council. Yes. That's where he really made his launch pad yeah exactly um but yeah just notable that he was at my little coffee house i say my as if i'm the only person who goes to barrett's obviously there are many people who go there it's delicious and for good reason um if you were their only customer and they were still in business, that would concern me greatly.

I would have. And your coffee tab. Yeah, it would concern me greatly as well. No kidding. That would be very concerning. You'd have to take out a second or third mortgage to support your coffee habit. My husband would not be pleased with me. I will say also I saw I was driving up to dfw like a couple of months ago and i ran into congressman colin allred at uh check

stop in uh west texas so i'm just you know people people i'm just saying i may or may not be going to the good haunts that's what i'm saying you know folks are showing up congressmen from texas are showing up to these haunts um i think Mac is bragging about her coffee tastes. What's happening right now. Check stop the bakery or the coffee at check stop is a pot probably from the seventies sitting in a store with styrofoam cups next to it says, please serve yourself. That's the best coffee.

It's phenomenal. So you drink out of a styrofoam cup. It's always tasting good. Exactly. It's delightful tasting good. Exactly. It's delightful. Okay, gentlemen. Really fast. Our last thing before we head out and enjoy Christmas with our families.

Rapid fire round. I want you to say the best Christmas movie. Die Hard. Die Hard. Matt Stringer. My gosh. Hot take. Bradley?

Rapid Fire, sir. I said come back to me. Hayden? I don't know. Holiday Inn. Oh, I don't think I've ever seen that movie. Cameron? I'm going Dark Horse Pick,

Jingle All The Way, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Turbo Man. That was a great movie. Phenomenal. I'll say mine is It's a Wonderful Life. I don't think you can get much better than that movie, Jimmy Stewart. Incredible. I was going to say that. Because you stole. Incredible. I was going to say that.

So because you stole it, now I'm going to say Krampus. Not bad, Santa. That's a good one. Does Gremlins count? If Die Hard counts, Gremlins definitely counts. Or American Psycho. There's a christmas tree my lamp home alone's a great one home alone we just watched that a couple nights ago it's so

good i'd forgotten how fun that movie is mazlan turned it on at the office the other day so good so okay no one no one said elf is it just too mainstream i was gonna say that because she she's obsessed okay calm down i love elf but i'm not sitting over no you're not wrong you're totally exaggerating she didn't say you were wrong she said you weren't calm i will say this in my family, once it turns December, we're pretty much quoting Chevy Chase Christmas Vacation for the entire month. Another classic. Just tradition.

I love Elf. I love Elf. But I don't think, like in terms of, like that's best Christmas comedy for sure. But best Christmas movie has to be something a little bit more classic, a little bit more sobering or charming. Well, Elf what i mean no it's a wonderful live a christmas story is great though that's that's another one that's really great yeah okay well now i want to go watch a movie gentlemen thank you so much for joining me folks merry christmas we so appreciate you listening each and every week and we hope you have a great time celebrating with your families.

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