The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - December 3, 2021

Episode Date: December 3, 2021

This week on The Texan’s “Weekly Roundup,” the team covers the bills that became law this week, the number of GOP primary challengers this election season, growing calls for a fourth special session, a famous actor opting not to run for governor, COVID-19 infection rate comparisons at schools with and without mask mandates, the state threatening to pull $600 million from banks if they boycott fossil fuel companies, legislator retirements, 82 illegal aliens rescued from a stash house, Texas’ social media censorship law hitting a snag, how Texas cities were scored in LGBTQ inclusion rankings, an updated policing strategy in Harris County, and a look back in Texas history at the founding of the Texas Navy.

Happy Friday and Merry Christmas, folks. Senior Editor Mackenzie Taylor here bringing you this week's News Roundup. Our team details the bills that became law this week, the number of GOP primary challengers this election season, growing calls for a fourth special session, a famous actor opting not to run for governor, COVID-19 infection rate comparisons at schools with and without mask mandates, the state threatening to pull $600 million from banks if they boycott fossil fuel companies,

legislator retirements, 82 illegal aliens rescued from a stash house, Texas' social media censorship law hitting a snag, how Texas cities were scored in LGBTQ inclusion rankings, an updated policing strategy in Harris County, and a look back in Texas history at the founding of the Texas Navy. Thanks for listening. We are so glad you tuned in. Howdy folks. This is Mackenzie with Brad Johnson, Daniel Friend, Isaiah Mitchell,

and Hayden Sparks, but not Winston. And I'm a little bitter at Brad for not having his dog here. I feel like Winston's here most of the time. Yeah. I don't bring him in one day and you flip your lid. Is that considered me flipping my lid? Yes. Okay. Yes, it is. Okay. Got it. Well, gentlemen, thanks for joining me. Hayden, what's that face for?

I don't know. I just, I think think it's it's become a time honor tradition on this podcast for you and brad to get into it right off of the bat so i feel like well it's been a couple weeks so it's true you'll have to catch up after you've been out of town and now you just have all this pent-up rage that well i don't know if i have a lot of pent-up rad always has pent-up rage no not this time because you if i have a lot of pent-up rad always has pent-up rage no not this time because you know what's different about this time oh what is it michigan beat ohio state oh yes and i am not entering another year of misery so there you go i forgot to text you about that congrats that's a big deal yeah i noticed

but i was aware and i just forgot to congratulate you i know that's probably the make or break of your year so i didn't text him either if it makes you feel any better what the heck i also noticed i'm sorry i did think about you when i saw the one if that counts it's the thought that's the thought that counts truly sure i brought it up on tuesday whenever i saw you. That's really nice. So I didn't text, but I think I made the greatest effort out of everyone here. Yeah. You get a little bit more credit.

Well, the rest of us completely failed. And Isaiah probably didn't even know there was a game going on. No. He shakes his head. Oh, my gosh. Okay. Well, let's jump right into it. Hayden, there were a handful of bills that went into effect this week. Talk to us about the most high profile item to go into effect this morning, actually, as we're recording.

When the epilogue is written for Texas politics in 2021. Wow, this is an incredible lead in. I just want to say I want to recognize it right off the bat. I think it will include highlighted and an exclamation point at the end wow the election integrity protection act of 2021 wow because of the number of hoops that were required for this bill to jump through before it finally made it to today and if we know, it's that there's plenty of hyperbole on both sides of the aisle. And so, I poke fun lovingly, but as we do know, it's dark outside because the sun did not rise this morning as all these new laws took into effect. I'm just kidding. But that's

often during the debate and amendment phase on both sides of the aisle. There's often a lot of dire warnings, but we'll have to see what the litigation of this law turns out to be. But the original version of the bill did not make it across the finish line. And that's because there was a quorum break on the very last day of the bill to be the very last day that the Texas House could have passed the bill to remind everyone on May 30. Just as the clock was running out on the regular session of the 87th legislature, Democrats chose to leave the Texas House chamber and scuttle the bill. It was left to be thrown in the trash because Republicans scheduled it so far back on the schedule that when they broke quorum, it expired. The 140-day session was up, and the version that had been hashed over by the Texas House Election Committee, which is chaired by

Briscoe Cain and vice-chaired by Jessica Gonzalez, was finished. So that was the original quorum break. The original bill did not take effect. So when we're talking about the bill that took effect today, that was the bill that was passed during the second special session. And all the bills that took effect today were passed during the second special session because the Texas Constitution requires at least 90 days before new legislation takes effect. And that is 90 days from the end of the session in which it's passed. That's why bills that are passed during the regular session take effect on September 1st, generally speaking. There are a couple of exceptions to that. That's for the appropriations bill. And then if two-thirds of each house agree to set the effective date earlier,

that is also allowed. But generally speaking, about three months have to pass before a bill takes effect. So that was the original quorum break. And then as we know, there was some action this summer on the bill that ultimately was passed. Yeah. So remind us what happened after the original quorum break. The first quorum break was, at least it appeared to be a little bit spontaneous spur of the moment. They played that one by ear a little bit. The second quorum break was seemingly much more orchestrated. It involved not just leaving the Capitol, but Democrats flew to Washington, D.C., two representatives, Julie Johnson and Jessica Gonzalez. I mentioned Gonzalez a minute ago. She's the vice chair of the Texas Elections Committee.

She and Representative Johnson, in fact, went to Portugal. Many Democrats met with Vice President Kamala Harris, and all of this took place in August after Governor Abbott called another special session. And one of the purposes of this special session was to pass the elections bill, which had been lost during the regular session and that quorum break. And as we know, the special session in July was completely lost, completely unproductive. It was reduced pretty much to a daily prayer meeting. Prayer is not important, but they couldn't do anything other than that because they did not have a quorum.

And the third quorum break, if you want to count it as a third quorum break because it was in the third special session, did occur in August when Abbott called another session. And he had pledged that he would call session after session until this bill was pushed across the finish line. What ultimately occurred is enough Democrats returned on August 19th to restore a quorum and gave the GOP the votes that they needed to pass the elections bill. Not all Democrats were on board with restoring quorum, and there was a great deal of infighting among them because some of them wanted to stick it out and continue to break quorum,

and others made a calculated choice to return to Austin, return to the Capitol, and see it through. Governor Abbott signed the bill on September 7. It took effect at 12 a.m. today. And the slew of policies that went along with that, setting additional ground rules for early voting, structuring the early voting period, prohibiting drive-through voting except for limited circumstances. And then one provision, interestingly enough, that the governor seemed to have a little bit of buyer's remorse about was downgrading the penalty for illegal voting.

So on Wednesday, illegal voting was a felony in Texas, and today it's a misdemeanor. So the governor wanted to reverse that. They ultimately didn't do that, so that also took effect today. Yet to be seen is whether this law will satisfy the people who were concerned about the legitimacy of the 2020 election results. And we'll also have to see the results of the litigation that has been filed by the Justice Department and other groups. Yeah, certainly. So talk to us about other bills that went into

effect. This was certainly not the only one that went into effect this week. Well, the items that also took effect included chemical abortion restrictions. There was a limit placed on drug-induced abortions at 49 days gestation. There were also criminal justice related items. Senator Joan Huffman, a Republican of Houston, had a bill that added education requirements for domestic violence, human trafficking, and other related issues in our Texas public schools. There was also a bill that Isaiah could speak a lot more to this than I could, A bill by Senator Hughes, Brian Hughes, a Republican of Mineola, that corrected an earlier bill by Representative Steve Toth that is designed to prevent the teaching of what has become known as critical race theory and the ideas that are associated with that now and make instructional materials more accessible to

parents and require the teaching of topics, controversial topics from a variety of perspectives in a balanced fashion. So those were some of a sample of the other items that took effect. And then another bill hit the books called the, what it's known as the social media censorship bill. And Daniel's going to address some litigation that has changed the outcome of that. So a bill designed to curb social media censorship did take effect. However, that has now been stymied due to a federal judge's ruling, and Daniel's going to address that more extensively. So that's just a sample of some of the other bills that took effect, all of which were passed during the second called session. But again, the big item would be the Election Integrity Protection Act, which took all year to get done. But the GOP did get it across

the finish line. Well, Hayden, thank you for that. And we'll definitely get into that stymied social media censorship bill later on. But Daniel, let's go ahead and chat with you about primary challengers this cycle. You know, folks are filing for election ahead of 2022 to challenge some incumbents. And there are a lot of open seats after a lot of legislative retirements that we've covered extensively. But let's talk specifically about GOP challengers to sitting incumbents and where we're at in terms of who's filed so far? Yes. So we're seeing a growing number of people who are actually challenging incumbents. Like you mentioned, there are a lot of open seats. This has been a big turnover year. We're going to see a lot of turnover in the House and the Senate as well, just because it's redistricting. A lot of members are retiring. Are we at five members in the Senate? Five members?

Five members in the Senate so far. And then there's also, I think there's 20 in the House. There's a substantial number in the House as well. So it's a significant turnover. But also with the people who are staying on,

there's also a significant number of primary challengers, which is interesting in that it's up from last year or last election cycle. I went back through and looked at the number of incumbents who were challenged in previous years going back to 2000. And specifically in the state house, since there's 150 seats there. A lot of them are Republican. And there has been many, many primary challenges in the past that peaked around a little bit over 30 incumbents being challenged back in 2016. And then at the low end, there's usually about 10 or 11, which is actually what we saw in 2020, which was the lowest it had been since 2000. And so two decades, it was the lowest in 2020.

And keep in mind, that was before the pandemic, so that wasn't even a factor when people were filing for candidacies in 2019. So just kind of interesting to see how it ebbs and flows. Right now, we're about at 17. The last I checked, there could be some more just based on who's actually filed. Sometimes it takes a little bit to get the paperwork through the party to the Secretary of State and actually on the website showing that they have filed. And then there's also some candidates who don't have that much of a reach and they might have announced a campaign

in a local paper or something, but it's not really out there to public. But of the ones that we have seen, there's about 17 incumbents who are being challenged. Got it. Talk to us about the rate at which these incumbents lose primary challenges. So it's not too terribly often that we see successful challenges to incumbents. However, there are some notable exceptions to that, and there usually are some incumbents who lose re-election in different years. So even back in 2020, when we had only 11 incumbents being challenged in Republican primaries, there were still two incumbents who lost re-election. I believe it was representatives Dan Flynn and J.D. Sheffield

who lost to Brian Slate and Shelby Slauson. So that was interesting. It's a turnover of two, even though it was a low number of challenges. Now that it's increasing to 17, that certainly would seem to indicate that there could be more primary losses for incumbents, but not necessarily a perfect correlation there. If you look back at 2002, for instance, I think there were 12 is like six or seven people lost reelection to their primary challengers. So we'll see what will happen. It also depends on the candidates themselves, what's going on with the incumbent. Do they have any scandals or something that people are going to be paying attention to or their votes on different things? And then as well as the candidates who are challenging them, do they have good name recognition?

Do they have good financial backing? Do they have ties to the community that's going to boost them up? Those are all factors. So it's really kind of impossible to just say this is how it's going to work because there are so many factors. Absolutely. Now, who are some of the incumbents that are being challenged? So some of the notable ones that stick out, one, for instance, is Gary Van Deaver, who is actually being challenged by a former member who had been in Van Deaver's seat in previous years. That would be George Lavender. George Lavender is running for election to the seat again.

What a nice last name. Very flowery. Very, exactly. It just is nice to hear, Lavender. But he actually was unseated by Van Dever several years ago, tried running for the seat again, I think in 2016, did not unseat Van Dever, but now he's trying again after redistricting.

So we'll see how that turns out. I have not actually seen his filing on the Secretary of State's website, but he has reportedly launched a campaign. So we'll see what happens there. Another interesting race to be watching as far as primaries'll be with Representative Brian Guillen, who is the newest Republican member in the Texas House just because he changed his party affiliation from a Democrat a few weeks ago. And so there was actually already a Republican running in that seat. So now he's going to be challenging Guillen. Now, Guillen does have the backing of lots of people in the Republican Party. When he did change his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican,

he had House Speaker Dade Phelan there. He had Governor Greg Abbott there. He had the Texas GOP chairman and vice chairman there. So he has the support of lots of Republicans. But it's also interesting looking back historically. In 2012, you had a similar situation with J.M. Lozano, who changed his party affiliation also after redistricting year. And he was actually forced to a runoff. Typically, when races are forced to a runoff, that's a really bad sign for incumbents.

And there's only a few cases back in the past 20 years where incumbents who go to a runoff actually win. But in that instance, Jay Mlozano was forced to a runoff and he did win that runoff. So that was interesting. We'll see if something similar plays out. But in order to get a runoff, he needs more than one primary challenger. I'm only aware of Mike Monreal challenging him right now. There's a few other candidates who are being challenged or incumbents that are being challenged with some higher profile candidates who have run in previous races, so they've built up some name recognition.

One of those would be Representative Reggie Smith, who's going to be facing Shelley Luther, who previously ran for Senate District 30 when there was a special open seat a year ago. She, of course, skyrocketed to fame during the COVID pandemic, and there was the whole business closure thing. And she tried opening her hair salon in defiance of Governor Greg Abbott's executive order. So that will be an interesting race to watch just because she does have some name ID now. You also have another person

who was in that SD30 race with Luther, who is, his name is Andy Hopper. And he's also running against another incumbent, Representative Lynn Stuckey in Tarrant County. Or not Tarrant County, Denton County is where he's from. And then you have another candidate that I am aware of that ran for the 11th congressional district when it was open in the last cycle, Wesley Verdell, who's also challenging a state house member, Andrew Murr out in West Texas. So that will be also another race to watch.

So we'll see what, what turns out of those. And there's, of course, like I said, I think there's 17 incumbents who are being challenged. Some of these will result in probably some turnover there. Some of them, or a lot of them probably will not, but they'll be interesting to watch anyways. Certainly. Thank you, Daniel. Brad, let's talk about calls for a fourth special session. Calls have certainly been growing. Talk to us about where this stands and how many lawmakers have asked. Yeah, about over the last month or so, we've seen it almost double in size. Still, you know, in terms of the overall makeup of the Texas House, it's still a smaller portion of the group. But so far, we've seen 26

legislators, two state senators, and 24 Texas House members backing a prospective special session, mainly chiefly to ban vaccine mandates. This comes after the federal government and some local entities, both public and private, have tried implementing vaccine mandate policies for their employees. The governor, he has avoided taking a stance on another special session. He said it's certainly a possibility, could come at any time. He said that multiple times. Multiple times. Basically, any time he's asked.

On multiple different topics, whether it's vaccine mandates or other issues. And so, right now, it's not going to happen and um you know unless something changes as you know the governor is the only person that can call a special session and not only that but he's the only one that controls what the legislature may consider during such special session certainly now where are we at on the status of vaccine mandates in Texas? So as we know, Governor Abbott issued a ban, an executive order ban on public and private vaccine mandates.

Now that's a change in position from the first one, which was just on public entities. But since both of those, there are still many entities that are, both public and private businesses that are not adhering to to that along with you know we see this happening with the mass mandate stuff as well so there's you know broad um uh in adherence if that's even a word to to this uh executive order which is why so many people are growing or calling for a special

session for the legislature to actually write it into law. One of the bigger vaccine mandates that was issued was from the federal government. It was through OSHA, and that required businesses, I think 100 employees or more, to all require vaccines. And the Fifth Circuit struck that down. Who knows if the Supreme Court's going to take it up? They very well could. They may punt and let the Fifth Circuit's ruling stand. But that's where that is right now. We've seen various other ones. For example, there was a U.S. District Court that ruled against the North Texas Pilots Challenge to United Airlines' mandate. So it's

kind of a hodgepodge of different results. Who knows how it's all going to shake out, where the dividing lines come, especially on public versus private mandates. But yeah, right now that's about where it is and the legislature cannot pass anything on it because they're not in session, even if the support would be there. Yeah, absolutely. What else might be considered on a fourth special session call? Well, Hayden mentioned this earlier, the restoration of the voter fraud penalty. It was, as he said, reduced in, I think it was the House, was it? Is that correct? I can't remember which chamber, but it was the penalty.

But it was passed by both. It was approved by both chambers. And so it was, it was adjusted and moved forward with. Another thing we could see is the, an election audit, which of course, president, former president Donald Trump has pushed for quite a bit. We saw him calling out speaker Phelan on it. But we saw also last week or the week before, very recently, Thanksgiving has blurred my timeline, but the House and Senate approved funds. They took funds from one part of the budget and moved it to the Secretary of State,

I think $4 million roughly, for them to conduct a statewide election audit. So that's happening without legislation itself. And then another thing we could have is something on Chapter 313, the property tax abatement program. That was not renewed by the state legislature. And we saw that especially come up when samsung the samsung investment was announced because that was a part of it samsung got a substantial property tax abatement from the taylor isd and so um that is something that certainly a certain section of of texas officials and business interests and communities would like to see continued but then you have the the reason that it wasn't in the first place there's a lot of pushback for it um during the regular session so those are a couple options but ultimately it's up to governor abbott and

who knows what's what he's going to do certainly and thank you brad speaking of governor abbott let's talk about a potential challenger to the governor that opted not to run for election hayden talked to us about Matthew McConaughey. What was his announcement? And walk us through the developments up to this point. Matthew McConaughey, who is a professor of practice at UT Austin's Moody College of Communication, announced that he will not. And famous actor. Yes. Famous, famous actor. You've got to stay on top of me or i'll forget these i just love that his number one um attribute was like yeah he's a professor at ut yeah that's

true he's just a professor i left out as a part owner of austin fc well maybe i this should probably be a group topic because honestly i'm not not up on your becoming. I really do. All right. All right. All right. Yeah. Not very qualified to do this one, but, um,

he said he's not running and he didn't say, he didn't say whether, whether he's, whether he was considering a, um, a GOP or a democratic run, but he said he's not going to run and that he was honored to be considered for political office that he never imagined he would end up being thought of as a

possible gubernatorial candidate. He, of course, grew up in Uvalde, which is significant right now because border issues and border security has been the hot button issue of this campaign. So I'm sure that would have at least a little bit played into his candidacy if he had chosen to run. But he did appear at a March for Our Lives rally at the state capitol a few years ago after the tragic shooting at the Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. He gave views that were a little bit vague on gun control, made a statement that sounded like he would support a ban on rifles, on many what are often referred to as assault rifles as a political term. But he ultimately chose not to run. So it doesn't look like that will need to be hashed over, at least in the near future.

There was some polling that showed him registering pretty highly among voters, and who knows how that would actually play out. But especially in a head-to-head against Abbott and Beto who at that point was the prospective Democrat nominee but that's not coming to fruition so certainly well thank you Hayden for that it really was a great great coverage of it don't yeah you you did a fantastic job Hayden oh his little smile Isaiah we're going to come to you so a while ago we presented data that showed that schools with mask mandates have an infection rate of about one percent lower than schools without mask mandates. How has that number changed as the school year has progressed? That gap has actually shrunken a little bit. So the first story that we wrote was on data that

ended in late September. I want to say the penultimate week of September. And the square just went on and I thought, well, let's see how it changed. And now the gap has gotten a little bit smaller. In our first article, the positivity rate gap between schools with and without mask mandates was 1.04%. Now it's 0.88%. So in other words, students that attend schools without a mask mandate have tested positive for COVID 0.88% more than students where masks are required. And that is a cumulative count, not a moment in time, by the way. Got it. Now, is this a statistically significant difference? These statistics make that a very difficult question.

Statistical significance is not just a guess at how big or small a number seems. It's a calculation of the standard deviation, which is a way to measure the spread of data in a sample. And for one, this is a census type collection, not a sample. So in other words, it's the entire data set for the Texas public school system and not a representative piece of it. So there's not really probability involved. The infection rate difference between schools with and without mandates is just a fact on its own. We could potentially calculate the standard deviation of positive cases for each set. infection rate difference between schools with and without mandates just a fact on its own we could potentially calculate the standard deviation of positive cases for each set but you know like

if we're going to do that do we use the infection percentage of each district or do we use the raw number of infected kids like the absolute tally for each district and then calculate the total percentage from that if we wanted to be honest we could calculate both and let the readers pick the one they like most because they'd be different. One would be higher, one would be lower. But that would end up in the article as like one sentence with a lot of footnotes. And again, this isn't a sample. It's a census. So there is no margin of error and it wouldn't be an appropriate use of statistical significance.

Anyway. Got it. That was a lot. I don't know how you sifted through all that when we were writing this article. Thank you, Zay. So we don't have to. How do COVID trends look in schools this year overall? Promising since the week ending in the 5th of September.

That is so far the peak in this school year that has started for most schools around the state between August 3rd and August 23rd. Since that time, it hit a high peak in September with 40,000, well, above 40,000 positive student cases reported that week. And now we're far, far below that. We've got the charts and the specific data in the article. The overall positivity rate is that, you know, since school year has begun, cumulative count of 4.1% of the state's 5.3 million kids have tested positive. And we don't know how many of those are the same kid to us testing twice. You know, they're not necessarily identical or unique. Right. And to give that some perspective, you know, I mentioned we've got 5.3 million kids going to public school in Texas.

And since measurement began, 112 Texans under the age of 20 have died of COVID-19. That's about 0.16% of the state's total death count. Got it. Isaiah, thank you for that. Brad, let's go to you. Texas joined a coalition of states facing off against banks. What are the details? So there was a letter signed by 15 state fiscal officers to the U.S. banking industry threatening recourse should they decide, should the banks decide to boycott fossil fuel companies or just in general stop doing business or reduce their business with them. So the letter alleges that the federal government is, quote, pressuring U.S. banks and financial institutions to limit, encumber or outright refuse financing for traditional energy production companies. And there is a growing movement, especially among the progressive left, environmentalists especially, to get banks in general, any institution, any powerful institution, to stop prioritizing

or incentivizing in some way the fossil fuel industry. They want to transition away from that. And one way is to hit them in the pocketbook. And so we see these red states. This was this group of states. They signed this letter saying that if you do this, we'll pull whatever money state funds we have that's in your bank out of it and move it elsewhere to a bank that is not going to be engaging in this kind of thing. Overall, it's estimated about

$600 billion that is in this pool of, not technically a pool, but the amount, the collective amount between these 15 states. And that's quite a bit of money. And should anything actually happen on this, this just seems like a way to prevent any such actions by the banks. Now, what is Texas's role in this? So the letter was circulated and penned initially by West Virginia Treasurer Riley Moore, and he got a bunch of other red states to sign on to it. Texas is on it. Comptroller Glenn Hager, his name is on it.

And Texas, according to the Comptroller's Office, accounts for over half of this sum of money. And so it's a big, for the purpose of this letter, for the people pushing it out there, it was a big get the purpose of this letter for the people pushing it out there. It was a big get to have Texas a part of it. Now, sorry, let me read a quote by Glenn Hager. He said at a time when countries around the world are experiencing energy supply constraints that will worsen the inflation crisis and threaten our economic recovery. This administration is using every tool at its disposal to try and curtail traditional sources of domestic energy production.

So, you know, the we've seen these policies that the Biden administration has implemented, such as nixing the Keystone pipeline, prohibiting new federal leases or new drilling leases on federal land and various other policies. You know, they're they're trying to reduce the amount of fossil fuels that the state relies, not only the state, but the country relies upon. And they're going about it in various different ways. Now, Texas, the Texas legislature passed a bill doing exactly this, the purpose of this letter. And so, Texas would, even without these other states, Texas would already be doing this if these banks choose to act on such a demand or encouragement by the federal government. Now, I should note that I didn't see any examples of banks actually doing this in the US. And so, like I said before, this seems like a preventative measure, but that certainly doesn't mean, especially in this day and age where public opinion, especially on Twitter and whatnot, is pretty powerful and can get large companies to change the way they operate internally.

This is not an unreasonable thing to think might happen. And so these state fiscal officers are trying to get out ahead of it. Well, Brad, thank you for covering that for us. And so these state fiscal officers are trying to get out ahead of it. Got it. Well, Brad, thank you for covering that for us. Definitely a story that a lot of our readership has cared very deeply about and shown a lot of interest in. So thanks for covering that for us. Daniel and Brad, we're going to come to both of y'all and talk through the retirements

this week. We've been following those very closely at the Texan Lawmaker Retirement. So Daniel, we'll start with you. But we had another retirement in the Senate this week. And earlier I said, I think it's five retirements. and that's notable in that there are only 31 senators, right? So that's a large portion of incumbent senators that are actually retiring. So who is the latest to retire? of Houston and Senate District 11. He was first elected in 2011 and before that he had been in the state house for five terms. Like I said, this district is south of Houston and includes basically all of Galveston County. It says 99% on the redistricting page with a new district. I know the lines have changed a little bit, but it still

includes basically all of Galveston, the south eastern portion of yeah i always get west and east confused i can get north and south but west and east i have to think through it fingers moving on the x and y axis trying to consider where exactly that was so county more the southeastern part of harris county and all as well as the northeastern part of brazoria county um a big chunk there. So that's where the district is. Senator Larry Taylor announced his retirement. And then talking about some of the circumstances leading up to the retirement, according to one report during a phone call, Taylor said that

part of his reason for leaving, retiring now, was some pressure from Representative Mays Middleton, who was intent on running for the seat. And he did, in fact, announce that he was going to be running for the district basically immediately as soon as the press release from Taylor was published. You had immediately following that, you had Mace Middleton saying that he filed for the seat. So that happened right away. A very quick turnaround there. So those are two seats that are now kind of open. You have SD-11 and then you also have HD-23 for Representative Mays Middleton. Got it. Daniel, thank you for that. Brad,

let's go ahead and chat about another retirement in the Texas House. Yeah. So Representative Jeff Kaysen, uh, just announced his retirement today being Thursday, Thursday morning. Um, this wasn't too much of a surprise considering all the context surrounding it. Um, for example, his, his HD 92 was during redistricting was shifted from a slight Republican advantage, R53%, according to our TPI, to a D60%. It's a 13% shift. That's huge. And so it's practically impossible for a Republican to win that seat now. And so he saw no use in running for it. He had been asked to run in HDd 93 which is currently held by representative

matt krause who is who was at first running for attorney general and is now running for tarrant county district attorney um that's also in tarrant county obviously the district is but um he decided not to because he's always lived in hd 92 and doesn't want to uproot his life and even if it's you in HD 92 and doesn't want to uproot his life. And even if it's a neighborhood away, doesn't want to think that's worthwhile. And so but also during this, he I mean, he's done this before. Representative Kaysen kind of took aim at a couple a few of his colleagues that he blames for the redistricting turning out the way it did. He placed blame on Craig Goldman, Giovanni Capriglione,

and Stephanie Click. At least two of the three are chairman. I'm not sure. I know Capriglione was chairman in the last regular session in 19, but all pretty powerful members of the the gop caucus and um he blames them for for not sticking up for his district and ensuring that it gets a favorable redraw for republicans and so particularly citing the

tarrant county affiliation there right right and so um yeah he represented case and only served well only have served one term he was a a freshman. He replaced Representative Jonathan Stickland, who did not run for re-election last year. Kaysen won narrowly, but won by a wider margin representative next year when or 2023 when the legislature convenes for the next regular session. Awesome. Thank you both. Hayden, tell us about a stash house in South Laredo. It was announced by both Customs and Border Protection and the Webb County Constable Precinct 2 office. They indicated that the individuals involved were from Honduras, Belize, Peru, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Mexico. And there were also, unfortunately, three unaccompanied children found among those individuals. The Webb County Precinct

constable's office used the word rescue when they said these individuals were apprehended. And of course, CBP reminded everyone in the press release that these stash houses are a threat to national security. And they said a quote, a breeding ground for illnesses or other communicable diseases because of the unsanitary conditions. So that was the nature of the bust in Webb County. Thank you, Hayden. Always interesting to hear those border stories and you followed and thank you for that, Daniel. Just as we've already alluded to, but just as the state's new ban on social media censorship was set to go into effect, a federal district judge put a halt to that he is in the Western District of Texas federal court in Austin. That's where oftentimes Democrats will come in to push kind of oppose the Republican laws that have been passed through Austin because that court is more favorable toward them. This is an instance of that happening as well.

And so you have the social media censorship bill that Republicans supported and most Democrats opposed. There were some Democrats who actually, um, as well as prohibiting them from censoring content based on a person's views, uh, political or partisan or religious views, uh, stuff like that. Um, the judge Pittman said in his, uh, order, his temporary or his temporary injunction that he granted, uh, he said that content moderation and curation will benefit users in the public by reducing harmful content and providing a safe, useful service. So that was the gist of his arguments right there at the end. Got it. Now, what was the argument that the opponents of the legislation made? So the opponents of the legislation, of course, are these companies, the big tech associations that have, you know, Facebook, Google, Twitter, these names that we're quite familiar with, um, kind of working together. They have a bunch of attorneys, uh,

representing them. Uh, one of the people who, one of the trade organizations is called Net Choice, uh, with the president and CEO being Steve Bianco, um, who appeared during the legislative legislative process in opposition to the legislation. And he basically makes the argument that HB20, which is the bill number, actually infringes upon the First Amendment rights of the companies, not individuals, basically saying that these companies have the right to moderate their content and basically curate the type of community that they want on their platform. And so kind of defending the curation and editorial use that these companies have. One of the things that they said, what the judge said in the courtroom, he said, this court is convinced that social media platforms, at least those covered by HB20, which for

context, it'd be users with 50 million users or more are the companies that are affected. But Pittman said those companies curate both users and content to convey a message about the type of community the platform seeks to foster and as such exercise editorial discretion over their platform's content. So there's a lot of talk about whether they should be in an editorial type thing like a newspaper or if they're more a common carrier like a utility. And so that's kind of where the debate is, you know, is this the town square or is this just, you know, different companies, you know, giving people an opportunity to utilize their platform um so that's the debate

the judge was more favorable towards the social media companies uh and did issue the temporary the temporary injunction yeah keep on saying restraining order it's basically the same thing you can't just different yeah yeah a little bit different a little bit different um and that's probably cringe at my saying that is the same. And that's the whole publishing versus platform argument, right? Essentially, yes. You know, publishers or platforms. Now, has the attorney general responded? So as of the time that we are recording this, which we're recording this on Thursday afternoon, a day after it was ordered on Wednesday evening, the Attorney General has not responded, but it is probable that we'll

see something from him or from the governor sometime soon. I imagine that they will appeal this. I would be surprised if they don't. Yes, certainly. Thank you for covering that for us, Daniel. Isaiah, let's talk some Texas history. One thing we love to do at the Texan is report on some of the historical dates and just events that have happened that make Texas, Texas. So historians date the birth of the Texas Navy to November 25th, 1835. Tell us a little bit about how this started and how it ended. We just kind of passed through this anniversary and you wrote a piece about it. Yeah, Texas did have a Navy, technically more than one because there are iterations of it.

And let me just say that this is such a wild period of history, which makes it so fun to research because you've got these guys that are outlaws and their resumes are like outlaw, then sheriff. And then they fought for Texas Revolution, then the Confederacy and then the United States. And then they retired as like a college professor or something like, you know, just all of this period of history. It's just wild. Anyway, so the provisional government of the revolutionaries first authorized privateers to wage war on Mexican ships on November 25th, 1835. So this is before an official declaration of independence. And anyway, that didn't last very long because

eventually they bought official ships of their own, but those only lasted about a year. So in January 1836, the provisional government bought the Invincible, the Independence, the Brutus, and the ship William Robbins, later rechristened Liberty, but all were lost by the middle of 1837. The Liberty actually guarded Sam Houston to New Orleans fresh from, well, not directly from the Battle of San Jacinto, but he was still suffering from a shin wound that he took at that battle just weeks before. And that ship, the Liberty, languished there at New Orleans after the Texas government failed to muster enough funds to pay for repairs.

There was another one that surrendered to a pair of Mexican ships after a four-hour battle in April of that year. Anyway, so they had a four-ship Navy, and just one by one they couldn't pay for repairs if they were captured. And so they later commissioned a second Texas Navy that would aid the rebels of the Yucatan state in Mexico in their rebellion, which is ultimately not quite successful. But when that was going on, the Texas government decided to use the Texas Navy to aid those rebels.

So on the same day that Sam Houston took over as president from Mirabel Lamar, who sent out the ships in the first place to aid the Yucatan, Houston ordered them to be brought back. Like the same day it was inaugurated, but news travels slow. And the Commodore of the fleet at that time, Edwin Moore decided that he didn't want to listen to Sam Houston. And he just kept going on to Yucatan to engage the entire Mexican Navy with two ships. Bold strategy. Bold strategy.

Anyway, so Houston, after months of his order being ignored denounced the entire texas navy as pirates and has friendly nations to help bring them back and so houston became just warrier and warrier of the texas navy and their legitimacy but it's interesting that you've got an entire branch of a sovereign nation's military albeit only only, you know, a few years old, that the nation's own head of state feels is criminal, which is just pretty funny. Anyway, the Texas Navy got officially absorbed into the U.S. Navy in 1846, shortly after

annexation. But during its time, it actually contributed pretty substantially to the formation of the Republic. The first four ships crippled Santa Ana supply lines and even in some engagements, captured materials like gunpowder from Mexican ships that would later be used to defeat the Mexican army at San Jacinto. Very good. Well, Isaiah, thank you for covering that for us. Always fun to hear a little bit about Texas history on our podcast. We're going to transition now to cover a few of the articles written by our reporters in other parts of the state. Daniel Kim Roberts up in North Texas wrote an article about a new ranking for Texas cities.

What kind of ranking was that? So this ranking was conducted by the Human Rights Coalition, the HRC, and it's called the Municipality Equality Index. And this is made to evaluate, quote, embodying LGBTQ plus inclusion in their laws, policies, and services, looking at 25 different cities in Texas. The analysis that the HRC did actually looks at cities all across the country, but it was in Texas, 25 specific cities. Got it.

Now, how did the cities rank according to this group? So according to this group, they gave four perfect scores to different cities in Texas, and those cities would be Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, and San Antonio. It's ranked in a score from 0 to 100, with 100 being a perfect score. So those cities got 100 as far as their view on the LGBTQ plus inclusion, whereas some other cities ranked much lower, like Killeen and McAllen were actually the lowest with 17 out of 100, according to them. There were some other low scores that I saw as well, like College Station had 22.

I think Waco was in the 30s. So you have varying scores like that. Of course, you can see all this at Kim's article where she details it a little bit better than I could describe, but that's the gist of it. I like it. Thank you so much, Bradley. Harris County approved a strategy change this week, and our reporter in Houston, Holly Hanson, covered this extensively. What did they do? So in response to spiking violent crime rates, especially homicides, the county commissioners approved a plan to increase police presence in high crime neighborhoods. It's called, quote, precision policing. Of course, this concept is not new this has been around for um for as long as policing has

been around um you know sticking sticking units where uh the crime is happening and uh to do this they have allocated 2.6 million dollars to provide 96 additional officer officers on patrol per day in the unincorporated portions of the county that do not overlap with the houston police department uh notably does not fund extra deputies it funds overtime for the existing deputies and so they're seeing um the these rising crime rates it's happening not only in houston it's happening in austin we see i've covered that quite a, it's happening in Austin. I've covered that quite a bit. It's happening. Actually, Dallas is one that it's not quite happening as much. But almost every major city across the entire country is facing this kind of, especially homicide increase. Some other categories of violent crime as well.

So these local governments are having to confront that. And the county itself, of course, it's not the, the Sheriff's Department is not the largest law enforcement outfit in that, in the county. The Houston Police Department is, and they cover much of the county,

but there are portions that exist outside of the city itself. And that's where this effort, this effort especially will focus. Um, and so that's their plan, $2.6 million for 96 additional officers of, you know, overtime. Yeah. And law enforcement is expensive. Um, but a lot of cities are, you know, dealing on a lot more, uh more funds for other projects. Yes. So, it really comes down to the priorities of each city. Talk to us about the crime scene in Harris County right now.

And like you just mentioned, you know, Houston itself, they've not implemented, Houston and Harris County have not implemented this, quote, defund the police stuff. They decided not to do that back in 2020 when Austin did it and various other cities across the country did. But they're still facing the crime uptick. And in Holly's article, it says there have been in the county at least 550 homicides since January. Compare that to something that I've been tracking a lot, which is homicides in Austin, which obviously is not as big of a place population wise. And this is the city rather than the county, but it extends beyond the county itself as well. So that is, they just reached their 87th this week. So, you know, that's a lot more even though it is a higher population area. But the, they have various law enforcement agencies have kind of pegged this, this phenomenon on two things, or one thing a lot, mainly is

COVID that's caused a lot of a lot of these issues, or it's at least led to them. But also you see, especially in Harris County county these bail policies uh the use the more liberal in the old sense of the term use of personal recognizance bonds and something that hughes i think it's houston crime stoppers they track is victims of uh homicide victims from offenders that were just let out on pr bond yeah and there have been at least 154 this year so there's that and then holly told me this morning that she spoke to a deputy harris county deputy after the story was published and he said that the department um in these targeted areas the department is like 20 30 calls deep on hold most of the time. And he likened the, this new precision policing to putting a bandaid on a mortal wound.

So, um, that's the latest in Harris County from Holly Hanson. Got it. Bradley. Thank you, Holly. Thank you. Gentlemen. Um, let's move on to a fun topic. I would like to say that it is Daniel J friend who came up with this topic. We are now in December. Christmas season is in full swing, even for those who do not celebrate as early as I do. So let's talk about Christmas trees. First of all, I'd like to point out that it was my third suggested topic after you shot down the other two. And then I was just like, well, I'll say something that she'll agree to. Yes, that's exactly right. And I think you even said it in jest, assuming I would not take it

because... No, I knew that you would. Okay. Then you were fully aware. Christmas trees. And we already kind of got into it a little bit. Brad and Isaiah are already at different sides of this argument. How much, Brad? Real Christmas trees or fake Christmas trees? Isaiah, do you want to set the table?

Real? With anything, any item at all, real is better than fake. Yes. Brad? Oh, that's it. That's your. Well, I mean, if you want more all, real is better than fake. Yes. Brad? Oh, that's it. That's your... Well, I mean, if you want more, the smell is better. Okay. Man, I got to look at this quote.

It's always coming to mind. Some Robert Frost quote about how we like walking sticks with their irregularities that we make by hand better than like, I don't know, something you turn on the lathe like a baseball bat or whatever. Oh, yeah. The irregularity of like, you get one of the Christmas tree, it's got this perfect symmetry, these perfect layers of branches, nothing in between. And it's just unnatural. Yeah. Bradley?

Well, I prefer the fake just because it's much less of a cleanup. There's not all the... Is that your only argument? That is my only argument. You just sweep it up. It's convenience. It's a pain in the butt. Or there's the sap and whatnot.

Where does the sap... The sap doesn't go anywhere unless you... Well, if you touch it, then your hand gets all sticky. It's disgusting. You only touch it when you move it into the house. Probably, yes. Yes.

And move it out of the house. Brad likes to embrace the fake trees. I was going to say, Brad really wants to spend time just hugging the tree. Yeah. Yeah. Literally a tree hugger. Oh, good one.

Yeah. Thank you. I thought so too. I just think, I'm with Isaiah 100% on this. Even though my family, since they moved to Arizona, has a fake tree, which I'm a little bitter about, but the smell makes it worth it in and of itself, in my opinion. The smell. You can just put a the car refreshing

around the tree it does not smell the same light a candle there are like christmas tree candles yes boom but it's still not the same it's cleaner there's something refreshing and homey but also like spicy about a christmas tree sense spicy yes like it's a you know what i'm talking about like a pine spice it's actually it's so much better than a candle and i love christmas candles but a tree does not does not nothing's better than the actual smell of a tree in your living room yeah let me ask you all this how do you feel about beyond meat there's a big difference between fake meat, something I'm consuming and something that you're decorating your house with. You consume the smell.

That smell goes right in, right into your body, but you can't, yes, you can consume the smell. And if you want to go out and smell a Christmas tree, go out and smell a Christmas tree, go out,

take a walk in the woods. That's beautiful. It's out there. Are you suggesting that a real christmas tree is an excuse not to get outside i think that's isaiah's real motivation that's yeah that could be dead right yeah isaiah known for never ever going outside yeah exactly i mean in general if there's a plant inside i'd rather it be fake why that's so weird oh here hayden do you agree with that hayden it seems like you just might.

Is that all trees or all plants? Is it about bugs? Is it about smell? What is it about plants inside? Well, there's bugs, too, and then there's dirt, and then you have to take care of it, the responsibility of watering a plant. Whereas you can just get a fake one,

and you don't have to worry about it. I'm just hearing a lot of excuse for laziness. That's what I'm hearing. Yeah, I mean, it is laziness it is having control of the space that you live in whereas when you bring in another living object you have less control it's going to be less clean so this is going to be more responsibility about control and ease i understand hayden i feel like where are you at on this i i personally agree with daniel i i wouldn't want something to take care of

and i i think outside things should stay outside and a tree is an outside thing so just generally speaking you feel like outside things just stay outside. I want to clip that and just have it on hand, that quote from Hayden. That'd be great. Okay. But do you believe that about pets? I guess you're not a pets guy. So probably yes.

I will neither confirm nor deny whether I'm a pet person, but I feel like we've talked about this a little bit before. It's already public knowledge. I've made record of my views on that so one can say that he has some pet peeves oh my gosh fair i'm not anti-pet for the record yeah i just don't have any pets yeah because i would not be good at taking care of them sure Sure. I'm getting a very skeptical facial expression from McKenzie, but that's because I'm very skeptical of your statement. Well, that's my official statement.

Somebody get it in the piece. Um, any final thoughts on the Christmas trees, boys? Okay, great. I will say my parents, like I said,

have a fake tree. They got these little, uh, pine scented, uh, spires to hang from the tree and they smell awful. So if anybody thinks you can replicate the smell of a Christmas tree with fake things, you are just simply wrong. On that note, folks, thank you for listening.

Merry Christmas and we will catch you next week. Thank you all so much for listening. If you've been enjoying our podcast, it would be awesome if you would review us on iTunes. Merry Christmas, and we will catch you next week. in an age of disinformation. We're paid for exclusively by readers like you, so it's important we all do our part to support the Texan by subscribing and telling your friends about us. God bless you, and God bless Texas.