The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - December 4, 2020

Episode Date: December 4, 2020

This week on The Texan’s “Weekly Roundup,” the reporting team discusses an initial batch of COVID-19 vaccine doses coming to Texas, state data that shows a record number of students leaving public schools in favor of homeschooling, a gubernatorial endorsement in a special election, the formation of another ‘Sanctuary City for the Unborn,’ the Supreme Court's hearing on census data in light of illegal immigration, and gun sales continuing to sky rocket. For a limited time, when you buy an annual subscription to The Texan, get a free 'Fake News Stops Here' mug. Claim your mug today: thetexan.news/mug

Hello, hello, folks. Mackenzie Taylor here, Senior Editor at The Texan, on another edition of The Texan's Weekly Roundup Podcast. This week, Governor Abbott announces COVID-19 vaccine doses. Stats from the state show a record number of students are leaving public schools in favor of homeschooling. Abbott endorses a special election. Another sanctuary city for the unborn is formed. The Supreme Court tackles census data in light of illegal immigration and gun sales continue to skyrocket. Also, folks, for a limited time, go to the texan.news forward slash mug to get a fake news stops here mug for the news junkie in your life this Christmas season. Don't miss out, folks. Thank you so much for listening and we'll catch you next time. Hello, folks. Mackenzie Taylor here with isaiah mitchell isaiah has a mouth

harp on the table here so at one point he might just break out into song is that correct isaiah no no you can't bring a mouth harp into the podcast room and expect us not to talk about it what mouth harp are you talking about yeah is that not a mouth harp are you talking about? Yeah. Is that not a mouth harp? What is that? It's an empty spot on the table. Oh, okay. I see. Man, this is a solid start to this podcast.

Happy post Thanksgiving week, everyone. Oh, man. Well, gladly, I only have to battle two of you this week for for uh the podcast uh integrity so this will be good see but we're trying to make up for brad's absence so it's gonna be a little bit harder just fyi okay so you're compensating yes yeah overcompensating well someone has to do it for brad that's true yeah brad is off this week with some long-awaited and well-deserved vacation time. But he still is on Slack.

He's still messaging us. He wrote an article. Yes, he wrote an article this week, and he's off. So, Bradley, this is our calling you out publicly because you don't know how to take time off. Yeah, you suck, Brad. Oh, that's really good. Stop working. Stop working. Stop working.

Stop slacking with the capital S. Okay. On that note, gentlemen, we'll actually get into the news. Daniel, I'm going to start with you. This week, the governor made an announcement, particularly relating to COVID-19 vaccinations and doses available here in Texas. That's a huge topic of discussion at the national level. Walk us through what's happening in the state. So now that it's December, 2020 is finally coming to an end and maybe coronavirus is too.

Maybe. I was going to say. I don't know. Maybe I'm going out on a limb too much and hoping, being too optimistic. But Abbott did announce that the CDC had allotted 1.4 million doses of a coronavirus vaccine for the state to be distributed to healthcare workers, staff, and long-term care facilities. And so that'll start happening the week of December 14th, so pretty shortly here in just a few weeks. Coronavirus vaccines will begin to be distributed. I believe I saw somewhere that Abbott had claimed that about 20% of the

population in Texas had already kind of had the virus or was immune to it already. And so going forward, he was optimistic that we'd be able to get 1 million vaccinations per month, you know, with a population of 29 million people. It won't be too long before, you know, with a population of 29 million people. Right. It won't be too long before, you know, there's enough immunity built up that the cases go

down and stay down for good. At least that's the ideal outcome of the situation. We'll see. We'll see what happens. We'll see how long it takes to actually distribute these uh vaccinations um you know what other logistical problems might arise what other issues might occur in the future that's all up in the air of course but that's what it's looking like i like it so in terms of you know who gets the vaccines first what kind of what kind of people will be prioritized?

So the governor has emphasized that he's repeatedly emphasized that this is all voluntary for people who want the vaccination. But there's obviously some people who are going to need it more than others, especially right now. So the first ones first ones in line to get it, of course, are doctors and people who are interacting in the healthcare field with coronavirus patients where they're much more exposed to this. And then also with people in long-term care facilities where they're interacting with the people most vulnerable. Of course, the fatality rates are much higher for elderly than young people who there's been only a handful who have actually died when they're young and healthy. So really kind of watching out for those first two groups. And then the governor has also, with the Department of State Health Services, they created an expert vaccine allocation panel and they created several different guidelines to have priorities that they would follow and so you know in addition to the doctors and the

frontline workers who are at the greatest risk of contracting the virus the other priorities they say are quote protecting vulnerable populations who are at greater risk of severe disease and death if they contract COVID-19, mitigating health inequities due to factors such as demographics, poverty, insurance status, and geography. epidemiology at the time, allowing for flexibility for local conditions, geographic diversity through a balanced approach that considers access in urban and rural communities and in affected zip codes, and transparency through sharing allocations with the public and seeking public feedback. So those are kind of the priorities that they've laid out. So obviously the populations that they're concerned about are, in addition to the doctors and the staff at long-term care facilities and whatnot, they also are trying to prioritize people that don't necessarily have insurance, health insurance, who might be poorer. And this is something that even the Dallas mayor has come out and asked for minorities to be prioritized in this.

And so in a way, the governor's plan is already kind of doing this, their priorities. And then also, of course, based on locations, if there's areas that are seeing an influx of cases, I'm sure they'll also prioritize those areas as well. Yeah, absolutely. And to piggyback on what you just said there, Hayden Sparks, a reporter of ours from North Texas, I'm sure they'll also prioritize those areas as well. to in terms of priority to minority populations the letter said quote in my it is my sincere hope that after health care workers first responders and the most vulnerable you will consider making it a priority to deliver the vaccine to minority populations that have been disproportionately affected by covid19 so certainly all sorts of different um rhetoric being thrown out there but it seems like there's a some lockstep in terms of what the first steps will be. Thank you for reporting on that for us. Isaiah, coming to you this week, and in the past few months, we've seen a lot of data surrounding students returning to school.

Different homeschool advocacy organizations have also come out with different data. The state's come out with data. Walk us through your piece, kind of breaking that information down. Sure. So we're pulling data from two places, as you pointed out. One is the state of Texas, the Texas Education Agency. And that data spans from 1997 up to the 2018 to 2019 school year. And the more current data has to do with homeschool withdrawals, meaning parents pulling their kids out of public schools to put them into homeschool. And that data comes from the Texas Homeschool Coalition, which is a homeschool advocacy group that the TEA recommends officially on their website for parents to consult if they're trying to pull their kids out of public schools and put them into homeschool. So they've got this tool on their website that parents can use to get this process rolling.

As I understand it, it's pretty simple. I have no kids to pull out of public school, so I can only go so far here. But the usage of this tool has jumped a lot this year compared to last year. So for a few months around the beginning of the school year, they were reporting record high increases in uses of the tool compared to the same months from last year. The biggest was in July, which is also probably not coincidentally when state coronavirus infection numbers peaked so far. And comparing July of this year to July of last year, the use of this online tool jumped 1,700%.

Then after that, in August, comparing August to August, this year to last year, there was a 400% jump, and the same for September. So that's THSC's data that's a little bit more current. And it's not official, so they're going to have to wait until August of 2021 to learn state data on the actual withdrawals for homeschool this year. What we can look at is the state data from 97 to the 2018 to 2019 school year. And I've linked the reports from the TEA on our article. I've also linked THSC's tool. I would recommend that you use, well, not the withdrawal tool. They've got an interactive map. It's a separate thing that just helps you digest the data. I would recommend using that one because the TEA website,

much less the many hundred pages of the government reports, they're hard to read, which is not surprising. So if you just want to know the numbers of students getting pulled out of traditional public schools to go to homeschool,

I would recommend using the interactive online map linked at the bottom of the article. But the long and short of it is that in the 2017 2018 school year that was when withdrawals for homeschool peaked in the history of the data that we've got stretching back to 97. that they absolutely topped out in the 2017-2018 school year withdrawals from traditional public isdss also continued to increase, but there was a decline in parents pulling their kids out of public charter schools. So if not for that decline in charter schools, the 2018-2019 school year would have beaten out the previous peak the year before, 2017 to 2018. So it's a recent peak and the year following it was still really

close in terms of student withdrawals. And all the numbers are pointing to another peak for this year beating out two years ago in terms of parents pulling their kids out of public school to put them to homeschool. Yeah, absolutely. And we've seen, you know, a myriad of different ISDs throughout the state have to adjust their approach to teaching this year in terms of the pandemic, but also just in terms of seeing students, you know, have very difficult time with distance learning. If they're not going into school, they're like the failure rates of students are skyrocketing. And so really just having to watch these ISDs alter their method of teaching has been a huge part of, you know, a lot of parents

rhetoric in terms of deciding to pull their children out of school. And some school districts are being very creative and finding ways to solve the problem. And others are sticking more traditionally to, hey, we're going to continue with distance learning. Some are fully back. It really just depends. But I think that variance, you know, is yielding a lot of different results. So parents are taking matters into their own hands if need be. Thank you for covering that for us, Isaiah. Daniel, I'm coming back to you. This is kind of fun because we're post-general election. We all love some political spice. And now that most of the races are over our attention is really going to be turning to the senate district 30 race it's going to be a big deal there are two fairly high profile

candidates there's already been you know a special election and now we're dealing with a runoff here and the rhetoric being thrown around has been spicy the entire time. But walk us through a big development this week and give us a 30,000 foot overview of the race this far. Yeah, I don't know if it was a huge development because it was kind of expected. That's very fair. We kind of expected it a long time ago, to be honest. So this race in Senate District 30, if you remember back in August, of course, State Senator Pat Fallin won the Republican weird kind of nomination thing to be the next congressman in the 4th Congressional District. Weird in that the precinct chairs actually chose the candidate to represent their party. Republican Party precinct chairs were the ones voting on who the candidate would be.

Yes. And I could go into a long explanation of that, but I'll spare you. All that to say, he was leaving his seat. So there was a special election for his seat since he's leaving at the end of the year or the beginning of next year to be technical. And so several different candidates jumped into his race for Senate District 30. Now, the two notable ones, of course, right at the beginning were state representative drew springer from wenster and then you also have shelly luther who's the dallas salon owner who kind of rose to fame when she defied governor greg abbott's uh lockdown orders back in april uh when she reopened her dallas salon and so um right from the get-go you kind of knew that you you had this one candidate

who was kind of opposed to the governor and was protesting a lot of his covid policies in the other hand you have a state representative who's kind of lock and step with the governor kind of you know protesting some of the the stuff from a very more standard Republican line. Whereas Shelly Luther was coming from more of a grassroots, the lockdown is terrible, even Governor Abbott's policies are stupid, was what she was saying. And so you had this conflict between those two. Those two were the biggest names.

This is a very bright red district. So there was a Democrat in the race. He received 20% in the open race. Um, and Shelley Luther and Drew Springer both received 32% with Luther about a hundred votes ahead of Springer. Um, and that was in September, uh, the end of September, I believe the 30th. And, uh, so that's kind of the 30-foot overview. Now, at the time, Governor Abbott had still not jumped into the race. He hadn't endorsed one way or another.

He hadn't come out against Shelley Luther, and he hadn't come out in support of Drew Springer, though I was kind of expected that he would. He didn't give any donations. He didn't even donate to Springer's campaign re-election bid for his House seat in October. He gave to a bunch of other seats. Of course, Springer's House district wasn't really competitive. It was kind of presumed that he would win because it was, again, a very bright red district. But this week, Governor Abbott did wade into the race and endorsed Shelley, endorsed Shelley through endorsed Greg, endorsed Drew Springer.

Let me get my name straight. Abbott endorsed Springer against Luther. Um, and, uh, so Luther kind of, you know, shot back against the governor. She posted a picture of Greg Abbott and Drew Springer on one side, black and white, them both wearing face masks. And then she posted her and Donald Trump on the other side not wearing face masks. And everybody made a big hullabaloo out of that as well. So that's kind of the – that's really the gist of what happened now abbott's jumping in the race um it's kind of presumed that uh he will contribute some of his massive campaign war chest to help springer win this runoff election um when i was looking at it it seems very similar to a race a house district runoff race back in

july that brad covered a lot of in house district 60 where you had kind of this similar situation with a more of a grassroots candidate backed by conservative mega donors running against a person who's backed by the governor. And you had that clash right at the last minute where Governor Abbott came in and ran a bunch of TV ads on behalf of his endorsed candidate, kind of propping him up, and then his candidates managed to pull ahead by a little bit in the runoff race and win. Now, whether that same thing will happen now that is yet to be seen um of course the political circumstances between july and december are quite different um so who knows how that'll play a factor into it um and also you know an interesting thing that i'm kind of curious how what will come of it it might really amount to nothing but But, you know, Democrats can actually vote in this,

unlike in the Republican primary runoff. So how will that affect the race as well? Will they come out and support one of these candidates either? Both of them are Republicans. Both of them are using rhetoric that Democrats generally don't like. So it'll be interesting to see if they do anything in the race or not. Yeah, for sure. And I think in these kinds of special elections, turnout is everything. We always say that, but it really is. You don't know who's going to come to the polls. I mean, one of the big reasons Pete Flores was able to pull off a huge upset in his race

for SC 19 back in 2018 was because his team and teams led by and supported by statewide elected officials like Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick were able to mobilize Republican voters to get out to the polls in the special election when not everybody knows a special election is happening. It's not a primary or a general election that everybody knows is coming up. There's not some giant name on the ballot like President trump or joe biden um so it'll be interesting to see who comes in and turns out in which camp is more effective at coming and turning out their voters uh you know they're confirmed voters from last time so we'll see what ends up happening there but that'll be fun when the date for the special election is when

so the date for the special election is saturday december 19th and i believe that the early voting actually begins on i want to say like next tuesday whatever day that is yeah it's going to be interesting it's going to be fun uh always fun to have a little bit of a political theater thrown in on a you know in a december how fun is that? Yeah. Isaiah coming to you. There was another town in Texas that made a big move in terms of, you know, uh, making a statement on abortion. Walk us through what happened this week and what's happened up to this point. Yeah. Ackerley in West Texas just became the 17th sanctuary city for the unborn, um, in Texas. So, uh, the count So the city council voted unanimously to outlaw abortion. They adopted a similar version of the ordinance that has been adopted elsewhere that, you know, as we've said before, operates

with two enforcement mechanisms. The public enforcement mechanism works like most city bans in that the city can impose fines, but they can't really collect these fines until Roe v. Wade is overturned. And the private mechanism, which is more immediate, holds abortion providers liable to surviving relatives of the aborted child and allows the relatives to sue for damages. And this does not apply to the mother. That's one of many little contortions that the ordinance makes to make it through the law, existing state and federal law. I noted in this article, in light of Lubbock, that this ordinance, like previous versions, opens with a series of legal facts and claims to help it squeeze through those loopholes in state and federal law. And importantly, it notes that Texas has never repealed its statutes against abortion.

They've just moved them into other sections of the code. And it refers to Texas case precedent stating that such laws were made in place until the legislature repeals them. So the Texas murder statute still defines the crime of murder to include any act that intentionally or knowingly causes the death of an unborn child at every stage of gestation from fertilization until birth. And that's from the penal code. Yeah. So this is important in general for this ordinance, but it's important and relevant lately because in Lubbock recently, the Lubbock City Council voted unanimously against adopting this ordinance because they say they expected legal challenges.

This was the same reasoning that they cited for them to vote in accordance with the town charter. And since they voted unanimously against it, it's going to appear on the ballot in the next uniform election. So it still has a chance in Lubbock. And in Odessa as well, one of the candidates for mayor in Odessa stated strongly off the bat that he wants Odessa to become a sanctuary city for the unborn and also a sanctuary city for the Second Amendment. First on his priorities was balancing the budget or something like that. Something unimportant. Something minute like balancing the budget. That's good stuff. So in term, and Lubbock is particularly noteworthy in terms of the size of the town, right?

I mean, we've dealt with a lot of like 17 Texas towns now have come out and then, you know, passed a resolution or an ordinance along these lines. But Lubbock, you know, we keep bringing attention back to that because of the sheer size of the city correct not just that but also because Lubbock has a Planned Parenthood and the Planned Parenthood in Lubbock is not performing abortions yet they're performing abortion referrals but they're not performing abortions right now they will come 2021 which is you know a month away and I don't know if they've got a particular date in mind. I can't quite remember. But yes, the size and the fact that they have an abortion providing company in town motivated a lot of state legislators and students at Texas Tech and Mark Lee Dixon, the brainchild. Well, no, the ordinance is his brainchild.

The ordinance did not father Mark Lee Dixon. Yeah, the guy that initially came up with this idea, we shall say. Spearheading the movement. Spearheading the movement. Yeah, he among others were motivated by the coming of Planned Parenthood to town. It was actually a return after a state law since ruled down in court drove them out of town back in the 20-teens.

Such a long time ago. At the city council meeting, Councilwoman Latrell Joy, who had, I think, the least shallow arguments against the ordinance, legally speaking, noted that Texas's dismemberment abortion ban was just ruled unconstitutional in the Fifth Circuit. But Ken Paxton is going to have another go at it, and they're going to try and hear it en banc in court this January. So that's still up in the air and um the legal challenges that the ordinance itself has faced only have to do with the language of the text referring to certain abortion providers as murderers and that's what they went to court about danny wrote on this a little while ago yeah um and after they tweaked the language the lawsuit was dropped and both parties you know pro-lifers and pro-choicers walked away thinking that each had won which was kind of funny but um the law itself was not changed

in the towns that it was adopted in by the time you know that the lawsuit happened so i mean in lubbock there would be a more significant issue of standing because there's a planned parenthood there yeah and uh we we don't know how that'll end up because the ordinance has been written to take liability off of the city for the ban. Yeah. They're not going to be really enforcing it as a hard ban unless Roe v. Wade is potentially overturned. For now, what it does effectively is just allow the relatives of unborn children to sue. So the city's kind of hands off about it. And anyway, you know, it'll, if it gets voted in, in the next uniform election in Lubbock, we'll see how it goes. I hate to steal the thunder

from Ackerley in this whole segment, but it's pretty cut and dry there yeah the city council voted unanimously and the ordinance is effective immediately so um that's that's about it for them there you go things are up in the air in lubbock yet yeah and we'll keep an eye on that and continue to cover it your coverage is so thorough thank you for making sure our readers are informed isaiah daniel coming to you let's talk some federal news the supreme court this week uh there are some news surrounding the census which has been a a big topic of conversation and illegal immigration all backlit by the you know impending departure of president trump walk us through what happened this week yeah so uh probably a year and a half ago i think was really when they started talking about the 2020 census and Donald Trump, uh,

president Trump's plan was to, uh, basically find a way to make sure that illegal immigrants are excluded from the census count so that they don't count towards the apportionment for redistricting purposes. Um, so that would really affect, you know, the states that have a high population of illegal immigrants, namely California and New York are two very high population areas with a high population of illegal immigrants. Now, Texas is also a state with a high number of illegal immigrants as well. So it also affects the number of representatives in the state of Texas. And so he's kind of pursued this policy and tried finding different ways to basically accomplish it. And so, you know, he went back and forth through different processes. First, he was going to make sure that there was going to be a question on the actual census about citizenship.

But then that policy was reversed, of course. I think that was due to a court thing, but it could have been something else. Anyways, that did not happen on the census, and so he instructed the departments, the other departments under the executive administration, to work with the Commerce Department and the Census Bureau in providing the data necessary to determine who is and who is not a legal citizen of the United States and who's a legal resident. And so one of the things that has happened since then, of course, the census has been delayed quite a lot because of the coronavirus pandemic. So that just complicates everything by another tenfold degree

because the Census Department is supposed to get the census to the president by the end of the year, December 21st. 21st. 21st is not the end of the year. 31st is the end of the year, despite us wanting it to come sooner. So the Census Department is supposed to get it to the president by December 31st. The president is then supposed to send it over to Congress in like the next week or the next two weeks, the beginning of January, when the new Congress is in session. And then Congress is supposed to take that and give it to the states in order for them to do the redistricting later that year. In Texas, of course, the legislative session is a certain window. And so it's very important for the legislative session, if it's going to happen on

time, to happen in that particular window. So the delays that keep on happening kind of make it look like it's going to be a little bit complicated for the Texas legislature to do the redistricting. That's a whole other issue. So you have that issue going on and you have the illegal immigration issue going on. And the illegal immigration issue is really what's happening in the courts.

But the court is really kind of hesitant to kind of hesitant to kind of step in and do anything about this because of everything else being kind of up in the air and so there was a lawsuit in led by new york and 22 other states or 21 other states and they were suing the president trump in order to not allow him to remove illegal immigrants from the census data but as the representative for his administration said this literature general said during the supreme court hearing he was pointing out that we don't actually know if the Census Department is actually going to be able to match up the data on who is an illegal immigrant with the data they have for the census by the time that it needs to get to the president. And even if they are able to match that up, there's just a lot of uncertainties of how many people it's actually going to affect, if it's actually going to affect redistricting at all. And then you have the question of, is Trump actually going to go through and on what his policy has stated and actually remove those from the count?

And if he does that, is it actually going to affect apportionment in any certain way? Those are all unknowns at the moment. And so the Supreme Court justices seem very hesitant to kind of step into this case. Now, they could do it. They haven't done that yet. This hearing was on Monday. They could step in sometime soon before the end of the year, or they might just wait and see if there is a time when this is going to be a little bit more ripe and allow some post-apportionment lawsuits to take place, as has happened many times in the past. So it's just kind of a complicated situation.

There's a lot of variables that are up in the air. So, yeah, it's just going to be a fun thing this year and next year next year it affects every level of government and it affects a lot of what will happen legislatively here in texas and what the you know narrative will be in dc as well so all sorts of fun there and all sorts of consequence thank you for covering that so thoroughly for us daniel isaiah i'm coming you. We've been watching very closely the bills that have been filed in anticipation of the 87th legislative session and walked through, you know, a lot of different proposals from legislators. Walk us through one particularly

that you covered earlier this week about a district that is not necessarily something that other counties in Texas have. Walk us through the proposal. Yeah, your hesitance and trying to think of the right word to label this thing is appropriate. There is only one county board of education left in Texas, and that's the Harris County Board of Education. In 1911 was when county boards of education were established in texas they were meant to consolidate rural high schools in an effort to level the field between rural and urban school districts so now it is somewhat ironic that our last county board of education uh is in the rural hamlet of harris county with the sparsely populated you know town of Houston in it

since my sarcasm it's it's our most populated County but the the bill itself is is really aimed only at the Harris County Department of Education and it's it was filed by state representative Valerie Swanson from spring and it's not the first of its kind. She filed a very similar bill in many parts of the text, identical in the last session. And what it would do is abolish the County Board of Education and make all county boards of education illegal. But again, this is really the last of its kind. Kennedy County-wide

common school district does exist in Kennedy County. It's not quite the same thing as the Harris County Department of Education. The Harris County Department of Education doesn't run any traditional public schools. It is also not a traditional public school district, which means it doesn't fall under the oversight of the TEA. This has provided a lot of motives for more leftward opponents of this particular department, the Harris County Department of Education. They're worried that, you know, they run schools, for example, for students who are expelled or subject to disciplinary action or special needs and so

forth so there are certain activists in the area houston area especially that um have raised concerns about schools pawning off difficult students to a school a school system that is nebulous in its mission and essentially lacks oversight from the TEA. And it's become kind of this Area 51 for problem students in school. And to their credit, the credit of the HGDE, they don't really impose a heavy tax burden on the local populace per person. It's something like $8 per homeowner. And on top of that, they tend to have a pretty substantial surplus in their budget every year. But trustees on the board, as we've written before in the past, special thanks to Holly Hansen from the area,

have expressed mistrust over the surplus and the kind of irresponsible spending that it allegedly can encourage. The concrete example that I included here was an unusually high pay raise, somewhere like a 23% pay raise, for the superintendent, James Colbert Jr. And, you know, schools aren't all they run. They also run some warehouse where they process records um they just they're they're weird you know it's this weird and ill-defined department that is a holdover from a very very old law that um many legislators or some legislators find is just not applicable in our most populous county.

There was an effort last session along with, as I said before, the other iteration of Valerie Swanson's bill. A cooperative effort between Paul Betancourt and Sylvia Garcia, a Democrat. Which is a bipartisan effort. Yeah, a bipartisan but fruitless effort to launch a sensitive review of the board's tax revenues. So the Harris County Department of Education has been loath to release its tax records for investigation to the legislature or the TEA. And Swanson's bill is taking aim at them to effectively abolish them. Yeah, absolutely. Isaiah, that's incredibly thorough coverage. Thank you for ensuring our readers are informed. Question. The arguments for abolishing the body and the arguments against abolishing the body.

Give us the quick 30,000 foot view of those arguments. Sure. You've heard a lot of the arguments for abolishing the body already, mainly that it lacks oversight. It imposes a redundant tax burden, however light, on the citizens of Harris County, the taxpayers of Harris County. And the arguments for keeping it, for not abolishing it, tend to be the same kind of arguments that you hear whenever the TEA has to intervene somewhere, or chooses to intervene somewhere, we'll say. Namely, that there are many people who are wary of this kind of state oversight

and interference with local with, you know, local doings, especially when it comes to education, local control, those arguments. Yeah. The whole, the classic local control versus state control arguments. And because of the makeup of our state politics,

especially with regards to these urban blue centers like Harris County, Republicans have tended to favor more state oversight, especially when it comes to education. We wrote another article recently about, I think Tom, well, I know he's Tom Morath, the head of the TEA. I can't remember if we wrote it or not. Or Mike Morath. Yeah, Morath. Excuse me. I've only seen it written. But yeah, Gina Hinojosa filed a bill that would put his position up for election because he's ruffled a lot of Democratic feathers for poking around in struggling school districts and encouraging oversight of these districts in largely blue areas like San Antonio, Houston. Yeah. And with some success in some places and lack of success in others. But, you know, as you summed up, local control versus state control. It's the same conflict here, albeit with a very weird and different department.

Yes. Whose weird and different makeup has allowed it to to skirt oversight that has has formed the argument in other places like Houston ISD or Harland Dale, where the TEA has had interfere or tried interfere. Certainly. Awesome, Isaiah. Thank you so much, Daniel. I'm coming back to you. One thing one thing you've been covering a lot throughout the course of the pandemic, and just in general, this is one of your beats, gun sales in Texas. We have an update. Walk us through that update. Yes, so I've been following the background check data that's released by the FBI on a monthly basis, because it's just been really interesting, especially this year, because gun sales have shot through the roof. Literally and figuratively. Actually, I don't know if any roofs were shot through technically um that was such a daniel moment to have a pun and to examine his own pun as a literal statement

both of those things were very daniel okay continue's true. Anyways, there have been a ton of gun sales this year. Even though, you know, if you go into a gun store right now, if you go down to Academy Sports or whatever local gun store that you shop at and you try buying some ammunition, chances are the shelves are going to be pretty empty. So you had a low amount of supply, but on the other hand, you also had a very high amount of demand. So you had a low amount of supply, but on the other hand, you also had a very high amount of demand. So you had, again, the coronavirus lockdown policies that were driving up demand in March when you saw the highest number of gun sales. And then you also had high demand in June and July when you saw the civil unrest and the more violent protests that came along with that. And then you also saw some more high demand, of course, with the presidential election

and the debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden over gun control policies, with Joe Biden purporting to kind of advocating some far-reaching gun control policies that many gun owners are quite frankly very scared of. And so whether or not that's actually going to affect anything that's yet to be seen, especially with the Senate elections that are still up in the air in Georgia, whether or not Republicans will control the Senate or not will kind of determine how legislation pans out over the next two years. But even so, people are kind of worried that a Biden administration means that there's going to be more gun control policies, so that's going to be driving up demand as well. So you have the low supply, you have the high demand, you have different gun manufacturers,

firearm ammunition manufacturers who are saying that they've had a backlog of over a year's worth of ammunition in excess of a billion dollars. And that was Vista Outdoors CEO Chris Metz, who said that at an investor call in November, the first part of November, just after the election. So you've got all that going on. It just adds up to a lot of people wanting to buy guns and not really a lot of guns to buy, but all the same, people are going out and buying what they can. And so Texas has already shattered its previous records,

so has the country, and the number of background checks that have been conducted for firearms. Now, one of the interesting things that I saw going through the data, you know, if you look at the national level, it does break things down on the background checks that are done for permits for firearm purchases or permits to carry, rather, and then for firearm purchases by handguns and long guns. And there's some other stuff in there as well, like permit rechecks that some states do. Texas doesn't do that. Now, one of the fascinating things about that comparing Texas and the United States, while the number of license to carry applications in the country

actually has gone down compared to last year during the same first 11 months, it's actually gone up quite a bit in Texas. I'm sure part of that has to do with the different lockdown policies. And in other states where lockdown policies might be a little bit tighter, people might not be going out to get licenses because they're not able to. But in Texas, that's not the case. The number of both permits and purchases for long guns and handguns have all gone up substantially over the past year. So that just continues to happen. Even though there's no ammos on the shelves, people are going and buying guns.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you for, as always, providing such important context for those kinds of conversations. Gentlemen, we in the absence of Bradley, and you know, it's always fun to be able to talk through different articles and spotlight pieces from different members of our team who are spread out throughout the state and unable to join us on this podcast. I wanted to give you all the opportunity to spotlight an article from one of our other team members and just kind of walk through that piece really quickly and give our readers a little bit of a snippet of that. And they can always go and read it at the texan.news and read the full article.

But which one of you would like to start by highlighting one of our, one of our pals? I guess I'll go. I've got one pulled up already. Although I do want to say in memory of Brad, he will be missed though. he's not with us now um hayden wrote an article about garland isd that uh i just thought was well written you know i i happen to like articles that are are dry you know i might surprise you yeah but um i mean like holly for example like she and i both really dig the

same kind of books and poems and things like that but um i just hate seeing that kind of thing in news reporting you know i don't like to see powerful stories i like to see informative stories so anyway hayden did that here and uh with actual quote gathering and reporting and background that, you know, refrains from commentary. I'm pretty much just describing our mission statement and the way that we tend to write our articles in general. But ISDs are a mine of news that is, you know, rarely touched by most media. But they exert quite a bit of control, not even just over taxes, but over children who grow up to become adults. And so it's an important subject. And I don't know, I just dig Hayden's writing style in this article.

Headline is, Garland ISD grappling with $32 million deficit after voters reject tax increase. And so it starts off with background and then gets into the monetary issues at hand presently and then goes into alternate futures, some science fiction. You know, if the bond had passed or the request had passed, the funds would have gone towards teacher wages and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. the funds would have gone towards teacher races and and blah blah blah blah yeah but um anyway i've ranted far too much about this dry and boring but informative article hayden always finds a way

to get right down to the nitty-gritty and it's his writing style is always appreciated by our readers and yeah certainly garland isd is definitely grappling with this reality that the bond that they all but were assured would pass did not. And now have to rework a lot of their budgeting process. Daniel. Yeah, I was going to cheat on this. You know, please do. Is it one of your own articles?

Yeah. It's one of my own articles from last week. So it's not from this week, but it was from last week during the week of Thanksgiving when we didn't have a podcast. We had a great article. We had a great title. Thanks for sticking with the title. You know, that one took a little bit of courage for me to pull the trigger on. And I was surprised that you didn't cut other stuff as well. And I'll tell the audience why. I love puns. The title of our article is Texas Lawmakers Have

High Hopes for Marijuana Legislation. The title of our article is Texas lawmakers have high hopes for marijuana legislation. And it stayed. It's an accurate title. It's very fitting. The pun is there. It's not too on the nose. Now, in the excerpt that we have right below that, I'm a little bit more pointed with my pun. And I say without getting too deep into the weeds,

here's a look at the marijuana-related legislation proposed for the upcoming session in Texas. And then I do have some other puns scattered throughout the article. You've got to name them, dude. You've got to name one or two of the other. Some of these are masterful. Also in the introduction. A joint resolution.

Yeah, the joint resolution. That is is actually that's what they're called they're called joint resolutions that's how constitutional amendment is there's some constitutional amendments uh to legalize marijuana um both for medical purposes and for recreational use um you know whether those i think those are a little bit more, um, unrealistic to actually see that past rather than the other legislation. Um, the other legislation, of course, you have basically the same, uh, bills to legalize or even decriminalize marijuana, both for recreational and medical purposes. Uh, there's various bills that are floating around. There's a little bit more of a push this year compared to the previous session

for the full legalization of marijuana. During the last session, Representative Joe Moody from El Paso introduced a bill which was interestingly co-authored by a handful of people, including Representative Dade Phelan, who is the presumptive speaker, new speaker for the next session. And so he, last session, introduced this legislation to decriminalize marijuana. This year, he's handed the reins to that over to Representative Aaron Zwiener, and instead he's pursuing his own legislation to fully legalize it. But he's also supporting Zwiener's bill, which was his bill. So there's a little bit of bill juggling going on there.

But those are kind of the main policies that are out now. There are some Republicans. Like I mentioned, Phelan had sponsored this bill or co-authored this bill back in 20-whatever year that was. 2019. Wow. That's crazy. Wow. Yeah.

Yeah. So back in 2019. Back in 2019. Like it was. This is really getting Daniel. Daniel, this is a speed bump for Daniel. It is. I just,

do you notice I always do that when I'm thinking about time? Yeah, you do. Yeah. That's, I don't know why too much Nolan. You're right. That's actually so true. Nolan in your diet.

Yes. So you've got those, you see Republicans are also interested. That's where I was going. there you go um some republicans are uh representative steve toth has a bill that would decriminalize uh some use of marijuana uh for the small possession you had uh lost it in my place in the article it's it's in here i believe it was to drop it from a class b misdemeanor to a class c misdemeanor class c is

the lower one, right? You're doing great. You're doing so well. Whichever one that you can't get arrested for. I'm just going to let you keep talking. That's class C. Yeah, I'm just going to let you keep going. Class C, just like my talking.

Right, yeah. Class C. Oh my, wow. Okay, some other puns that I included in the article. No. No. Oh my gosh. Lauren Heaven. I was talking about how they're trying to blaze a path. that I included in the article. No. No. Oh, my gosh. Lord in heaven.

I was talking about how they're trying to blaze a path. Dan Patrick bluntly said something, right? Yes, Dan Patrick. And that's another good point that I mentioned in my article, which is also important. Last time there was this, I believe it's the same decriminalization bill that we're talking about from Phelanelan and joe moody and a

couple others after that passed the house it was going to go to the senate and in my article i state correctly accurately that lieutenant governor dan patrick had tweeted out quite bluntly that the legislation would be dead in the senate and it was. He didn't send it to a committee, and that's where it died. Now, that's kind of important because if you have a feeling who's a presumptive speaker, it's definitely possible that a legislation could go through the House.

I think that's very likely that some kind of legislation will pass in the House to at least decriminalize small possession of marijuana. If not, legalize it for more medical purposes or other purposes as well. But that being said, what happens in the Senate is really the big question. Will Dan Patrick once again kind of oppose this legislation at all costs and say, no,

we're not going to legalize marijuana we're not going to decriminalize it at all like we're against it um we're going to see what happens there now i reached out to patrick's office did not get a word back um so i don't know if his opinion has changed at all in the past two years but we will find out certainly those were those were my big puns those were yeah well i'm really glad that was i got out of my system yeah it's true and i think the the impending thanksgiving holiday you know as i was editing this piece just provided me with enough i don't know jolliness where my usual grinch attitude

toward puns was not as prevalent. So it was good timing for you. You timed it well to get this through the process. Well, gentlemen, thank you so much for covering that. Let's talk a little bit about Christmas. We're into Thanksgiving. We're onto Christmas. There we go.

First of all, do you guys have a good Thanksgiving? Wow. So much silence about your thanksgiving we were waiting for brad to respond brad is slacking may he rest in peace in ohio yes another week may he rest in peace up there this is this is horrible far north it's cold and snowy it's like christmas. Just like Christmas time. Yes, Daniel knew that would get me. Speaking of that, have you all considered the many similarities between the story of Frosty the Snowman and the New Testament? What? No! Well, comparing Ohio to heaven made me think of that.

Have you just ever considered? No. My friend Nabil pointed this out to me, so credit to him. This isn't my idea. But he was taking some religion class on Christianity, and he didn't know a thing about it because he's Muslim. And so then he was, like, learning all this stuff academically for the first time as an adult. And he compared it to Frosty. Yes.

You know, because he's got—I mean, it's not a total resurrection. Well, okay, in the beginning. Start there. He's kind of miraculously conceived, if you think about it. That magic hat. Interesting. I mean, he's got this following of children, and he's fighting this, like, sorcerer. Anyway.

That's true. You know, he doesn't, like, totally die and come back to life, but the melting and re-solid's true you know he doesn't like totally die and come back to life but the melting and re-solidifying yeah you know and then he eventually goes away up north to be with santa and he'll be back again someday wow i've never thought about that how would i have thought about that before that's that there's some similarity yeah he could he could be a christ figure i guess yeah it's been a while since i've seen no we're not going no okay we have so many thoughts about this we're going to move on i mean this is a literary device yeah many many great works use it's true it's everywhere yeah

how about that dude yeah yeah lord of the rings just kidding oh yeah okay yeah we're getting we're getting really into the weeds here oh my gosh i can't believe i just said that um after our previous conversation but your thanksgivings were good daniel you had a good thanksgiving with your family in oklahoma isaiah you're home with your family yes north texas uh i went to arizona it was great brad's in ohio where it's snow. Mish was here with her family. Sarah is in Disney. The happiest place on earth? Yeah. Disney World?

Yeah. Yes. Land and world are distinct, right? Yes. World is on the right side of the country. Correct. Land is on the left side. Depending on which way you're looking.

Now, if you're looking at the map upside down. That's true. thank you for that um this is such a great podcast okay um favorite christmas song that's a tough one it might be oh holy night that's a good that that's up there for mine yeah i think the lyrics of the first noel just aren't that good but oh holy night has some great lyrics and just a great chord progression it's just cool man have you because i know you you know have dabbled in french have you read the first noel isaiah just dapped um have you have you read the first Noelle lyrics in French before? I have not, no. You should.

They're actually much better than the English versions. Okay. I didn't know it was a translation. Yeah. And it's a little different. So you said O Holy Night is yours. Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

I mean, you can't go wrong with Silent Night either. Yeah. Or Joy to the World. Yep. Now, I like Mannheim Steamroller. Classic. Their Joy to the World rendition is great. Then are you also a fan of Trans-Siberian Orchestra?

Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Yeah, sure. It's great. Love it. They've got that one cool song yeah that one cool song they do they do lots of stuff it just sounds very trans-siberian lord in heaven it's like the one song that all the christmas how like when you have a house that's just decked out with

christmas lights and they have a music show that's the song they use yeah is that trans-siberian orchestra song i haven't seen like an outside house playing music yeah i haven't actually seen this you've never been to a christmas light show on a private residence no at a private residence no we're gonna have to figure out how to make that happen um it's a big thing yeah it's a big deal all the rock stations like 92.5 in dallas um i can't remember the the number of the one here i've got it on my radio but yeah like around this time when they start playing christmas music if they do that's the trans-siberian orchestra's carol of the bells is the one christmas rock song well i don't know i guess if you count some of those ones from like the 50s and 60s, like rocking around the Christmas tree.

Which is a classic. It is. It's a classic. It's just not something you play right after Def Leppard on the radio or something. That's very true. Yeah, that's very true. I think O Holy Night and Silent Night are my two favorites, but O Holy Night is my favorite. I think, did you guys hear Ben Rector came out with a Thanksgiving song?

That was pretty fun. No. Yeah. Anyway, because people always, you know, are mad about Thanksgiving not having music and people are singing Christmas music too soon. So he came out with a Thanksgiving song. I believe I talked about that on our last podcast. Yeah, you made a great argument.

Well, Ben Rector has a Thanksgiving song. So now that it's over, you can enjoy that. Yeah. Now that it's actually the season for christmas music you can enjoy that let's just let's give christmas a taste of its own medicine let's play some thanksgiving music now that's really good oh man okay folks well um thank you for being with us on this delightful edition of our weekly roundup podcast um oh mary it is very mary um i do want to make a plug here for something that's

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