The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - December 5, 2025

Episode Date: December 5, 2025

Show off your Lone Star spirit with a free "Remember the Alamo" hat with an annual subscription to The Texan: https://thetexan.news/subscribe/The Texan’s Weekly Roundup brings you the latest news in Texas politics, breaking down the top stories of the week with our team of reporters who give you the facts so you can form your own opinion.Enjoy what you hear? Be sure to subscribe and leave a review! Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast.Trump Pardons Texas Congressman Henry Cuellar and Wife, Says Biden 'Weaponized' Justice DepartmentCongressman Troy Nehls Forgoes Re-election, Becoming Fourth GOP RetirementTexas Rep. Gary VanDeaver Will Not Seek Re-election in 2026Afghan National’s Arrest in Texas for Alleged Terroristic Threats Highlighted After D.C. AttackTexas Representative Sues on Behalf of 17 Families Against Celina ISD, Teacher Facing Child Pornography ChargesAbbott Urges U.S. Treasury Secretary to Investigate CAIR Following 'Terrorist' DesignationHere are Three Themes to Watch Ahead of Texas' 2026 Candidate Filing DeadlineComptroller’s Office Announces Final Rules for Education Savings AccountsLt. Gov. Patrick Calls for Senate Hearing Over Chinese-Linked Solar CompaniesTexas-Based Dell Technologies Pledges Over $6 Billion for 'Trump Accounts'Dan Patrick Announces 'Little Texan Savings Fund' to Invest $1,000 in Texas Children's 'Trump Accounts'Three Texas School Districts to Open Virtual Campuses in Fall 2026

Good morning, everybody. This is Brad Johnson Senior Reporter here at The Texan for this week's edition of the weekly round of podcast. We got a full house today. Joining me is Cameron, for usual. Mary Elias, for usual. Then we've got Holly Hansen. Hey. And Meredith Dyer. Welcome, y'all. Thanks for having me, Brad. You never know who's going to speak first. So everyone just waits. We got a lot of stories that hit today, so let's just get right to it. Cameron, there was a massive political story in D.C. that happened this week, of course, related to Texas, but I don't think anybody really saw this coming. No. Give us the rundown.

From Trump, Henry, I don't know you, but you can sleep well tonight. Your nightmare is finally over. And Henry is Henry Quay, our congressman in South Texas. Yeah, and he was pardoned by Trump via a. truth social post. That's how everyone became aware of this pardon. And in the truth social post, Trump goes through all sorts of different things, alleging that the Biden administration weaponized the justice system against their political opponents like Kuiar. But what led up to all of this? This has been an ongoing legal saga, all sorts of issues going on with Henry Kueyar,

some of his political consultants, his wife. Well, they, Henry Kouyer and his wife were being charged with a number of different things, most prominently, taking bribes from Azerbaijan that was being filtered through a Mexican bank. And there was also pretty random country to take bribes from, I'd say. You know, if I had to pick a list of countries and congressmen would be taking bribes from, allegedly, of course. Yeah. That would not be anywhere near the top. Right. And there was a raid on his office and all sorts of such. His former staff, long-time staffer and advisor, got wrapped up in it too. There's actually a follow-up story that he's waiting to see if his charges are going to be dropped.

That's Colin Struthers, a long-time Democratic operative. It's a complex, convoluted story involving multiple countries. And apparently that in Trump's words, the nightmare is over now for Quayar. And he can, he did file for. re-election that's you put that out on social right and immediately after this happened speculation ran rampant about was there a deal right is quay are going to flip parties and he put those to bed as well he did he filed as a democrat yeah now quayar has been mentioned about flipping parties for years yeah often in relation to a potential pardon in for this right since it bubbled up but

he considered jumping over to the republican party before last year's election decided not to stuck it out one narrowly one re-election and now looks to be in driver's seat in his district particularly if the new map passes because because it moved more it moved slightly more democratic and next year is looking like a more democratic friendly cycle yeah just with the macro level factors and we'll see how it plays out but um yeah this is i didn't see this coming did you no not at all but i'm sure dc insiders like you're saying you're talking about the rumors about the football party so these conversations were probably happening behind the scenes we don't know it's all speculation but the timing though the timing though is interesting it came down uh just

about five six days before the filing deadline yeah it didn't come after the filing deadline no so what's what is trump getting out of this well there might he just like see because he's uh been at the troubling end of investigations like this. Yeah. Well, maybe there's some big votes coming up that they're planning to have in Congress and they need Democrat support for them. And Quiro said he'd vote for something. Who knows?

Right. Again, it's all speculation, but we'll see the fruits of this part and come to fruition in the coming weeks or whatever. And I'm sure there's going to be a big deep dive in the post or the Times or the journal or something about how this all has. You know, sources say sort of the story, but I'll be looking for that. But as it right now, Quayar and his wife are pardoned on these charges. And we'll see what happens with these other consultants because they were charged similarly to Quayar and his wife.

And we have all that information up on the side if people are interested in doing a deep dive. Check it out. Thank you, Cameron. I'll just briefly mention a retirement announcement that came the weekend after Thanksgiving. you know, if I'm going to release an announcement of that kind that I don't want to get a lot of attention, I'm going to do it on rivalry weekend, right? College football rivalry weekend while everyone's watching me, watching Michigan get their butts kicked by the high state. But anyway, Congressman Troy Nels and Holly jump in here if you have any input because he's a Houston area congressman. Troy Nels announced he is not seeking re-election.

He is retiring and that Texas 22 will now be open. Right. Next year. Interestingly enough, though, his twin brother, Trevor Nels, is running for the seat. No way. What a coincidence is. Surprise, right? There's some other folks running too, but that one came as a surprise.

And Trevor Nels, of course, tried to replace Troy as Fort Bend County Sheriff after Troy got elected to Congress and did not win. It was unsuccessful. That's correct. Other candidates in that race are Rebecca Clark. Rebecca Clark, yes, GP activist. activist and former state rep J.C. Jaton filed as well. Right. Which that's been an interesting path for him because he lost last year in one of those primary. Republican primaries to Matt Morgan and he also flirted with running for Fort Bend County judge. Right. But now he's run for Congress.

Right. Yeah. So there's a lot of a shaking up going on in Fort Bend County. And, you know, we've had some interesting developments there with the Fort Bend County judge, K.P. George has switched parties, but he's also facing some legal trouble. So there's a lot happening in the Republican Party in Fort Bend County. But yeah, you see some strong candidates like Chaton. And Rebecca Clark, who's been very active. She's one of the women who came forth in shortly after the pandemic to talk about what's happening in public schools. So she's gained some name recognition in that area and has been very active. It's going to be a fascinating primary to watch. And I think we'll probably see more candidates before the filing deadline is all said and done. That's right.

And he also notable he is the fourth Republican retirement in the Texas congressional delegation. There's also some that are leaving to go run for other offices. But he's the fourth retirement. And there's a developing theme here. I wrote about it in fourth reading this week that it's just very unpleasant to be a rank-and-file Republican in Congress right now. It's unpleasant to be a rank-and-file member in Congress, period. Where is that unpleasant stemming from? Well, a lot of the, this kind of started under Nancy Pelosi where a lot of the decision-making power got moved away from chairman. They still have decision-making ability, but got centralized into the speaker's office. That's where a lot of the negotiating, a lot of the decisions come from. Also, the

increasing prostration at the feet of the executive by Congress. Congress does not serve its original role right now. And they don't assert their authority, but there's many reasons for that. One of them is they're up for election every two years in the past path of easiest resistance on that is to blame the guy in the White House. So that's part of it. Also just logistical things like travel back and forth constantly. There was just the government shutdown where people had to be, you know, know, on the, on call to head back to D.C. during, during that to get a vote scheduled

and, and reopen the government. It's just broadly, politically, logistically, real life, just unpleasant. Yeah. Right now. And it's part of why we see Wesley Hunt in the Senate race. You know, if he catches lightning in a bottle, he's an next U.S. senator from Texas. But he doesn't want to stay in Congress. And he's someone you see who's, he has a young family, young children. And, you know, it's probably a little demanding on that family lifestyle where you, as you see some of the veteran congressman from Texas have been there for decades in some case.

And so, yeah, interesting to see that shuffle. Yep. Thanks for waning on that. Holly. That's going to be a fascinating race to watch. another retirement that I'll touch on quickly is a state rep Gary Van Deaver this is one we've been waiting on for a while he's actually undecided and I heard he was he told people before Thanksgiving that he was coming back there's a push by leadership to bring him back and there was

an attempt to get the governor to endorse him even though Van Deaver voted against the ESAs during the regular session he was one of two in Dave Phelan but now he's decided decided not to run again, which leaves an open seat. And Chris Spencer, who ran against Van Diever last year and pushed him to a runoff, is back in the race. Because of the fact that he has already been on the ballot, his name ID, he's probably the front runner. But then I believe the, another candidate jumped in, Matt Bray, I think his name is. I think he's probably the Van Dever back candidate. We'll see if a full-throat endorsement comes out.

But I believe I saw Vandeva Cher, Bray's announcement. So that's an interesting district because it's all rural. It's, well, I think it's like six counties up in the northeast corner of Texas. They've got Texarkana in there. It's just, it's not like any of these suburban districts. The dynamics are totally different. You know, the school choice voucher stuff. I was going to ask.

big issue. And there's a reason Van Deaver did not back that. His district and these rural districts, they are less friendly to that idea. They view it as a detriment on their local school districts. Was he one of the state reps who was targeted during the last primary season? Spencer was endorsed by Abbott. Okay. And Spencer is pro-ESA, but it's not like, you know, Briscoe Kane being out there just like shouting it from the rooftops. This is an unalloyed good. He's more of a tepid supporter because of the district. That's just the district, the nature of it.

So there is one more, I think, in my looking at my sheet, one more state rep waiting on to see what he does. And that's Cecil Bell. And Bell, of course, was one of the votes that flipped two boroughs on opening day of session. And he received a lot of flack for it. He was sniping back at people on Twitter constantly about it. I don't know what he's going to do, but he is the one up in the air at the moment as we sit here at 11 o'clock on Thursday. Maybe he's filed by the time this thing goes out. That's right.

That's the only one that I see that we're waiting. Actually, Harold Dutton also hasn't filed. But I haven't heard anything about him not coming back. Have you? I have not. Okay. So two things to watch there, but another retirement on that. So Mary Elise, let's go over to you following the attack on National Guardsmen in Washington, D.C. And arrest that occurred in Texas became a focal point by law enforcement.

Yeah, so a bit of a tragic situation over the Thanksgiving, over the day before Thanksgiving Day of, we saw that there were two National Guards members that were shot in Washington. D.C. And the suspect is in Afghanistan National. And after this happened, law enforcement highlighted, particularly the Department of Homeland Security, announced that there had been actually an arrest in Texas of an Afghan national who had been allegedly making terroristic threats. And this was the day before the shooting actually happened, which did tragically take the life of one of our National Guards members. I saw as the White House right now as honor. her Sarah Bextram by lowering the flags, but she passed away on November 28th.

So the DHS was highlighting this and they were pointing out that they were both Afghan nationals and saying that this happened in Texas and that it was a potential threat for Fort Worth. After we published this story, actually, the DOJ announced that he had been federally charged the individual who was making threats in Texas. He's a resident in Fort Worth, and he was federally charged for three. threatening to build a bomb, conduct a suicide attack, and kill Americans. And this was through different videos that they collected on TikTok and X and Facebook and such. So following this attack in Washington, D.C., and after the fact of this arrest in Texas,

the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services put forward a new guidance saying we're going to be looking at more closely at 19 high-risk crimes. countries, designating them as high-risk countries, which includes Afghanistan, and they are allowing through this guidance for certain factors to be considered in the vetting process of the aliens coming from these countries, and they described this as negative country-specific factors that they'll be looking at. They also announced on the 26, number 26, that it had stopped indefinitely the processing of all immigration requests from Afghanistan in light of this attack on our national guardsmen. So the DHS has really been highlighting this and saying that they're

trying to take some pretty intense action to crack down on this, and particularly focusing on Afghan nationals, who may be criminals who are in here, who may commit a similar crime to the murder of our national guardsmen. So the Texas Department of Public Safety was the one that arrested this individual in Texas, the Fort Worth resident, and described his actions as making terroristic threats. And they said that ICE has lodged a detainer in his case. And so where it stands now is he's been federally charged as of Tuesday. So they announced that on Tuesday. So we'll see where it goes from here. Thank you, Mary Elise. Actually, Holly, we just had an update on one of the stories we talked about in the last segment was Trump just endorsed Trevor Mills.

Okay. social. Okay. That'll be interesting. That is a game change. It sure is. Yeah, we'll see what happens. Well, Meredith, let's go over to you. Yesterday, Representative Mitch Little held the press conference announcing a lawsuit against Selena ISD and former teacher Caleb Elliott. This is something you've been following since it started. What about a month or two ago? What's the latest on this lawsuit? Well, yeah, this story has unfortunately been snowballed. for the last couple of months in a really negative direction. Yeah, just a background on it.

Starting in October 3rd, Caleb Elliott, who is a former teacher and coach, has wrapped up four state felony charges, eight felony counts by a federal grand jury. There's about around 40 victims that the count is right now, and he's had three separate arrests related to child sexual abuse and child pornography charges. So he was recording and taking pictures of male students in the locker room at Moore Middle School where he worked, and they found all of this on his phone. There's a lot of different allegations. There's now Mitch Little was announcing this lawsuit along with Quentin Brogden and Jack Walker on behalf of these 17th families. So this is the fourth lawsuit now.

So it joins three other lawsuits. And there's a lot of just a lot of different allegations that we'll see as the evidence comes out, things like form. issues at another school, knowledge by the school and other people working with him. Allegations have been made about him installing cameras into locker rooms, making students do like jump things, jumping jacks or burpees while nude. So just a lot of, a lot of horrible, horrible things. It just keeps happening, keeps coming out. So Little was just very, Mitchell was very blunt in the press conference calling out Slena ISD and the police Department. The police department had, last month, had finished their investigation and reported

their findings. And Little was just being very clear that he feels, like he said, they stopped the investigation where they wanted to and not necessarily where the evidence would lead them. That was what his quote was. So he also was talking about Selena ISD, who is doing a third-party investigation they say that. And just when are those findings going to be made available? will they be made available to the public? And Walker, who is filing this with him, had a quote where he said, every red flag in this case has been met with a green light.

This is a systematic failure by the school district to stop a known predator from preying on our children. So they introduced two new pieces of information in their lawsuit that was, I believe, different from the other ones. And that was that there are Snapchat subpoenas out because Caleb Elliott had, distributed these photos and so they are just yeah discuss it just addressing how traumatic that is for all of these families and like not knowing where the extent of this case is going to

stop and also there was Mitch Little said there was witnesses to a confrontation with a former staff member at Moore Middle School and Caleb Elliott that was much what prior to this to his arrest so using that as evidence that there was knowledge of his is illegal and illegal and sexually abusive actions towards students. And so that's all in the lawsuit. Yeah, it's just really sad to read a lawsuit with like 17 John Doe's, knowing that they're children. So at the end of it, they were just highlighting the HB 4623,

which Mitch Little authored, was allowing for this to happen. And for some of these things to come to light, the bill had removed sovereign immunity from school districts in certain situations, allowing families to sue. And so if a school district's negligent in hiring and supervising or employing an employee who commits sexual abuse or doesn't report, that opens the door that these families can seek legal action. Yeah, awful, awful story.

And sure to be more developments on that. So thank you for covering it, Meredith. Holly, let's go to you. There's yet another scandal in Kema. that he'd been following this for years. For years. Give us the details of this latest update. Yeah, Kim us the gift that keeps giving to journalists, that's for sure.

The latest story involves the mayor and a probate case. And at the surface, it looks like kind of a family feud, but it gets a little more involved because taxpayers seem to be funding part of this. But the mayor basically last month filed for probate of her stepfather's estate. Unfortunately, her stepfather died. 10 years ago in the state of Texas, you have to file for probate within four years or there are certain laws that govern the distribution of the assets that would include all of the biological heirs. But when Mayor Robin Collins filed for probate, she didn't mention to the court that there

were any biological heirs. And she produced a handwritten letter to her own mother that purportedly leaves all of the assets to the mother over which the mayor has power of attorney. And it all came, became exposed that there were all these properties that her late stepfather owned when she attempted to sell one of the properties a few months ago. And the title company realized that the deceased stepfather was on the title and that the biological errors needed to be involved in the case. So they bring in a handwriting expert? Not yet. I want to see that. This sounds like the beginning of the Knives Out movie. It kind of does. Well, you know, this is one of those things where, you know, a little local journalism can get pretty interesting. You know, when I called one of the

biological errors for comment about the probate filing, that was the first she heard of it. Wow. So, you know, she didn't want to go on the record, but her attorney is now filed documents contesting this this handwritten will uh they're saying that it's it's not in the late stepfather's handwriting and uh i need to see some magnifying glasses exactly is like a movie right yes but apparently there were multiple properties that were owned by the stepfather and uh according to records from galvestick county mayor collins transferred three of those properties into her own name a year after the stepfather died. So there's a lot of allegations flying back and forth here. But there's another aspect regarding the legal work performed for the mayor. And we did find through open

records some instances where the law firm that the city hires to perform, act as the city attorney, apparently build the city for some work done for Mayor Robin Collins. and her company, her LLC, last year. And although we have requested records seeking information or evidence that they were reimbursed for this, the city has not responded. And now well outside the 10-day window for responding to an open records request

and have asked for an extension. Last night, the city council met And at the very end of the meeting, Mayor Collins addressed what she called an inadvertent billing issue and said that the city had been reimbursed, but we're still waiting on those records to prove that the city has been reimbursed. In the meanwhile, a lot of the residents are concerned about how the city attorney may be performing work, perhaps, for an elected official at taxpayer expense. Local politics. It's amazing. It's so fun. It's the wildest.

It is. Yes, absolutely. Thank you, Holly. I'm sure a lot more updates. I'm sure there will be. Like you said, the gift that keeps on giving. Cameron, let's go back over to you. Governor Greg Abbott has taken another action against care.

First of all, what's the acronym for care? The Council on American Islamic Relations. Okay. Tell us what Abbott did here. Well, Abba is now. urging the U.S. Treasury Department to investigate care for potential removal from its tax-exempt status. He did this in a letter directed to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, where he alleged cares, quote, longstanding ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas in its ongoing support for

terrorism. And as we've covered extensively here at the Texan dot news, Abbott has taken quite a bit of action against CARE in the last few weeks. Along with this letter, he's also designated the organization and the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization and transnational criminal organization. And there was a response from CARE after the Abbott letter went to the Treasury Department. Care said that Abbott's request, quote, has no basis in fact or law, nothing to do with national security and everything to do with anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian bigotry. So this is another escalation in Abbott taking steps against care and other Muslim-focused

organizations here in the state. And I'm sure we'll see a response from Besson in the coming weeks. And this kind of goes hand in hand with the Epic City stuff that the state leaders are doing investigating i think there either is a lawsuit or there's so there's a lot lawsuit file yeah there's quite a few investigations ongoing with epic um now known as the meadow um oh really yeah they changed the name and again it's another very complex story just because of the different investigations from different state organizations or agencies because it's both the lieutenant governor and the attorney general and the governor with DPS and other state agencies, like there was the funeral services commission that was investigating something

as well. So a lot of different people have their eyes on the meadow now, or Epic City, along with what Abbott's been doing with care, with the Muslim Brotherhood. And then he also sent out a letter a couple weeks ago. to Colin in Dallas County, requesting them investigate the Islamic Tribunal. What's that? He was, he, Abbott is alleging that this Islamic tribunal is instituting Sharia law, skirting our American legal system.

And so we'll see, again, this, this is something where it makes a big splash at the beginning. It quiets down for a few weeks. weeks or a few months and then something bubbles up again after we get some results of the investigation or it fizzles away or it fizzes away whenever hearing that that does happen as well but with the epic sitting thing we did see some movement on that the DOJ uh conducted an investigation and said they didn't find anything but then there's these other uh periphery investigations still ongoing so attorney general's office is not stopped looking no tell you that like there's going to be something yeah filed from them I'm sure yeah um cool anything else about that and

talk about? No, if people want more info, they can click the links in the story. I have it all up there. What's that website again, camera? The texan dot news. The best place for Texas news. Incredible. Go check it out. I'll preview

a piece I wrote this week just that is itself previewing the filing deadline. Some themes. Preview of a preview. Love it. It's like Inception. Preview Inception. Cititream. I don't know.

So there were three themes generally, as I was writing this, that came to mind to watch. First is what the heck's going on with the map? We haven't, as of now, 1124 on Thursday, we have not gotten a ruling on the map. I think it's probably leaning towards the map is going to, the new one is going to stay in implementation for next year. Currently, that is where it is because there is a temporary stay on it issued by Justice Elite. on the lower court ruling. So as we sit here now, it is the new map that's the current lines for next year. That could go the other way.

And then everything gets shot to hell. I don't know. We'll see. But I think it's probably- If you're rooting for chaos, you want that to happen. Yes. If that does happen, you'll see a lot of dominoes fall back the other way. Right.

You'll have districts where Republicans are running that are not viable for Republicans. You'll have incumbents who have switched to different districts. districts, Al Green being one, a couple up in Dallas, too, that will, that would be of note. They'll jump back to their now current districts. And so just like the shakeup that happened would have to go, has to be put back on the shelf. And you see people go back to the districts they currently represent. So that's the first thing to watch. When is that going to come?

I don't know. We'll see. Maybe it comes by the time this goes out, hopefully. Hopefully. Hopefully. Hopefully. Get that off my plate for good. You're not getting off so easily.

I know, no. The second thing to watch is decisions have to be made, not just on congressional runs, but the biggest one we're talking about right now is Jasmine Crockett. She's going to have an announcement on Monday. Mary Elise will be there. So follow her on Twitter for updates at that event. I have a hard time believing that she's holding an announcement, a big press conference, to announce she's running for her current congressional seat. Everyone expects her to jump in the Senate race. And her public comments are kind of hinting that, right?

So that would upend the Democratic primary. Oh, yeah. Now, Republicans want her to run. Absolutely. Because they look at the appo. They look at the polling. She has very high floor of support in the Democratic primary. party, she also has high negatives among average of the general populist.

Very polarizing. Right. Yeah, exactly, which is why she's so well-known and famous. Right. Yeah. Well, it's a double-edged sword. Fox News loves her. Yep. So.

They do. They do. Absolutely. Yeah. So that's the biggest thing to watch. There are other decisions that have to be made down ballot, like people are going to run for certain house seats, things like that. But that's the biggest one. And then the third is there is a mad scramble by judicial candidates to file their petitions.

Candidates for political office, legislature, executive branches, they don't have to file petitions of collected signatures. They can just file a fee in lieu of that. Judges cannot. And there are two incumbents who are recently nominated for the Supreme Court, Kyle Hawkins and James Sullivan, who have not filed yet. And they're actively trying to get all of their signatures needed before the deadline. They probably will, but there's a chance, even if it's a small one, that they don't. Right. And when you do these petitions, it's always a problem because they, they, they're, they're, requirements are so technical. Like if you have someone, that's off the time I'm ahead, maybe I'm not

quite exact on it, but like if someone circulates the petition but doesn't live in that appellate court districts, you have to get 50 from all 15 appellate court districts in order to get on the ballot as a statewide judge. And that includes the 15th Court of Appeals, which is statewide. But if you have someone collect signatures for the 14th, congressional or appellate court district but they live in the first i think that's a no no well first in the 14th overlap right aren't those the two out of houston they overlap don't they overlap am i right or wrong about that i don't know i would think not i'm learning a lot right now they're just there's certain pellet court districts yeah well there's a weird thing with the

appellate courts because there's two in houston and i i believe that it's kind of random which you get assigned to if you're coming out. So your example might be the... I'll pick two different numbers. Yeah, first and the eight. Okay, yeah, just to be safe. But I think that's the case. It can get dicey with those because of all the requirements.

And if you don't dye your eyes and cross your teas correctly, you can have the whole thing voided or at least enough voided to keep yourself off the balance. So something to watch there. Another thing on that end, two challengers are circulating petitions against incumbent Supreme Court justices, Jimmy Blacklock, the Chief Justice, Brett Busby, and Associate Justice. They are being pushed to do this,

or their biggest campaign message, is being pushed by Jeff Younger, who is the father of James Younger. We followed that story. From the beginning to end, back early on in the Texans days, his son was his mom says his son is transgender his dad says his son is just trying to appease his mom there was this whole custody fight and ultimately the wife tried to take the boys to because he has a brother

to california right to california and there was a petition filed the supreme court by jeff young or the father to prevent that from happening um the court found that uh Jeff Younger in their ruling, as they said, had abandoned his kids basically, was not a good father and they saw fit to just let the mother take them. Now, obviously, the other cases that Jeff Younger's making is that the child is not transgender and the mother trying to do this. Trying to force him into it. So like, if you want to read some awful details about like internal family dynamics read the the filings of on from both sides right of the young case but um ultimately the court ruled against jeff younger and that allowed the wife to take the kids in custody to

california and so um it's uh that is a theme particularly because jimmy blacklock wrote the opinion in that case and i think busby was part of the majority so So something to watch there. Maybe it doesn't amount to a hill of beans. Maybe they don't even go to the ballot. But they probably will. And then it will be a big campaign theme next year. So that is my things to watch.

Well, and I just fact checked. First and 14th are concurrent jurisdictions. So they cover the same territory. So in that case, you have to get 50 signatures in each from the same area. That's weird. Yeah. Very strange. Yes.

It's Texas politics. It's not logical, Brad. I know. But that's what makes it great. I know why you were expecting. Yeah, right. Meredith, let's go over to you. The Comptroller's office released the final rules for the Education Savings Account Program in Texas. Tell us what that means for Texas family. Yeah, so the Texas Education Freedom Accounts, which is the new name for the ESA program, is going to launch next year in the fall of 2026. This wasn't anything. groundbreaking or new because about 30 a month ago or so they released the proposed rules and

then followed it up with a 30-day public comment period where they received about 300 written comments from various groups and individuals took those into account and made some pretty much some slight adjustments there wasn't anything too much different from prior prior proposed rules so the general guidelines are just the eligible schools can qualify or eligible students can qualify for up to $10,300 for private school expenses related to that. Students with disabilities can qualify for up to $30,000 within the ESA program and then homeschool students around about $2,000. Some of the smaller updates that they made were just confirming that like the

adjusted gross income would be used to determine participation. Things like students with disabilities can use like evaluations to get help or priority, but they still have to have that individualized education plan from the state is still required. And then just the idea that if you are involved in the program in the future, you don't have to reapply every year. So they did these slight adjustments. Vendors and private schools can apply December 9th to be part of the program, and then families can apply online in February, February 4th, 2026. So that's, that is it. There we go. The thing that habit went to political war over is finally actually

being implemented. We'll see the Comptroller's race is particularly fascinating in that angle, Meredith, because this is the person, whoever wins is going to be the person that manages this. And Greg Abbott does not want Don't Huffines to be the one that oversees his school choice program, let alone all the other stuff the Comptroller does. So that's why Abbott's backing Kelly Hancock so heavily, right? And then, of course, you have Christy Craddick in the race. What is, what does Abbott say is his,

reasoning for not wanting Huffines to... Well, Huffines ran against Abbott for governor in 22. Oh, so it's just more... It's not something specific to the ESA program. It's just personal. No, I don't think so. I mean, maybe if you injected him with truth theory, I'd have a reason for it beyond just I don't trust him to implement it.

But it's a personal political grudge, which is a thing and always will be a thing. So, Don Huffline's made his bed when he ran against Abbott on that. Yeah. So there you go. Cameron, let's go back over to you. All right. Senator Dan Patrick is asking for a Senate committee to investigate Texas solar companies. That's interesting.

Gives the details. It was interesting. Kind of came out of nowhere when it came across my timeline earlier this week. And Dan Patrick wants to talk with some energy executives at these solar companies. In his tweet making this announcement, he highlighted a Fox News report where in this Fox News report it discusses some different subsidies from the Inflation Reduction Act that was passed during the the Biden administration that flowed to solar companies that had links with China. So I dug into, you know, there was some information in the Fox News report that I was able to

parse through and then do a little digging myself. and there's a Canadian solar company called Canadian Solar. That's original. Yeah. That committed to building. I guess you could just say simple. Don't want to cause too much confusion. But that might be a reason why because they were planning to build a huge facility here in Texas.

But this solar company had extensive ties. with a Chinese footprint. They had a lot of different imports coming from Asia and China and things like that. There was another company, Trina Solar, North America, that had secured $235 million in financing for more than a million square foot solar plant outside of Dallas. The Fox News report, I actually found some. of the quotes that they were highlighting about how the president of the company had made comments to China Daily about how significant this investment in the American manufacturing and economy

of how important it is. Then also there's just, you know, with many of these companies, there's layers within them. You know, this Trina Solar Company was actually acquired by a separate company and then changed its name. And then one of the founding members of the solar company is actually a delegate in the Chinese National People's Congress. So just lots of shady connections, where money's flowing, the subsidiaries within the company who's acquiring who. So we'll see, you know, when they hold this committee hearing in 2026. So that's coming up. And it'll be held in the business and commerce committee.

So we'll see what comes of it. You know, definitely some information there that they'll be able to ask these executives about. Absolutely. Thank you, Cameron. Holly, back over to you. Another piece you've been story you've been covering quite a lot are the license plate readers in Texas and the brouhaha over that. There's an update on it. The ongoing brouhaha.

Ongoing brouhaha hasn't ended. Has not yet ended. In fact, the latest is that the, main company that supplies these all over the state of Texas, both in public and private installations, is a company by the name of flock safety. And it was determined last year that they needed to have an online private security license for the private installations. And there was a little trouble over them operating without a license for a couple of years. Last year they got a license, but it is expired. And it expired on September 30th. And no one seems to

have noticed until, you know, some watchdog group notified me and a couple of other people in the state that this was a problem that they had the expired license. The city of Baytown has turned off any feed from the cameras that are coming into their city police department. But, you know, these readers, they collect, you know, your license plate number and some other identifying information about your vehicle every time you pass one. And as you're driving around, you'll see them everywhere. I mean, Home Depot's use them. Homeowners associations use them. Other, you know, private companies that are watching them. You know, so right now, DPS has not responded to my request about the status of the license.

but Flock did tell me that the expiration of their license was due to an administrative error, and they are working to get it resolved. But it does prompt, you know, or reawaken some of the privacy concerns. And we've seen some government entities in their contracts with Flock over those privacy and data sharing concerns. The city of Austin is one of them, Hayes County, San Marcos. And there have been other cities across the nation that are ending the contracts. We've also seen a couple of lawmakers out of Illinois. Congressman and Senator Ron Wyden have requested the FTC conduct an investigation

because it seems there's some pretty lax cyber security protocols with these flock readers. They don't use multi-factor authentication, and it's not real clear about who owns the data, who can access the data. In fact, the police chief of Kansas City had to resign because it was discovered that he had used flock cameras over 200 times to track the whereabouts of his ex-girlfriend, which is not a criminal matter that he was entitled to gain that information. So there's a lot of back and forth. Flock is very defensive about, you know, how the product can be used and how it helps solve crime. You know, one of the other issues is that it seems they actually don't sell the equipment. They sell a subscription to the database. And so at their own expense, in many cases, they're installing these cameras.

They own them. And, you know, what happens to the data they collect is a big question. Here in Texas, an activist who tried to get some of the data was told by the Attorney General's office that it's not subject to an open records request. But in other states, in Washington State, there was a district court judge that said, well, yes, this is collected at taxpayer expense, and it is subject to public records. So, you know, there's a question about how the data can be misused, whether or not it's actually secure. Like with Cameron's story, there are also some layers of ownership and who's involved in creating the artificial intelligence that reads these things. And they can collect quite a bit of information. And using all of the data collected, you could actually map someone's whereabouts and you can correlate it with other records, you know, such as their driver's license, their voting history, all kinds of things.

Create an entire profile about a person. Exactly. And there's also a federal lawsuit contesting the use of these as a violation of the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against illegal search and seizure. Interesting. We'll see. We'll see what happens. My guess is we'll see them resolve their licensing issue in the state of Texas. But, of course, that's not going to end the concern over what's happening with these readers and what. what's being done with the information. Absolutely. Thank you, Holly. Mary Elise, over to you on a couple related stories.

But first, there was a large donation brought forward for a new federal investment account program with a very notable Texas billionaire. Yeah, so Dell Technologies, which is headquartered in Texas, announced that they'd be donating over $6 billion towards the new. and we talked about it a couple times on this podcast, I believe, Trump accounts, it's what folks are calling them. The private investment accounts that are being, they'll be established through a legislation that was passed through Congress. It was authored, actually, by Senator Ted Cruz,

and it's intended to be used for newborn American children, and these investment accounts are each seated with a $1,000 investment from the federal government, from taxpayer funds. So this was the Dell Company announcing that they will pledge a $6.25 billion towards these accounts. So it was Dell CEO, Michael Dell, and then his wife, Susan. They were announcing this on Tuesday. We said, we'll give $6.25 billion from our charity fund to $25 million American children through these new investment accounts.

So they'll plant an additional $250 into $25 million accounts. And that will be added on top to the $1,000. dollars from the government that will already be placed in there and so this was this the whole trump account idea was an initiative of president donald trump's administration like i mentioned it was carried through congress by crews and it was within that federal funding bill the one big beautiful act which was signed into law this summer so it was a provision within that funding bill so it establishes this law establishes a private tax advantage investment account that's with that seed investment i mentioned a thousand dollars for every american child that's born between january 1st 2025 and then December 31st 2028 and then these accounts will become available on july 4th 2026 so in their announcement video the delves explaining why they wanted to pledge this money susan said next year, every American child will be able to get an investment account powered by

Invest America. And she said that the real power of these accounts is that anyone can contribute, such as the Dells who are contributing this money here. Michael said, we've seen what happens when a child gets even a small financial head start. The world expands. And the whole topic of these accounts, of course, has sparked a lot of discussion from folks, from particularly a lot of Republicans saying, different factions within Republicans saying, you know, this is, this is not conservative. This is the government, you know, taking taxpayer funds and distributing it, redistributing it. And then other folks are saying, well, this is such a great opportunity to teach financial literacy to American children and kind of give them a head start here. So it's been

a lot of debate back and forth, particularly people responding to Senator Ted Cruz. But I think that overall people recognize that this was a generous donation from Dell Technologies, the $6.25 billion. And then the next kind of development in this story, which is a separate article that we wrote, was Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick kind of piggybacking off of this announcement the day after, announced that he's planning to prioritize the creation of a new little Texan savings fund during the next legislative session, which he would want to use to allow an allocation of an additional $1,000 to newborn Texas children, which would be added into those already existing Trump accounts, which will already have the $1,000 from the federal

government and the donation from the Dells and any other philanthropists that jump in here and donate to these accounts. So Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick said, you know, if I see a idea from the president that helps Texans my first question is always why not do it in Texas too so he said this will be one of his top priorities during the 2027 legislative session and he said that he's estimating that this will cost the state about 400 million dollars in taxpayer funds per year he says this is about 1% or less of our total state appropriations will amend the state constitution to add this as a permanent program and he talked about you know how many children are being born in Texas every 90 seconds. He said a baby's born,

pointing out that we have a lot of opportunity in the state of Texas for these accounts to have an impact for sure. So this will be his priority during the 90th legislative session, one of his many priorities, of course, the new little Texan savings fund. And so that legislative session starts in January 27. So we'll see where that winds up. Thank you, Mary Elise. And of course, there were very pointed reactions to this across the spectrum, the political spectrum, following these announcements, both the federal and the state one. So we'll see how it plays out in the session in 2017. Meredith, last one.

Let's hit this fairly quickly and get on to tweeterie. Three Texas school districts are set to open virtual campuses next fall. Tell us which districts and who can apply. So earlier in the 89th session, there was SB 5-6. 69, which created this new legal pathway for districts to have virtual and hybrid programs that were funded equally to their in-person counterparts. Texas has seen this huge increase from 5,000 to 62,000 in a little bit over 10 years of students that are attending virtual schools of some sort. So they just laid out some qualifications. These schools have to, like, address the Texas essential knowledge and skills, the TEKS, meet certain national standards for online courses, and have the same amount of instruction.

minutes per year, which is 75,600. Cypress Fairbranks is offering, they have over 1,000 of their students are currently in online programs, and so they're opening up a high school, three different options for high schoolers, and then also this was unusual for fourth and fifth graders specifically. So I thought that it was the only elementary offering and a little unusual, to be honest, as a former fifth grade teacher, it's not the norm. So three options they have are these full online virtual schools, one to two classes for juniors or seniors or like a tuition-based type of class outside of the school day.

Katie is opening a legacy virtual high school and they are offering it to in and out of district students. So a free full-time and then a paid part-time program. And then lastly, Friscoe is doing something called Frisco Flex, which is a high school. Same thing. They're initially offering it to in-district students and then opening it to students out of the district. So I just think that it's going to be very interesting next year with the ESA program, with these virtual schools. schools, with charter schools, always increasing in their attendance just to see what happens with Texas public schools next year. Thank you, Meredith.

A lot of education stuff, of course, to always follow. Let's move on to tweeterie. Holly, let's start with you. Of course. Ladies first. Ladies first. There you go. Well, thank you.

I appreciate that. Yeah, this caught my eye. The Houston Police Officers Union posted, I think, yesterday this tweet that says they're done responding to the Houston Chronicle. When a paper stops reporting fairly, we stop participating. If you're wondering why we're not commenting anymore, now you know, and along with their posts, they have a picture of a bird with the Houston Chronicle lining the cage and the bird is doing what birds often do on newspapers. And their comment is, we understand, if you still need their paper for lining bird cages and litter boxes.

But, yeah, the police officers union has not been too happy with the Chronicle for a long period of time, but especially lately the Chronicle's been publishing and editorializing on some things going on in the city, some things that are taking issue with the mayor and the police department because they are allegedly cooperating with ICE. We did publish a story about this recently where some city council members want them to actually have a policy that they're not going to contact ICE when they encounter a suspect with a warrant from that agency. And so it's a big conflict. The city attorney has said that that policy would not be legal and that officers are obligated to comply with any warrant request and notify the agency that they have a suspect and custody. Yeah, I saw that picture when I was scrolling on Twitter here and during one of the segments.

It's very bright. And I almost showed you, but sure enough, you had already seen it. Meredith, let's go over to you. So one of the things that I fell down an ex-rabbit hole was this Oklahoma University student, Samantha Volnecke, writing a paper about gender norms using a lot of Bible background or evidence. and then getting a zero for it and claiming that it was religious discrimination. And so people were, the essay was posted, the paper was posted. It was just horribly written.

And just the discussion online between, obviously, it's no secret that this is a transgender professor as well. So it's no secret that like biblical values and transgenderism can bump up against each other in the university system, which we've reported on a lot. It's just the choice of individual that people are championing. to be like the spokesperson for religious persecution when it was just such a bad poorly written essay and some people posted the requirements of the essay and the topic and the grading rubric and everything and if that is true it just did not follow it at all and it was pretty rough so yeah it's kind of embarrassing Cameron what was the worst essay you ever turned in in college oh my gosh my worst I have no clue I wrote one on the

the intricacies of Cold War Romania. Oh. I thought it was an interesting topic, and I started diving into it, and I had zero interest. So I turned in absolute garbage. And I got D-I. But hey, I passed.

There you go. That's all it matters. No one cares about your grades later in life. No, no. I've never been asked my GPA since getting into the real world. Not once. As a teacher, sometimes you do. get asked your GPA, which is interesting.

Oh, really? And if you run for office, it'll be, you know, your opposition will use it for sure. Oh, one thing's for sure. I will never be running for office. I'd rather go all over a mile of broken glass. I thought you were, I thought you were running for office right now, right? That's right. House District 151.

How's the race going, Brad? How those bumper stickers? Awful. I'm here all the time. I can't knock doors. Oh, gosh. Terrible. You can't win without personal contact.

I know. Mary Elise is back after getting booted. Let's go over to you. Okay, hopefully that should work. My tweetery is about Turning Point USA and Candace Owens, which has been developing recently. They are going to do, it looks like they're going to do a live stream with Candace Owens

because as of recently she had solidified that she was accusing them of being involved in Charlie Crick's assassination. So it looks like they're going to do a live stream together. Which should be very interesting for a number of reasons, but that's kind of one of the trending topics on X right now, is that they're kind of going back and forth and doing the kind of standard finger point. You're like, oh, no, you won't come in person, oh, you said this time, whatever, but it looks like they may have come up with an actual time they're going to do a live stream together. So that will be very interesting to watch, for sure. Absolutely. Cameron, over to you.

story came across my timeline CNN is going to be in partnership with call sheet the prediction market company and so as people are watching the news they will now see live prediction bet options for what's happening in the news and I thought this was interesting for two reasons one I didn't know this was happening until I saw a separate video of someone doing real-time prediction betting on words that would be spoken during press briefings. And so I was like, wow, that's crazy. So because this person was making money essentially on just watching the news, making, intuiting predictions on will China be mentioned during the press briefing in the White House. So it brings in all sorts of, ethical considerations right i also came across another story that just came out today where it's being

alleged a google insider has been exposed on polymarket which is a similar prediction um market site where this individual was making bets and winning that's on what would be top google searches like end-a-year google searches and so Again, it's just interesting how gambling is getting involved in themes outside of the casino, outside of sports, where you can now watch CNN and make a bed if they're going to talk about X, Y, issue. So I don't know, maybe it'll make its way to Texas. It's about the slipperiest slope that I've ever seen in real life. Yeah.

Yeah, that's wild. It's a wild story. To close this out, I'm going to go with Ted Brown, Libertarian candidates for U.S. Senate in 24, he filed again this year. And why does that matter? Libertarian's not going to win, of course. Who does he pull votes from? Who does he pull votes from, right? It's always the question.

I have not seen a Green Party candidate yet, but maybe there is one of those two. But last year, he pulled in 2.4% and 267,000 votes. In last year's race, it didn't matter because the crew is won by eight or nine points. But if things break certain ways and Democrats are counting on a close race because of the macro level political factors and economic factors in this race. And then also if Ken Paxton is the nominee, they believe that they have a better shot. Polling certainly shows they have a better shot than if Pornan's the nominee, but this is still a red state. And it's still a very much uphill battle for Democrats to win. If you're interested in some commentary on that, we had Luke Warford on Smokefield Room podcast this month.

Check that out. It was a good discussion. But Brown could play a factor here. He's been on the ballot before. He will be the Libertarian Party candidate. They nominate through conventions. So there's no primary for that. And it could play a factor if the margins are close enough.

For sure. And so that's something to watch that actually just happened while we were. We have seen races lost by the margin that was taken by the libertarian candidate. That's why sometimes you see Republicans very much hoping a green party candidate will jump in the race too to draw off votes from the Democratic candidate. There was an interesting dynamic a couple cycles ago where we saw the Democrats sue the Green Party candidates and Republicans defend them to get the Green Party candidates off the ballot. But, and it reverse happened with the libertarians and Republicans. I didn't see anything like that last cycle, but I think 22 that did happen. I believe you're right.

And it's harder because margins are bigger or are generally bigger at the statewide level, it's harder for a third party candidate to actually play spoiler, but it has happened. There was one instance that I can think of, sure fire that the spoiler was played. And that was the HD 47 race in 22 or 2020. that was Justin Barry was the Republican nominee against Vicki Goodwin. This was before the redraw where they made Goodwin seat more heavily Democratic. Republicans actually had a shot to flip that. They didn't.

They lost. Well, if I recall correctly, the margin of votes was about a third. The margin between Barry and Goodwin, Goodwin winning, was about a third of that which the libertarian candidate pulled in during that race. So it does happen. It does. It's happened numerous times in state house races and certainly some, some lower level races.

I can remember just from, you know, almost 20 years of following Texas politics, seeing it before. But if, if Ted Brown pulls in that vote again, that's not nothing. That's significant. So we'll see where it goes from there. But that'll do it for this week's edition of the weekly round of podcast. Wow. Holly and Meredith, thanks for joining us.

You bet. And we'll catch you next week. Thank you to everyone for listening. If you enjoy our show, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you want more of our stories, subscribe to the Texan at the Texan. News. Follow us on social media for the latest in Texas politics and send any questions for our team to our mailbag by DMing us on Twitter or shooting us an email to editor at the Texan. News. Tune in next week for another episode of our weekly roundup. God bless you and God bless Texas.