The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - February 16, 2024

Episode Date: February 16, 2024

Show off your Lone Star spirit with a free Gonzales Flag t-shirt with an annual subscription to The Texan: https://thetexan.news/subscribe/The Texan’s Weekly Roundup brings you the latest news in Texas politics, breaking down the top stories of the week with our team of reporters who give you the facts so you can form your own opinion. Enjoy what you hear? Be sure to subscribe and leave a review! Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast. This week, the team discusses: The Republican Party of Texas censuring Republican House Speaker Dade PhelanA rise in Chinese nationals at the southern border with MexicoThe Republican incumbents digging in their heels on opposing school choice and impeaching Attorney General Ken PaxtonThe U.S. House impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on its second attemptU.S. Senate passing a foreign aid package worth almost $100 billion without border security provisions The House Republican primary between an incumbent freshman and a Paxton impeachment defense attorneyAustin accepting a $1 million grant from the EPA for “climate planning and action”A Texas congressman’s bill to connect the state power grid to its neighborsRockwall County’s lawsuit challenging a one-voter municipal utility district with hundreds of millions in taxing powerState Sen. Nathan Johnson facing a Democratic primary challenge from a House member 

Happy Friday, folks. Senior Editor Mackenzie DeLulo here, and welcome back to the Texans Weekly Roundup. This week, the team discusses the Republican Party of Texas centering Republican House Speaker Dade Phelan, a rise in Chinese nationals at the southern border with Mexico, the Republican incumbents digging in their heels on opposing school choice and impeaching Attorney General Ken Paxton, the U.S. House impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on its second attempt. The U.S. Senate passing a foreign aid package worth almost $100 billion without border security provisions. The House Republican primary between an incumbent freshman and a Paxton impeachment defense attorney. Austin accepting a $1 million grant

from the EPA for climate planning and action. A Texas congressman's bill to connect the state power grid to its neighbors. Rockwell County's lawsuit challenging a one-voter municipal utility district with hundreds of millions in taxing power. And State Senator Nathan Johnson facing a Democratic primary challenge from a House member. Thanks for listening and enjoy this episode. Well, howdy folks. It's Mackenzie here with Matt, Brad, and Cameron. Gentlemen, hello. Happy Thursday. Hello, hello. Thanks for listening and enjoy this episode. Yeah. There's lots of news every day. Well, especially when you work in the news industry. Yeah. You really are paying attention. Yeah. It's like drinking through a fire hose.

Oh, my gosh. Yes. It's like every day you come into the office and you just log on. You're like, oh, this happened. This happened. This happened. Yeah. It's like parsing through it.

Yeah. Absolutely. You know, it's about the signal for, sorting for the signal through the noise, right? There's so much noise out there. Yeah. You know, things that people bring up, they tweet out, they write on, but not everything's relevant, right? Yeah. You got to really sort through everything.

Not everything's a story, especially for like, well, for us, especially we're a little publication. We have to really choose our stories wisely. Yeah. It's very true. Well, gentlemen, thanks for joining me today. Matt, welcome back. We're excited to have you as well. Let's go ahead and jump in to our news today.

Brad, we're going to start with you. Wow. After last week, not allowing you to join our conversation until like five stories in, you get to lead off today. Yeah. And I'm going to be talking a lot. It looks like looking at the stock. Well, we're excited about it. After months of waiting,

that censure resolution we've heard so much about against House Speaker, Texas House Speaker, Dade Phelan, was finally taken up by the state GOP, the state party. Give us the details. So passed by a vote of 55 to 4 with four abstentions by the state Republican executive committee at its meeting on, I think that was Saturday. And the final resolution against Phelan, it's a censure resolution, names offenses that are the Paxton impeachment, the speaker's Democratic chair appointments, the border bill point of order back during regular session and school choice as far as Phelan not doing enough to get that across the line in the eyes of these party activists. And so it stems from two censure resolutions passed by local GOPs in Phelan's district, Orange and Jasper counties.

Those were in the middle of last year that occurred, and it got kind of postponed because of public notice requirements. And they also, the SREC, put it off to wait until after whatever happened with school choice in November. Under Rule 44 of the Texas GOP's governing document, they're allowed to officially drop its neutrality in a primary that an incumbent has been censured in. And so that effectively allows them to spend up to 12 percent of their general of their election fund, the state fund and against that incumbent. And would they not be able to without that? Correct. Yeah. And so overall, it's more ceremonial. It's more just a statement of condemnation than anything else. But there are some tangible aspects to it. This has been a long time coming. Texas GOP Chair Matt Rinaldi celebrated it when it occurred along with 55 votes.

So most of the SREC voted for this thing. And 60 SREC members or 62 SREC members. Right. Yeah. But Rinaldi and the vice chair Dana Myers are included in that as well. So overall 64 though there were 63 because Jill Glover passed away and her position was filled at this meeting as well, I believe. But regardless, the vast majority of the SRC. Yes.

And like this, everybody knew this was going to happen. It wasn't surprising. And so it was just a question of when. Now, if I recall correctly, the quarterly meeting usually happens in March and this happened in February before the, the, uh, the primary. this race especially he endorsed covey early on interestingly enough covey ran against rinaldi for the gop chairmanship after alan west stepped down so a lot of a lot of webs here um but yeah after a long time waiting this central resolution has finally been passed let's quickly go over the arguments for and against the centralure resolution at the meeting. So one of the most notable people that spoke in favor of this was Chris Brough from Beaumont, Beaumont area. He basically said that, you know, while Dade Phelan has been very generous to me in my political career personally, we're not voting on his generosity.

We're voting based on his conduct and whether it violated our rules. He said, quote, I wish I could support Dade Phelan in this, but I can't. He's wrong. He's been obstinate in his wrongness. voting based on his conduct and whether it violated our rules. He said, quote, I wish I could support Dade Phelan in this, but I can't. He's wrong. He's been obstinate in his wrongness. On the flip side, Joe Poyman, who runs Texas Alliance for Life, he defended the speaker pointing to some of the big pro-life bill victories that conservatives love that passed the legislature, whether the Harvey bill or the trigger ban. Uh, he said, because of those two bills reported abortions in Texas has plummeted from thousands

per month to zero. Uh, all 23 facilities in Texas have stopped performing abortions and the industry has collapsed. Dave Phelan was the most pro-life speaker the state has had, certainly in modern times. And then Phelan spokesperson, Kate Whitman hit back and said, this is the same organization that rolled out the red carpet for a group of neo-Nazis, refused to dissociate from anti-Semitic groups, and balked at formally condemning a known sexual predator before he was ousted from the Texas House.

The SRAC has lost its moral authority and is no longer representative of the views of the party as a whole. There's no love lost between these two sides. And this was expected. They knew it was going to happen. And the state party apparatus is officially condemning the speaker. And notable, too, when Poiman is saying those things of Texas Alliance for Life. He's the head of one of the two big pro-life organizations in the state. Oftentimes, these two pro-life organizations are at odds, not necessarily on this issue, but interesting to see Poyman kind of come out with

those points, particularly in that a lot of the House members who defend Phelan citing conservative victories will use those bills passage as part of their defense and all of that. Can you tell us about what this means practically and kind of the political dynamics at play within the party? Yeah. So, and you mentioned the two pro-life groups, you know, the differences aren't really on, there's some policy differences or at least emphasis, but really the big differences comes down to who they endorse in these primaries. And it's always pretty interesting to see the breakdown, but the other one is Texas right to life.

Um, practically it means the party can spend 12% of its funds in, uh, in the race. It was, um, it has already run ads against feeling last year, though those were more issue advocacy than campaign ads. And so that was during the Democratic chair fight. The party reported in its state account, $300,000 cash on hand. That was back in, I think it was the January semiannual. So those numbers have probably changed one way or the other since then. So we'll see if they actually spend any money. They've got a lot of races that they're keying in on. But this is probably among the top.

It's definitely among the top races to watch. And so it might be something that the party decides to invest in. But overall, it's really just a statement of condemnation. And that's not surprising given the current political makeup of the SRAC. They have long been critical of the speaker and the speaker has long been critical of them. Really, this is just going to be a war of words back and forth. Yeah, certainly. Bradley, thank you. Cameron, coming to you next, let's talk about the border and some illegal immigration.

There's been lots of new numbers coming out about the number of illegal immigrants at the southern border crossing the southern border. Tell us about some of the things you've come across most recently. Yeah, so the January numbers came out from CBP. That's the Customs and Border Protection. So just to highlight some of those, there was actually a 50% decrease from December 2023. So in January, they saw over 124,000 encounters. And this is interesting to highlight just because we've seen lots of discussion in terms of the state versus federal battle over who is determining how to take care of the border. And we've seen Abbott take a lot of action, whether it be continuing to build the razor wire barriers and declaring an invasion and all the Republican-led governors coming to his support. But what is something that's been interesting that I've come across is the rising

number of Chinese nationals who have been encountered at the border. And this was actually touched on a few weeks ago by former President Donald Trump. He did an interview with Fox News where they asked him about this rise in what they called military-aged men coming across the southern border. And he insisted that this would lead to a terrorist attack. So that raises some eyebrows when the former president says something like that. And the interviewer in that conversation asked him, are they being directed by the Chinese Communist Party to come here? And Trump replied, I believe so. And he said, I believe we're going to have a terrorist attack. And so that caught my attention initially. And

I try and stay abriefed of a lot of the conversations going around with intelligence communities, geopolitically. And for our listeners, there's the former CEO of the private military contracting company Blackwater. His name is Eric Prince, and he has his own podcast and has done lots of long-form discussions about different issues, not just geopolitically, Iran, North Korea, he said, quote, are looking to capitalize on the weakness of the United States right now, especially in an election year. So when you're hearing the former president mention something, you're hearing someone who has incredible insights geopolitically mention something. I wanted to dig into this a bit. So what I came across is there was actually a daily caller report where they obtained information from the CBP that said that there's been more than 30,000 migrants who crossed the southern border deemed potentially national security risks who have been released into the country, which includes over 20,000 encounters

with special interest aliens. And for our listeners, a special interest alien is a non-U.S. person who, quote, potentially possesses a national security risk to the United States or its interests. So when it comes to the encounters with Chinese nationals at the border, there have been more than 24,000 encounters with Chinese nationals at the southern border during the fiscal year of 2023. And that's according to figures from CBP. again, this is a fascinating story because there was something that came out by CBS and they did a 60 minutes investigation into this because it was gaining some traction online. And they found that these Chinese nationals were actually being funneled somehow to this small opening in the border wall. I believe it was in California, next to San Diego. And the way they found out about this opening in the border wall was through TikTok. So in this video, you can see they were going, they were showing the CBS reporters, the TikTok

videos that was showing instructions for how to reach this opening. And there was additional reporting done that was saying they were spending thousands of dollars to travel up through Ecuador and paying, you know, sometimes up to $20,000 to pass through passport-friendly countries like Turkey as a way to get to South America up to the border. So just a fascinating story. I go into all these details if our listeners are interested, because when it comes to the border, it's incredibly complex, and especially when you're dealing with foreign countries. And with the rise in Chinese nationals encounters at the border, the battle between state and federal governments here. This is a story that is going to be continuing on for years to come, because as we've seen also, the differing

approaches to how to handle the border and the rise in illegal immigration. We've seen President Trump say he's going to expel a large number of people. And who knows how that is going to play in the media, especially with how people report on the border right now. So this is something that's going to stay in the news for a long time. So, yeah, absolutely. Definitely go check out Cameron's reporting with the Texan news. Cameron, thank you. Bradley, coming to you. The primary is only weeks away and strategies have really solidified.

What trend are you seeing in these particularly contentious House races? Something interesting that I've noticed is more and more embattled House Republicans are steering into the skid and embracing rather than shying away from their records, emphasizing it rather than talking about other issues. Speaker Phelan is currently running an ad directly and pointedly criticizing Ken Paxton and doubling down on his impeachment. It's a bold strategy, especially among GOP primary voters. We'll see if it works, but he's not turning away from that. State Representative Justin Holland did something similar at a recent forum.

In another instance, Karanda Timesh backed Phelan's speakership and defended the appointment of Democratic chairs to some minority committees. Contrast that with, I saw a video of- Minority committees. Minor committees. Okay. Sorry. Got it.

I got it. Confused minority reports and minor committees. I was like, I think he means minor committees. Minor committees. Thank you. Yes. And- Tom Cruise.

Contrast that with State Rep. Terry Wilson, who who said when asked the question if he supports feeling speakership said, well, if he's the most conservative option, then yes. But if there's someone else, then I'll support them. Interesting dynamic there. Tomas is a lot more vulnerable than Wilson is. So just an odd, odd situation. On another stripe, you have reps Travis Clardy and Drew Darby defending their votes to strip ESAs from the Education Omnibus Bill. School choice options. School choice, yeah. Specifically citing in a new angle that it would have funded illegal immigrants through the education funding. It's an odd contention there.

And the governor hit back with an equally odd rebuttal. Overall, just interesting that mostly they're digging their heels in, at least these members and some others, rather than, you know, shying away from it, hoping that that still pulls them across, pulls them across the finish line. And in a couple of weeks, we'll see. Yeah, absolutely. Bradley, why do you think that this is the trend that we're seeing, particularly in these primaries? I mean, usually, historically, we've seen challenged GOP incumbents really try and come to the conservative side and find ways to kind of shore up their conservative bona fides. This is different. It's politically complicated and it's been a politically complicated year.

So it's not necessarily surprising. But why do you think this is? Well, to some extent, the die is cast. You know, their records are their records. And there's some room for movement on things. There's a lot of members who are saying that take impeachment, that they voted to have a full investigation in the Senate through the trial. Others like Phelan are saying, no, this entire thing was necessary and needed to happen and frankly should be done again. That's the position we see Drew Springer in, senator who's retiring. But overall, I think it's just that this is what they have to run on.

And this is either going to pull them across the line or it's going to sink them. And probably also a lot of irritation with the attacks on them from their opponents. And it goes the other way as well we're seeing um a lot of uh you know complaining both sides about what kind of arrows are being slung at each other if there's lies in in the attacks if there's if they're being misleading things like that so in short it's election season and that's what we're going to get. Yeah, absolutely. Bradley, thank you. Matthew, coming to you out in West Texas. Howdy, howdy. Also, what's on your mug? Is that a is that a Bronco that I see on your mug? It's a fucking Bronco. That's pretty cool. Fucking Bronco. Yeah, that's my favorite.

Well, I can see why. Let's go ahead and jump into your story here, Matt. The head of the Department of Homeland Security will face trial in the U.S. Senate over allegations that he refused to enforce federal laws relating to border security and immigration directly under his purview. This is the second time in history that a cabinet official has been impeached. Walk us through the details. Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has finally been impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives in a narrow vote on Tuesday, with three Republicans adjoining the Democrats to vote against the measure. The vote finally passed, 214 to 213, making Mayorkas the second presidential cabinet member in history to be rebuked in such a way by Congress. The last time it happened was in 1876. The articles of impeachment cite allegations that Mayorkas has willfully refused to enforce federal laws, such as immigration-related laws, causing the crisis at the southern border and placing national security at risk. Now, this is the second time this year that congressional Republicans have

tried to impeach Mayorkas. The last effort failed when Congressman Steve Scalise was absent for cancer treatment last week, and Democrats told House leadership that Texas Congressman Al Green would be absent since he was at the hospital recovering from surgery. When you're counting votes to see who is present and who isn't, that changes the threshold needed to pass a bill, and while the GOP knew they had several defectors, they thought it would narrowly pass. Then, before the vote, on the first attempt, Democrats surprisingly wheeled Green into the chamber in a hospital gown, where both his presence and the no vote helped shoot the resolution down. Fast forward a week, all he did was delay the measure,

and with the return of Representative Scalise, the impeachment resolution passed. Once the articles are presented to the Senate by the House of Representatives, the Senate will begin a trial. According to Democrat Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the trial should start later this month with Senator Patty Murray from Washington State presiding over the proceedings. Now, a conviction requires two-thirds of the chamber to sustain, which is unlikely considering that Republicans only hold a narrow minority in the chamber, and it would require a sufficient number of Democrats to cross over and join Republicans to impeach Mayorkas. In the rare occasion that this does in fact occur, Mayorkas would immediately be removed from his position as

DHS secretary. The jurors could also decide to impose a penalty on him, banning him from ever serving in the government again, if they so choose. Matt, great coverage of a pretty spicy federal story here that you've been following now for weeks. Thank you so much for your coverage. We appreciate it. Cameron, we're coming back to you. You ready? I'm ready. That's what I like to hear. Debate over the Senate border bill back in the U.S. Capitol here kind of turned into a foreign aid bill by the end of all of it. It's the only package that continued to kind of move through the process. Tell us what happened here. Well, just like you mentioned, the debate over the border bill turned into a foreign aid package worth over $95 billion.

That's billion with a B. And it passed by a vote of 70 to 29. Included in this package was $60 billion in aid for Ukraine, $14.1 billion in support for the military operations happening in Israel, and then more than $8 billion to Taiwan and its operations in the Indo-Pacific. And before the vote, we heard Senator Mitt Romney from Utah call this the most important vote we will ever take as U.S. senators. And he was one of the votes in support of this foreign aid package. Notable votes against were Democrat caucus member Bernie Sanders, and then also many Republicans, including Ted Cruz, J.D. Vance, Mike Lee, Rand Paul. But what I wanted to touch on

here was there was lots of conversation leading up to this foreign aid bill. And there was actually a memo that was sent out by J.D. Vance earlier in the day in which he uncovered a clause in the text of the legislation that he called, quote, an impeachment time bomb for the next Trump presidency if he tries to stop funding the war in Ukraine. There was language that he was making reference to that if Trump were to withdraw or pause that financial support from the war in Ukraine, they would be able to bring violations that were related to similar accusations they made against Trump in the first impeachment. And so that was really a bombshell to come out before the vote occurred. And then Vance and other senators engaged in a public discussion on X, where him and Mike Lee and others talked about a lot of the issues occurring, not just with the manufacturing capabilities between the

United States and Russia, because what this military aid was going to do was essentially produce military artillery shells and be able to send that to Ukraine in their efforts against Russia. The cost factors and the production issues occurring here in the United States, but also the amount of lives lost in this battle between Russia and Ukraine. So if our listeners are interested in that, I add all that context into our piece here. I won't go over it. I'll allow the listeners to go and read that. But the issue that now lands with the House in terms of the foreign aid package is, will it pass? And Mike Johnson has signaled that it would be dead on arrival. So not a whole lot of hope for those who voted in favor of passing this foreign aid package, despite the fact that President Joe Biden has

expressed that the House should pass this bill with urgency, he said in a statement. So we will see what eventually happens. But if there's any predictions to go around, it doesn't seem as though it will pass once it reaches the House. Yeah, great coverage, Cameron. Thank you so much. Bradley, we're just a few weeks out from primary season, and you wrote about a very contentious Denton County House race this week. Give us a preview. Most notable challengers, given that he was one of the handful of lawyers defending Ken Paxton against the impeachment charges in the Senate last year. He is running against Damesh. And something that makes this even more complicated is Mitch Little was her treasurer before this break over impeachment happened. She's a freshman member, and she actually, I saw on Twitter,

had appointed or had named Mitch Little as one of her potential emergency successors. Members designate people, usually it's their spouse, to serve in case they pass away unexpectedly or become incapacitated at something. We saw it happen in a less severe instance with JC Jaton last year when he went on guard duty. His wife Fanny served for a few months and pretty standard thing. But that shows how close to mesh and little were before this break over impeachment happened. And that is the reason that he jumped in.

He said it. He said it when he when he came in the race. And it's obviously a big feature. You know, there was a forum that was done and you can read more about what they said in there, but I thought one of the most interesting things was little just flat out acknowledged that, you know, he is, he is running to be someone that will be one of the 10 to challenge the ruling of the chair in the house. You need 10 members to do that, to challenge most parliamentary decisions. And it's kind of seen as a, um, it's definitely seen as a slight to leadership. If you

do that, um, it's kind of a, from the, uh, the other perspective, it's a break in case of emergency thing. This is something we only tend to only do unless, um, or as, as a last resort isn't done much but it basically consigns your policy hopes to the graveyard if you join that and Little acknowledges that basically and says you know what

that's okay. He's got some policy opinions that I talk about in the piece but overall he's there to be basically an irritant to the speaker. Admittedly. Yeah. There already are members that are openly critical of the speaker and have called on

him to step down, and he would join the ranks of them if he wins. On the flip side, you have Tamesh, who is trying to secure her second term in the House. She has the backing of Greg Abbott because she voted against stripping those ESAs, the school choice, from the Education Omnibus. And she's got a lot of financial backers. TLR is coming in. Mitch Little has also raised a lot of money. Among these House races, this is probably going to be the highest spending ones. And one of the more high profile, too. Yeah, and one with the most parity, I'd say. In a lot of these races, you have the incumbent racing and spending lots of money,

and then the challenger is not on that same level. We'll see if that matters at all, but in this instance, he is raising hundreds of thousands of dollars along with raising you know hundreds of thousands of dollars along with her raising hundreds of thousand dollars so um a very contentious race if you want to read more about it uh check out the piece but that is some that is definitely a top five race to watch come march 5th and i will say to the campaign treasurer that is appointed by the candidate to be on their documentation when they do file to run for office. It can kind of be one of two ways. You either have somebody who is just good at filing

your campaign finance reports and can put the numbers in, do their due diligence and call it good. You just trust them to handle that for you. Or it can also be somebody who may still have that skill set, but is willing to put their name on your filing so that there's a show of support, right? It kind of can show, okay, this person's backing me and local folks get an idea of, okay, this prominent local person is throwing their support behind me, right? So this is not strictly just kind of an accountant or a bookkeeper all the time. This is sometimes really just a ceremonial or symbolic gesture of support from somebody who holds some sort of influence in the district. Yep.

And if you go back to Dinesh's finance reports, about a year, maybe even less, you'll see Mitch Little's name on it. Yeah. And now we are in one of the most hotly contested primary races in the state. Wild, wild stuff. Bradley, thank you. Cameron, we're coming back to you. The city of Austin has prioritized reaching net zero by 2040, this time with

some help from the federal government. Tell us what happened. Yeah, going from the global to the local. That should be the name of your new newsletter, your new podcast, from global to local with Cameron Abrams. That'd be fun. Maybe if our listeners want that, let us know. Bring it on, people. So the city of Austin has accepted a $1 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency. And this is in order for the city to continue their climate planning and actions within the city here. The Office of Sustainability told us here at the Texan that they're going to be hiring staff. They're going to be using this funding to help build out this regional climate planning effort, because they already have a climate equity plan that

they've been attempting to tick off a lot of their different strategies throughout the city here. We talked about a resolution that the city has committed to, and they're seeking to reaffirm this target for net zero community-wide emissions by 2040. But what's interesting is this EPA grant was actually allocated through the Climate Pollution Reduction Grant by the way of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. So lots of layers of how this $1 million eventually landed here in the city of Austin. That climate pollution reduction grant provided a total of $5 billion to states and local governments for the purposes of, quote, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other harmful air pollution. So the Austin Office of Sustainability said they're going to be prioritizing the climate action plan, and they're identifying high priority, ready to implement measures. And I reached out to one of the city council members, Paige Ellis, and she had told us that they're, quote, trying to move the needle on our regional

climate planning efforts. And she reaffirmed the idea that they're going to be hiring people and they're meeting with stakeholders and they're creating a larger regional plan, meeting biweekly with other regional partners. And this includes Travis, Bastrop, Hayes, Williamson, and Caldwell counties. So this is more of the same with the city of Austin. They've continued to take progressive steps in terms of how they're implementing different priorities and policies. Certainly not new. Not new, but just sort of an update. And the fact that more money from not just locally that they've allocated, but from the federal government coming into the city to help with these climate change efforts that they're trying to implement.

Yeah, absolutely. Super notable stuff, Cameron. Thank you so much for your coverage. Bradley, we're going to kind of stick, we're going to transition locally via Gray-Kassar to the federal level. Okay. Okay, great. Former Austin City Councilman Gray-Kassar, current congressman, has filed an ERCOT bill. Give us the details.

Yes, that's like my bat signal that's like urquhart or greg cassar okay so by the way the transition was i mean i thought it was good thank you congratulations i was trying really hard the connect the grid act filed by congressman greg cassar a democrat from aust, would repeal exemptions made for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas region under the Federal Power Act. What that means is it would connect the grid to surrounding grids, opening it up to federal regulation through FERC. And currently, because ERCOT is wholly contained within state lines, the grid operator and market infrastructure, market and infrastructure overseas have been chiefly regulated by the Public Utility Commission rather than FERC ever since ERCOT was created in 1970 and so um there are various arguments to this cassar cites the february 2021 winter storm which is coincidentally as we sit here talking

for three years ago today uh that things really hit the fan on it that's wild to think about yeah oh my gosh um talk about comedic timing for a bill. Anyway, I digress. Um, so Casar's opinion is that this would, uh, allow the state to pull power from surrounding grids when it needs it and sell power to surrounding grids when it doesn't need excess power. He doesn't emphasize this, but he is of the opinion that the grid needs more federal regulation regardless. Now, that is the point of contention that then rubs most in the power industry the wrong way. way and because ercot has it was deregulated and um rather than one company owning all the the segments of a supply chain it was broken up um and now different companies own different parts electricity is sold from generator to retail electric provider and then transmission companies get a fee for transporting that electricity the commodity from the rep to the individual customer it's all a delicate balance

i've talked about it a lot we talked about with the black rock thing um but overall those who want this see a need for federal regulation and they cite uh winter storm yuri for that now interestingly enough ercot does have some tie flows between two different grids uh next adjacent to it um cassar says he thinks this would open the door for increasing that to like 12 000 megawatts which is a large a large amount yeah contextualize that for us it's a lot um yes one megawatt can power 200 homes there we go during a peak demand and so that's a lot um currently the the tie flows that ercot does have is in a few hundred um megawatts and so a lot lower but you know this would this would further involve the federal government in a grid and market system that is already reeling because of federal

government involvement through the production tax credit and that is why what we talked about with blackrock the blackrock event event with Patrick and getting more dispatchable power, why the legislature is doing this. Overall, the industry and the legislature is going to fight tooth and nail. This isn't going to go anywhere probably, especially in a Republican controlled US House of Representatives. Senator Charles Schwartner tweeted once this was put out, that ain't going to happen. And I think it's a pie-in-the-sky dream of Kassar's. I have a tough time seeing it going anywhere legislatively, but it's been filed and it's being talked about, and there are a sizable

amount of people that think this is the right way to go. Beto O'Rourke said that during the campaign. It doesn't exactly break down on party lines, but it kind of does. And at least on the political side of things. So overall, something to watch for now, but it's probably not going to go anywhere, I'd say. Yeah, certainly. But notable nonetheless. I told y'all that that i saw that cassar went to my favorite coffee shop right like literally the same day i did yeah okay great congratulations thank you it was one of those moments where i was just looking at the background like is that barrett's and it was great congratulations thank you okay bradley we're gonna stick with you. One county is suing over a 2022 election that authorized $833 million in debt.

Tell us why. So under current Texas law, the way that residential infrastructure, meaning roads and water utilities, sewage, that kind of thing, is built for a population that doesn't yet exist is through municipal utility districts. And those are created by usually developers. During a legislative session, they have to be approved by the legislature. But outside of that, the TCEQ can do it. And it usually ends up with one voter who is living in a temporary shack on the land, the undeveloped land, casts the deciding vote to authorize 800, in this case, $833 million worth of debt

and the taxes that are to pay off that debt in perpetuity, one voter approves that. Now, it's a tricky situation. How do you authorize this level of debt to pay for the infrastructure that's a prerequisite for getting a voter base there or a tax base? Difficult situation. But you have the situation where a lot of these counties have no authority whatsoever to say, no, we don't want this here. This is not a good thing. And we have one county here fighting back against it, Rockwall County, whose county judge, Frank New, and state rep, Justin Holland, have been very critical of this specific thing, this instance here.

And they're suing because the one voter who cast the deciding ballot, the only and deciding vote on this, Zachary Lee Carson, and he has a lengthy criminal history most of it are misdemeanors many of which were pled down originally they were felonies pled down to lesser charges and at the time of the vote he had pending charges

for multiple felonies and then he was convicted weeks later of one of those felonies. And then he was convicted weeks later of one of those felonies. The others were pled down. Burglary was the one he was convicted on, the second degree felony. Yep. Engaging in organized crime was another one that was pled down. And then the kicker, I think, aggravated sexual assault of a child.

That was pled down to inappropriate touching and based on the timeline it seems like all of this was one incident um and then later he was charged with assault causing bodily injury that looks to me like based on the dates here that occurred when he was convicted of these other crimes so i don't know if, but that's based on the timeline presented. That's what it looks like to me. Regardless, the county is alleging that this voter was ineligible or at least should be declared ineligible to have created this mud and they should have to do it over again or at least stop what's currently in

state from uh taking action on anything and um it's it's a weird situation um the other contention the county makes is that on the ballot it didn't say for or against. It just said district. And so they allege that it's faulty ballot language as well. But that's a lesser contention. I just have a question about muds more generally, if you could help. I can try. So this individual, Zachary Lee Carson, he creates the mud. And he says it's going to cost $833 million to build infrastructure. And he cast a lone vote to approve that $833 million.

And that's in hopes of creating a community that will support the tax base that will pay back that $833 million. Is that correct? Close. Carson was just the voter. Okay. The developer paid Carson to live on this land and be a voter. A separate developer. Yeah, the developer does all this. Zachary Lee Carson is not the developer. He's just a loan voter.

He's just a guy paid to be the voter basically so if a developer they could essentially work this is speculation they could recruit an individual to move onto that into that area encompassing the mud and have them cast that vote not only can they do that they do do that okay yes that is what happens and it happens all over the state it's not just this instance there are tons of muds the developer in this case was um uh an llc owned by philip huffines of the huffines family up there brother of don huffines who ran for. Brother of Don Huffines, who ran for governor. Usually very politically opposed to his brother.

Usually on different... Oh, no, Philip. Philip's the one who is aligned usually with his brother. There are three Huffines brothers. Yeah. And I get them confused. The other one endorsed Abbott.

Yes, exactly. Which was an interesting family dynamic, I'm sure. Well, his brother was running against the governor, but Philip was not that brother. Correct. There we go.

Philip ran against Angela Paxton for Senate in 18. That was the biggest Senate race of that time. Yeah. Unreal. Anyways, continue. So that's the Huffines have a development side of their family businesses. And part of that includes creating these muds so that there is infrastructure in place on which they can build residential units, whether it's homes or apartments or whatnot, because without the infrastructure, you can't build the residential

units. And without the residential units, you can't attract residents or a tax base or a voter base. And so it really is a difficult situation. How do you do this correctly? But there are clearly massive flaws in it. And this is absolutely one of them. Are MUDs unique to Texas or are there other states that have similar maybe by name but i think there are other states have similar okay types of um entities but i think it's yeah maybe by name and muds are one kind of a broader category of special purpose districts each of which has the ability to tax and the transparency is very limited it's very difficult to find

information about board meetings of muds when votes are happening anything like that matt's written about guy out in nectar county that i was just gonna say that's written about you know um a swell guy um and then you've got uhDs, Municipal Management Districts, which are generally for more commercial areas. That is, remember Colony Ridge? That is an MMD. And so under a lot of these overarching problems, MUDs exist. And it's, like I said,

it's, I'm not sure what the solution is. Justin Holland has proposed and others have proposed bills to give counties a say in rejecting or approving these muds. Currently they do not. And that may be a way to kind of solve this, to ensure that at least the local officials there approve of this thing. There's some more checks and balances in place.

And during the legislative session, when we talk about the local and consent calendar that kind of rushes its way through the House, the vast majority of MUDs are funneled through that process where it takes two seconds for these bills to pass through the legislature. And all of a sudden, all these M muds are moving their way through the legislature. So that's typically where they end up in the process. It's a very quick process. This is local and consent. It's also known local and uncontested, meaning there's not much, what am I trying to say? Opposition to the bills at all. So they just kind of make their way through the process like an auction. It's just like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom down the line. And that's where sometimes these members that you're talking about, Mitch Little potentially affiliating himself with when he if he does make it to the legislature would be a group

that often does try and kind of gum up that process of passing these bills. That's what happened with the Mother's Day massacre, right? Back in 2019 yeah it's an it's an option for legislators who feel like they have no other option to get what they want yeah whatever that may be they can blow up the local consent calendar that has a lot of these muds on it um which really ticks off a lot of legislators um but also makes for some crazy spectacle for us to watch always fascinating right because you off a lot of legislators, but also makes for some crazy spectacle for us to watch. Always fascinating. Right. Because, you know, a lot of these muds are not controversial. They're signed off on by the, at least by officials. They're either signed off on by the legislator there or the county commission or both. But the process just yields some

lack of transparency in ways that allow for these kinds of things to also happen in addition to the process being used correctly. Yeah. And when you have a crazy situation like this with a guy who has multiple offenses and charges, you know, it's a it's an anomaly, I'd say. But it's also more and more stories of it happening. Right. Yeah. Yeah. No doubt.

Absolutely. Well, Brad, thanks. Cameron, thanks. Cameron, we're coming more and more stories of it happening. Right. Yeah. Yeah, no doubt. Absolutely. Well, Brad, thanks. Cameron, thanks. Cameron, we're coming to you. Okay. Senate District 16, a huge race this cycle, probably the biggest Democrat on Democrat. War, proxy war going on right now. Give us a rundown of that race.

Yeah. it's really an interesting situation because just looking at the demographics of Dallas County, which Senate District 16 sort of surrounds and encompasses, over 63% of the population is between the ages of 18 and 46. It includes a mix of different ethnicities and cultures because just over 40% are white and slightly under 40% are Hispanic and 13.5% are black. So an interesting mix of populations there. And then also the leadership of the city of Dallas just changed. We saw Eric Johnson announced he was leaving the Democratic Party, joining the GOP. So with that interesting dynamic there, add in Nathan Johnson, who has positioned himself as more of a moderate Democrat in the Senate, and he's the incumbent there. He's being challenged by a House rep member,

Victoria Niave-Criotto, and she's more positioning herself as the progressive. And what's interesting is they actually already had a live public debate. And so I was able to listen in and pick up some things from that. Like, for example, in their opening sort of arguments, Criotto was saying she was going to bring a different voice to the Senate, saying there's lots of fights that need to be had. She said Governor Abbott has been terrorizing people, especially when it comes to his actions at the border. While she attacked

Johnson as well on one of the votes that he cast with SB4, very highly contested debate over that bill because SB4 had to do with raising penalties on individuals that were found to be engaged with stash houses and human smuggling and things. And when Criotto attacked him saying that Johnson had caved to Dan Patrick on his vote, whereas Johnson said he actually partnered with his Hispanic colleagues to argue for lowering the penalty and that Criado was only taking up the issue now because it was politically advantageous for her to do so. So it's going to be an interesting choice for the voters because it's going to boil down to do the voters want a face and a name they know that is more a moderate voice? Or are they going to be moving to wanting more progressive policies being pushed in the Senate? And it's important to contextualize how the Senate operates, especially with how powerful

the leader is. Yes. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, because as everyone knows, the upper chamber in Texas really does operate with a lot of push and pull from Dan Patrick, let's say. So in order to get bills passed in the Senate, you really have to play the game. And so you can be a very progressive voice wanting to push very progressive policies. But if you're not engaged with Dan Patrick and always pushing back against him, you're not going to be able to get any of your issues passed. And so you might appear more moderate, but that's only because you sort of have to be, it seems, in the Senate.

Well, it depends on what game you want to play, right? It's the same in the House. As we were talking about it, to your point, Cameron, it just depends on whether you want to be an agitator and that's the role you want to play to try and move the Overton window a little bit left, or if you want to go along and see if you can pass some bills, right? There are two different approaches. And I think that's what we're really seeing the argument be here in this primary. It will be fascinating. Like you said in your piece, these are two very experienced and well-known local officials going against each other with very distinct political tracks. So it'll be really fascinating to see what happens. It will be. Yeah.

Cameron, thank you. Okay, real fast before we move on to our Twittery section, I want to give a shout out to our regional team. We have always great content coming from the regional reporters here at the Texan. We're just killing it. So I want to start off with Seth. Fort Worth ISD reduced its budget to address an unbalanced budget. So Fort Worth ISD announced that the district will make reductions in budget and staff in a statement. They cited declining enrollment, a lack of state and federal funding, and the ending of elementary and secondary school emergency relief grant programs as the main challenges that is prompting this decision. During the 2022-2023 school year, the district had a

budget deficit north of $80 million. And at the end of the school year, the district laid off around 200 employees and did some internal restructuring. The legislature approved, notably this last legislative session, $10.8 billion for new public school funding in the 88th regular session. Kim Roberts had a great story as well, detailing another big primary fight happening in North Texas. Three Republicans are vying to fill the House seat, being vacated by Representative Craig Goldman, who's looking to join the U.S. Congress representing Texas. Cheryl Bean, John McQueenie, and Leslie Robnett are running in this primary race in House District 97 to replace Goldman. The district leans Republican by a margin of about 16 points, according to our partisan index here at the Texan. This is a district that takes in Fort Worth, part of Fort

Worth, and white settlement and runs south to encompass Benbrook and Crowley. From Holly Hanson, we have a story about the Harris County district attorney's race. If you know anything about Harris County local politics, you know that that race is fascinating and very much a democratic battleground. Kim Ogg is vying for a third term as DA in the nation's third most populous county. Harris County is a very big deal in Texas and nationally. And she's defending her policies and touted her record as a reformer, while challenger Sean Teer accused her of not doing enough to decriminalize offenses and reduce the county's jail population. We're seeing another progressive challenger to an incumbent Democrat here. Teer also lambasted Ogg for not signing

onto a 2022 letter from the district attorneys of Dallas, Bexar, Nueces, Fort Bend, and Travis counties, vowing not to prosecute abortion law violations, something we've covered extensively here at the Texan. But Ogg noted that district attorneys can be removed from office for enacting policies that conflict with state law. Fascinating. So I have to go read Holly Kim and Seth's pieces at the Texan. OK, gentlemen, let's move on to our Twittery section. Bradley, I'm going to come to you first. What did you see on Twitter this week?

This morning, Thursday morning, there was a poll put out. It showed it was from National Public Affairs, which based on what I, the financial information I looked up appears to be a right-leaning organization, a firm, I should say. They did work for Ronnie Jackson, a few other Texas Republicans, and then Republicans across the country. So it is a national firm. They conducted a poll, 807 likely voters in the state. And it shows in a hypothetical matchup in the general election between Colin Allred and Ted Cruz, it shows them dead even at 44% with 12% undecided. It's interesting.

I'm not sure if I totally believe it, but polls are, it's a crapshoot kind of. Some polls are better than others, but we don't know until we have results. Yeah. If you look at the fave-unfave ratings, it gauges that for a number of officials, all but two are Republicans. Joe Biden and Colin Allred with plus 15%, though he has a lot more no opinion than anyone else, 25%. Allred does?

Allred does, yep. So, you know, people are pretty settled on Ted Cruz one way or the other, whether they like him or they hate him. Allred is kind of an unknown quantity, much lower profile. But if that's to be believed, then this is going to be an interesting Senate race. Once we get to the general, something also interesting that I saw. That I want to mention, they gauged the preference for kind of generic candidates by party. And with the Republicans, they asked them, you know, if you could choose, if you consider yourself more of a Trump Republican, a traditional conservative,

or a moderate Republican, the breakdown was 43% Trump Republican, 37% traditional, 18% moderate Republican. On the Democratic side, the three categories were progressive Democrat, traditional liberal Democrat, and moderate Democrat. And that one showed the moderate Democrat number was 41% to 27% for the traditional and 29 for the progressive so kind of reverse yeah uh mirror images of each other um almost but yeah so again it's an early poll a poll is a measure of a snapshot in time of opinions in a snapshot in time how many times we made this disclaimer right I know, right?

Doesn't mean that Ted Cruz is going to lose. Doesn't mean Colin Allred is going to lose. But. It's interesting. It is interesting, especially from a GOP firm. Yeah, absolutely. Especially them putting it out there, right?

Fascinating. And also in it, Trump is up seven on Biden in the state, which is about probably what's expected. Kind of unsurprising there. Thank you, Bradley. Cameron, what do you got for us? Well, something we wrote about here I didn't get to talk about on the podcast

last week because we published it after we recorded. But I thought our listeners might want to hear about it is the the DOJ special investigation report that they were looking into President Joe Biden's handling of classified documents. That was released last week. And there was lots of interesting stuff. It was over 388 pages long and some interesting lines that were added to this report.

One of the things was they called the president a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory. Oof. That was a common theme, the poor memory, because there was a moment in this report where apparently, quote, he did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended, and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began. Also from the report, apparently President Joe Biden did not remember even within several years when his son Beau died, and that his memory appeared hazy. And what was interesting is a report comes out like this. You might want to run some media

cover, and we saw that happen. He went out and had a press conference that evening about the report. And to many comments online, it did not go well. points. He mixed up names. He mistakenly referred to the Egyptian president as the president of Mexico. So not a great showing. We saw many Texas lawmakers come out and comment on it. We saw Sid Miller said he's calling on the president of the United States to use the executive authority to immediately secure the border between Texas and Egypt. So it is a bit humorous. But then we also saw Ted Cruz say he was astonished at the report. He called this mentally incompetent man has access to the nuclear codes, Ted Cruz said. And we saw Chip Roy comment on it. We saw Ronnie Jackson comment on it.

So this was just fascinating coming out because we have an election coming up and we have a DOJ report commenting about the lack of mental fitness our president has. Will that have an effect on the voting? Who knows if people will bring it up in a couple months. But for the last two weeks, at least it's in the news headlines. It's in headlines for sure. Absolutely. Cameron, thank you.

Matthew, coming to you. Looks like we have some history stuff going on in your tweetery this week. And I love a good history story. For those listeners who regularly tune in, I regularly like to cite a historian out of Dallas, Attorney Tara Ross. She has some great social media accounts and posts all kinds of interesting

little this day in history things. And one that she expanded on was this past week in 1807, former vice president Aaron Burr is arrest was arrested for treason, and this was three years after he had killed Alexander Hamilton in that famous duel. Now, a lot of people are familiar with the duel between Burr and Hamilton, but not that many people, including myself, could remember exactly what happened with Burr after the fact. Well, according to Ross, he went off and joined up with some former military people, and they were looking at trying to conquer some land in the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase, and were trying to build an alliance with Great Britain to back themselves militarily in order to take this land.

They were also apparently potentially looking at land in Spanish-owned Florida, and still trying to make up their minds on what land they were going to conquer, whether they were going to try and take some from Spain, or take some from the United States, etc., etc. But one of the people that he was concocting the plan with ended up ratting him off to President Thomas Jefferson, who didn't take kindly to the idea. And Jefferson pushed to have Burr arrested. And he was arrested on February 19th in modern-day Alabama and was accompanied back to Richmond, Virginia by a nine-man military guard. She said that the trip was a thousand miles on horseback, which you can imagine had to be awkward. Now, this was kind of

the interesting part of it. There was a trial, and the trial just had an interesting host of characters from history. The defendant, Burr, was the former vice president who killed the first secretary of the treasury, Hamilton. The judge was Chief Justice John Marshall. The person pushing the prosecution was President Thomas Jefferson. The district attorney prosecuting the case would be the son-in-law of a future president, and the defense attorneys had been delegates to the Constitutional Convention. In the words of Ross, it was very much a soap opera as a trial. Now, a whole bunch of interesting, exciting moments went on during the trial where Marshall had authorized a subpoena of President Jefferson, and he refused to comply, forcing Marshall to drop the subpoena, etc., etc. At the end of the day, the trial set an important precedent on how the offense of treason works under the U.S. Constitution, and Burr was able to get acquitted on the charges. Now, while Jefferson was furious about Burr's acquittal. Burr was able to live a freed life,

but he would live the rest of his life in disgrace. So fun little part of history. And for some reason, I always forget about what happened after the duel. I don't think it was very fun for Aaron Burr. Bradley, we should talk about Alexander Hamilton. I don't think you want to do that. One of our most notorious.

He did get away with it. He did. There's that. One of our most notorious fights on the pod between Brad and I was on Alexander Hamilton. And it was simply just due to the fact that we disagreed with how the other person was framing the argument. And we were arguing really honestly about entirely different things. Did that stop us from getting into a very heated argument? Absolutely not. Of course not. Yeah. Okay. Well, gentlemen, we're almost at 110 here. We got to stop ourselves from chatting. Folks, we appreciate you listening in to our weekly roundup

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