The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - February 26, 2021

Episode Date: February 26, 2021

This week on The Texan’s “Weekly Roundup”, the reporters discuss blackout and ERCOT drama, legislative priorities from L.t Governor Patrick, Gov. Abbott’s address on winter storm action items, special election news in HD 68 and CD 6, Biden’s immigration policies relating to unaccompanied minors, a halt of the president’s deportation pause, developments on Planned Parenthood and Medicaid, Gina Carano and The Mandalorian’s connection to Texas, and Austin homelessness ballot language discrepancies.

Howdy, folks. Mackenzie Taylor here, Senior Editor at The Texan. After a special winter storm edition last week, we are back to our regularly scheduled programming. Welcome to the Weekly Roundup podcast. Our reporting team covers blackout and ERCOT drama, legislative priorities from the Lieutenant Governor, Governor Abbott's address on winter storm action items, special election news in House District 68 and Congressional District 6. Biden immigration policies relating to unaccompanied minors. A halt of the president's deportation pause. More Planned Parenthood and Medicaid developments. Gina Carano, Disney's The Mandalorian and their connection to Texas.

And Austin homelessness ballot language discrepancies. Thank you all so much for listening each and every week. We hope you enjoy this episode. Howdy, folks. y'all so much for listening each and every week we hope you enjoy this episode howdy folks we have daniel friend brad johnson hayden sparks and isaiah mitchell all here in the office today brad and daniel thank you guys for covering for us last week the rest of us all slacked but you guys were hard at work recording podcasts for our listeners so thank you sounds typical right daniel yeah yeah about right hey i was in the office. Yeah. But we didn't, yeah, we definitely could have had you on the podcast.

But it's understandable that you didn't. Why was Isaiah siphoned off? Because it was just about ERCOT. And that had been a lot of stuff they had covered. He could have been a foil though for y'all. He could have. Could have been a great host. That's true. Very genuine.

So tell me about ERCOT. Explain it to me like I know nothing about it that's all i was doing i was like so ercot epcot what's the difference that's actually a pretty good joke sarah loves that because it was a disney uh reference good job well gentlemen thank you for doing that on that note brad we're going to start with you keeping in you know in line with what we talked about last week, but it is still huge news this week, if not the biggest news story of the year so far, not that we have much time to go forward with. But talk to us a little bit. You published multiple pieces this week, overviewing the ERCOT scandal, the blackouts, and there's been a lot of news that's happened this week in relation to that, the weather warming up so give us a little bit of a rundown so a lot of the broad

facts of the of the case here have remained largely the same um you know obviously power went out around you know 1 30 in the morning on monday february 15th and for many texans remained out until you know th Thursday afternoon, Friday morning. So, that's the big picture of it. You know, as the investigations heat up and the state's energy system comes under the microscope, you know, we'll get more answers, get more insight in that, you know, as we record this, I had just been sitting in all morning the House Committee hearing on this. And so that is, you know, that's one example of the legislature, especially, you know, investigating this and asking questions of industry insiders. But, you know, just generally ERCOT, they decided to load shed, which is a term meaning reduce the amount of people that are pulling electricity from the grid.

And the reason they did that was because their supply was not going to be able to match it. Now, is that the same as a blackout? Or is a blackout the result of load shedding? That. Blackout is a result of the load shedding. Now, you know, I've written about this quite a bit, but originally it was meant to be these rolling, rotating blackouts. And apparently early in the morning that did happen. Like for 15 minutes, they were out. People were out of power. And then 30 minutes they were back on the grid.

Now, that didn't last long. And obviously, 1.30 in the morning, most people are asleep. And so, um, you know, I certainly wasn't, if it happened to me, I wasn't aware because I was asleep. Brad goes to bed very early for those who don't know. This is true, especially this past two weeks. Um, so they, they began shedding load. And as I said, the blackouts eventually turned into these controlled, prolonged things that if you lost power, you were out of it for multiple days. There was very little hope because of the stress on the system that the cold weather created. There was next to no ability for them to get people back on the grid. They were trying to prevent people that were still on the grid from having their power shut off and obviously prioritizing things like hospitals, firehouses, police stations, that kind of thing. So if you were out of power Monday morning, likely you were out of it for the entire stretch. You know, one aspect of this that I've touched on is, you know, the severity of the weather and how that affected it.

Well, I'm jumping around a bit, but it does pertain to this. So compared to the 2011 event where people were out of power for, you know, a few hours, they, you know, the reason that that was relatively so short compared to this was because the temperature was a lot higher. Do we know how many people lost power in 2011 off the top of your head? Are the numbers comparable to this time? The number I have in front of me is not number of people. It's megawattage. Okay. So, but it does show a huge discrepancy here.

So, in 2021, the amount of megawattage taken off the grid was just about 52,000, which is a lot. And that is almost half of the entire capacity the state can provide. And one megawatt equals, powers how many homes? A few hundred homes. I've seen competing figures. I've seen ERCOT says 200. Between two and 600 is what we're seeing, right? Yes, I've seen people say 600.

It's hard to get a handle on that. But obviously that's quite a bit of difference, you know, based on how you're doing the math. But the numbers I have in front of me is just based on megawattage. Now, compared with the 2011 event, they only had to force off the grid just less than 15,000. So that's a massive difference. And the reason for that is largely the temperature and how long the temperature stayed low.

We approached zero degrees here last week. It never got close to that. It got below freezing in 2011, but it never got close to that. It got below freezing in 2011, but it never got close to zero, let alone stay there for hours and hours and hours at slightly higher temperatures, 10 to 20 degrees, it stayed for days. So that just compounded the stress put on the grid and made everything have to work harder in order to meet the demand that was also jumping at the same time because people were hiking up their thermostats, understandably so, in the cold. This is not a typically cold climate. This is not a place where people are used to that. So that should be the expected reaction. And so they, they eventually restored power.

You know, there's been a lot of talk during the, the hearings today, at least the one that I was in about what caused, what other aspects of this, you know, caused the supply shortage. You know, there's obviously a lot of talk about frozen windmills. That was absolutely a thing. what other aspects of this caused the supply shortage. There's obviously a lot of talk about frozen windmills. That was absolutely a thing. At one point, half the state's windmill capacity was out of production entirely because of being frozen. In addition to that, wind did not generate much at all, even when it was able to. So I think a figure I saw was that I came up with was they, at most during this event, wind produced less than five, than one fifth of its capacity.

And often it was far lower than that, what they were actually producing. So that's one factor. Another factor was the effect on natural gas and there this came you know this came in a few forms first it the freezing temperatures made it more difficult to pull gas from the wells and it affected the and not only just because of the gas itself was harder to pull out, but it affected the machines that pull them out. Also, electricity was turned off there. And so you have this cycle of, you know, not being able to ramp up electricity production because you don't have the gas. But you can't get the gas partially because of the electricity being cut off for their machines. Another part of it, and this is something that was talked about a lot in the hearing today,

was the pressure in the pipeline was not enough to force gas all the way to the power plants where they can generate electricity. This was the first that I've heard that specific of a claim. I don't doubt it, but there hasn't been a lot of further details into how that works, whether compressors had their electricity turned off at various stages of the supply chain. So that's kind of a question mark right there. So basically what I'm hearing is a lot of the things that we found out in the last week or so, let's say since things started ramping back up, there just aren't as many answers as we would like, right? As Texans would want. Transparency

has been a big issue, hailed by lawmakers and Texans alike. Now, ERCOT had an emergency meeting yesterday. Give us the quick 30,000-foot view of what that looked like and specifics that came out in that meeting that we'd not heard before. Yeah. I mean, essentially, it was just an overview of what caused this. You know, one of the big takeaways for me on this was something that is incredibly technical.

The average person's not going to understand it. I barely did until I started, until I started really diving into it. But there were headlines last week about how ERCOT was close to a statewide wholesale blackout. And they provided more details on that in the meeting this week. And it turns out that by their calculation, they were like four minutes and 37 seconds away from what's called a a black start where um the frequency this is where it gets technical the frequency on which these uh machines operate can't fluctuate too much otherwise it just throws a wrench into the system basically and it causes real hardware effects for example you know engines that that have to run can short.

Like actual damage. Actual physical damage. It's not just like a software bug. This is a real thing. And this is what ERCOT was saying in the meeting. Also in the meeting, they highlighted the differences that I already ran through of the 2011 event and then at the end um the the resignations of you know five members became effective uh it's a 15 member board correct yeah yeah well they have they have a handful of alternates as well i can't figure out if they're technically on it or whatnot but

um of the ones that are that are full board members yes 15 and and a third of them resigned including the chair and vice chair and the reason they did was because of the heat they've gotten for not living in the state. And the chair lives in Michigan. The vice chair lives in Maryland. Another woman lives in Toronto, Canada. So, you know, that's the upshot of it. Currently, as we speak, the CEO of ERCOT is getting grilled by the Senate in their hearing. So, you know, this is the very beginning stages of the process of finding out what went wrong, why it went wrong and how we can fix it going forward. And ERCOT members, how do they find themselves on the board of ERCOT really fast? How do ERCOT members get appointed to the board? really fast how they how do ercot members oh so um governor abbott he appoints commissioners to the puc the public utility commission uh which is the you know effectively the uh the regulatory body overseeing anything from telephone connections to internet connections to electricity the grid

now ercot is a specifically siphoned off non-profit that is designed to electricity, the grid. Now ERCOT is a specifically siphoned off nonprofit that is designed to focus on the grid electricity itself. And members of the board are appointed by the PUC for that. And from what I understand for one year terms, so they're, you know, the ones that have been there a while have been renewed every year. It's not like a, you know, a public or a political appointment where it lasts six years or three years or what have you. So. Awesome. So real fast, this is the last point we'll hit on this before we move on to other things. The hearings today, what are the top takeaways so far? Well, I would say that, um, that the, the, what I mentioned with the frequency was, uh, you know, that was felt all the way down the line.

That was not just at the 30,000-foot view of ERCOT. It nearly happened at each of these power generators, power plants, and all the way down the line. It nearly knocked out a lot of their infrastructure. So that's number one. Number two, from what I've heard so far, is that fact of the pressure being too small in the pipelines to deliver gas.

Now I did hear from someone, an industry insider that disputed that, and he said that they have data that says what really caused it was the cutting off the electricity at the wellheads. So we have competing narratives here. I'm not sure which one is 100% correct yet. We'll find out. And I would say by far the number one takeaway is, I know I'm listing this third, but the number one takeaway is the communication problem ercot the puc especially

um you know these these generators all you know they're generators that's not explicitly their responsibility although you know it helps the lack of communication to the public is you know a gross oversight not just you know speaking from my experience as a reporter, it was impossible to get a hold of any of them. Yeah. But let alone someone who's, you know, the average person who doesn't do this for a living, doesn't know the ins and outs of the electricity grid and how they get their power. They just know that when they flip their light switch on, it's not coming on. There was not a lot of conveyance of the seriousness of this issue building building up to it in you know by anyone really well i think there was even some relief when folks saw governor abbott coming out with some information right and he started you know disseminating some info to people whether it be on twitter or on facebook social media um and that was the first we really started to hear

of specifics yeah and one of the the power generators that was testifying in front of the house today he stated that you know their weather guy had predicted a serious event coming on the 9th so you know days before everything hit the fan um and they told urquhart it's not like urquhart didn't respond to them at all, but they didn't really respond with much urgency that should be, according to him, that should be required for an event to this size. Certainly. Well, Brad, thank you for covering that so extensively and so thoroughly. I really, you know, our readers have voiced their appreciation for your work. So thank you for doing that over this last week. I know you, we've all been working hard and you've been running yourself ragged. So thank you for doing that. On those notes, let's talk some legislative priorities in the Senate. Isaiah, I'm coming to you. This tangentially relates to ERCOT reform, but the Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick this week released his top priorities for this legislative session, this ongoing session. Walk us through what those top priorities look like.

ERCOT reform is just about at the top. I don't say it's at the tippy top because the state budget technically holds that spot, but it doesn't really count since that's a constitutional requirement. So after that, his first two are ERCOT reform and then the Star-Spangled Banner Protection Act, and then statewide broadband access. So the first 10 items on the list verbatim in his phrasing are one, the state budget, two, ERCOT reform, three, power grid stability, four, the Star-Spangled Banner Protection Act, one Twitter user dubbed it the Mark Cuban Act, five, statewide broadband access, six, Pandemic Liability Protection Act, seven, election security, eight, the heartbeat bill, nine, an abortion

ban trigger and ten the end of taxpayer-funded lobbying all sorts of interesting stuff there now how similar are these priorities to the governor the governor comes out with his own list how much you know of a mirror do we see between the lieutenant governor and the governors the governor had a much shorter list patrick has a list of 31, assumedly meant to emulate the 31 districts of the already filed proposals by the Texas Republican Party's more conservative wing. And so on that more conservative side, the heartbeat bill is one of the most famous examples. Yeah. And the total abortion ban dubbed a trigger because it would kick in in the event that Roe v. Wade is overturned. And yeah, I think there might be other conditions, but I mix it up with the sanctuary cities a lot because they have similar legal bases.

Anyway, so with his longer list, he's kind of stretching the breadth of the Republican Party. Yeah. So even taxpayer funded lobbying, that's certainly a priority of the Republican Party. ERCOT reform, power, good stability, both of those things are very timely, I'd say. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting that those shot to the top of this list because these Senate bill numbers, getting a low bill number marks a pretty important priority according to these guys that decide, like Dan Patrick in the Senate here. So the fact that so quickly he decided ERCOT reform is going to be Senate bill two and three, like the lowest numbers he can assign.

Senate Bill 1, like you said, has to be the budget. That's how it works. Good stuff. Well, Isaiah, thank you for covering that for us. It'll be interesting to see, you know, at the end of the session, how many of those 31 items got, you know, worked through the process. Daniel. Now, something interesting that I noticed on that, Dan Patrick had said in some meeting the week before the storm hit that he was releasing his legislative priorities next week. And that week was, of course, when the storm hit.

Those legislative priorities did not come out. So I'm sure ERCOT reform was definitely a last minute thing. Yeah. A change there. Yeah. That was interesting. That was not on the list before last week. Yes.

Almost certainly so. Well, Isaiah, again, thank you so much. interesting that was not on the list before last week yes almost certainly so um well isaiah again thank you so much broad we're coming back to you to talk a little bit more uh you know through priorities the governor himself came out with an address this week now the governor did to note this and y'all have mentioned it before but he added multiple new items to his emergency list um talking through you know erquhart reform some grid stability items winterization winterization of the grid funding for winterization um walk us through so you know aside from lieutenant governor's action items the governor did also add things to his list

but specifically this week abbott went on a televised address talked to you know texans what did he say what were the big you know action items there it was very short address it was like five minutes um largely the the purpose of it at least based on my understanding listening to it was that i was trying to show people that he understands why they're angry about what happened last week he's angry too he shares that, you know, saying he's determined to get answers for this, for what happened. But in the speech, he highlighted three action items moving forward. And, you know, we kind of already alluded to it. But, you know, because he took the time to emphasize them again, I think we'll go back, We'll repeat them. But they were relieving those who have been saddled with exorbitant utility bills. I wrote on earlier this week about how especially these people that have utility plans indexed to the wholesale price, which obviously jumped up to like $9,000 a megawatt, astronomical prices. They're getting bills of thousands of dollars, which is obviously not the norm. Abbott emphasized his intention to help those people, relieve the financial burden they find themselves in. Now, it is important to note that of the total utility customers in the state, those people that have those plans amount to about 1%. So it's a very small amount of people.

Obviously, if you're one of those people, the effects are massive. But it's not as widespread. I think there was a lot of panic at first. Yes, there was. People should not be worried, for the most part, about getting thousands of dollar bills because the wholesale price is increasing. Most people are on fixed rate plans and that doesn't change. And actually also the power generators in the hearing today both stressed

that their customers will not face increases. Another one is Overhaul Urquhart. Abbott, he kind of celebrated the people that resigned and said, you know, it's not enough. More needs to be done. And the other one is, you know, winterization, safeguarding the electricity generation against extreme weather. So that was his brief five minute speech. I like it.

Thank you again for covering all of these, all this minutiae. Really important to Texans. Thank you for doing that. Daniel, we're coming to you special elections we have a couple of different special elections to talk about here um one happened this week and one was scheduled walk us through first house district 68 what election happened so house district 68 is up in north tex. It covers 22 rural counties, the largest of those being Cook County. And that was started because Representative Drew Springer,

who was the previous representative of the district, won a special election for SD30. And the election in HD68 this weekend, or this Tuesday, I lost my schedule, was between Jack County attorney David Spiller and Nakona Boot Factory owner Craig Carter. And David Spiller won that with about 62% of the vote. I like it. Now tell us a little bit more about the details of the race.

I think we've joked before about how little news that this race made. This election was not something that was on the forefront of most people's minds in Texas. Even the politicos. It was kind of a boring race. Yes. I was tweeting about it yesterday or on Tuesday. And usually on election night you go and you see all these tweets about the race. And I'm looking in this hashtag and people have used it and no one had used it.

So people just were not that excited about it. Even in the original race in January, not the runoff that we just had, but the original race, it wasn't nearly as exciting as, you know, the SD30 special election, where it was definitely a lot more heat, a lot more mudslinging going on in that race. But in HD68, it was a lot more tame. You had four Republicans running in January and also one Democrat who filed. I could never find any more information other than the filing. He didn't have any kind of a campaign website or anything. So, you know, if he hadn't run a campaign, I expect he could have gotten 15% of the vote. But I think he ended up with like 5%.

So really kind of not a big factor there. David Spiller, on the other hand, the Jack County attorney, who also happens to be a Jacksboro ISD trustee for over 20 years, I think, was the clear frontrunner in that race. He almost won outright with over 50% of the vote, but he fell short of that with about 44%. And the runner-up position was actually a lot more competitive with the three other Republicans within 1%, 2%, 3% of each other. In that, Craig Carter came out on top. But shortly after that race, the other two Republicans who were behind Carter endorsed David Spiller. So right from then, it was kind of clear that Spiller was kind of the clear front runner, had a good chance of winning. It was his to lose.

Yes. And then Carter's campaign was kind of affected, too, because he had a car accident at the end of January, which killed his four-year-old daughter and mother-in-law. Also put his son, a young son, I think he's like three or four as well, in very critical condition. He's been recovering since then. The last update I saw on Carter's Facebook page, you know, he has been recovering some good, but that definitely affected the campaign. But Carter was committed to running anyways and followed through with that. Yeah. So, you know, I think the most notable part of this election is the dominoes that fell to create the need for it. Really quickly walk us through what happened.

Yes. So starting back about a year ago, you had Representative Dan or John Ratcliffe in the fourth congressional district. He had been floated as possible director of national intelligence. And then that nomination was pulled by Trump and then Ratcliffe won, ran in the primary again, was selected as a GOP

nominee for re-election to that seat and then Ratcliffe's name was brought back for the director of national intelligence and was actually confirmed by the Senate. So then his seat was vacant and he also couldn't be on the ballot again since he was now in that federal position.

And so to replace him, the GOP, kind of the activists in that district, selected a nominee to replace him. State Senator Pat Fallin won that handily, and then his seat, since that is a very deep red district that senate seat was definitely up for grabs and eventually a special election was held for that in which drew springer the representative won that election and then that left springer's district vacant now i suppose there could be a election for the jacksborough isd but i don't know but we won't necessarily be following that one yes

we followed them all up until this point but for now it's gotten much we're at the end of the road less spicy as it goes down i think we're now at like the the part where only people in jacksboro isd really care about that yeah i think i think we i think we're at the end of the road in terms of our coverage so you know hd 68 is done. Let's move on to Texas six, uh, a special election for this congressional district was scheduled this week by the governor. Walk us through the specifics of that. Yes. So in early February, uh, Congressman Ron Wright died. He had been fighting cancer, uh, for the past several years and then was, uh, tested positive for COVID 19, uh, in January and and ended up hospitalized after that,

along with his wife, was also hospitalized with COVID-19. But he passed away from that in February. His funeral was held this past Saturday. And then shortly after that, Governor Abbott called a special election, set the date for May 1st, which is the next uniform election date. That's just like more of like if there's a special election to be held, that's when it's going to be held. Certainly. You know, some other local things will be on the ballot, but not much.

And then candidates will need to be filed with the secretary of state for a position on the ballot by March 3rd. And early voting begins in mid-April, I believe. Good stuff. So, so far, I mean, the news this week around this race was big in that a few notable candidates, you know, announced their intention of running. One specifically was, I think, the most notable, but there certainly are a lot of names floating around in this race that will be big contenders. Tell us a little bit about who's entered so far and, you know and who else we're looking at here. Yes, so I think the biggest name that everybody's eyes are kind of on,

certainly from the Republican side, is Susan Wright, which is Ron Wright's widow. And so she announced, you know, her name kind of started getting floated shortly after he passed away. And then this weekend, you know, that really ramped up as more rumors and speculation that she was running. And then some people close to the family were saying that she might be running, that there was a good chance of it. And so she announced that she would be running for his seat this weekend or this week. And she also released today on Thursday, a long list of

endorsements from various office holders and just people in Tarrant County. The district, Texas' sixth congressional district is in kind of the southeastern part of Tarrant County, and then it also goes into Ellis County and Navarro County. So a big part of it is Arlington, Mansfield, and then Ellis County, of course. And so lawmakers who have already endorsed her, representatives Lance Gooden and Jody Arrington. You also have several state representatives, Stephanie Click, Matt Krause, Tony Tenderholt, and David Cook. And then there is a plethora of local elected officials, the mayor of Arlington, several city council members in Arlington, Sheriff Bill Wayborn of Tarrant County, and then also lots of various Tarrant County GOP precinct chairs, different SREC members. The SREC is the GOP State Republican Executive Committee, which Susan Wright has been a part

of for the past two years or four years, I guess. It's already 2021. And so those are the big names that have endorsed her. Now, there are some other Republican candidates who are also running that are big. State Representative Jake Elsey, who actually ran against Ron Wright when the seat was open in 2018 and was in a runoff election with him. Fairly close runoff election, too. He has filed to run. Now, he hasn't actually released an official announcement.

The last I checked, his campaign website's not up yet. So we'll see if anything official will come in. Of course, with Susan Wright running, it'll be interesting to see how some people, like Bill Wayborn was also rumored to be running, but has endorsed Susan Wright. Same with other state representatives like Tony Tenderholt, who's in the district. You know, after she ran, they kind of backed her. Now, some other notable candidates on the Republican side announced on Mark Davis's show on Thursday was Sari Kim, who I believe worked with the Trump campaign in some capacity. You also have another Trump campaign advisor, Katrina Pearson, who is considering a run that she told Breitbart about that earlier this week, as well as another, the chief of staff for the HHS under Trump, Brian Harrison, also was considering a run. He's an Ellis County native. And then you have a few other Republicans, Mike Egan, who I've heard is from more of the Plano area,

but he's now moving down to that district. And then you also have John Anthony Castro, who ran in the state, not the state, like the U S Senate election in Texas in the Republican primary against John Cornyn. Um, you know, he told me that he isn't going to be fundraising, but he is going to put a half a million dollars of his own money into the race is what he said. Um, so, you know, we'll see how those, how that money stacks up against, uh, Susan Wright's name ID, her backing with lots of local activists. She's the clear front runner in the race, but we'll see. It is. And it's not just a Republican race.

There's also a lot of Democrats. Yeah. And this is a seat the DCCC was targeting in the 2020 election. Right. This is a now it was won fairly comfortably by Ron Wright back in 20 in 2020 in November, but it still is not overtly safely Republican. Yeah, I would say, you know, in back in 2016, it was a safe Republican seat. I think I'd have to go back and check, but I'm pretty sure, you know, safe red district. And then as the 2018 election came along, Democrats, you know, were very successful in that election across the state. And so I think they saw some movement toward the left there. And then also this past election in 2020, the Democrats were, you know, it was one of their, I would say like their tier two races that they were kind of, it didn't get a

lot of attention. You get a lot of attention. You get a lot of money poured in, uh, compared to like the open seats, uh, that there were some competitive like Texas 23 or, um, some other congressional seats like that. Um, but Democrats have been eyeing this. There are actually a bunch of Democrats who have jumped into the race. You have Jane Lynn Sanchez, who ran against Ron Wright in 2018, who is, I think she was actually the first Democrat to announce that she would be running in this special election. And then you also have a few other notable Democrats. You have Sean Lasseter, who was running in a,

I don't remember if it was Fort Worth City Council or Arlington City Council. I believe it was Fort Worth. One of the city council races that she withdrew from to run in this race. And then you also have Lydia Bean, who ran against State Representative Matt Krause in this most recent 2020 election. And she announced that she was going to be running. And then also Matt Hinterlong. I forgot who he is, but he's running. You'll be running for the seat.

I have a list here that's just like a lot of names. Yeah. Which is normal for special election or for open seats, right? A lot of folks throw their hat in the ring. It will be interesting to see who comes out on top. I'd say the Democrats. Gina Lynn Sanchez is a clear front runner right now we'll see who else enters but she's run the district before she's you know a familiar name for a lot of folks um good stuff daniel thank you for covering that for us hayden finally we are at your docket my friend um all sorts of border news happening, particularly in light of the

Biden administration's policies and, you know, first few months in office. Walk us through the latest development, particularly in relation to what's happening for unaccompanied minors at the border. Well, this is a really low key issue. People don't have strong opinions about this at all. Of course, I'm being facetious because immigration has been a hot button topic for many years now. And President Biden's Health and Human Services Department has reinstated or they use the word reactivated a camp or a site for unaccompanied minors who are currently primarily from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, to house them pending their immigration cases. This is a facility that is in Demet County and was open under President Trump, but was closed the month after it opened. So it hasn't been in existence for very long.

But this is a temporary facility as opposed to a permanent facility. So the permanent facilities that the HHS has to house unaccompanied minors only have a limited number of beds. So the Biden administration says that this new facility, or the temporary facility is needed in order to accommodate some of that overflow. But this is one of the facilities that Democrats criticize Trump for opening and for using, including Beto O'Rourke, who's considered to be a possible Democratic contender for Texas governor. So this was highly political when it first started. And one could argue, though, that it was in conjunction also with the child separation policy that President Trump continued from prior administrations, but used more frequently than prior administrations. So all of that together made it more politically

charged when it was open back in 2019. But out of necessity, the Biden administration has, in fact, brought it back. There you go. So all sorts of interesting things there. And it'll be interesting to see the coverage of that issue, particularly from a media perspective going forward. Let's also talk about a deportation ruling. You know, the Biden administration has been very forthright in terms of issuing different border policies right away. The latest development here is that one of those, you know, policies,

one of those one of those orders was blocked. So walk us through what happened there. Well, immigration is an issue where there are a lot of generalities, a lot of talking points, and a lot of misunderstandings. And one of those misunderstandings is that immigration law just disappears when a Democrat gets sworn in. And that President Trump invented these concepts of deportation and separating children from parents during court proceedings and things like that. And that's just simply not true. But what Biden did right out of the gate was institute this policy that with limited exceptions, deportation proceedings would stop for a 100-day period. And on Tuesday, a federal judge appointed by President Trump last year decided that that was not going to be allowed, that the Biden administration and

any administration is required to enforce immigration law, and that includes enforcing deportations. And while the administration might have some discretion in choosing which cases to pursue, they are not allowed to just create this nationwide pause on deportations altogether. They have to make some effort to enforce deportations and remove illegal aliens, not just ones accused of offenses in addition to being present in the United States illegally, because that in itself is against the law. So, they are required to enforce that law, and they are allowed some leeway, but according to this judge and his new ruling, they can't just end it all together. Of course, this is a preliminary injunction.

It's not a final decision in this case. So much like someone might be released on bail prior to trial, deportations, so to speak, have been released on bail. So they will continue to operate as they would otherwise until this case is finally decided by this court or unless a higher court intervenes and overrides this district court judge. But this is a nationwide injunction. So in terms of the judicial philosophy behind that kind of decision, walk us through, and this is a judge that was appointed by Trump, President Trump, right, during his presidency. Walk us through a little is a judge that was appointed by trump president trump right during his presidency walk us through a little bit of that uh you know dynamic well a criticism of democrat appointed judges that is often leveled by conservatives is that they are judicial activists

in other words that they impose their political opinions on the whole country via these nationwide injunctions. These are used sometimes to override Congress. And critics might say that Judge Tipton, Drew Tipton there are lots of exceptions to this, but they generally exercise deference when it comes to the law. And they generally give a lot of weight to Congress's authority. But in a sense, that's what this judge was doing because he was saying to the Biden administration that they cannot ignore the laws that Congress has created. So in one sense, yes, this judge is imposing a nationwide order from his district courtroom in Victoria, Texas. But at the same time, what he is doing is, at least from his perspective, requiring the Biden administration to honor the statutes as they plainly read, rather than channeling some political desires on

the part of President Biden. Very good stuff. Well, Hayden, thank you for covering the border so extensively for us. We'll continue to watch that. That's one of the really big stories that affects Texas and will continue to be a hot rod of an issue. Isaiah, we are coming to you, my friend. Planned Parenthood and Medicaid has been at the forefront of a lot of our coverage, particularly in your beat. What's happening with Planned Parenthood and Medicaid? Give us the update. So Planned Parenthood will continue to stay on as an official Medicaid provider in Texas for at least another week or two. What happened was a Travis County District Court judge extended a temporary restraining order against the state that will keep the company on, on the list of official providers. And that's pending a ruling on Planned Parenthood's request for a more lasting injunction

that would keep the state from cutting them off. Got it. So in the very, you know, why is this even a discussion that's being had? Why is this even being worked through the, you know, the legal process right now? Why did the state want to cut Planned Parenthood from Medicaid? Well, it's actually been going on for quite a long time. I think I mentioned this on the last podcast that I was on before the snowstorm, the great snowstorm. Back in the day. Yeah, back in the day. It all goes back to these undercover videos from 2015 that our listeners might remember.

And they show Planned Parenthood higher-ups negotiating the prices of fetal body parts. So there were a lot of allegations of illegal activity, unethical activity. And in response to that, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission decided to cut them from the Medicaid program. So they sent the company notices of termination in 2015 and 2016, which, though ignored, ended up becoming pretty important. And so Planned Parenthood initially won a victory in 2017 in court, district court, and the court there ruled sympathetically to them and ruled that they

could stay on the program. And the state appealed and won at an appellate court that affirmed Texas's right to choose the providers of the Medicaid program. Got it. So what's keeping the cut from taking place at this point? Planned Parenthood asked for a grace period from the state after the state won in court and determined that they did reserve the right to cut them from the program. And so they wanted six months. The state only gave them 30 days. But in the last hours of this period, literally, Planned Parenthood went to court and alleged that the state did not follow protocol and the notices of termination, giving inadequate amount of time and the opportunity for a hearing in court. The state argues that the notices of termination from 2015 and 2016 already fulfilled those requirements.

So that's why I say they became important once again, because they formed a pretty strong base for the state's argument in court. And that's what's going on right now. This most recent extension of Planned Parenthood's tenure on the list is actually the second one this month. We were supposed to have a ruling during the snowstorm, so it got postponed. Certainly. Well, thank you for covering that for us. We'll continue to keep an eye on it. Daniel, I'm coming back to you. Honestly, this was a trending story, both for us and for a lot of different outlets. A very big story that happened over the last few weeks and also was

interrupted in Texas by the snowstorm. Gina Carano, a lot of our listeners may know who that is now, who may not have known before, but walk us through a little bit of the controversy surrounding some decisions that were made by a very large company and an actress well she is a dallas born actress dallas born actress there's the texas angle that's right um now she starred on i think she's been in several different movies, several different action movies. The role that probably has gained her the most fame and now infamous from some people has been her role on Disney's The Mandalorian, a Star Wars show that they have on Disney+. You know, that's run by Lucasfilms. You know, when they launched Disney+, everybody saw that as kind of a challenge to Netflix. But they really didn't have a lot of original content.

I mean, like all the Disney movies, of course, but nothing new specifically for that show except really The Mandalorian. And it's, you know, until recently, that has been like the primary reason why a lot of people even have Disney+. It's the only reason I have it. And so she starred in that show alongside the main actor and was recently, quote unquote, canceled by the angry Twitter mob who was up in arms about a post that she had on social media. It wasn't, I don't think it was even her post. It was something that she shared that was basically comparing how Nazis influenced the German culture to kind of attack Jewish citizens and kind of comparing that to the modern political climate. And so everybody got really furious about that and accused her of anti-Semitism. And shortly thereafter, Lucasfilms released a statement that she was not working for the

company. So they kind of gave her the boot from that and they condemned her social media post. Interestingly, and this is something that a lot of people on the right have pointed out, the main star of The Mandalorian, Pedro Pascal, had also shared a meme, I guess, on Twitter a few years ago comparing kids in cages, quote, you know, immigrants at the border to people being locked up in the Holocaust. And Disney has not made any comments about that. So, you know, a little bit of hypocrisy there that people are pointing out. There was another one of some director or producer with

disney in general that shared a meme of some guy putting mega kids into a wood chipper yeah so like the hypocrisy is yeah and you know i think a lot of people on the right have seen this. A lot of people have flocked to Ben Shapiro and The Daily Wire. And The Daily Wire recently has kind of entered into the filmmaking sphere in trying to produce some movies and releasing their own content. And so after they heard about this, they reached out to Gina Carano to see if she would be interested in producing a film with them. And she pretty quickly said yes, which I think from a recent podcast that they had released, Shapiro was a little bit surprised by that because most people in Hollywood, you know, they get the boot by Disney or some large company for doing something like this. They get canceled and they just kind of keep their head down and hope that they can get back into the industry yeah um and uh carano you know she said

if she's going to go down swinging then that's how it's going to be like she's if she's going to go down she's going to go down swinging and uh now what makes this more relevant to texas is that uh it's being produced with uh bonfire, which is a Texas-based film studio. Yeah, tell us a little bit more about Bonfire Legend and also tell us details that we know so far about the film. Yes, so Bonfire Legend is a fairly new film studio created by Dallas Saunier, who has been in the film industry for many years now, making more independent films. He did get into some criticism for previous productions that he had and people on there who were accused of misconduct. And that kind of creaked Havit on his previous endeavors,

and so he created this new film studio, Bonfire Legend, which is in Dallas. that's where dallas lives um and he produced run hide fight uh over the past several years which was filmed at a texas school i think it was a middle school in red oak south of dallas um where they filmed this this movie about kind of a school shooting, a fictional movie where a person fights back against a bunch of school shooters. Where did you say they filmed that? Red Oak. That's where we went to high school.

Yeah, I think they said it was a middle school. I mean, it went to middle school there too. A decommissioned middle school in Red Oak. Well, how can you look this up and see Isaiah's old stomping grounds? They've got a lot of middle schools and they were you know in this interview they also had ben shapiro and dallas sonia had a podcast together and dallas sonia was talking about the school and you know they were talking about how they had free reign on blowing stuff up and had a lot of fun with that um but you know it wasn't originally supposed to be a daily wire movie but as they're

producing it you know the subject matter of a content of being a school shooting situation you know a lot of people looked down upon that and was like we're not going to touch this this is a bad movie critics hated it and when they had it at a film festival and so um dallas reached out to ben shapiro and said hey why don't you guys distribute this and so they did and that has you know probably gained more attention than it would have had it been distributed another way and so they'll be reproducing a film with uh gina carano now um since, since everything kind of happened on the turn of a dime in the past few weeks with Carano's cancellation from Disney

and quickly getting a phone call from Ben Shapiro and things are moving quite fast, I don't think that they necessarily know exactly what they're doing. They're still in the early stages of what kind of films they're going to be making or what kind of film they want to produce, what she wants to star in and lead the project on. So then in the very early stages, we probably won't know many details about it, you know,

where it will be filmed, who will be filmed in Texas. You know, there's not a lot of information out there, but the Daily Wire says more information where it will be filmed, if it will be filmed in Texas. There's not a lot of information out there, but the Daily Wire says more information will be coming out in the coming weeks and months. So keep being some eyes out for that, but it'll probably be sometime. I like it. Very interesting stuff. Bradley, one of the things that you cover is the city of Austin, particularly the homelessness issue here in Austin.

Now, there's been a lot of discussion in the last few months about the camping in line ordinance. The ban that was, you know, has really been at the forefront of the discussion in terms of homeless policy here in Austin. There's been some news regarding that this week and some discrepancy. Walk us through that. So voters on May 1st will have the chance to cast a vote on whether to reinstate the original camping and lying policy. But there is the city council. They pass their own ballot language. The city council has to approve that. And after they passed it, they have been sued by mainly the group behind the petition effort. And the reason is that they're accusing the city of passing biased language, basically

to emphasize the enforcement mechanism rather than emphasizing the fact that it's just returning to what it was before. Essentially a ban, right? This is the ban that was initially in place. Yes, yes. And there's more nuances to it than that. So if you are curious about the details, read our story. But, you know, we'll see where that lawsuit ends up.

I like it. Thanks for covering that for us. Boys, you guys killed it this week. So let's pivot to a fun topic. Let's talk about something fun. Last week was very difficult for a lot of folks. So we're going to keep it lighthearted. What were, and this is Daniel's idea. I want to give credit to Daniel for coming up with

this idea, but what are some things that you never expected you would have to do in Texas that you had to do last week as a result of that crazy winter storm, some sub-zero temperatures? What were some things that you guys had to do? I saw folks sledding on like cardboard which cracked me up couldn't you know not having grown up in texas seeing folks not have sleds which of course they don't hear of course they don't have sleds but the makeshift sled operations cracked me up i saw this video of people who had tied tables to the back of a truck and were like driving around it's kind of like a oh my gosh like folding tables yeah like or even just like a kitchen table oh like laying on the ground and

writing it like a jet ski basically or a uh what do you call those things on boats you know where you have like an inner tube yeah basically like that except on the ground in the snow and the ice was it with the table upside down yeah and and it was a table it was all sorts of different things cardboard boxes whatever and they just kept on filming like these trucks come by with like different things you see in up in the uh the north that is a common thing on college campuses kids whenever it snows while just finding whatever the the heck you can to sled on you you know, whether it's cafeteria trays or, uh, I don't know, other stuff, cardboard, you know, any, any random thing that you could possibly sled on.

I see. What was, uh, Isaiah, something you did last week that you would have never had, you know, expected to have to do in Texas or get to do in Texas? Well, um, I pulled over well okay so backstory one of my one of my big criteria for picking an apartment was a fireplace and yes it was smart such a smarter move than we could have ever anticipated it's actually the smartest move i've ever made and um I just, I like to have a fire in the fireplace. And so I've been

building fires in there for like, you know, since it got even the littlest bit cold. And then it got... What, so 65? Yeah, exactly. If it's 65, there's going to be a fire in the fireplace. And so then everybody started doing it because it got dangerously cold and nobody had any heat. And so I saw

all these people walking around my complex with armfuls of wood, and I thought, man, them too, you know? And so I pulled over to some, like, office, like, corporate office. It had darkened windows and a lot of fallen, broken-down tree branches from the snow. And so I just, like, broke up a bunch and put them in my trunk. And that was on my way to my apartment knowing that i needed firewood or rather i guess really want i guess i didn't really need it but well in that situation pick dry it's a very good thing to have if you actually have a fireplace you should

be yeah stoking it that's a it was freezing it was so cold it was pretty chilly i think you needed it it was 440 hours straight in austin wow that's I think you needed it. For 140 hours straight in Austin. Wow. That's different when you put it in terms of hours. Yeah. Put it in terms of minutes. Yeah, Daniel, quick. I don't have the math. Do the math for us.

Probably millions. I don't know if we can know, though. Millions, billions, quadrillions. Yeah, 140 times 60 is not in the millions. You know what? I don't think any of us can really know the answer to that. This is an unbelievably tangential conversation we need to return to our original

Bradley what were some things that you did not think you'd have to do in Texas well I slept on my office floor I did not anticipate that happening I was out of power and eventually out of water so you came up to me and I had electricity and heat and water

and then you came up to me and I had electricity and heat and water. And then you came to the three went away. So, yeah, we we stayed at the office one night. I would say the main one, though, is driving around the city for two hours trying to find a place to get food. Yeah. Just a fast food restaurant. You know, anything. Something that was open. Yes. Just a fast food restaurant, you know, anything. Something that was open. Yes.

You didn't expect to do that after last year? No. Not to the same extent. Oh, actually, yeah. With COVID? Yeah, it was worse, I would say. Yeah. And, you know, thinking about back when the pandemic really hit, I remember.

I think even then they had drive-thru open. Yeah. I remember waiting in line to get into HEB, but it wasn't overwhelming. Yeah. And just driving by the HEBs, you see the lines wrapping all the way around the building. And the fast food lines, cars are stretched into the road, people waiting to get through the drive-thru. And I'd say that was it where did you finally get food uh dairy queen by daniel's house a classic yeah did you get a

blizzard it was get a blizzard it was 25 degrees it's a joke because we were in kind of a blizzard yeah no it was a joke thank you daniel i just needed factually i did not yeah there was no incentive it was too cold for a blizzard with you and he would have happily oh yeah Thank you, Daniel. Factually, I did not. There was no incentive. It was too cold for a blizzard pack. Winston was with you and he would have happily... Brad feeds his dog ice cream. That's why he's so fat. Winston is not fat. He's pretty lean.

What about you, Hayden? What kind of stuff were we dealing with on your end? Was there anything you did that you did not expect to do in texas i always think i'm going to get out of answering and then everyone and then whoever's sitting next to me you know hands me the microphone um i think probably grocery shopping at cvs is probably the one thing i did that i didn't expect to do two weeks ago zombie apocalypse people don't forget CVS has food. Yes, they had some food.

I mean, the line was really long at checkout. But yeah, I've never bought, like I buy things like soap and deodorant at CVS if I just need to run in and grab a couple things. But I've never actually gone to CVS to grocery shop. But when the roads are frozen and you have a CVS right next door to your apartment complex, then that's the thing to do. It's a good move.

Yeah, that's what I did. Go where there is food. Daniel, did you already say yours? No. The thing that I thought of when I thought of having this be a podcast topic was there was some snow on my porch and i was like i wanted my apartment to be warm and i figured with the snow like right there outside the the porch with like this giant screen door glass door i figured that wouldn't let the heat kind of

heat up the porch and reflect into my apartment as much so so I decided that I should shovel it off. But I don't have a snow shovel. So what I did instead was I made use of a Swiffer. Wow. And I shoveled my porch. You got to do what you got to do. I mean, like I had on the front of my vehicle, I had just the solid. Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, and Brad's laughing at me because he has he took a picture i mean i have no idea how you managed to drive well and so i had to use a spatula from my kitchen because i don't have a snow scraper thingy or whatever those things are called and so i i was like using a spatula and a water bottle to try to get the snow off and so i cleared off enough on the driver's side to see but apparently it wasn't very much because brad took a picture and put it in slack and everyone was like how did you get to work how did you not get pulled over i was yeah i my maternal instinct kicked in and i was just automatically just worried about hayden see we drove up we went to go get lunch and then uh hayden yeah it was creepy when i came back all the lights were out it was like post-apocalyptic sorry go ahead what were you saying yeah well we got there while we were getting lunch. It was creepy when I came back. All the lights were out and it was like post-apocalyptic. Sorry, go ahead. What were you saying?

Yeah, well, we got back and we just saw your car and I just started laughing. I had to drive carefully because I couldn't see out the right side. I should probably stop talking or get our liability guy on the line. But yeah, I couldn't. Everyone was driving like 20 miles an hour anyway. So I felt fine. But Daniel's story reminds me of my neighbor. I was walking Winston and I walked by him and his car and he's scraping off his windshield

with a credit card. Oh my word. Would you like a scraper? And he goes, yeah, his eyes lit up like he was like it was a Christmas morning when I pulled it out. It was right there. And he's like, what a christmas morning when i pulled it out it was right there and he's like what is that thing i've never seen that before what that's crazy not even in a movie i think this isn't even like an outdoorsy observation this was just something

i didn't think we do at one point i was at a house with other people you know we all flocked to where there was heat and water and at at one point in the evening, for some reason, I think cell service went down for a lot of folks. And for us in this house, in this location, we just had no cell service. So no Wi-Fi, no power. Thankfully, we had a fireplace. We were just huddled around it. And it cracked me up because when you don't have Wi-Fi, electricity, cell cell service some sort of electronic uh entertainment you just kind of start doing funny things so i had these two little boys who were saying with us i was playing 20 questions with them just trying to keep them occupied right and immediately the adults took it over and the kids went off and played legos and for two hours a group of full-grown adults played

20 questions around a fire and genuinely thought it was the funnest thing they'd ever done it was it was hilarious that you know just the lengths you go to be entertained when there's not much else to be entertained by so that's kind of like when you're driving in a car and you're counting cows and stealing some person's cows and yes whatever that stupid game is it's a delight sarah is shaking her head because we have done this in a car together before um well gentlemen thank you so much for contributing to this podcast folks thanks for listening we'll catch you next week thank you all so much for listening if you've been enjoying our podcast it would be awesome if you would review us on itunes and if there's a guest you'd love to hear on our show, give us a shout on Twitter. Tweet at The Texan News. We're so proud to have you standing with us as we seek to

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