The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - February 28, 2025

Episode Date: February 28, 2025

Show off your Lone Star spirit with a free "Remember the Alamo" hat with an annual subscription to The Texan: https://thetexan.news/subscribe/Learn more about the Data Center Coalition at: https://www.centerofyourdigitalworld.org/texasLearn more about The Beer Alliance at:https://beeralliance.com/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 on The Texan’s “Weekly Roundup,” the team discusses:Texas Lottery Accused of 'Conspiracy,' 'Organized Crime' in Legislative HearingsAttorney General Paxton Launches Investigative Probe Into Texas Lottery 'Process'Agriculture Commissioner Advises 'Extreme Caution' After Cartel-Suspected Explosive Device Kills Texas RancherColony Ridge Bust Results in 118 Arrests for Offenses Ranging from Homicide to Drug TraffickingVIDEO: Sen. Brandon Creighton Talks Senate's School Choice Plan, Texas Border Protection EffortsTexas Bill Would Allow Property Owners to Shoot Down Trespassing DronesTexas House Unveils Education Package, Setting Table for Policy FightsTEA Commissioner Discusses School Funding, Teacher Pay, Academic Outcomes in House Committee HearingHouse Bill Seeks to Restrict Children's Access to 'Sexually Explicit Material' in Public Libraries

She announced on Twitter that she had a big announcement. This was in the dome. The announcement was made from the top of the Capitol. She announced that she had something to announce about a future announcement. Wow, that's a lot of announces. Welcome to politics. Well, howdy folks. Welcome back to the weekly roundup. We are recording far earlier than we usually do on Thursday morning because today, I don't even know where to begin in terms of what's going on legislatively today.

But Marilis, what are you following? You're following? I'll be following the House at Gavilan at 10am and then I'll be following the House at gaveling at 10 a.m. and then I'll be at the committee hearing for the dementia Institution priority of Dan Patrick's which we'll talk about later. Certainly. Well Cameron, what are you following today? Uh, well today the senate is gaveling in they also have a k-16 committee that's going on Where they're taking up some big pieces of legislation. They're going to be taking up a parental bill of rights. They're taking up, that's SB 12. They're taking up SB 13, which has to do with library materials. They're taking up

another bill that has to do with, uh, sex education. They're taking up a lot of stuff. Yeah. So, um, just got my eyes on that today, but the entire week has been crazy. But it's the fun part of the job is the, different things that come up that are unexpected. Like, this entire week I've been following the, well, over the past two weeks issue with the Texas lottery, you know, we might see some movement on that this week, but that was something that wasn't even on my radar, you know, three

months ago, but it's become a major, major focus for us here, at least for me. Yeah. Um, so that's been really fun. And then also all this education, uh, legislation that's been proposed by Creighton in the Senate. They've had, you know, floor procedures. Uh, they've had press briefings. floor procedures, uh, they've had press briefings, we sat down with, for an interview with Creighton.

What'd you go listen to Cameron sat down with Senator Creighton this week to talk through all of it. All of it. And so it's been really fun. Um, a lot of back and forth to the Capitol, a couple of late nights, but it's all worth it. I was getting drafts from Cameron like 9pm last night. It was pretty fun.

Another thing that's been going on this week is the Make Texas Healthy Again initiative. That's gained a lot of momentum since it was introduced and it really ramped up with the Robert F. Kennedy presidential campaign and has really carried on since then. It's become a pillar of the Trump administration and it's now coalescing here in Texas with a number of big name activists descending into the Senate chamber to provide testimony, which was fun for me because usually if people don't know, the Senate doesn't allow press onto the floor. But for committee hearings sometimes if they are expecting a large turnout or it's a high

profile issue, they'll have the committee hearing on the Senate floor where the press gets a chance to go down there. And so that's what I did this week and got to walk around, take some interesting pictures and talk to some interesting people that were there. So be more upfront and personal with the action. Yeah, it was, it was really fun. So, uh, yeah, busy week, but, you know, fascinating nonetheless. I feel like it's the case with every reporter,

but it seems more so with you covering the Senate that all of your beats happen at the same time. The last two weeks, I think Cameron has had smoke coming out of his ears just because of how fast the gears in his brain are moving. It's been wild. And Brad's over here listening to a um, a hearing right now acting as business and industry.

I keep messing up my committee names. Um, right. What's, what's on your, what are you watching today? Uh, right now I'm listening to SB six in business and commerce. BNC. I don't know if you know it's called BNC. Oh, thank you. Yeah.

Yeah. Just making sure. I really appreciate you cl. Oh, thank you. Yeah, yeah. We really appreciate you cluing me in on that. Yeah, you're welcome. Now it's the large load growth bill, and they're talking about limitations or requirements on, of these, you know, large loads come in like crypto miners,

data centers, things like that that are very large and as Senator Phil King just said they use more electricity than entire towns. So wild. Well I'd love to pick your brain about what they say in this committee hearing after they finish up because the AI crypto data center issue is going to be something that is going to be have to be addressed in the next few years as AI and crypto becomes more ubiquitous with private and public industry. So it'll be interesting to reach your article on this if they end up saying anything about it.

And an interesting wrinkle to this whole data center debate is I think it was probably four weeks ago, three weeks ago, the Chinese AI model DeepSeq was released. And the reason why that I bring that up and why it's interesting for Texas lawmakers to address is because in the DeepSeq white paper, they reportedly were able to create a AI model

that was vastly cheaper per compute output as compared to ChatGBT or Gemini or many, or Claude or all these other AI models and was comparable in its intelligence effectively. So it costs less, it's comparable in the types of outputs it was providing, but they were able to do it on older chips. So there's the chips aspect because there is

a shipping restriction on these Nvidia GPU chips that are needed for AI data centers. So right now Nvidia isn't able because there's tariffs essentially shipping to China. So they're able to do it on cheaper chips but they are also able to do this deep-seq model on vastly smaller server clusters. So if people are aware like it takes you know thousands, hundreds, tens of thousands of these servers to able to provide the amount of electrical output, information output for these AI models. What DeepSeq was able to do was,

reportedly again, because it's coming out of China, we don't know if it's true or not, there's a lot of controversy about it, but they were able to do it on older chips, smaller server clusters, which could have an effect on the amount of money required and the amount of space and the amount of electricity needed to build data centers here in America. So if the reporting out of China ends up being true, then it can have an effect where American models, American AI manufacturers don't need as much space,

they don't need as much electricity, they don't need as many servers. So the money being put into AI could shrink since they don't need it that much. But that's all, it's almost speculation. Right. Well that reminds me of the the nuclear issue. You have this technological breakthrough of small modular reactors that all of a sudden changed the game on the economics. It made it a lot more a lot cheaper a lot more efficient to build these things

versus a very large scale you know civil power plant. And so we'll see how much it actually changes the game. But when you have these technological developments that are always, you know, right on the precipice, but the question is when do they happen? Do they happen enough to provide an economic incentive to turn the table? You know, when that happens, all the preconceived notions about why problems are the way they are, it shifts on their head.

So it sounds kind of like that. Well, especially on the nuclear issue, it takes decades to build these nuclear power plants, right? And so when you need the nuclear power plant and when you get the approval to build the nuclear power plant, it you get the approval to build the nuclear power plant it's usually too late. So hopefully we'll see if these small nuclear reactors there I'm sure there's been innovations in the ability to build them faster and get the permitting done quicker. Yeah, it couple of years, not a decade and a half.

Yeah. You know, so, um, but that, I feel like the nuclear issue, people are becoming warmer to it. And at least here in Texas, they want to, you know, ramp that up. Yeah, absolutely. Well, we have a lot to get into here and we could talk about just these committee hearings alone that are happening today, all day, but we have a week's worth of news. Cameron, the Texas lottery, you've mentioned it, but let's get into that as our first story. There's been a lot of controversy surrounding the lottery, the lottery commission. It's certainly not lit up this week. It's only intensified.

Give us an update on where things stand. Well, the Texas lottery commission, there, there was a couple hearings this week. And really the issue started sort of bubbled to the surface after there was a February 17th jackpot winner who used a courier app called jackpot to purchase the winning ticket. And what these courier services does is essentially a third party app. So there's the retailer who prints and owns these machines

for the Texas lottery. People can load up on their phone this app and say I wanna to purchase 10 tickets and the third-party app will send that information to the retailer. The retailer prints out the tickets and loads the numbers for the person. They can choose and then once it's printed they see, and the person at the retailer runs the ticket to see if it's a winner or a loser. That information is then again transferred to their party app and the person on the back

end who's purchasing it knows if they won or not. Well there's been, you know, again, I just became aware of this issue, you know, a month and a half ago and apparently there was some previous controversy surrounding a large foreign investment. This was over a year ago of some, you know, large money buyers who essentially statistically gamed the lottery system where they purchased millions of dollars in tickets to win 90 plus million dollars of the Texas lottery. So this was something that was done by the Houston Chronicle. They did a deep dive on it. But this February 17th winter, Dan Patrick became aware of it, went to this retailer

and posted a video of his interaction with the person running the storefront. And I encourage everyone to go watch it because it was very, it's eye opening to see what the front of the store looked like because they were selling board games and just one person by on the counter and you know Patrick it even got on the phone with the lawyer representing this store because another thing that is worth mentioning is these lottery retailers are required to sell something other than just lottery tickets you know because in most people's minds at least in my mind I thought what buying a lottery ticket is is just going to a convenience store or gas station, buying a ticket as I'm buying gas

or some snacks for the room or something. What the Texas Lottery wanted to prevent was having just standalone lottery stores. So they required people to sell their stuff. This store was selling board games. But in the back, they had all these terminals that were printing these lottery tickets and so that sort of it was it was something people were paying attention to after Patrick posted this video there was

lots of reports being done at the time and another aspect of this whole Texas Lottery conversation is the commission itself is up for Sunset Review. And a part of the Sunset Review report that was published said that the TLC has had a turbulent experience. So that's straight from the report itself and what I just laid out kind of Provide some insight into that. We we saw Senator Bob Hall file SB 28 which would prohibit people from the ability to play or purchase lottery tickets on mobile applications like on your phone or on the internet and

This was all going down on one day this week where we saw multiple committee hearings addressing the Texas Lottery Commission where even members of the executive team, commissioners of the Texas Lottery were providing insight into their view on what is currently going on and being discussed. But as these committee hearings were going on, things were getting released at the same time. Like for example, the Lottery Commission released a policy statement saying they were not going to allow courier services to operate. This happened during a

committee hearing. While they're debating the issue. While they're debating an issue. And so there was a response because there's actually a coalition group of these courier services that called the ban on their operations abrupt, disappointing, and unnecessary. Well, there was, this was happening during a House subcommittee hearing. There was then a, um, a break in the day where there was going to be a Senate hearing addressing the same thing, but in this brief window, Governor Greg Abbott came out and said, I'm directing the Texas Rangers to investigate the TLC and these courier services. So that was

interesting as I'm, you know, walking up the stairs to get to this committee hearing, Brad's text me, did you see the press release? I'm like, what? I have to look it up. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is happening all at once. And I encourage everyone to go read the piece because I provide a lot of quotes from Senator Bob Hall because he was really going after the Texas lottery. At one time during his sort of opening monologue on the issue, he called what is happening an organized crime ring being embedded in the Texas government. He went on to say, a public-private partnership led by a state agency for a criminal conspiracy to defraud Texans government agency." So very pointed words there and he went through, it probably took 30 minutes, and he went through all

these different investigations his office has done into the TLC. I highlight that in the article if people are interested. And again, as this Senate committee was going on, there was anticipation that Patrick was actually going to be there to preside over it. He did not end up coming, but he did issue a statement during the committee hearing that he was going to be asking the Texas Rangers to expand their investigation to include any and all matters related to the lottery couriers and possible crimes internally or externally arising from the lottery commission's actions or failures to act. So that's the lawmakers and the appointed officials perspectives there. There was the

courier services of the Texas lottery who had the opportunity to provide some of their testimony about what they see is going on right now. There was a representative from Lottery.com, Jackpot.com, Draft Kings. So for example, Rob Porter, the chief legal counsel for Lottery.com said, you've heard a lot of testimony today about Lottery.com. It is not the same company. We do not have anything to do with them. I'm here today to speak for lottery.com. This is one of the things as well is it's important for listeners to dive into these stories sometimes because you'll read the headline or read just a couple sentences of a story and people will be talking about something but it's actually it'll actually be two different

issues or two two different individuals or that have similar names and things can get muddled and the waters can get muddied. So he went on to say we weren't involved in that and the couriers at the table don't support that I can only speak for the people that are sitting at this table and we're all committed to upholding law and the reputation of the state lottery we ultimately serve. They also mentioned how they're part of the solution, how they are providing safeguards through these third-party apps to prevent bulk purchases because that was really the crux of the issue here. Like I just mentioned with Bob Hall's commentary on the issue, it's these bulk purchases that

are gaming the lottery that aren't allowing just regular folks who are trying to play the lottery and buy one, two, three tickets where these large bulk purchases are buying millions of dollars worth of tickets. So lots of different things happen in these committees. Really what I just ran through is just the top lines there. I encourage people to go read the piece because there is lots of information that came out and there's more that's going to come out in the, in the coming days and coming weeks.

Absolutely. Well, let's talk then about the attorney general waiting into this because state officials across the board here have jumped in. What did Paxton have to say? Well, we already had two of the big three. Right. Well, we already had two of the big three, right? Well, Paxton came in as well and said he is going to be investigating the Texas lottery. He said he's going to be focusing on suspicious and possibly unlawful lottery quote winners that involve the bulk lottery

ticket purchases and the utilization of a third party courier service. So like I just mentioned, has to do with these large money buyers essentially purchasing millions of dollars to statistically gain the Texas lottery. He also said he's going to be looking into possible violations of state and federal law. So I'll just mention before I wrap on what Paxton is doing here, because there's been a lot of Texas lottery bashing. I mentioned some of the courier services defending their operations, but we also saw a Democrat

from Austin, Rep. John Busey, he took a bit of a different approach, issued a press release. I'll just read a little bit of it here. To my astonishment, and that of many of my colleagues in the Texas Legislature, the commission abruptly decided yesterday that it has the power to not only regulate, but also outlaw lottery courier operations, a complete contradiction of its own actions, testimony and requests. He then concluded by requesting the TLC to withdraw their courier service ban. So there is some disagreements within the lower and upper chambers here between individual lawmakers on how to move forward with the TLC.

But this is why the Texan is here. We're trying to provide both sides of the story and let the readers make up their own mind on the Texas lottery here. And I did my best in both the pieces we just talked about to provide, um, both sides of the coin on, on this argument. And there is a, as Cameron is so eloquently, but there's so many different parts of this story. So I'd encourage folks to go read his entire reporting, but that's the bullet

points. That's, that's the, just the outline of what's going on here. And Cameron's done a great job of following it. So folks go read his stories, keep up to to date and this is where at the beginning of session We were talking about where the big policy fights gonna be well the lottery is apparently one of them So we'll keep an eye on that in front and center front and center Cameron, thank you Mary Lee's let's come to you agriculture commissioner said Miller. She did a very strong warning relating to cartel activity Tell us about it. Yes. Tell us

about it. Yes, so this agriculture commissioner, Sid Miller, he issued a warning about cartel activity. He said there's a growing threat of this activity along the southern border and the basis of his message was issuing extreme caution. So this came after a Texas rancher was killed by an improvised explosive device, an IED, on his property. He was a 74 year old rancher, US citizen, Texas resident. He was killed on his ranch and it's important to note it was in Mexico. I spoke to Miller and he said that this rancher has property in both Mexico and Texas but his vehicle activated the I Miller and he said that this rancher has property in both Mexico and Texas, but

his vehicle activated the IED and he was killed along with two of his family members, Miller told us. So Miller's warning outlined this. He said a tragic and alarming incident occurred near Brownsville, Texas. This shocking act of violence highlights the growing threat posed by cartel activity along our southern border. And I believe it was on January 27th, the United States Embassy and Consulates in Mexico issued a level for do not travel due to crime and kidnapping.

Wow. Yeah, and they were warning that the areas that border the Rio Grande Valley and South Texas have had recurring cases of gun battles. They've seen multiple IEDs, these explosive devices. You know, this story, have you ever seen the movie Sicario? No. Great movie. This, because in the movie Sicario,

it's essentially the federal government and the CIA and the FBI battling against these cartels. And in the movie, the opening scene in the movie, I'll just spoil it. The FBI comes across this house that's right across the border from Mexico. And there's all sorts of, I won't get into the Gord details, but in IED goes off in the opening scene that was planted by these cartels. So it's almost like, you know, fiction come to life. Yeah. How old is that film? Oh, it's got to be gosh, 10 years old now. Okay. Yeah. Okay. It's a great movie though.

old now. Okay. Yeah. Okay. It's a great movie though. Yeah, well this the warning that Miller issued was similar with the embassy's warning and that they urge people to avoid dirt roads and to not touch unknown objects which obviously avoiding dirt roads is gonna be pretty difficult for these ranchers but they told them to not touch unknown objects, to plan travel during daylight hours, be aware of surroundings, and keep in close contact with family and friends. So pretty serious warning there. Miller said he encourages everyone in the agricultural industry to stay vigilant and report any suspicious activity of law enforcement.

And a few days ago, Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared cartels and other groups foreign terrorist organizations, which Governor Greg Abbott did, specifically Trent DeRogua, in, I believe it was September. And then of course, President Donald Trump had his executive order declaring all cartels and other groups as foreign terrorist organizations. That was his first day in office, I think within hours of being sworn in. So this is obviously a top priority of the president as well. Yeah, I'll be interested to see moving forward how the state and the federal government approach this issue. If they are deeming these cartels as foreign terrorist organizations,

how much coordination between United States governments and the Mexican government is going to occur because the politics in Mexico, you know, are just the cartels have a lot of power let let's say. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And something else that Miller said, he was pointing out that he thinks this is the cartels almost getting desperate with this presidential administration really cracking down on the cartels. He said that they're getting desperate because their money is quote drawing up. And he said that these explosive devices, this criminal activity is meant to scare away the ranchers.

It's to keep everybody out of the way Miller said. So, yeah, absolutely. Very interesting story and more border activity. You just hate to hear about it. I'm sorry. We got to go, Cam. We got to go. We're 30 minutes in and we are three stories in.

We are 30 minutes in. Oh my. There's so much there. There's so much there. There's always so much. Marylis, thank you. Yes, Karen, I'm sorry. Karen is literally biting his lip. I have so many things to say. Well, folks, on that note, let's take a night break and hear from data center coalition. Did you know data centers support 364,000 jobs in Texas and contribute $3.5 billion in state and local taxes?

These critical facilities boost the state's economy and power essential services. From video calls and online banking to health care and government operations, data centers are the backbone of our modern lives, driving economic growth and ensuring seamless communication across the state. With Texas households averaging 21 connected devices, the demand for data centers continues to grow. In today's rapidly advancing technological landscape and with the state's booming economy, businesses are expected to generate twice as much data in the near future, making data centers a vital investment for the future of Texas prosperity. To learn more, visit centerofyourdigitalworld.org slash Texas. We're back. Marylis, we're back with you. ICE connected in

Operation Colony Ridge on Tuesday. Tell us about it. Yes. So United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, announced that they made 118 arrests in a multi-agency raid, so they worked together with the DPS on this, of the Colony Ridge development in Liberty County, which is north of Houston, I believe, and this has been Colony Ridge, our readers have probably heard about it, but it's been accused of knowingly allowing illegal aliens to purchase property. So Governor Greg Abbott announced that this operation would be happening in Colony Ridge on the morning of February 24th.

He said Colony Ridge is being targeted today. Texas DPS troopers and special agents are assisting Homeland Security investigations with an operation in Colony Ridge this morning. He said they're specifically targeting criminals and illegal immigrants and said that he's worked with Tom Homan, the new border czar under Trump on this for months. So ICE shared their results on Tuesday afternoon in a social media post. They said that they led this operation in the Colony Ridge development and announced that there were charges and convictions there were 118 arrested individuals with charges and convictions that included criminal

sexual conduct, homicide, theft, negligent manslaughter, child sexual abuse, crimes of moral turpitude, weapons offenses, and drugs offenses. So a whole plethora of charges there and if you remember back in October 2023, Colony Ridge really received a lot of the attention when all of Texas's 25 Republican congressional delegations sent a letter to Governor Greg Abbott and asked him to look into this development following reports that it wasn't requiring proof of legal residency for its residents, along with other malpractices.

Yes. And it was accused in February 2024 to be built. Colling Ridge was accused of being built off of a business model that they would sell land to people without social security numbers because emails showed they said, we will not be able to sell our developments if each of our buyers have a social security number. That's just a part of the email that the Daily Wire reported initially.

And then later on, both the federal government and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Colony Ridge on the basis that the owners were engaging in deceptive practices in the marketing of their plots and the lending of their plots to residents. And this is something that Brad covered, which was a few weeks ago, before this raid of Colony Ridge. There were three illegal aliens that were arrested there,

and they were hiding, found to be hiding 350 pounds of methamphetamine. So big story there that Brad covered. Brad's direct quote was that's a lot of meth. Yes, yeah that was made into a news log. It certainly did. Yes, but another story came out recently that I believe it was Houston Public Media and they said that they spoke to an ICE Houston representative spokesperson and they only confirmed one arrest and so that obviously conflicts with the social media post made by ICE that said 118 arrests have been made. So it's definitely I'm gonna be looking into this to confirm those numbers because there's a big discrepancy. Yeah big

discrepancy. 117 difference. Yeah. There's those numbers. Cause there's a big discrepancy. Yeah. Big discrepancy. It's 117 difference. Yeah. Here. So gap there. So very good. Well, Mary Lee, thanks for covering that for us. And we'll keep, you'll keep us posted on what we find. We've already plugged it, but let's plug it again.

Your interview with Senator Brandon Creighton this week. It's out on all podcast platforms, school choice, public education, education at large, the session, even the border a little bit y'all talked about. So yeah and if people are interested in hearing Brandon Crate and address a lot of the concerns that have come about in recent months about school choice, concerns, conservative concerns about school choice legislation. I ask a lot of those questions. So if people are interested in that,

they should go check it out. Absolutely, Cameron, thank you. Mary-Lise, we're back to you. Believe it or not, a state representative filed a bill allowing Texans to shoot down drones. I think the response from our team was this is the most Texas bill ever. Give us the details of the legislation.

Yeah, this is quite the shift in topic, but a bill has been filed in the Texas House with representative Jeff Leach and essentially it would allow property owner to disable destroy or damage an unmanned aircraft such as a drone that's flying over their property and of course this is a big concern for folks who have ever experienced an unmanned aircraft flying over their property. Well just don't shoot down the drone that's carrying my Amazon package. Yeah exactly. That's also their issue. Cameron's like I need my Ninja Creamy supplies. So obviously we've got

people on both sides of the coin on different feelings about this bill. But this is House Bill 2916 and it's playing off of certain sections of the Texas Penal Code that outline what constitutes an illegal action, destroying other individuals' property. Of course, it says that taking down unmanned aircraft, such as a drone... To clarify, this is the bill saying this, taking down an unmanned aircraft is an affirmative defense when it crosses property lines, so if the drone is... Well, I'd be interested to talk with Leach about this if he was inspired by the New Jersey drone story. Yes.

They came out. Did he mention that at all? He wasn't able, we weren't able to connect because he was in back-to-back meetings. I think it was one of those days where we had everything pile up at once. Right. But that was a big story a couple months ago. Yeah, in December. Yeah.

Yeah, and then White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt actually, she addressed, I don't know if you heard, she addressed the sightings and she said that they were authorized to be flown by the FAA for research and various other reasons and she said this was not the enemy. So. Yeah, what does that research in quote various other reasons? I think. She's asking questions.

Cambridge is asking questions. Just asking questions. So there's three different requirements that have to be met for this under this House Bill 2916 for shooting down a drone to be considered an affirmative defense. So the flying object must have been on property that's owned or legally occupied by the person that it was shot down using a firearm legally possessed by the person that it was shot down using a firearm legally possessed by the person that was used to disable, damage, or destroy the unmanned aircraft that the person did not authorize to be on or over their property and that the person had not previously been

prohibited from discharging the firearm under Texas' Penal Code or a dedicatory instrument governing use of the property. So according to Texas law, a person commits an offense if they do knowingly damage, destroy, or tamper with someone else's property, tangible property without consent. And House Bill 2916 makes it that if those three requirements that I just mentioned are met, then shooting down this aircraft would be considered an affirmative defense and prosecution. Well, because there's actually laws that determine how much airspace someone owns above their

property. Same thing with mineral rights and laws how far down into the ground. How far down, how far up. Well, so there's been, you'll see this in real estate negotiations for building, you know, skyscrapers. They have to negotiate airspace to build these buildings or like, there's been lots of stories for, you know, decades now about these mineral companies who are drilling down underneath people's homes to the point where their property rights don't extend to, to extract That's wild.

to extract these precious rare earth minerals. I'm sure that doesn't mess with the foundation at all. But so, you know, it's an interesting sort of wrinkle to things that people might not be aware of is there's an extension of the air that you own above your house. Yeah, it's not just straight up. So that's why there needs to be legislation to address some of these things. Yes, yeah for sure. So something that's worth noting that this bill doesn't address is one of the sections of the Texas Penal Code is that recklessly

discharging a firearm in a town that has a population of over a hundred thousand residents is a felony. So that would leave a firearm in a town that has a population of over 100,000 residents is a felony. So that would leave, I counted 43 cities that would not be affected by this House Bill, and that includes where we're at right now, Austin, Amarillo, College Station, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Tyler Waco. You can probably imagine what the other cities are, similar sizes. The United States Department of Transportation's FAA, Federal Aviation Administration outlines on their website the regulations around shooting down drones on one's property because

obviously this has been a question raised by people before. They say it's illegal under federal law to shoot at an aircraft. A private citizen shooting at any aircraft including unmanned aircraft poses a significant safety hazard. It also assures citizens that drones don't pose a hazard to people or property because pilots must operate them. So that's from the FAA's website. And there's another bill that's the another one that I found that was related to drone activity was filed by Representative Charlie Guerin and that would allow the capture of images by such craft for that was related to drone activity was filed by Representative Charlie Garen and that would allow the capture of images by such craft for certain

agencies in Texas. So you can check out the story full of details on that. That's a separate bill. But very interesting, very Texas. I'd love to drone on about this topic because there's so much to say, especially with the requirement to have these drones manned by an individual. That's going to be something that I'm sure is going to be addressed in legislation with the developments of AI. Because I'll be quick. You've got to be quick.

Because right now, as everyone knows, there's these autonomous vehicles on the road and they're being manned by individuals being contracted in India in many cases. But they're not just monitoring one car. They have maybe 10, 15, 20 in front of them. And so they're watching all over the place, these different cars they can intervene if the car is gonna crash or hit somebody or something so if that constitutes being a if they do this with drones that constitutes a manned aircraft you know it doesn't need to be one-to-one or can it be how it's currently operating with autonomous vehicles it'll be interesting to see

some sort of network. Well, Mary-Lise, thank you for your coverage. Yes. Bradley, we're coming to you with your headphones. There you go. Take a break from your committee hearing. Let's talk about education packages in the Texas House. Give us the rundown. Yeah, so the Senate has already passed SB2, that's over in the House. They just passed the teacher pay yesterday was it? Oh in the Senate? Yes. Yeah so the Senate's moving on their stuff but we saw the Friday last week or Thursday the whole package in the house basically come out and there was some coordinated messaging, Burroughs had a press roundtable, we might have talked about this on the podcast last week, but it's an interesting coalition of things

all in one grouping. Of course you have the top lines, the school finance that Cameron's talked about, the ESAs that are 85% of local and state funding, so that's a fascinating different tactic to take compared to the Senate's version, right? We'll see which one wins out there. So that's HBs two and three. Those are the Texas two step as the House is coining them. But then you've got a bunch of other

interesting ones as well. HP four to eliminate the star test, replace it with something ideally better. We'll see if it is. I don't know. But that's also by Buckley. Jeff Leach has HP6, classroom discipline bill, which I think is probably the most impactful in this entire discussion of education reform. Yes, money is needed. Yes, ESAs are top of mind for a lot of members, but the thing driving a lot of

problems in schools are both on the teacher retention end and on just student performance is classroom discipline. And the speakers talked about this as a problem I think the lieutenant governor has. That is for me the biggest thing to watch in this in this package. And the governor mentioned it in his state of the state. He did, yep. Yep. So you know that's been a problem, developing problem for a while and it's kind of reaching a zenith at the moment. Then you've got Gary Gates's HP 20, a boost to technical education. Then Terry Leo Wilson has HP 100, requires ISDs to use SBOE approved instructional materials. Keith Bell has HP 120, expands Junior ROTC programs and

what you can get out of them. And then Harold Dutton has HP 123. Burroughs specifically mentioned this in the round table. It's a one time $750 payment to parents for tutoring services for their children who are not reading at third grade level. So the house is moving forward on the Burroughs has talked about how he thinks this is going to be an education session. I'm sure people in the Senate said the same thing. I think you mentioned that on your podcast interview with Creighton as being an education focused session.

You know, the House is laying out its plan. It's drawing its line in the sand on things. And I think there's some that they're going to push really hard for. its line in the sand on things and you know I think there's some that they're gonna push really hard for. They'll compromise on some of these but the house has been very determined it looks like to get these across the land. These priorities have taken shape now so now it's just okay where what passes once we get to the end of the legislative session day 140 so definitely worth keeping an eye on. Brad thank you for your coverage there. We're to take a break and hear from the Beer Alliance.

The Beer Alliance of Texas is proud to support its members who help deliver an annual economic impact of $35 billion and provide over 200,000 jobs to hard-working Texans. From local tax revenue to direct economic investment to charitable contributions, their members are heavily invested in the success of our communities and our state. The Beer Alliance is dedicated to ensuring the safe distribution of alcohol throughout Texas. For more information visit BeerAlliance.com. You'll see how quickly Brad put his headphones back on. Not wasting any time.

Nothing. I wish I was sponsored by the Beer Alliance. I have so many jokes. Okay. Anyway, moving on. Cameron, we'll come into you. Let's talk more education. Yeah. There was some very interesting information laid out in the House Public Education Committee this week. You covered everything that was said, lots of interesting data points tell us what was happening.

Well, this is sort of a accompanying piece to everything Brad just laid out because there's lots of education related legislation and people might be asking themselves, is it necessary? What's the reason why the lawmakers in the Texas government see education as being such an important issue right now? Well, Mike Moran provided hours of testimony in front of the House Pub Ed Committee. TEA commissioner. The TEA commissioner.

So very important figure in all of this. And I'll just read some of the things that he talked about. 62% of Texas students are quote, economically disadvantaged. Only about half of kids entering kindergarten are ready for basic lessons. And so he said it sets up a significant challenge for teachers. He also went on to say, we do think that there is some relationship between smartphone use generally and certainly smartphone use in schools and student achievement And we think that relationship is extremely harmful. I bring that up only because there was

Legislation proposed by Ellen Trachs clar. I believe that would ban cell phone use in classrooms and Mike Morave has mentioned this on a number of occasions about smartphone use in classrooms and Mike Morath has mentioned this on a number of occasions about smartphone use in schools and the detrimental effect it has. I think one of the most important parts of Morath's testimony was in regards to funding and the student allotment. There's been lots of contradictory information put out, lots of different policy groups, lots of different activist groups talking about either Texas is funding schools at a proper amount or either they've continued to fund or funding has gone down. So there's some misalignment between what is being said and what is actually being reported.

And so, Morath touched on this and he talked about there's three predominant buckets of funding a school district, one being the M&O, second being interest and sinking funds, the last being federal funds. Morath added that there are many different federal programs that add to the basic allotment which is dependent on property taxes levied by local school district and totals $6,160 per student in average daily attendance. That comes to what he called an all-in picture of $15,503 per student funding in Texas. So there's the per student and average daily attendance funding and then that all in all the funding that goes to these school districts comes to $15,503. That's why we're seeing these

different numbers being reported by different groups. But he said he caveated his statement saying, bear in mind that some of that money has to go to specific places. That funding base is not actually what educates children. That funding base pays for things that educate children, and the primary things that school districts pay for is teachers. Teachers are the most important in-school factor that impacts student outcomes. There are other factors that matter it's just the quality of the teacher in the classroom matters more than others. So that was a consistent

theme throughout Morass' testimony is really pointing at the quality of teachers and making sure teachers are essentially ready to instruct these students. He went on to say that school districts are wrestling with vacancies, but also are employing more people than ever before as teachers. So interesting there that there's more teachers

than ever before, yet there are gaps that still need to be filled. Another point I'll make before I wrap here on this section is the teacher incentive allotment. That's been brought up on a number of occasions in regards to teacher pay raises and the teacher incentive allotment is a program to allow teachers to earn a higher designation and higher accompanying salary. Morath explained that the number of teachers designated for TIA has risen from about 4,000 in the previous legislative session to approximately 25,000 in the current session, and he noted that

this jump reflects quote, still a small fraction of the total teacher population. So meaning the schools districts have the ability to implement this teacher incentive allotment, yet many school districts are yet to take advantage of it, which is then not having teachers in these school districts take advantage of getting this higher designation and then thus having a higher salary. And so for people who are deep in the weeds on education funding, teacher pay raises, if you're listening to the Texan podcast, you probably are. So keep that in mind when the conversations surrounding teachers aren't being paid enough, teachers aren't getting paid at the level they should be. There is a program available for this. It's being addressed

in legislation both in the Senate and the House with their teacher pay raise bills, but it's dependent on if the school district adopts the TIA, the teacher incentive allotment. So a lot of overlapping things here. A lot more came out in this hearing. I encourage people to go check out the piece I wrote on it. I think as this session has been dubbed the education session, I think Morass testimony in this hearing is gonna be vitally important

for people who wanna know what's going on in education and have the right information. That's a huge reference point. Absolutely. Laid out the groundwork for all of it. Well, we have more education stuff to talk about, Cameron. This is a little tangential, but still in the same realm. A freshman lawmaker has now filed a bill to address books in public libraries.

We're not talking school libraries, we're talking public libraries. Tell us about it. Yeah. or public libraries. Tell us about it. Yeah, so we saw HB 900 or the Reader Act that was addressing school libraries and removing sexually explicit materials from those last session. Now we have Representative Daniel Alders is seeking to establish a framework to shield minors from such explicit materials. The bill would broadly define access to include any method by which a library obtains materials, whether physically, electronically, or otherwise. It also specifies that the law would apply to libraries that are municipally

financed, operated, and free to the public. It also includes a legal standard for, quote, sexually explicit material to include written descriptions, illustration, photographic image, video image, audio file that describes the picture portrays sexual conduct. I actually got a chance to speak with Daniel Alders about his bill and why he thought it was necessary to bring up this piece of legislation. He explained to me that in many libraries the quote young adult category is quite broad and he said his legislation would quote provide cover for that legality issue where cities are concerned. There's a lot more information again in the in the piece a lot more insight into why

Alders thought this bill was necessary. I encourage people to go read it. Yeah absolutely. Interesting approach. Brad coming to you again. Headphones off. Right when this is getting good. The House has shown its cards on property taxes this week. Give us the details. Indeed. So Chairman Morgan Meyer, Republican from Dallas, filed spills HBs 8 and 9 alongside HJR 1, which is the accompanying constitutional amendment. The trio's parameters include increasing, well more compression so that's just basic, it's 3.31 cents of additional compression on top of what's been approved in past previous years. But the main one is increasing the business personal property tax from $2,500 to $250,000.

So quite a hike. That's something businesses have been wanting for a while but haven't gotten. The total for the House's plan and the budget is around six and a half billion. The Senate totals around there as well, but they have vastly different plans here. And so this clearly shows that the house is again going for a business friendly plan on property taxes. Last session they tried to do a 5% appraisal cap and that was created an interesting dynamic where you had large corporations against it and they

preferred the Senate's plan but small businesses loved the 5% appraisal cap and so in the committee hearing in ways and means when Meyer was laying this out, you had these two going at it, the two kinds of businesses categories and you had the Texas Association of Business testifying against and you had a couple like mom and pop shops. One was a Mexican restaurant in San Antonio testifying in favor. We all know how it ended up. The two chambers fought and fought and fought and reached a stalemate, went to a couple specials. The appraisal cap got dropped in favor of just a straight compression plan.

Ultimately though, the Senate got what they wanted in a $60,000 homestead exemption increase. So we're back in a potential property tax fight again, although I don't see this getting quite to the level that happened in 23 because first of all, the Speaker and the Lieutenant Governor are friendlier right now. Second of all, the plans are not as far off. You know, a 5% appraisal cap across the board for all property was pretty significant change.

This is much less so. This is just exempting more property under a business. So business personal property tax is tax on anything that a business possesses beyond its real property, which is the land it's on, the building it's in. So inventory for a fast food restaurant, the fryer that counts, they pay taxes on all this. So this would just increase the amount of exemption they get on that. Senate still wants a 40K homestead increase. We talked about that. Senate argues that $1 billion in homestead exemption goes further than compression. Compression is lowering rates

across the board. Of course the Senate's right on this, but that's because the tax base we're talking about lowering rates on is smaller. Whereas compression spread out across all property taxpayers. So they argue that's better. They also want to incentivize home ownership. The house though wants to see more business friendly ideas put in. That aspect of the last,

the deal that was struck in 23 was pretty minimal. It was not, there was not a lot of specifically business oriented reforms. Well it's interesting you mentioned this butting of the heads of small versus large businesses on this on this issue. I just looked it up real quick. 23% of the workforce work for companies with 500 or more employees. 25% work for medium-sized companies with 100 to 499 employees.

52% work for businesses with fewer than 100 employees. So, you know, it seems pretty evenly split between these like small and maybe mid and large size companies. Which side of the argument the legislator, legislatures are gonna fall on, you know, we'll see. Yeah, yeah, well then you got Governor Abbott in this, whereas he, he kind of stayed out of the property tax fight last time around. I'm not sure if he's going to do that this time. I don't think anybody expects it to get as bad as it was. And then the governor, though, has called for previously 100K business personal property tax exemption. We thought that was a really big hike last session. Didn't get across the line, went nowhere,

but now we see, can't do math, I'm not gonna try, $250,000. It's too early. Yeah, so, I see this as a negotiating tactic, the house, you know, overselling what it actually wants and seeing if they can get something closer. Maybe they get $150,000.

Property tax overton window might you say? I guess you could say. But yeah, we'll see what the Senate does. They bite on this. Do they find it more palatable than an appraisal cap? I don't know. We'll see. Well done, Bradley. Thank you. Thanks. Okay. In the analysis with... we'll see. That's where we're at. That's a classic. It's where we're at. That's what we do. You should put that on a t-shirt for a text and podcast. We'll see. With Brad going like this. Yeah. Shrugging. Um, well, thank you Bradley. You did really good math. Let's move on to the query section. Um, Mary Lee's let's start with you.

Yes. This is interesting. I'm seeing a lot of people upset about it because of the recent deportations, but, uh, if you aren't familiar with the tape brothers,, it's Andrew Tate and Tristan, Tristan, his brother. You could say that they're commentators. Cultural commentators. Cultural commentators. That's one of many things you could say. Yes, exactly. Multifaceted. So polite. They're multif faceted. So they've been... Apparently the Trump administration, and this is just floating around online, but the Trump

administration has pulled some strings to allow them to travel to the U.S. because right now they're facing some charges in, I believe it's Romania? Yeah, in Romania. So, but they've been allowed to come to the United apparently because the Trump admin is what are the charges though they're pretty serious are they not yes yes they have to do with sexual deviancy deviancy sex trafficking or is it I don't know the exact charges but it they're pretty bad yeah in nature they're not good dudes yeah so yeah it's trafficking charges I wonder how long they've been out of the States it's been a very long

time yeah so very interesting that now they're getting the green light to stop back in yeah there you go. Yes. Maybe we should deport them. Well, that's what some people are saying online. That's actually really funny. Um, Cameron, what do you got? Well, um, I was telling Mary Elise this morning, we've been swamped with Texas news during the day.

So when I go home, I have to catch up on the national news. Yes. So I was actually watching this clip from the Megyn Kelly show, and she was talking about this New York Times article that was doing a deep dive on how the wealthy individuals in the Hamptons are feeling about the Trump deportation efforts. And I'll just read a couple of excerpts from this article. It's going to be very interesting.

Um, this is a quote from Marie Mullen, founder and executive director of Hampton's community outreach saying, quote, everyone relies on housekeepers and carpenters and tree cutters and grass cutters. People come to the Hamptons to enjoy their homes and who's going to take care of their houses. Who is saying this? This is someone the New York times is quoting from the Hamptons community outreach.

Okay. So this is like community, community member, essentially. Yeah. So this is the Hampton people saying this and then New York Times is just reporting. Well, the New York Times, they did some reporting on this and I'll read from the article here. The fear is on display outside a convenience store where day laborers sprint into a nearby field when a stranger approaches. It is present in the nervous apologizing of a long-time housekeeper when she interacts with the police after a minor automobile scrape.

And it courses through a small encampment in the woods where a landscaper is awaiting warmer weather so he can start cutting grass again and send money home to his family in Mexico. Further in the piece here it says, I'm reading again from the article, on a recent afternoon Miss Mullen visited a small group of undocumented immigrants who had been living under a tarp in the woods behind an ice cream shop until a manager there threatened to call the police. The group moved into the trees elsewhere, nearly in the backyard of an upscale restaurant. One of the men living in the woods is a landscaper waiting for summer jobs. Another lost his

job at a deli after he took time off to treat an injury. Another suffers stomach pain and cannot work. They spend their days wandering through stores, warming up and charging their phones. So, uh, it's, it's, it's just an interesting piece that highlights the, the shifting alliances over the past decade of the two political parties. I've talked, I've talked about this ad nauseam in newsletters and on podcasts, but how the Democrat Party has become much more aligned with the open borders policy, a more sympathetic look at illegal immigrants, but in the case, in it's aligning with those who are in upper salary brackets, who are living in more high income areas, which didn't

used to be the case in previous democratic parties, where they were more aligned with average day Americans, workers. It seems like things are, you know, really coming to a head here on the illegal immigration issue, especially in a piece like this in the New York Times. That's wild. Some of those quotes are just unreal. Yeah, people are interested in going and reading it. Like I said, it's the New York Times headline, they helped make the Hamptons the Hamptons, now they're living in fear. Oh my gosh. You know there are perfectly valid arguments for and against this issue. I don't think one of the valid arguments is, oh no the Hamptons will not be able, will not look as nice. That probably won't resonate with the common population. I don't think this article is doing what the New York Times might think it might be doing. No.

No. Wow. I'm going to go read every word of that after this. Bradley, what do you got? Well, I had something else planned, but I think I'm going to adjust because it's God's plan. Oh my gosh. My tweeter-y is a good friend Valentina Gomez, noted Twitter troll and congressional candidates. She announced on Twitter that she had a big announcement. Wow that's a lot of announces. What about politics. She announced that she had something to

announce about a future announcement. And she did. Remember there have been several times where that has happened and someone's like, I'm launching an exploratory committee. I'm announcing that I'm thinking about launching an exploratory committee for office. Well, she of course is the, well well previously had said she was going to run against Dan Crenshaw for Congress.

Well, because God had different plans for her. She decided to now run instead for Texas 31. That's John Carter's seat. receipt. And so she adjusted. She actually hadn't filed for Crenshaw's district, but she did file for Carter's now. And so now she is running instead in Central Texas. Shameless district hopping. And these, mind you, these districts are nowhere near each other. Yeah. The announcement was made from the top of the Capitol which I'm curious which representative people have suggested who it was but I'm curious which representative helped her get up there because you have to be associated with at least have a staff member right from their... Was it in the dome? Or was it the floor? It was a dome. You're

thinking the other video. The first one. Yeah. When she was still running against Crenshaw. This was in the video of running against, running for district 31. She was at the very top. Yeah. That's interesting. I don't believe there's typically pictures or videos allowed, so I wonder how that worked its way. That's true. They told us explicitly not to take any pictures. They all were just on their own tour. Yeah. Hmm. Wow. Well, she did. She got the video in the Capitol building for which she is not running.

She is running for US Congress. Well, that's what confused me. I saw the video she's in the- On the house floor. On the house floor. I'm like, oh, is she running for her? I think she's just, she's just saying, you know, I'm running as a Texas representative. You know, this is even if it's not where she'll be working.

Well, there, this was something that came up in the Hagenbu and Yarborough race is you have to be a resident of the district for a certain amount of time. Well, it's a congressional, it's different. You can actually live outside the state and run for a congressional seat. The only requirement is that you have to by the time, I don't know if it's by the time you win or by the time you're sworn in, you have to be, you have to live in the state. Just in the state?

In the state. Yes. You don't even have to live in the district. That's interesting. Really? There are a lot of- Interest, I have no idea. You find in these congressional races that even though it's technically allowed, if you don't live in district, it still becomes an issue in the campaign.

Like if you live a mile outside the district you're running to represent and it's a Republican versus Democrat option and you're a Republican and you're running in the district you're running to represent and it's our Republican versus Democrat option and you're Republican and you're running in the district you're a mile away from people are still gonna make it an issue in the campaign. So for better or for worse it's just how it works. So the fact that this is how she's going about the campaign is let's just say very untraditional in that sense. So there's no shying away she's not shying away in any shape or form from the fact that she does not live in the district. Yeah, I mean, she's now run for this

and it was because God called her to not run for Texas too but run for Texas 31. So here we go. Well, I wonder why she decided on Texas, you know, cause she ran for Missouri secretary of state previously. So, you know, she could have went to any state. Lots of unpack here. Yeah.

It also make us sure that says that. Well, it's done back. That's Cameron's and the brads will be, we'll see. We'll think about Mary Elise's. Figure out yours, what your tagline might be. Well guys, we should get to the rest of the day, shouldn't we? Allow ourselves some flexibility

to run about to the Capitol. I need to get back to listening to this riveting testimony about Power Group, okay? Okay, got it. Well, I'm gonna go to the house. Yeah, 15 minutes, the house is in session. Okay, folks, thanks for listening and we'll catch you next week.

Thank you to everyone for listening. we'll catch in next week for another episode of our weekly roundup. God bless you and God bless Texas.