The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - February 4, 2022

Episode Date: February 4, 2022

This week on The Texan’s “Weekly Roundup,” the team discusses Trump’s Conroe rally and the Texas officials in attendance, updates on the energy grid in light of the cold front hitting the state, how abortion numbers have fared since implementation of the Heartbeat bill, a Laredo border chief at odds with his guardsmen, a congressman expressing concerns about a registry of gun owners to a federal agency, criticisms Sid Miller is facing from the right and the left, the attorney general’s race heating up, the latest in congressional fundraising numbers in Texas’ open seats, and a look at some highlighted state legislative races.

Howdy, howdy, Senior Editor Mackenzie Taylor here on our weekly Roundup podcast. This week, our reporters detail Trump's Conroe rally and the Texas officials in attendance, updates on the energy grid in light of the cold front hitting the state, how abortion numbers have fared since implementation of the heartbeat bill, a Laredo border chief at odds with his guardsmen, a congressman expressing concerns about a registry of gun owners to a federal agency, criticisms Sid Miller is facing from the right and the left, the attorney general's race heating up, the latest in congressional fundraising numbers, and a look at some highlighted state legislative races. Thanks for listening. Stay warm and safe and enjoy this

episode. Why hello there, folks. Happy Friday. Mackenzie Taylor here with Daniel Friend, Hayden Sparks, Brad Johnson, and Isaiah Mitchell. We're on a remote podcast this week as there's a lot of cold weather happening. Ice on the road. So we decided to stay home and opted against driving in these conditions. Some of us aren't from Texas. We're a little more used to this weather, but ice on the roads is something you should absolutely never drive in. Boys, how are we doing? Are we all cozy at home? I'm sitting here with a candle, a hot cup

of coffee. I'm feeling pretty good. I have neither a candle nor a cup of coffee with me, but I'm doing good other than that. Other than that? That's the last thing I expected you to say. Daniel's our resident non-coffee drinker, which is quite the situation. What about you, Hayden? How are you doing over there?

I've had my cup of coffee already, so I decided to refrain from making another one, but glad that we don't have to drive on the ice covered roads today. Absolutely. Opted not to, or opted against having a caffeine buzz when you try to go to bed tonight. I like that. Isaiah. Yeah, I'm feeling good. I just had an apple.

I'm really glad to hear that. Was it a, was it a good apple? Was it a small apple that Mac would make fun of? I have a feeling you're referencing something that I don't know. Oh, wait, I remember. Yeah. She relentlessly, mercilessly derided your small apple.

I remember that. Yeah. Yeah. It was a good apple, too. Sure, it was a little bit small, but it came in a bag with a lot of other apples, and it was a good apple. It came in a bag with a lot of other apples and it was a good apple it came in a bag with a lot of other apples wow that's a great descriptor we have the weirdest arguments and debates it's i know but apples are important i'm from washington you know apples are our bread and butter your heritage our heritage what kind of apple was it, Zay? I don't know. Oh, great. Brad, how are you? Quickly.

Staying alive. Lend your mind. Staying alive. Trying not to lose my mind in all the Twitter craziness, but yes, that is happening. Are you having flashbacks to nearly a year ago at this time and all the you writing articles from your phone and the lack of power well luckily i don't have to write articles from my car this time but uh i guess flashbacks in that i'm trying to keep up with all the news and the grid updates and whatnot and uh well that's about it because it hasn't gotten to the point where it was last year. Thank God. Yeah, which we will get into. Let's go ahead and start with some news this week. Hayden and Daniel, y'all this last weekend were able to go down to Conroe for a rally with former President Donald Trump. There were a lot of other elected officials in attendance as well, but both of you were there. Give us a

little bit of a behind the scenes look at what it was like to be there at that rally and who else was part of the day? So a little bit behind the scenes. Of course, a big event like this, you have media registration in advance. So Hayden and I both registered. Hayden was going to kind of cover the reporting side of it and I went for photography reasons. And so we registered, got our credentials. And then the day before, we were planning on going a little bit later, which was probably our own mistake. But we found out that we need to get there around 1030 just because they do a big security sweep because it is a former president. You have Secret Service come in and make sure that there's no bombs smuggled in with the camera equipment and stuff like that.

And so we went over to Kongro. We left Austin around 7 a.m., got there around 10. And it was a nice drive over. And we got in, no problem. By the time that we got there, there was already a big crowd of people waiting for the event. There were a lot of merchants setting up different booths of MAGA gear and Trump bobbleheads and all sorts of different things like that. And so I kind of got to see how things were getting set up at that point. And then we also got to set up our gear up on the stage. The press section is a little bit kind of sectioned off from the rest of the rally. So there, which I was very grateful for. I don't like crowds. i was very glad to be on the press side of things because there was a lot less crowded um but i kind of got to see how things were

set up before the crowd started filling in um and then uh we kind of went took a break i went back to the parking lot went to wendy's got a good bite to eat came back uh waited around quite a bit of the day just because it wasn't the event wasn't really happening until later that evening when speakers would begin to speak. And Trump wasn't set to go on the stage until 7 p.m. So we had all day to kind of hang out. I got to read a little bit of The Hobbit. That was good. And then throughout the afternoon, we saw a lot more of the crowd start coming in.

Even by like 2.30, there were lines and lines of people just waiting to get into where the rally was being held itself. So we kind of got to watch as people just filled in. And there were a bunch of chairs set up, but then there was also a lot of people who were standing up. So it was quite packed. But that was interesting to see. Well, and Daniel, you were there in a primary role as our photographer on the ground. And Hayden, you were there reporting on everything. For folks who have not seen the story at the texan.news, we have an awesome photo story from these two that gives you a total behind the scenes look of what this day was like. I think it's fascinating that we have a former president who's touring around the country holding rallies

and thousands of people are showing up. It's fascinating. Very, very fascinating to say the least. And these boys have awesome, awesome recount of what actually went down. You can see the crowds, the bobbleheads. I asked the boys if it was like a county fair or something along those lines. They said it was more like that, an all-day event with all these vendors and there were food trucks, all sorts of different things that people could partake in. And they were there all day waiting for speakers. Very interesting stuff. So go to thetexan.news to look at all those photos. Hayden, on that front, let's talk about the lineup of speakers that these people were waiting around to hear prior Prior to the president's speech, who was all there

from Texas? I definitely want to reiterate what you said. Daniel did an excellent job with the photography. My job was pretty easy. I got to stay up on the press riser and observe. Daniel was running around all over the place getting pictures of people. So definitely head to our site and check out the photo journal of what took place. But the lineup of speakers included some national names and a lot of Texas candidates who Trump has endorsed in the upcoming primary. One aspect of the rally that was noticeable was the crowd's preoccupation with 2020. A lot of references were made to a possible run by Trump in 2024. But when people mentioned that, the crowd would start chanting, 2020 because of course, Trump is still claiming that he lost in 2020 fraudulently. So they are doubling down on that. Don Buckingham talked up Trump and she

gave her pitch for land commissioner. Sid Miller gave a reelection speech for ag commissioner. Both of those people have been endorsed by Trump. Donald Trump Jr., one of Trump's sons, of course, warmed up the crowd. And then, of course, we had Governor Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Patrick. Patrick was Trump's campaign chair in Texas, and he may be tapped again for that role if Trump chooses to run again. I know that the former president at a border rally said something to that effect, that he might have Patrick be his campaign chair in Texas again. In short, Trump said in his speech that he might pardon the January 6th defendants if he was elected to the White House again.

And of course, he continued to rail against the Biden administration and discuss voter fraud. Although he was careful not to announce a candidacy because that would trigger a lot of requirements on the FEC side of things. A lot of campaign finance issues that would come from him launching a campaign officially. Of course, it's not necessarily a foregone conclusion that he's running again, but all signs definitely are pointing in that direction. And he said that we, is the word that he used, would retake the White House in 2024, addressing his supporters. So all but announcing candidacy, but not saying it. Other people definitely did say it, though. Judge Mark Keogh, the county judge in Montgomery County, even got up and prayed that Trump would be reelected and asked God to bless his road to the White House. So definitely a lot of hopes

among Republican officials in the northern Houston suburbs area slash East Texas that Trump will run again and of course win. Absolutely. And it's conjecture at this point. We'll see what actually happens until there's an announcement. There's no announcement, but very interesting to see this ramp up. And again, it is very untraditional that a former president would travel the country campaigning, essentially rallying after he had lost a reelection bid. Fascinating look at political history there. But let's talk through the weather grid. Thank you, Daniel Hayden, for that. And again, go to thetexan.news, check out that photo story. But Brad, let's get into the weather. Let's get into this grid situation. There was an update from state officials very recently. We're recording on Thursday as we publish Friday morning. So we're ahead of a lot of the... It's prior to a lot of what we're waiting to see happen. But as of right

now, things are looking a little bit better than we expected. Walk us through what state officials are telling us. If folks should be concerned about the grid at this point, where are we at as of Thursday afternoon? Yeah. So as of this moment, there have been two briefings by Governor Greg Abbott, along with a medley of other state agencies, representatives from those agencies, including the Public Utility Commission and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which oversees the grid. Basically, the message is, right now, it is not even close to as bad as it was last year. And if the weather predictions hold firm or at least don't deviate drastically, that will continue. We will not see blackouts like we did last year. Now, obviously,

the weather is the weather and who knows what's going to happen. But based on all available forecasts, the grid will continue to do just fine during this spell. And that was the message that the officials gave. Some facts about the grid right now. They're operating with about 20,000 megawatts of excess capacity or surplus capacity. About 40% of that is in reserves. And those reserves have actually been increased from where they were about doubled from the amount that the grid kept last year when everything went down. That was one of the reforms made by ERCOT. Additionally, the weather is,

as I mentioned about the weather, but in terms of temperature, scope, the weather is, as I, as I mentioned about the weather, but, um, you know, in terms of temperature, uh, scope across the state and precipitation, we're not seeing anything remotely similar, uh, remotely close to what we, the winter storm important to note at the moment. Um, currently we are seeing some outages last I checked, it was like 69, 70,000 people, um, across the state and compare that to 4.4 million during the first day of the blackouts last year. So, you know, not seeing anything on, on that level that level, not close yet. And a lot of these outages, at least is what the state is saying, come from downed power lines. Power lines falling from, you know, ice accumulating on them and snapping or fallen tree branches, snapping power lines because they're caked in ice or because of wind so um that's what we're seeing right at the at this moment and that may that

number may increase we don't know uh but right now greg abbott's governor abbott said that uh there's 10 000 linemen out across the state of Texas trying to fix those where they exist. And there's about 2,000 more coming in from out of state that are coming in to help with this weather event. The state overall has seen no cold weather outages of its power generators, unlike what we did last year where quite a bit of the installed capacity fell off, fell out of commission because of various cold weather problems. I think first and foremost, that is because the weather right now is not close to where it was. But additionally, state officials pointed to the winterization efforts that, that allow the power plants to continue operating during the cold weather. So, and one more thing, one thing that exacerbated the whole problem last year was this critical infrastructure drop-off. There were a lot of plants and natural gas facilities that are important in generating

electricity that were cut off from power when ERCOT instituted the blackouts because they were not designated as critical infrastructure. That has been remedied. Apparently, according to the latest number, there's 2,900 facilities across Texas designated as critical infrastructure as opposed to less than 100 that were last year. So overall, we are not seeing anything even close to last year, but the peak demand is expected to come tomorrow morning or Friday morning when this podcast goes out. One more update that I think is important. They said that because of icing changes relative to the predictions out in West Texas, they're expecting more wind generation than they were previously. So that's kind of where it stands at the moment. Take that with the caveat that things can change pretty quickly. And when this podcast goes out, when people are listening, we'll likely have passed the peak demand period.

We'll know a lot more then. Well, Brad, thank you for that. And we'll continue to keep an eye on all that's going on. Isaiah, we're going to come to you. The state put out a new report on February 1st with some data regarding abortions in Texas. How has that data changed after the Heartbeat Act? Well, unsurprisingly, the statistics show that in September, which is the last month where this report ends, the number of abortions performed in Texas was far, far fewer than in the previous months. And so there was a pretty sharp decline in the number of abortions performed. I'll admit that while I had heard coverage from a number of places, and I won't call any place out specifically because I thought it was the case too, that abortions had just stopped wholesale

in Texas for the most part. And there was only a dwindling few that remained in the period that the heartbeat act allows abortions to remain legal. But that's not quite the case. So to give you a sense of scale, in August, there were the Texas Health and Human Services Commission records 5,400 abortions or 404. And in September, remember the Harvey Act took effect September 1st, there were 2,197 abortions performed. And so we included some charts in this article. And so you can see a clear trend line of, you know, there's some bumps over the course of the whole year. And in September, that bar is a lot stubbier than the previous ones. The Health and Human Services Commission also measures abortions by type of procedure in Texas.

And we see that dilation and evacuation abortions, which the state called dismemberment abortions in one law that bans it, stopped completely after August. And some interesting context there is that the Harb was passed as Senate bill eight in 2021. There was another Senate bill eight that banned dilation and evacuation abortions a while ago, but it was only ruled constitutional by the fifth circuit in August. And so in September was the first month where that law stood as constitutional in the eyes of the court system. And so those abortions did not take place whatsoever in September. I don't know how much of that is due to the other Senate bill that banned them or to the fact that they are a late term method that obviously would then be illegal under the Harbied Act since cardiac activity develops in the womb for around six weeks. Yeah, it's kind of an overlapping combo of bands there. Well, Isaiah, thank you for following that for us. And we'll continue to watch these numbers. How often do you know, are these numbers regarding abortions in Texas released? Well, that's interesting. So this, the commission collects this data all the time.

And this February report was anticipated because of the passage of the heartbeat act, right? And so everyone was kind of anxious for this data, like how would that change in 2021? But I did scroll through that same page on the website in a pretty cursory search, and they had not released that same year-to-date report in the same format before that I could see in recent years. That data does exist, but this report was, I believe, meant to give specific insight into the effect of Senate Bill 8 for 2021. That makes sense. Well, Isaiah, thank you for following that for us. Hayden, let's talk about the border. Again, this would not be a weekly roundup podcast without you talking about the border in one way or another. But one of the pieces you wrote specifically dealt with a Laredo border chief going to bat kind of against his own guardsmen. Talk to us about this confrontation

and what it was all about. I've seen this reported as a heated confrontation or a clash between these border guards and Chief Ortiz. I'm not sure I would characterize it as that. It was a spirited exchange that did get a little heated at times, but it wasn't, in the video I saw, combative. Everything still remained pretty respectful. This wasn't just the Laredo border chief, though. It was the chief of United States Border Patrol, so really the head officer in charge of our men and women in green. And he was meeting with some Laredo border guards about the state of illegal immigration and apprehensions. Their sentiments were that the administration is not doing enough to reduce the flow of illegal crossings. They also discussed the fact that the Biden administration

is emphasizing different language and not really using the term illegal alien, although Chief Fortes quibbled with them that that term has become taboo because he pointed out that the agents use that term on a regular basis and nothing is going to happen to them. However, they have started using different terminology. And as we saw with the report on travelers being allowed to use arrest warrants, illegal alien travelers being allowed to use arrest warrants as forms of identification, the administration is placing less of an emphasis on immigration status. It's not that they are necessarily, although some would argue they are, encouraging illegal immigration. They just don't view it as

salient as the previous administration did in many cases. So they confronted Chief Ortiz about that. And he did acknowledge that there are morale issues in border patrol, but he emphasized that that does not mean border guards should give up and they did push back on the suggestion that they were. So it was a little bit of a not something that's necessarily routine. These border guards pushing back on their leader, they were definitely very bold in their criticisms of Biden and of border patrol leadership. But the video is available for anyone to watch. You can go see it for yourself. And I'll let y'all make the characterizations that you believe best describe this exchange, but not every day that you see the rank and file border guards push back on their leadership. It was interesting to watch.

Absolutely. Well, Hayden, thank you for covering that. And definitely an interesting story, and it can be found at the texan.news. Daniel, we're going to come to you now. A few months ago, Congressman Michael Cloud sent a letter to the ATF expressing concerns that the agency was building a registry of gun owners, certainly not something many Texans would be excited about. Now that agency has responded to Representative Cloud, what did they say in their letter? The big thing that came out of this letter from the ATF to Representative Cloud was that they provided an estimate of how many records they actually manage. And that would be 921 million records.

So nearly a billion of these records, about 866 million of those are stored in a digitized format. These records are obtained through what's called out-of-business records. So a federal firearms licensee that's on a gun store that you go to who is in the business of selling guns has to maintain records of their gun sales for a minimum of 20 years. So the federal government prohibits a coherent, unified national registry that keeps track of this, but local gun dealers are supposed to maintain their own registry, essentially, or records of gun purchases. And so they have to maintain those for at least 20 years. And then if a gun business goes out of business, then those records are then transferred to the ATF and stored in their system.

And so this is the system that has 921 million records. And that was of November of last year. So by now, there's probably even a little bit more than that. Throughout fiscal year 2021, there's actually 55 million records that were added to this system. So it's growing quite a bit. Talk to us about what the agency uses those records for. So in their letter to cloud, the ATF claimed that the sole purpose of these systems is to trace firearms used in crimes essentially they have this the system where they the law enforcement is trying

to figure out where a gun came from that was used in crime and so they trace it using these records the records were used in over a quarter of a million traces last year but the atf also noted that they can't determine how many of those traces lead to a successful prosecution of a crime. So, Cloud's concern about this whole thing is that even though the agency is using these out-of-business records to essentially circumvent the federal law that prohibits federal gun registry and essentially kind of find a loophole in law to essentially build up this huge database of gun owners and where those purchases have been made. Now, why did Cloud send this letter in the first place? There are really two things that prompted this letter. The first was kind of a report. The agency had kind of published this document that was reported on touting those 55 million records that had been added to the database in the last fiscal year. And so Cloud sent a letter essentially asking, OK, is this accurate?

And then also, how many in total do you have? And so that's the total that the ATF, expressed concerns about a rule change that the ATF is pursuing, which instead of requiring gun businesses to hold records for a minimum of 20 years, they would say that instead of just having those gun records over 20 years old, the gun store can then just throw them away, destroy those records, whatever, then they all eventually have to go to the ATF and be added to this database. And so that is his concern about it. Cloud is now sending another letter to the agency asking for more information about how this rule change would actually be beneficial, especially since the agency can't link those traces to prosecutions. He writes in his letter, indeed, the evidence provided by the ATF thus far demonstrates that such records have likely have little utility in prosecuting crime. It raises serious concerns about whether the ATF is creating a prohibited national gun registry.

Very good. Well, we will keep an eye on this, but thank you for covering that for us, Daniel. Isaiah, let's talk to you. Now, we're going to kind of pivot here to campaigns in general, but we're going to start specifically with a lawsuit here. A little while ago, the current Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Sid Miller, sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture for racial discrimination. And talk to us a little, remind us about that when you start talking here. But now that he's up for re-election, how have his challengers responded to that lawsuit? Yeah. So what happened was in the American Rescue Plan Act COVID stimulus package, among many, many other things, it provided loan forgiveness of up to 120% for socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers. And the U.S. Department of Agriculture interpreted that to more concretely and specifically to include several ethnicities, but not white farmers.

And so Sid Miller sued in his private capacity, not as agriculture commissioner, along with about four other Texas farmers, alleging that this discrimination violated the Constitution. And they actually did get some initial success. They got a preliminary injunction. And there are some other cases challenging essentially the same thing three or four around the country right now. Anyway, with regards to his case, one of the leading, I'm going to say the leading Democrat primary opponent based on funding, Susan Hayes, criticized this lawsuit as an effort to block funding for non-white farmers in Texas. And Hayes has a legal background

as an attorney and brought up a case or rather, you know, a cluster of cases, the Pigford cases, Pigrophy Glickman, that alleged discrimination from the USDA against black farmers and that ended in settlements. And these are actually very recent. We've got some more background on them in the article from the Congressional Research Council. But so she brought up that these cases making the argument that this kind of provision in ARPA that the USDA is interpreting is not a giveaway, but a debt owed. That's the way that she framed it. James White, one of his primary election challengers, criticized it from a different angle. White agreed with Miller in saying that this kind of formate should not be given out based on race. And he was very emphatic in making that point. But he called

Miller's lawsuit hypocritical because of certain fiscal decisions that Miller has made as commissioner. And he additionally brought up some of Miller's record in the legislature. So specifically, Wyatt brought up that Sid Miller raised a lot of fees across the board for farmers, ranchers, and other licensees with the TDA. And so these fees by statute have to fund the costs of the TDA. And they're just collected, as I said, from farmers of the licensees and permittees. And the state auditor's office found that the TDA had been raising fees excessively and without a clear method for determining what costs these fees would offset. He also approached the legislature for a 50% budget increase shortly after taking this

office, which White accused of being fiscally irresponsible, not fiscally conservative. And when Miller was in the legislature, White accused him of slow rolling a bill to allow concealed carry on campuses. If y'all recall, Miller was a Strauss committee appointee at this time. And so when this bill came through his committee, White says that he held onto it for a couple months and then released it too late for it to get to calendars. And so some interesting deep oppo research that White had at his fingertips. Kerry counsel, who agreed also with White and Miller that this should not be, that Farmay should be race neutral. And he did not have more specific criticisms of the lawsuit. So I've attached essentially his whole statement in the article.

And the other Democrat primary challenger, Ed Ireson, did not reach back to me. Got it. How has Sid Miller responded to all this criticism? Well, Sid Miller has defended his lawsuit from Hayes, from the left side, as continuing his argument that it is unconstitutional to discriminate based on race. And we covered this lawsuit in detail. His attorneys, Miller and the other farmers, they argued in their court briefs that they were acknowledging that occasionally in very specific and targeted circumstances, it is constitutional to have this kind of racial discrimination. Again, if it's targeting a very specific instance or trying to reverse a specific instance of government racial discrimination with a conclusive timeline. And so in this case, for it to be so broad and sweeping, he still maintains that it is unethical, unfair, and unconstitutional to withhold certain farm aid simply on the basis of applicant's race. So that was his defense from the Hayes side of the political spectrum. include a more specific summary of that report in the article that also says, similar to what

the state auditor's office said a little while ago, years ago, that the TDA could benefit from some more clear methodology for determining costs and other regulatory activities. Well, thank you, Isaiah. Sid Miller is certainly someone who has been in the news a lot during his tenure as agriculture commissioner, and it looks like that will not be stopping anytime soon. Daniel, let's talk about another statewide race that we're watching very closely, you specifically, but we're watching the Attorney General's race get a little more heated as time goes on with attacks going back and forth between candidates like crazy. Tell us about what's happening there. What's the latest? Prior to January, we really hadn't seen Attorney General Ken Paxton, who's the incumbent. He's being challenged by three actually very viable candidates who are challenging him in the primary. We hadn't really seen him attack any of those opponents outright in any advertising or anything like that. But in January this month, about mid-January, he started launching attacks criticizing one of his opponents, Congressman Louie Gohmert in East Texas.

And so he's done a few different things. He sent a mailer out in his district highlighting Gohmert's voting record, not so much the votes that he's cast themselves, but how many votes he's actually missed during his tenure in Congress. So about, I think it was about seven to 8% of his total votes in Congress during his time he's missed. And he also has highlighted, Paxton highlighted that Gohmert has not missed a pay raise vote for Congress, congressional salaries. So that was something that was noted in his attacks. And then he also has been running digital ads as well. He's run some, even like just a positive ad about Ken Paxton and his campaign highlighted that,

but specifically doing it in East Texas where GoMart is from. And so that's one attack that we've seen kind of come up, really kind of honing in on Paxton trying to solidify his, I think, his conservative grassroots voting base. I think if you look at the four different candidates in the race, Gohmert and Paxton do kind of attract from the same crowd, the same people who support Paxton have supported Gohmert. And so Gohmert's entry into the race was, I'm people who supported Paxton have supported Gohmert. And so Gohmert's entry into the race was, I'm sure, eating away at some of his support, especially in East Texas, where Gohmert has built up quite a name. So that is just an interesting thing. Now, Gohmert himself has also been very outspoken against Paxton. That's been from the get-go in his campaign since November. But this week, he's also launched a new TV ad that specifically criticizes Ken Paxton and the scandals going on in his office.

So that's something that's pretty interesting. Another thing that is interesting that happened this week was a mailer was sent out by the Eva Guzman campaign, not attacking Paxton, but actually attacking George P. Bush, another one of the GOP challengers. So it's kind of interesting. You see these two different lanes that are kind of competing for different votes. So that is interesting. Another thing I did get to talk with Attorney General Paxton briefly at the Trump rally, he actually came up and talked to the press. So I talked to him a little bit about going on the offense against Gohmert. You can read more about that in the article. And then it was interesting on the stage when Trump actually

got there, you had Trump who touted the endorsement of Paxton and he's you know he reiterates that his complete and total endorsement of ken paxton this happened last summer but the other interesting thing was that trump was also going through the crowd looking at different congressmen in the in the crowd of people there and kind of highlighting the people that he likes there and supporting them and he called out louis gomert. And he also said some flattering things about Gohmert as well. So that was an interesting dynamic there. You have Gohmert and Paxton at the same event. Trump has endorsed Paxton, but he's also very supportive of Gohmert. So it's got an interesting dynamic there. And you also have, of course, back last summer, Bush was also competing for the endorsement of Trump.

And Trump was also very positive about Bush as well. So it's kind of interesting to see how Trump has weighed in on the race in support of Paxton, but he's also been a little bit supportive of the other candidates as well. It's very interesting. I believe he said that, you know, Louie's been with me since day one. That was kind of the sentiment he shared there. And like you said, the only two candidates at the time when Trump endorsed Paxton competing for that endorsement were Paxton and Bush. So Guzman and Gohmert had not jumped into the race yet at that point. Very interesting to see that.

I'll also say another thing that I'll add. I did get to have an interview with Gohmert a week or two ago, and he was actually talking about the time when those endorsing Paxton. But Trump brushed that aside, essentially saying that the attacks on Paxton are very similar to the attacks that were on me. The scandals in the office are these just left-wing scandals. And so he kind of brushed those criticisms aside. So that was also an interesting thing as well. That's fascinating. And Paxton, you know, certainly one points with the former president when he's, you know, really went to the forefront of those lawsuits post 2020, post the 2020 election. And so interesting to see that that, you know, it may not have directly

resulted in an endorsement, but it certainly did not hurt Ken Paxton in his efforts, like you said, to court the president's endorsement there. Well, thank you for that. We'll continue to watch. Very interesting to see, like you said, those two lanes in this GOP primary kind of solidify. Let's continue talking with you, Daniel, about elections. Let's pivot to the congressional seats here. We have some new fundraising numbers. Walk us through how the open congressional races are shaping up now that we've had a campaign finance filing. Yeah, I'll try to give you a brief overview of these races. There are a bunch of different congressional races going on. So I'm really focusing just on these open ones where the congressmen are either retiring or running in a different district. So there's some interesting races here. Speaking of Louie

Gohmert, of course, now that he's running for attorney general, his seat has been open. Smith County Judge Nathaniel Moran has been the front runner in the race just in terms of the endorsements that he's gotten. And his fundraising also reflects that he was the top earner with $343,000 in receipts for the last quarter. So nothing too surprising in that race. In the 8th Congressional District, which is the race to replace Representative Kevin Brady, that has also been interesting where it's kind of come down to two frontrunners in the race have been seeing a lot of attention. And that would be a Crenshaw-backed candidate,

Morgan Luttrell, and then a Senator Ted Cruz-backed candidate, Christian Collins. Luttrell actually raised quite a significant amount of money, $1.2 million, which is one of the largest hauls out of everyone in Texas at the federal level, or even the state level as well, just a sheer large number of money coming in. Now, Collins also raised a significant amount, but it's really kind of small when you compare it to Luttrell's number. You had $334,000. So Collins has as much money, about as much money as the front runner in another congressional race, yet he's still way smaller than the other candidates. So that's an interesting dynamic. And it's also a crowded race too. So there's actually, I think there's several candidates.

Holly Hansen just wrote about a forum that happened in that district. So you can go read more about the other candidates there as well. In the 15th congressional district, you have Monica de la Cruz, who's kind of been the big frontrunner in this race since day one, because she actually ran the last time against the incumbent. Now the incumbent is running in a different district, and Republicans kind of shifted the boundaries of this district to make it more competitive for Republicans to win. So she raised $559,000 in the last quarter, bringing her to $626,000 cash on hand, a significant amount. But you also have a businessman in the district in that Republican primary, Maura Garza, who has also kind of buoyed his war chest with a lot of his own money, bringing his cash on hand total to $388,000. So that could be an interesting primary as well with a big self-funded candidate like that. In the 30th congressional district, this is the Dallas seat that state representative Jasmine

Crockett is running in, who received the endorsement from the retiring representative Eddie Bernice Johnson. So Crockett was kind of seen as the front runner in this race just based on that endorsement, but she was definitely out-raised by some other candidates. You have Abel Mulugeta, who had been the chief of staff for state representative Rafael Anchia, and also Jane Hope Hamilton, who had been the chief of staff for Representative Mark Vesey, who both out-raised Crockett in the last quarter. Will it get more so with a reported fundraising of $253,000? And then Hamilton raised $113,000, and Crockett raised $101,000. So that's kind of an interesting race there. And the other candidates

as well raised a notable amount as well. Then in the 35th congressional district, you have a few different candidates, really two are kind of the front runners in this race. You have former Austin City Councilman Greg Kassar and state representative Eddie Rodriguez. Kassar raised $468,000, whereas Rodriguez raised $251,000. So both significant amount of money there, big frontrunners in that race. And then last but not least, another huge frontrunner in terms of fundraising across the whole state was Wesley Hunt in the 38th congressional district that's the new district over in houston he had ran against representative lizzie fletcher last time in a competitive race and then is running again for this new seat and he's definitely the

viewed as the front runner in that race and his fundraising reflects that he was also vastly out-raised to all the other candidates in that race. You have one other candidate, Mark Ramsey, who self-loaned his campaign $101,000 with a few other contributions. So those are really the numbers to look at. There's a lot to go through.

I could bore you some more, but that's the overview. You kept it relatively succinct for how much information you had to pack in there. Thank you, Daniel, for your coverage of that and breaking down the numbers for us. Looking at campaign finance numbers is certainly not something that's that fun for many people, and it's great to have it all in one spot. Speaking of having it

all in one spot, go to the Texans War Room for all the information. For all the hottest races in Texas. It really is a one-stop shop in terms of coverage, polling, fundraising, all the candidates in the races. Go check that out at our website. Bradley, let's pivot to the state senate and talk about one of the open senate seats this midterm. Senate District 11 in the Galveston area has received a substantial amount of attention and a lot of high-profile endorsements. Give us a rundown of why the seat is open and who the candidates are

in this race. So current state senator Larry Taylor announced his retirement, I think it was like November last year, and it was kind of a surprise. He was expected to run again. You know, there were a few other senators that a lot of people thought or knew were going to retire, not opt for re-election, and Taylor was not one of them. But he abruptly announces his retirement, and it was, according to him, spurred on by one of the would-be challengers to him, which is one of the current candidates in the race, State Rep. Mays Middleton from Wallaceville,

who is the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus. Taylor basically said that Middleton was determined to run and Middleton has access to a lot of money, including self-funding. And so Taylor basically said that I was confident that I could have beaten him, but I would have taken a lot of resources. And so he's just going to step aside. So he did. And now the seat is open and Middleton, as I said, is running for the seat. He's one of the candidates, one of the top two, I would say, front runners. And in talking to him for this piece about the race, he said that the top two issues are stopping the Biden administration's abuses

of power and securing our border. He's focused a lot of his campaign rhetoric on the Biden administration and its policies that it's implemented, or at least looking to implement. For example, on oil and gas, he said that Biden is trying to eliminate the oil and gas industry, which has made us energy independent and push Texas into prosperity. Texans have a right to make a living and feed their families, and Biden's policies are making that more difficult. Some of these policies are the rescission of the Keystone XL pipeline permit, also the federal land oil and gas drilling lease prohibition. Basically, no new or renewed permits may be accepted under this federal executive order on federal land. And Middleton has quite a substantial fundraising

lead. A good portion of it is self-funded. He is the president of Middleton Oil Company. So he both has a lot of knowledge of the oil and gas industry, but also access to its resources. And so that's Middleton. The other top echelon candidate is Dr. Robin Armstrong, who our listeners, followers may know. We did a podcast with him last year, 2020, when he was coming under a lot of fire for successfully treating his coronavirus patients with hydroxychloroquine. The Texas Medical Board threatened to revoke his license, something that he fought and ultimately won. It apparently spent $40,000 of his own money just to just to prevent that fight that that threat off. And so he's gained a pretty substantial profile from that.

But he's also been around Republican politics for a while. He's been the Texas RNC committee man for, I think it's nine years. And so he's not a new face to the Texas GOP. He told me that we need a state senator that can champion conservative values in the body despite leadership, Austin insiders, and multimillionaires. He's contrasting with Middleton in that he hasn't held elected public office before. He's held that RNC committee man position, but that's a party position. So that's one of his big contrasts with Middleton. When I spoke to him, he talked a lot about the need to counter democratic messaging. And he said that progress was on

the heartbeat bill specifically and the fire that's drawn. He said, progress was certainly made and the heartbeat bill was a success, but it doesn't go far enough. We need to defund Planned Parenthood in its entirety, ensure that no child is ever aborted. And so those two are kind of the top. Then there's two others. There's Bianca Gracia, who's the president of Latinas for Trump, and Bob Mitchell, who's president of the Houston Bay Area Economic Partnership. But their fundraising numbers aren't even close to Armstrong, let alone Middleton, which is kind of in a category of his own. So that's a rundown of the candidates for this race. Quickly give us a So that's a rundown of the candidates for this race.

Quickly give us a little bit of a rundown of the big endorsements we've alluded to. Yeah. So Middleton, he has gotten endorsements from former President Donald Trump, which is probably the most sought after endorsement in Republican politics today. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who runs the chamber that Middleton hopes to be in next year. And then Armstrong has gotten support from Attorney General Ken Paxton. And I think the interesting wrinkle here is that Middleton supported Representative Matt Krause when Krause was running for Attorney General against Paxton in the primary. Now Krause obviously dropped out and he is running for Tarrant County district attorney. But I don't think there's any love lost between Paxton and Middleton. And we're seeing that with that endorsement. So a lot of high profile attention given to this race and we'll see how it turns out. Thank you, Bradley. Sticking with the state Senate, Isaiah, the longest serving member of that chamber has a primary challenger and they participated in a forum earlier this week. What issues divided them specifically?

The three of the issues that they discussed were education, criminal justice, and transportation or environment more generally. And the latter two were where they diverged most substantially, but we can just go through those in the same order that they discussed them at the forum. As I said, they mostly agreed on education policy, both criticized vouchers, school choice, more stringent state oversight of ISDs, and efforts to ban critical race theory or CRT in public classrooms. Molly Cook is – I should have mentioned that earlier. Molly Cook is the primary challenger for Senator John Whitmire. She made up for lack of policy disagreement in this

arena by using a pretty constant wedge issue in this race, which is that Whitmire has expressed plans to run for Houston mayor in 2023. And this is something that happens in the legislature all the time where people float these ideas or even commit to running without necessarily committing to retiring or leaving the legislature. But that was, with regards to education, what she pushed the most as a way to split herself and distinguish herself from Whitmire. But on that topic, Greg Abbott's so-called Parental Bill of Rights came up. And Whitmire, I'll just tell you what he said here. He said, you see now that this Bill of Rights, he, Abbott, wants to put in the Constitution is going to allow choice or vouchers. Vouchers would ruin public education in the state of Texas. It would certainly shut down our rural schools.

In the urban areas, you do have other options, but in midsize or small communities, if you allow students to take their vouchers and go to their church schools, Brenham, for instance, would just lose their ISD. It's nothing but demagoguery. It's hard right to appeal to the Trump core. I should note that that plan does not mention vouchers, but the topic is relevant nonetheless to their discussion here. And Cook echoed his criticisms, but tacitly compared Abbott's rumors of a presidential run for Abbott to Whitmire's mayoral plans and accused Whitmire of not keeping a firm focus on the issues and having a mayoral run overshadow the way he's going to approach these issues. So with criminal justice, they diverge a little bit

more widely. Cook blamed Houston crime trends on high gun ownership and attempted to pin kind of a gun-friendly record on Whitmire. And we go into more detail and link to some of these bills in the article. But her concrete proposals for addressing this crime wave in Houston would be limiting stranger-to-stranger sales, a proposal that she touts as bipartisan since Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick himself says that he supports limiting stranger-to-stranger sales and universal background checks. So in response, Whitmire touted to support for a red flag bill that he sponsored and said that he would support the idea of having the DPS come in and have an anti-gang task force in Houston. And further specify that he would support a zero-tolerance policy for anyone that uses a weapon in the commission of a crime.

And with regards to the environment and transportation, Whitmire cited some of the local efforts to improve air quality that he's supported in Houston and led in Houston in the area, but said that statewide change on this issue is going to be difficult from a progressive perspective because the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is appointed by the governor and Republicans have controlled the governorship for quite some time now. So in response to that, Cook pointed to community organizing and said that she would take on the responsibility of making those kinds of changes through grassroots efforts. In general, that's the identity that she used to distinguish herself from Whitmire.

Whitmire has been rated by at least one third party as one of the most liberal members of the Texas Senate. So he's not a moderate. But in terms of messaging in this race, he is coming out as, you know, he's touting his own seniority, his experience, and just his long record in the legislature, while Cook is billing herself as more of a progressive, upstart, grassroots, underdog kind of candidate. Well, we will certainly keep an eye on this. Thank you, Isaiah. Brad, let's very, very quickly pivot to a House District race. We're going to continue to highlight different campaigns throughout this entire primary cycle. Plenty to talk about, but very quickly, let's talk about House District 73 after Representative Kyle Biederman opted not to

seek re-election. Who are the candidates in this race? So you have Carrie Isaac, a 2020 House candidate in House District 44, whose husband Jason is a former state representative. She's running for this House District 73 seat. She is endorsed by various organizations, but among the most important one endorsers is state rep Kyle Biederman. Then you've got Baron Castile, the former mayor of New Braunfels who didn't seek reelection in 2020. He's supported by a lot of police organizations, Texas Municipal Police Association, the New Braunfels Police Officers Association and the Hayes County Sheriff. Then you've got George Green, former New Braunfels city councilman. And that's three candidates. Wonderful. Thank you, Brad. We'll continue to keep an eye on that race. Are there any big issues that these candidates are diverging on before we move on? Well, Isaac put out kind of a negative attack ad against Castile. Those two seem to be the ones quarreling the most in this.

She hit him for not voting to decrease property taxes. Now his counter is that the tax rate itself did not go up while he was mayor. But of course, that does not mean the property taxes paid did not go up by citizens. She's also knocked him for kind of being friendly back in 2018 with Moms Demand Action, which is a gun control advocacy group. And so he hasn't really responded to it at all that I saw. He hasn't issued any attack ads of his own against Isaac, but we're in the last month, so those things are going to heat up and we'll see how it turns out. Thank you, Bradley. Also worth noting that Barron Castile's mother used to serve in the legislature, Carter Castile. So it'll be interesting to see if there can be family lineage that continues on in the Texas legislature. Gentlemen, let's talk through what we do. We're going to move on to a fun topic. What we do when the weather gets freezing, what is your favorite thing that you

can do? Or you can also answer what was a silver lining of the freeze last year? What was something that happened that, okay, that was actually kind of fun, even amidst craziness and a lot of tragedy for some folks, what was the silver lining for you? So either what you like to do on a snowy day when you're snowed in at home or a silver lining from last year. Brad, why don't you take it away? Well, last year was the first real snowstorm that my dog got to experience. So it was fun seeing him kind of lose his mind at the snow. Winston. It was only five inches. So growing up in Ohio, I've seen a lot more than that. But for him, it was brand new. And so that was, I would say that is the only silver lining for last year. For me,

personally, anyway, in what was it? Some of y'all were camped out at the office even. Weren't you camped out at the office for a while, Brad? Yeah, I think two days, Daniel and I were there. Yeah, it was, that was very inconvenience and not fun but yes daniel sheds a tear single tear rolls on daniel's cheek we survived okay what about you daniel um as far as like things i do when it's cold outside i feel like it's not any different than when it's hot outside like my life goes on the same way, one way or another. I'd say one of the unique things that I did last time during the freeze when we were camping out at the office,

it was fun to go and get some pictures of just the capital and all the ice and snow. There was also a water pipe that burst down La Faca that I went and got some pictures of. That was kind of fun. Yeah, I remember that. It sucks for the people who had to fix it, but it was cool to get pictures of. So that would be my thing is some cool photography.

I like that. Yeah, those photos are awesome. It doesn't usually happen in Texas. Yeah, absolutely. And especially snow at the Capitol. That's a unique photo op right there. Hayden, what about you? A silver lining for me from last year was I never lost power. I feel bad. I forgot about that. We all worked from home or some of the guys or some of us

camped out at the office, but I never had to improvise a lot because I think I lost water for a period of a few hours. But other than that, I wasn't affected by the storm except for being hemmed in. So I came out of the winter storm Yuri smelling like a rose, honestly. Nothing majorly disruptive happened in my life. But as far as when it's cold, I just, I have a weighted blanket. I don't know if any of you have weighted blankets, but they're very warm and cozy. So I, when it, when it's cold, it feels, it's more fun to bundle up and get under a bunch of blankets. Oh yeah. I have a blanket wrapped around me right now as we speak.

Isaiah, what about you? Well, kind of like Daniel said, when it froze the first day, I just stayed here and I was going to work from home, but I didn't have any power. I thought it's cold here. And so then the rest of the week, I just drove to work. Right now I do have power, which is nice. That hasn't happened yet in Austin.

It's occurred to me. It makes the snow seem, I don't know, I guess less of an event. I woke up. I'm like, oh, well, there's some snow. You know, it wasn't like it wasn't all like February last year. And it's like sleet snow. It's not powdery. It's not the powdery dumping we got last year and it's like sleet snow it's not powdery it's not the powdery dumping we got last

year it's very much just like a white layer of ice is kind of what it is yeah well i'm i'm within driving distance of a couple of those like workout playgrounds i have the pull-up bars and stuff like that and um so i like to uh frequent those and uh but when I saw this, I'm like, well, you know, I guess I'm not going to run, which I haven't done in like three weeks anyway. But now this is, I was totally, I was going to do it today, you know, and now I can't obviously. But I might see if. You could, but you might injure yourself.

Right. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to be wise. But that's what I like to hear. Yeah. But pull-ups are much more fun than running. And so I'm going to see if those are possible after work today. See, I might think that if I could do a pull-up, but I cannot do any such thing. You have to believe.

I'll try my best. I'll try really hard. I can only do that. I could not lift myself enough to do a pull up. I see those pull up machines at the gym that kind of help you hoist you up, right? Like they aid you in going up and you can set it like the resistance as little as you want. I'm like, oh, I could do that because obviously, but it's helping you. But I could not do one that's a real pull up. That's total cheating if you do it that way. Guys, just sheer will is all you need.

You don't need any actual upper body strength. Get a tank of helium. Just drink a whole bunch. Drink a whole. Is that how you consume helium? Well, we don't have a good word for eat or drink for the third state of matter. What do you say forget breathe okay but you're generally not supposed to consume the third state of matter that's probably why we don't have a good word for it i did forget the word breathe it seems yeah i was gonna say there is there is one but regardless

um i'm trying to think of a silver well i had all this time to think of one but i was just listening to y'all not thinking of my own answer a silver lining i mean there were times when i had no cell service where i was holed up i was holed up with um family friends and completely unable to make contact with the outside world the silver lining was the initial snow i love snow so that was my silver lining, being able to go out and make some little snowmen throw some snowballs at people. I went to the first snow last year before the freeze. There were two snows. The first snowfall, I went to a friend's house and we snuck up some friends and I to his place

and threw snowballs at his window. And we had a great time. And he came out and was like, oh my gosh, what are you guys doing? And we'd pelted his house with snowballs. It sounded like he was, you know, friendly fire was consuming his living room window. It was pretty fun. Yeah. I can't believe nobody said sledding.

That would be my thing. I didn't get to. It would be if I was able to. Did you sled, Brad? Oh, not not last year i was too busy writing articles um but growing up yeah we sledded is that the is that the correct form of it we sledded quite a bit um and it's very exhausting but quite fun it's very exhausting, but quite fun. It's exhausting, really? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, think about it. You're in this snowsuit, if that is what you wear, and you down um getting back to the point where you can uh

you can actually gain momentum going downward a hill you know that's that's a lot of work and you're in snow gear it's heavy it's hard to walk up it's not like you're in you know shorts and a t-shirt running up a hill during the summer which on its own is quite the the task in texas but it's totally different i was talking the silver lining of this snowstorm last year, not of just snow in general. Sledding, of course, is a silver lining. And snowstorms where you don't lose power and are able to drive around on powder are great.

They're delightful. But I'm talking specifically about the freeze. I don't think many people are out there sledding too much, at least in our little group here. Well, gentlemen, thank you for your time. We appreciate it. Me and our listeners. I learned a lot and I know hope our listeners did too. Folks, stay safe out there. Stay warm. We will talk to you next week. Thank you all so much for listening. If you've been enjoying our podcast, it would be awesome

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