The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - January 10, 2025

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

Show off your Lone Star spirit with a free "Remember the Alamo" hat with an annual subscription to The Texan: https://thetexan.news/subscribe/The Texan’s Weekly Roundup brings you the latest news in Texas politics, breaking down the top stories of the week with our team of reporters who give you the facts so you can form your own opinion.Enjoy what you hear? Be sure to subscribe and leave a review! Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast.This week on The Texan’s “Weekly Roundup,” the team discusses:Congress Certifies Donald Trump's Electoral College VictoryRepublican Caucus Rifts Mark the Texas House Speaker Race‘Cook or Calamity’: Paxton, Texas GOP Embark on Crusade Against Pro-Burrows RepublicansAbbott Appoints James Sullivan to Texas Supreme Court, Elevates Jimmy Blacklock to Chief Justice15th Court of Appeals investitureCanyon ISD Returns Bible to School Libraries After BacklashTexas Congressman Files Legislation to Move CBP Headquarters to TexasCorporate Transparency ActTexas Legislature Joint Committee Hear About Affects of Social Media on ChildrenHouston Police Officers Immune From Liability After Crashing in Pursuit, Texas Supreme Court RulesPresident Biden Issues Parting Ban of New Offshore Oil Drilling on Federal Lands

Yeah, well, my take on all of these rules regarding the speaker race, it's all pretty stupid. Hey Cam, do you think we could convince Mac to come up with some Texas merch with some Brad quotes on it? Like, it's all stupid. I've been saying that a lot lately. I think that would be a hot selling idea. Hello everybody, happy Friday. Hello, everybody. Happy Friday. Well, it's technically Thursday, but this is Going Out Friday.

This is the Texans Weekly Roundup Podcast. I am senior reporter Brad Johnson. I've got in studio with me Cameron Abrams, reporter with us. Another reporter with us, Matt Stringer. Mackenzie DeLulo has some kind, some version of the plague. And so this is a hashtag boys cast. Boys cast. Boys cast. And Matt is joining us after his, well, after his semester in OKC for law school and before he starts the next semester in OKC for law school. Welcome back, Matt. I'm glad to be here. It's been

a while. It has been. And we got a lot to talk about. We're going to talk how speaker race, you know, that'll unfold before the next Weekly Roundup podcast. But first, Cameron, let's start talking about the certification of the election. That was kind of the big national thing that occurred this week. How'd it go down? Well, relatively uneventful. It was surprising because, as everyone knows, last presidential certification had a really big hiccup in the storming of the Capitol. That's putting it lightly. And so comparatively, this one went incredibly smoothly. And it only lasted about 30 minutes. I was expecting to lock in, wait to hear objections and all sorts of things.

But nope, went pretty smooth the entire time. And the reason for that is because they changed a lot of rules for how the process takes place. They updated the Electoral Count Act. Yeah. Yeah. And so really the vice president's job as the president of the Senate, it was really just to kind of oversee what was happening. There wasn't really any official administrative duties. So while Kamala Harris is up there asking for how each individual state was going to be casting their electoral college votes, she was just sort of overseeing the process. And one of the interesting things, like I mentioned,

there was no objections from Democrats, which is something that hasn't happened in a number of previous presidential certifications. So I saw that come up on CNN as I was watching some discussions about it. So I thought that was interesting to mention. Well, you know, a big part of that is just how sweeping the election was. It wasn't close. It wasn't close, right? Because, you know, a big part of that is just how sweeping the election was. It wasn't close. It wasn't close. Yeah. Right. Because, you know, everyone's making a big deal about Trump winning the popular vote first time since George W. Bush did. But he really had a big victory in the electoral college as well.

He picked up 312 votes compared to Harris's 226. So really this presidential electoral mandate, you know, maybe the Democrats in Congress understood that. They might've also been thinking like bring the temperatures down a little bit considering, you know, the last go around. Exactly.

Exactly. I think the entire political sphere across the entire country, and especially in the state could use bringing the temperatures down a bit. They could, but you're asking for a lot, Brad. I am asking for mountains to be moved, and it is a foolish request. I understand that. Yeah, but that's really the only update there was a relatively smooth process. It only lasted about 30 minutes, and now're just uh patiently waiting for january 20th well

and you know another process kind of the state version of this uh was also pretty straightforward the electoral college vote yeah um that might have happened a week last week i can't remember in december in december okay um matt knows that one pretty well. Yeah. I have a little bit of a history there. Yeah? You want to go into it at all? Okay. Just the very top line. I mean, you got to oversee the election.

Yes, I have served as chairman of the Electoral College in the past and got made fun of by Jimmy Kimmel. And that's my claim to fame, pretty much. But, yeah, it's a very interesting process. I was always fascinated with it from high school age growing up, reading about it in civics and all that sort of thing. And so, I don't know, I just kind of got a wild hair one day and decided I wanted to try and do it.

And it's an awesome responsibility and an amazing opportunity to play a part in the electoral role in the process and help make sure that the will of the people is reflected and ensure that all the documentation and everything is done correctly and go up. And your signature is kept on permanent public record in the National Archives. That's pretty cool. And so, you know, the constitutional process for it is very explicit. You know, all the different documentation that has to be done out and sent to the various different entities for the record keeping. So, you know, as chairman, you're the one who, you know, verifies all the vote, receives the vote, records it,

fills out all the required documentation, and, you know, certifies it and sends it on. So, yeah, it's a lot of fun. Interesting. Well, we have our own, you know, big vote coming up next week. We do. And maybe an election will be certified. I don't know, though. We don't know, though. But tell us what the heck is going on with the speaker space, because there's so many different things going on. So tell us what's happening.

Okay, so brief overview. Nobody knows what's going to happen next week. What day next week is it supposed to be? Tuesday. Tuesday. And the House will gavel in at noon. Things will start. As far as the process goes, they will initially, you know, they'll sway everybody in.

The Secretary of State will oversee things. They'll adopt temporary rules. Now, that might be an interesting fight if some amendments are tried to be tacked on, the temporary rules, because they have to adopt something to govern the process before they adopt the permanent rules a few days later, right? So this is in the House. Senate will be much quicker. And they can file amendments to those temporary rules believe so yes yes um so if if there's ever going to be

an attempt to try and amend those with something um uh cheeky it'll be this this time around so i don't know what that'll be there's a lot of speculation about all kinds of things being thrown around. But ultimately, they'll gavel in. They'll get sworn in. Then they will adopt temporary rules. Then I believe they'll adopt a resolution governing the election of the speaker. Then they will have the vote. And from there, who the hell knows what's going to happen.

Fine. Fine. Of course, you have – I'll just give the three candidates that are in the race. You have Republicans, David Cook, Republican from Mansfield, and then Dustin Burroughs from Lubbock. You have a Democrat, Ana Maria Ramos from Dallas. It's going to be one of the Republicans. Republicans are not going to elect a Democratic speaker when they are the majority. Now, the question is, which Republican do they back, right?

Burroughs has a large chunk of the, publicly a large chunk of the Democratic caucus. And Cook, so far publicly, has none. Well, publicly, from what we in the public know, what are the promises being made or maybe some of the concessions that are being made that help court Democrats to one candidate or the other? Is there certain things that Cook, his platform that he's running on that pushes Democrats away? Maybe something that Burroughs has said publicly that is bringing Democrats to his side on issues? How are these two candidates aligning themselves with these Democrats or pushing them away? Well, one of the biggest questions going into this was, what about Democratic chair appointments? Are you going to appoint minority party members as committee chairs? Cook has said flat out that's not happening.

Burroughs has said, he's not said that flat out, but he said we're going to have a vote, which I expect to pass, to prohibit the appointment of those chairs. So either way, I think Democratic chairs are gone. Okay. Unless you have a third candidate, which is something that's been talked about come up and promise that and um a third candidate that promises not to remove democrat chairs yes and okay a republican a republican okay yep um and mathematically how that would work you have to get 76 votes regardless cook's at about publicly around 60, I think, roughly. Republicans. Burroughs is at like 30-ish Republicans with 38 Democrats on his public list. Now, the whip counts are moving constantly, right? They are a moving target. Also, you never really know, as we saw in caucus, you never really know if what people are telling you is correct until you have a vote.

Right. Because you have members that are playing both sides that are noncommittal. And that's just how these things go. It's impossible to get the human nature out of these things. So both sides need to gain some votes in order to hit 76 from where they're currently at, at least on these public lists. Well, are we expecting Democrats to vote as a block in this speaker vote? Or could they splinter themselves between any number of candidates? You know, if they did do that, they would have the single largest coalition or block of votes because they have 62 Democrats.

They, however, are also fractured. Okay. Just as the Republicans are. So you have the 38-ish, probably slightly more Democrats voting for boroughs or supporting boroughs right now. You have some that I've heard are on Cook's camp but quietly right now or in Cook's camp. And he's making appeals on other things. Like we saw him suggest a, you know,

considering the possibility of switching public school funding to enrollment-based instead of attendance-based. That's something Democrats have wanted for a long time. He didn't say he would do that. He said we can consider it. Now we saw some criticism come out right after that of that suggestion. Hillary Hicklin, Republican freshman from Belton, she came out and she didn't direct this at Cook,

but she said, no way. Well, I'm not for that. I think Brian Harrison also was critical of that. So Cook's trying to get creative to find ways to bring Democrats to his side because he needs them. And that was always going to be the case. You have people talking about we need to elect a Republican without soliciting any Democratic support. And in an ideal world from a Republican side, they have enough to do that. But they're so fractured.

They do have enough votes. Yes. They have 88 votes. Yeah. But it's so fractured that that was never going to happen. You have to have Democratic votes. You just simply have to. It's a mathematical reality.

Until you get all the Republicans on the same page, you're not going to get that. Well, that was, from my understanding, because you've been following this much more closely and you have all the details, but that was sort of the idea of the Republican caucus nominating a speaker candidate, right? But what's sort of the update with that? Because there is something going on with a tour of different cities in Texas. What's the update on what's going on with that?

So I wrote a whole piece on this. If you want all the details, you can check that out. It's on the website. This bylaw establishing a kind of a directive for Republicans to unite behind whoever is selected in caucus as speaker. That was put in place. to power years earlier where he had, you know, I think it was including himself, 12 Republicans voting with either the entirety or almost the entirety of the Democratic caucus and securing a speakership. Now, by the time the voting happened, it was like 150 to nothing because these things tend to snowball where once the members see the writing on the wall they go and

sign their name to the speaker because they don't want all their stuff to die during session um makes sense and we're just not in that reality right now you have either way this goes you have a large chunk of members that are going to oppose the speaker to the hilt um they're going to blow things up as much as they possibly can um you know i i talked to or i i was you mentioned the tour ken paxton attorney general along with texas gop chair abraham george were doing a tour this week where they stopped in various members districts uh to try and pressure them to vote for Cook. Right. And one of those, Brent Money, an incoming Republican from Greenville, I believe, he said flat out there's two options. It's either Cook or it's calamity.

So this group of members, a larger group than we have seen in a long time, either way this goes, because if Cook wins, you will have those substantially backing boroughs, in this case, wanting to blow things up as well. So it's going to happen regardless. And that is one reason why this thing isn't settled yet. Normally this is settled before caucus and so back to the caucus um side of things each of the last uh two speakers phelan and bonin announced a list of support to win to above 76 before the caucus vote even occurred and so they had they went into caucus being essentially the speaker elect because they had the votes.

For like two seconds. Huh? You're talking about this go-round? No, no. Okay, sorry. These are the past examples. Okay, yeah. So that occurred.

And so, of course, they won the caucus endorsement by a lot. Yeah. And then they went to the floor and won by even more because almost everybody joined them, right? Yep. This time, though, Burroughs announced with a very, very, very narrow majority, 76 on his list that he put out. And that one lasted for only two seconds. That one lasted for only two seconds because you immediately had like five republicans and one democrat say i never agreed to be on this list and so since then neither candidate has put out a public list of support

and you know in hindsight put this in my newsletter this week and hindsight shows putting a list out in the first place especially the way this thing's going where this is a public fight this is no longer just an inside baseball behind closed doors fight. It's a mistake. Do not put out a list of support because that's giving the other side pressure points to try and pick away at your support. And so the way this has gone, the speaker's race is changing for good, probably. First of all, the public is more aware of this than they have been in a

long time ever ever second things like that maneuvers like declaring i have the votes two months out it's probably not going to be done again doesn't work anymore doesn't work anymore so at least in this in this environment you you know, things can always change. Right. But well, so you talked a little bit about the process next week, the gaveling and the adopting of these temporary rules. Is there going to be an opportunity for all the candidates to step up on the floor and give a speech? and then is there a back and forth between the candidates and members where they're questioned publicly on some of their stances? Is that part of this process? There won't be any questioning.

There will be speeches, though, and there will be nominating speeches. I think last time you had, I forget, the members who gave speeches on behalf of Phelan, but I remember Nate Schatzlein gave one on behalf of Tony Tenderholt. Okay. And so you'll have that occur. They'll give their case, why I'm supporting, and then they'll get into the vote.

And normally that's pretty straightforward. This time it's not looking like that. Maybe something changes. Who knows? But once we get to that point the rule the um the resolution that has been adopted to govern the speaker's race will be important because those are the parameters by which we have the vote so like if we all have currently three candidates um There are three options, voting options, on the voting board. An I, nay, and P and V white light. And so each of those candidates will get a certain option.

Like let's say Cook gets I, Burroughs gets nay, Ramos gets P and V, right? And so that'll show you the total. But if you have a fourth candidate in there. What does that mean? For the lights. First of all, it means we're probably going to have paper ballots because there's too many options to have on the board. So that's going to string things out so much longer.

In a situation where we're probably already going to have a strung out process because it is very possible this thing goes to multiple votes and we could have candidates nominated on the floor i mentioned the nominating speeches that's where this would probably happen i'm not sure if we reached a deadlock if they they would just start over, maybe that would happen. We haven't been here before. Right. Well, and a lot of the discussion I've seen online, too, about the House speaker vote is people want to know how their representative votes on the issue. Like, is that possible during this?

Is it secret ballot? Is it public? Like, is that something that needs to be adopted as an amendment, as part of the temporary rules? How does that process work? So back in 09, I think it was either 07 or 09, Charlie Guerin, Republican from Fort Worth, offered an amendment establishing a secret ballot vote for Speaker. And his amendment would have held the votes in abeyance until committee chairmanships were released, committee assignments were released. That way Speaker can't punish members who vote against him.

There's been a lot of talk about a secret ballot kind of thing happening. This time I don't see it happening, chiefly because everyone's watching for it which means you're going to have a vote on this anyway so let's say a secret ballot does amendment does pass well the de facto speaker vote that all these people wanting to primary members will use is on a motion to table that amendment. And so you're going to have names recorded regardless. So there's no point in trying to avoid the vote for speaker, really. Yeah. Right?

At least that's my kind of logic here. I mean, it gives them something to try and argue over or frame. Yeah, but is that pretzel-twisting logic really something you can sell? If you're explaining yourself on the campaign trail, you're losing, right? I mean, I don't know. Some of these guys are really good with words and stuff. Fair, fair. So, you know, I've heard speculation that this thing could drag on

for two days to three days, which we've never seen before. Wow. Because things are that divided. And, you know, in that article, I run through all the arguments about the caucus process and what, you know, the arguments for and against where the especially the Burroughs camp is criticizing it even being a factor to begin with because of how many violations have occurred. I mentioned Tinder Holt. Well, Phelan won the caucus. Tinder Holt still took it to the floor, right? That's one example that the Burroughs camp is citing. Now, the other side says, we didn't violate it. We stuck with it. So let's just stick with the rule we've all, you know,

at least agreed nominally agreed to. Right. Regardless, it doesn't, it doesn't matter because what matters is getting to 76. Yep. And this, the caucus rule only matters insofar as members are willing to,

to follow it and outside forces are willing to enforce it via a primary. Primaries are already happening regardless of how these boroughs guys vote. Oh, yeah. They're not saving themselves at this point from a well-funded primary challenge, right? Which doesn't help resolve the division. Right, right. resolve the um the uh division right right um yeah this is kind of the i think the midpoint of this long drawn out and we call it the civil war right um this is a this is kind of an apex in terms of the significance of changes that can be implemented if it goes one way or the other oh yeah but we're still going to be in a primary fight in 26 we're already talking about it the significance of changes that can be implemented if it goes one way or the other.

Oh, yeah. But we're still going to be in a primary fight in 26. We're already talking about it. Ken Paxton's tour that I went to a couple stops on, you know what it reminded me of? Hmm. A U.S. Senate campaign tour. Oh. And he drew lots and lots of people.

They were very big crowds. Yeah. Lots of buzzing about that lately. Well, did he say anything about that? I'm sure because I saw him do some press afterwards taking questions. You were there. Did he say anything interesting during those press? Well, he's saying this is about the speakership and reforming the House. And I asked him if there's any third option if Cook can't get there that he would support.

He said it's not about me, not about my choice, whoever the Republican. I just want a speaker that Republicans elect. I think I saw where he also took a question from another reporter about, you know, if they coalesced behind Burroughs, would you support him? And he had an interesting response. Yeah, what did he say to that? If I recall correctly, and I've slept since I read the tweet yesterday, but it was, you know, that he would, you know,

if that's who they ended up going with, he would be supportive of it, not that that was his personal pick. Another thing he said, he was asked about supporting Cook, despite Cook being one that voted to impeach. And he said, Cook apologized to me. And it's watering the bridge at this point. But we need someone who's going to reform the House. Now, this public pressure campaign has worked on some, but it's also hurting them

with others. And I saw State Rep Candy Noble put out a very lengthy email this week detailing all of this. She said ultimately she's supporting Cook and that's not changing. Notably, she's his deskmate and so they're pretty close and um she is sticking by him um you know caveat is when everything hits the fan what do people do who knows right but um her whole first half of the email was talking about these outside forces a big part of it is the texas gop that's sending in mailers and text messages battering these republicans you know a lot of these republicans hate that even if they're on the uncooked side candy noble is one of them and there are members that were gettable for that side of things that are no longer gettable gary gates is one he said it explicitly because they don't like this outside haranguing in what is normally an inside process.

Yeah, that's been really the most surprising thing for me is how public this has gotten. You don't really, an outside observer wouldn't normally think the election of the state house speaker is going to be a big deal but it's turned into a massive issue we've even seen donald trump jr yep way in on it has been slapped on mailers and sent out yep um it's being cited in tweets um this this whole public pressure campaign has worked in some regard. It's also backfiring. The question is, which one weighs more, right? It's going to play out the way it plays out. Yeah.

Some of these lawmakers are interesting in that, or the dynamics going on in here, and that the more pressure they lay on, the deeper they're digging in and resisting. Just last night, I don't know, I can't remember, did we mention this yet, the Cody Harris complaint? I did not mention that. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, but, well, you're probably more up on it than I am, but, you know, just kind of an example of how it is continuing to dig in

and get more intense. Yep. Harris filed a – he's a republican from palestine he's one of the republicans who had one of these paxton george events targeting them over the past week i filed a complaint with the tec against abraham george the text gop chair, alleging that he's threatening them to vote a certain way in the speaker's race. And there's basically a statute in there that's relating to like coercion of the speaker's vote. And it's a very long wordy statute. Well, my take on all of these rules regarding the speaker race, it's all pretty stupid because this entire thing is about horse trading. It's about, you know, soft quid pro quos.

That is generally how this thing works. And there's no getting that out of it. Well, which would normally happen behind the scenes. Yes. But now it's happening in the public eye. Yes. Hey, Cam, do in the public eye. Yes. Hey, Cam, do you think we could convince Mac to come up with some Texas merch with some Brad quotes on it? Like, it's all stupid.

I've been saying that a lot lately. I think that would be a hot selling idea. But, like, it's trying, these rules are generally entirely unenforceable. This complaint is probably going to go nowhere. Yeah. That's what I'm wagering anyway. But, hey, we have this whole fury news cycle over it. Oh, yeah.

Something that is just – Yeah, like it has snowballed and now everybody's bashing over everybody. Well, we see, you know, George, the messaging they put out immediately was, this state house member wants to imprison me. I'm like, come on. Now, it's effective messaging. It works. It does what he wants it to do. I mean, it's true.

He is filing a technically, like, I think it's a felony complaint, you know, against him. So it's not. There's a kernel of truth to it, but it struggles when it butts up with reality yeah this thing's going nowhere you know the tec is not going to do a thing about this yeah and you know that's the whole purpose of the tec you know we saw that texas court of criminal appeals uh ruling not too long ago where they said you know the legislature as imperfect as theEC is, is this buffer administrative agency to review these election and electoral-related criminal law one of these very thin complaints doesn't go turn somebody's world upside down who's being involved in the civic process. So if the TEC does not allow a criminal complaint to go forward, then a district attorney can't act on it.

I'll wrap this segment up with one thing. So one of the pieces I wrote this week, there's a lot on the website about the speaker's race one of them was five important questions about this to consider one of them is how does this affect the rest of session does this tire everyone out

and everyone is already tired out of special sessions such that we just get everything done and get out of Austin on sine die, or does this further entrench the divisions and the discord such that this session goes to hell in a handbasket? I don't know which way it's going to go.

You know, we're going to have, like I mentioned earlier, we're going to have a large group of people blowing stuff up, whichever way this goes. So that would indicate one way, the fact that everyone's sick and tired of this, you know, multiple special sessions and constantly being at each other's throats,

that would indicate the other way, right? Which one wins out, I have no idea. But Tuesday is going to be the start of it all rather the continue the start of the continuance of it all um it's been a long time coming and we've seen a lot of things ebb and flow in this race speaker feeling dropping out being one of the biggest right um the scales are going to tip one way or the other, and there's really no way to know until they start voting. Well, that was a great breakdown. There's still a lot of unanswered questions going into next week,

but I think you just laid out a lot of the possibilities, the process, and how we sort of got here. Yeah. And the issues with um this movement of the vote being now a public fight you know something that is unusual for a texas house speaker's uh vote yep but um anything else um i mean it's kind of similar to what we saw with the senate majority leader all of this is becoming public? It's just the trend we're on. All right, Cameron, let's move on. We beat that horse to death. So there were a couple appointments made on Texas' highest court, highest civil court, Matt. You were about to correct me on

that. But they were pretty big. Yeah. What happened? Well, Abbott selected James Sullivan to fill the empty seat on the Supreme Court of Texas and elevated Justice Jimmy Blacklock to its new chief justice. And just for some background, Blacklock, he secured a second term as a SCOTUS justice back in November, picked up 59% of the vote. I believe you wrote a story for us about that. Yeah, place two on the Supreme Court. Yeah. And he was first appointed to the court by Abbott in 2017 after serving as general counsel to the governor since 2015. So I mentioned that because James Sullivan, he was also a general counsel to Abbott, this starting in 2021. Prior to that,

he served as assistant solicitor general of Texas and a law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He is also a graduate of Harvard Law School. So not some schlub here. He has a tremendous background. But the interesting thing that I wanted to bring up and hear your thoughts, Matt, having justices on the Texas Supreme Court that have these close ties to Governor Abbott, what does that sort of relate to the public? What does that sort of mean for certain cases that might come in front of the court that involve the state of Texas that might be, you know, against Governor Greg Abbott with former general counsel to him sitting on Texas Supreme Court? What does that sort of mean? Well, my immediate reaction is that general counsel to the governor is a great route to if you want to serve on state supreme court eventually no i shouldn't say that

um you know it's the proof's in the pudding you know it's it's how the court rules you know it's it's you know you kind of have to take you know a culmination of cases and look and see you know there's going to be instances where you know maybe the governor's office is interested in a case before it you know and sometimes you know they get votes that are in their favor, and sometimes they don't get votes that are in their favor. And I think with this current court, I think you've seen a lot of very impartial justices that are following the law, and there really hasn't been anything that stood out to me as yeah as something that's an indicator of you know partiality or anything sure

yeah yeah well and one thing I'll mention here as well is Sullivan's name has recently been in the public discourse as it relates to the separation of powers with the Robert Roberson case because Sullivan he was the one as Abbott's general counsel filing the amicus brief regarding how the subpoena was issued and how the governor has the constitutional power to grant reprieves in capital cases. So if people say the name James Sullivan, if they are familiar with it, that's probably why they've heard it in recent months. You also have some of the jurists on the court, like Justice John Devine, who was not appointed by Abbott. He won his seat outright, working his way up to the judicial ladder,

I think, from a Harris County district court. and you'll see them rule the same way as you know people who have come on from the court from Abbott's office so you know that to the casual observer I guess maybe that's a metric that you can you know see that okay you know these guys in agreement are in agreement here and not just because you know he came over from abbott's office right um isn't it i saw somewhere on twitter that abbott is now appointed what two-thirds of the court's justices i think that's correct and this is also his first chief Justice appointment. And the whole reason for this musical chairs are moving upwards or restructuring of the court that we just saw is because, you know, the giant of the Texas legal system, Chief Justice Nathan Heck, just retired under Texas law.

I think it's 75. Yeah. 75 is the magic number that you have to retire. In the year that you turned 75, right? Yes. I think that's it. Because he didn't have to retire as soon as he turned 75. At the end of the year. Yeah, so he had to retire at the end of this past year. So that created a vacancy in that position that Abbott had to fill. And so he elevated one of the associate judges, Blacklock, to that seat, which created the vacancy.

And so who is the one serving the rest of Heck's term? Is that Blacklock? Blacklock. Okay. And then did Blacklock just get elected, reelected? He did. Okay. So Sullivan's got the whole.

From what I understand, and there's this, I had to read it several times under the Texas Constitution and filling vacancies. It's really funny because when a vacancy is created on a state court that's filled by gubernatorial appointment, if he makes an appointment during the regular session or a special session, it's subject to confirmation by the Texas Senate. But if he makes it during the interim, which technically we're still in the interim, he does not have to have immediate Senate review. But then I looked at it and it looks to me like the process follows that they'll still have to have Senate review during this regular session. And unless the Senate rejects them, they'll continue to hold over until the next general election. So both Blacklock and the new justice, Sullivan, they'll have to run in 2026. Even if they're, is that the same if they're confirmed by the Senate?

Yes. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Whichever comes first, basically. Gotcha. That they would have to face the Senate? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Whichever comes first, basically. Gotcha. That they would have to face the next general election. Gotcha.

Okay. Well, Matt, let's move on to another court-related thing. You sat in on the investiture for a pretty notable set of judges in a new court. Give us the details. Yeah, it was an amazing opportunity for timing, you know, to be here in Austin, doing some work at the Texan and also to be able to go cover the investiture for the new 15th Court of Appeals. This is the first statewide intermediate appellate court that has been created by the Texas legislature since the

1960s. So for those that don't know, the legislature has the power to create by statute intermediate appellate courts and various district trial courts, as well as county courts at law. But it's a power that it rarely exercises. And this one is very unique in that all of the other appellate courts exercise jurisdiction over regional districts, whereas the 15th Court of Appeals exercises a overlapping statewide jurisdiction, and it has exclusive jurisdiction over matters that involve state agencies, commissions, boards, predominantly civil matters. After its creation in the ADF legislature, legislation that was spearheaded by Senator Joan Huffman and former State Representative Andrew Murr, Abbott appointed Scott Brister as the chief justice

and Scott Field and April Ferris to the court. Now, the investiture ceremony that was held wasn't the official beginning of the court. The court's already had a number of cases before it. I think they've held three oral arguments, and they've had one case that was kind of a major high profile case and that was the attorney general's challenge to the Texas state fair's ban on concealed carry. And of course you saw all three judges reject that challenge so they appealed up to the Texas Supreme Court and the Texas Supreme Court concurred And I think that was a unanimous concurrence as well. So that challenge failed. But that was kind of a trial by fire to get this hot potato Second Amendment, well, gun-related case in their laps, you know, to rule on after being sworn in. And so the investiture ceremony, it was packed of justices from the Texas Supreme

Court, Court of Criminal Appeals, judges from around the state, a lot of notable members of the Texas legal community there. The chamber was very full. It was a very interesting ceremony. And it, you know, essentially represented the official kickoff for the court. And Chief Justice is also notable because Chief Justice Jimmy Blacklock kind of gave his first speech as Chief Justice and welcomed the 15th Court of Appeals into the Texas judicial system as an institution of the judicial system. There's been a lot of investitures in the last week and a half. I think the CCA judges had theirs earlier this week. Three new incoming. Yep. So a lot of movement there in the courts. And as you said, things are kind of now formally getting kicked off. A lot of new courts, new faces in those courts. And of course, new cases on the horizon. Two new, you know, change up over the Texas

Supreme Court. Of course, we have a new presiding judge of the Court of Criminal Appeals, Justice Schenck, and he is the only one of the new three incoming that have prior judicial experience. The other two associate judges on the Court of Criminal Appeals, of course, include Gina Parker and Lee Finley. And they all three won their primaries defeating incumbents, kind of that unprecedented surge in the primary that was spearheaded by Attorney General Ken Paxton. Thank you, Matt. A lot to follow there. Cameron, over to you. There is an update on a story you wrote, I believe last month month about a school district. Yeah, so like you mentioned, this was a couple weeks ago. We became alerted to this news that Canyon ISD, via an email,

had said they were removing, quote, the full text of the Bible from school library shelves. Obviously, this caused a big uproar. We saw quite a number of responses from different media outlets, but most pointedly from Representative Jared Patterson. And why Jared Patterson? Well, because he was the author of HB 900, otherwise known as the Reader Act. And the Reader Act sets the standard for library content that prohibits books that have instances of sexual conduct, or content, rather.

And that was one of the reasonings why the superintendent of Canadian ISD had said they were removing the Bible. Jared Patterson responded with a statement saying that the Bible does not contain sexually explicit content. And so apparently Canyon ISD took that feedback from Jared Patterson and re-evaluated their library standards practices and have reinstated the Bible in their school library. So pretty big update there. Also, Jared Patterson, he has filed a number of new bills related to HB 900 to try and help clarify and solidify some of the issues that have arisen since its original passage last legislative session. So just a bit of an update there on a past story yeah and if you can hear any background noise that is winston getting up from the ground

after having crop dusted us for about 30 minutes podcasts to now get up and make noise so he is i think he's protesting not getting uh one three several days' dog awards that was put out. He is very, very upset about that. So he is letting us know because we did it. We are bearing the sufferings. The consequences. The consequences of it. Okay, Matt, let's go back to you. President-elect Donald Trump has said he

wants to see numerous federal agency headquarters moved out of D.C. during his second term. And now a Texas congressman has filed a bill to do just that. What's going on? Yes, that's right. Congressman Keith Sell filed legislation to move the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, commonly known as the Border Patrol, to Texas. If the bill is passed, it would direct the Department of Homeland Security secretary, which I think Trump nominated Governor Christine Noem to be, if she's confirmed, to work with the Texas General Land Office, which is headed by Commissioner Don Buckingham, to find the best location suited for the new agency headquarters so that it will be in a better position to manage the crisis at the southern border.

We first saw efforts to move federal agencies, their headquarters from the D.C. area during the first Trump administration when President Trump ordered the Bureau of Land Management to be moved to Colorado, a decision that was later undone by President Joe Biden. Now Trump is planning to ramp up that plan again during his second admin, promising to, quote, shatter the deep state by moving agencies out of the nation's capital. While Trump has not yet weighed in on self-spill and whether or not he supports it, or I don't even know if they need it technically, the legislation is in line with what the incoming administration says they're going to really ramp up and make good on. So it'll be interesting to see where that bill goes now that we have a GOP trifecta

trying to move the new administration's agenda along. There's always a lot of proposals like this that are kind of window dressing. Now, there's a purpose for it, right? Yeah. But we see these things floated constantly and none of them have gained traction so far. But as you said, the environment might be conducive now.

We did see him do it with BLM during the first administration. Border is a big thing, of course, for Trump. And this one, I wouldn't doubt it if we actually see this one happen. It'll be interesting to see where they decide to put CBP headquarters, whether or not they decide to go close along the border where it's right there all we know is the question is does texas want it like if they're if they choose texas for this which has been the face of the border situation does the state want it because that means whenever you have a especially for state republicans whenever you have a democrat back in

the white house oh yeah you're gonna have a Democrat back in the White House, you're going to have a Democratic-run Border Patrol. And if they're handling things the way the Biden administration has until very recently, does that cause friction? Well, you could see it as causing friction, yes, but it also could allow for greater oversight. Maybe we'll see an emergency session of another attempt on the Texas Border Patrol. Oh, that'll happen. That'll be debated.

Since we're getting CBB headquarters here, why don't we re-up that bill that would create a Texas Border Patrol that can work hand-in-hand with them? I think Briscoe Cain already filed that. And depending on which way the speaker's race goes, Cain might either be very influential, be able to move a lot, or not influential a lot. It depends. Whichever way this goes, it all depends on how also he recovers.

But maybe I'm wrong, but I thought it was him that filed that. And I'm sure he's not the only one. You're going to have various others. You're probably going to have a chamber priority bill on that. So whoever gets that, that's going to be the one to watch. I was thinking about cleared the Senate but did not clear the House. Is that correct? Yes, that was the one that died on a point of order on a House deadline.

Yes. It was a House priority bill. It was HB 20. It actually didn't clear the Senate because it didn't get over there. Who carried that? Matt Schaefer i'll bring this up because i don't know if we're going to get to the twittery section um but you're talking about cbp in texas border protection unit possibly uh being created by the texas legislature through a certain bill being passed. But Axios actually published a recent scoop about how Trump is going to be issuing some

executive orders once he assumes office. Did you see this? Yeah. And one of the interesting things that stood out to me was that more aggressively using a part of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows some state and local law enforcement to assist in some of the duties of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, otherwise known as ICE. So that's coordination between state law enforcement and a federal agency like ICE, possibly this border protection unit being a expansion of oversight. Well, they actually used to have a program where they would essentially

deputize state and local law enforcement with immigration authorities. I can't remember all the details of that. Of course, you did not see the Biden administration do that at all. But that is a thing that has occurred in the past. And I think I've heard that actually floated for this upcoming administration. So. Yeah, I just thought that was interesting to bring up that Trump is thinking about how this coordination, along with Stephen Miller, of course, one of the appointees Trump is making to his cabinet, who is very much a hawk on the border. Yeah, you see Stephen Miller on policy. Kristi Noem had a DHS. Tom Homan is a border czar. And then we just saw one of the heads of CBP named, he was working with TPPF and his name

escapes me at the moment, but that was one of the notable Texas, chief of the border patrol or commissioner of border patrol. I don't recall that. It was a TPPF. But those are just names that people are going to become. They're well-known names in the political world, but they're going to become much well-known names because of the increased enforcement that's going to occur under the Trump administration. Rodney Scott. Regarding the border. So, yeah, just interesting stuff there. All right, let's move on. Matthew. Yes, sir. A new federal law is imposing reporting requirements on small businesses,

and it's facing a battery of legal challenges. Tell us about the Corporate Transparency Act. So the Corporate Transparency Act is a new law that was passed under the National Defense Authorization Act. And it essentially, it was sold as giving law enforcement a tool to help prevent corporations like LLCs, etc., etc., from conducting facilitating criminal activity such as money laundering by requiring these small businesses to report to the U.S. Treasury regularly. Anybody who has a substantial interest in the business or controlling power over it, et cetera, et cetera, such as name, date of birth, address, identification, a whole battery of requirements. And the failure to comply with the law has also carried some pretty hefty penalties, such as $500 a day fine and the potential for like two years of incarceration for some sort of criminal offense.

Since it went into effect right before these reporting deadlines came into effect this month, it got hit with a battery of legal challenges, including another one that I believe you reported on already, Cameron. Well, this latest one was brought by the Texas Public Policy Foundation and their litigation arm on behalf of two Texas residents in East Texas, Samantha Smith and Robert Means. basically Smith owns a small business, an LLC, that was in charge of like an Airbnb rental, that sort of stuff. And then he had one that was in charge of an apartment building or commercial business, both very, very small businesses, et cetera. And they argued that, A, the Corporate Transparency Act was a violation or an abuse of Congress's power under the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause and that it caused them irreparable harm because it was expensive and burdensome in complying with the onerous requirements of it. And an East Texas federal judge agreed with them yesterday, issuing an opinion and issuing a preliminary injunction as well as a nationwide stay blocking the enforcement for everybody.

So that's one of like five ongoing lawsuits. I think there was a federal court in Alabama that ruled that it was constitutional, but then these two federal courts in Texas have ruled that it is not. Obviously, this is shaping up to be a, you know, going to the Supreme Court issue, Commerce Clause issue, and what powers Congress has. But notable court victory for TPPF. Of course, they have a litigation arm that we regularly see, you know, being involved in a number of major constitutional issues on behalf of people

who cannot ordinarily afford to litigate that sort of thing. So it'd be interesting to see, keep an eye on this case as it works its way up the appellate ladder, which it's going to. Yeah, certainly. Thanks, Matt. Last one we're going to hit today, Cameron, is about a joint committee about effects of social media on children. How'd that go this week? It was very interesting. I listened in on this, and this joint committee, it was headed up by co-chairs, Senator Brian Hughes, Rep. Jared Patterson, and they had mentioned that they wanted to bring more attention, more focus to this issue about how social media is having what they really brought brought up a lot these negative impacts on minors especially

here in texas they brought a number of expert witnesses to provide testimony one of them a pediatrician in houston who was spoke who spoke quite a bit about the addictive nature of social media use there was another expert witness who doubled down on that addictive nature of social media use. There was another expert witness who doubled down on that addictive element of social media and also talked about the effects of what he called fleeting content and how it sort of coaxes people, not just minors, but adults as well, he mentioned, into really just staying on these social media platforms for hours and hours and hours. There was other expert witnesses who provided some almost these personal stories about how social media has had negative impacts on them and the people around them. So it was very interesting to see how serious the Texas legislature is taking the effects of social media on minors. You know, we've already seen the Scope Act, which was passed,

which is about how these digital service providers enter into agreements with minors. There's been a number of bills related to social media use by minors already filed. And we've already seen a question regarding oversight of social media by different state governments, most notably Net Choice v. Paxton, which did not rule in favor of the state government's actions. That was actually sent back down to the Fifth Circuit Court for further review. But social media, its effects on children, adults, their oversight of certain content, that's going to be a continuing conversation going into the 89th session. Now, they'll probably put out a report on their findings, right? But usually those things have recommendations for policy. Was there any policy recommendations floated in this hearing?

Nothing specifically that I can speak to off the top of my head. But like I mentioned, there has been a number of pieces of legislation already filed. Like I think I mentioned it here. Yeah, Patterson has already filed a bill for the upcoming session that would prohibit anyone under 18 from using social media platforms. So something like that. We saw one file from State Rep. Ellen Trox-Clair about similarly aligned prohibiting phones in schools. Right. You know, those are two of kind of a broader set of things that will probably be, you know, at least looked at. Yeah. And it's sure to lead to a lot of debate because there's the

issue of government encroachment and then freedom of access to social media. So there are people, whether it be if they're on the political left or political right, who view these issues differently. So like I said, there's there's sure to be a robust debate around a lot of these issues differently. So like I said, there's sure to be a robust debate around a lot of these issues, especially we haven't seen yet the social media companies themselves send representatives down to provide testimony. But if there's going to be further legislation proposed

and probably passed in the upcoming session, then I'm sure we're going to see a lot more involvement from the social media companies in the state of Texas to try to block some of these bills. But we have seen them pull back and concede some of the things that have been brought up. You know, we saw Mark Zuckerberg. He did come out recently about some of the content moderation policies regarding viewpoint. They're going to pull back some of the fact checkers. But this was a couple of months ago speaking in front of a congressional committee where he talked about some of the different things they have

attempted to do to curtail the sexually explicit content, the minor targeting content on their platform. So there is this push and pull that is occurring with these social media giants because of the public pressure from the pressure from state governments. So it's an ongoing conversation. Well, we saw social media companies were invited to this hearing and they did not show up. Right.

So it tells you what they think, at least right now, I think. Yeah, but if state governments are going to be allowed to have more autonomy with how each individual state is going to be able to regulate a social media user for accessing the social media platforms, we'll probably see the social media companies themselves become more involved in state legislation. Yep.

All right. With that, we're going to skip Twitter because we've been going on for a while. Sorry, Matt. Yep. All right. With that, we're going to skip Twittery because we've been going on for a while. Sorry, Matt. Yeah. Thanks for joining. And we'll see you on the other side of the opening day of the 89th legislative session. Thank you to everyone for listening.

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