The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - January 13, 2023

Episode Date: January 13, 2023

Register for the 88th Session Kickoff: https://thetexan.regfox.com/88th-session-kickoff Get a FREE “Fake News Stops Here” mug when you buy an annual subscription to The Texan: https://go.thetexan.news/mug-fake-news-stops-here-2022/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=weekly_roundup 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: The beginning of the Texas Legislature’s 88th regular session The changes coming to the Texas Senate for the sessionDade Phelan handily defeating Tony Tinderholt for the Texas House speakershipComptroller Glenn Hegar’s projected budget surplus growing from $27 to $33 billionPhelan’s list of priorities for the legislative session over the next 140 daysThe Texas House adopting rules that do not ban or restrict Democratic committee chairsGov. Greg Abbott announcing over 300,000 illegal aliens arrested via Operation Lone StarAbbott supporting the ERCOT market redesign and his opinion on getting the Legislature’s inputTexas Republicans’ criticism of President Biden’s El Paso visit to the southern borderA Texas Republican filing articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas

Happy Friday, folks. Senior Editor Mackenzie DeLulo here, and welcome back to the Texans' weekly Roundup podcast. This week, the team discusses the beginning of the Texas Legislature's 88th regular session. The changes coming to the Texas Senate. Dade Phelan handily defeating Tony Tenderholt for the Texas House Speakership. Comptroller Glenn Hager's projected budget surplus growing from $27 to $33 billion. Phelan's list of priorities for the legislative session over the next 140 days. The Texas House adopting rules that do not ban or restrict Democratic committee chairs. Governor Greg Abbott announcing over 300,000 illegal aliens arrested via Operation Lone Star. Abbott supporting the

ERCOT market redesign and his opinion on getting the legislature's input. Texas Republican's criticism of President Biden's El Paso visit to the southern border. And a Texas Republican filing articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. As always, if you have questions for our team, DM us on Twitter or email us at editor at the texan.news. We'd love to answer your questions on a future podcast. Thanks for listening and enjoy this episode. Well, howdy, folks. Mackenzie here with Hayden, Brad, and Matthew. We had a giant week in news, and I'm excited to jump into all things session.

But before we start, I came home from my honeymoon, which was a wonderful time, to a gift on my desk, Bradley, from your grandmother. Now, for listeners who may not remember, it's been a long time, and it's maybe even mentioned two or three times. But you're- You have a feud with my grandma, which is really kind of weird on your part on my part you keep you know going at this

but hey apparently an olive branch has been issued well i and by keep going at this you mean not talk about it for months yes correct but regardless i came home and there was this very sweet bag gift on my desk. I opened it and I was like, who left me a gift? And it was a framed picture of Brad's dog, Winston, who is one of my favorite living creatures on this planet. And oh gosh, I should have brought the picture in so I could read the note. But it said, since my owner does not have an Instagram, here is a one-time Winston Graham. And it was a little picture of Winston as a young pup. but it said since Brad, so since my owner does not have an Instagram, here is a one-time Winston Graham. And it was a little picture of Winston as a young pup.

And now I have it just sitting on my desk and your grandma wrote a sweet note and which I also still have. And so now thanks to your grandma, I have a very sweet picture of your dog who I qualify as my own sitting on my desk. So Mrs. Johnson, thank you very much for your sweet gift. Merry belated Christmas. a very sweet picture of your dog who i qualify as my own sitting on my desk so mrs johnson thank you very much for your sweet gift merry belated christmas and it made my it made my tuesday coming back to the office and receiving such a fun gift so i loved it i can't imagine why you

forgot about that because i told you i know you did and i told you i sent you a picture of it you you sent me a picture. Oh, I don't. Anyway, my memory is. Of the bag, not of what was in it. Okay. Okay. Yeah.

Well, I did not recognize the bag when I did return. A lot had happened since then. Really? What went down? Nothing at all. It's not like you changed your last name or anything. No. Nothing crazy happened whatsoever.

By the way, did you change your name on Twitter yet? No. But I think I'm going to do the whole like uh change my name because people don't like delulo such a it's just different it's so different so i'll probably put out a tweet that's like personal news change my last name here's a wedding picture and call it good did you file the paperwork to change your name yet no but do you kate this is we're getting so off track. It takes so much to change. I had no idea. That's what I've heard. I've never actually looked at the process.

Most of my friends who have say they do it like a year later. It requires so much work. We have all the other people, like we're legally married. Not just legally, but there's so many things that your name is on. Yes. You've got to go through the process. I mean. Well, and legally changing your name is on yes you've got to go through the process i mean well and legally changing your name is one part and then you have to change it on your driver's license and your passport and

your social security like everything it's it's a lot of work so i'll probably delay that a little bit i still haven't finished updating my address so yeah the name thing there are actually services you can buy online that will send you all the paperwork it'll like say okay here's everything you need to change your name on everything that exists which i might just end up doing instead of like going and scrounging all the government websites for everything or you could there's probably like a listicle somewhere probably that'll tell you it'll give you everything instead of having to pay for it yeah i'm not looking for my name is already my first name. People always get confused with spelling it.

And DeLulo is such a hard, like that's just difficult. But we'll figure that out at a later time. Regardless, we've talked too much about me. Let's get into the news for this week. Bradley, we're going to start with you, but we're all going to kind of talk through this beginning of the Texas legislature's 88th legislative session. A lot to jump into here. A lot happened, but it kicked off this week.

We've been looking forward to this since the last session ended. It's a very exciting time for us. Give us a brief overview, just starting off with the things to expect. So on Tuesday, the 150-member body gaveled in, gave their oath of office. The House elected a speaker, Speaker Phelan won the second term, and the Senate elected a president pro tempore, which was Senator Kelly Hancock

from the DFW area. And then the next couple days, they took care of their housekeeping measures, order of operations in their specific chambers and then the house handled their rules which we'll get into in a bit but just um basically getting their house in order before they hit the ground running on the actual uh policy and legislation that they will take up so they they have 140 days to complete their business before the session times out on signing die,

which is May 29th. For the first 30 days of session, committees, well right now committees aren't even formed yet, but for the first 30 days, committees may not even consider legislation, save for the governor's emergency items, which kind of get an exception to all these rules, whenever he names them.

And we don't know when that'll be. In last session, it was like February 1st, last day of January that he put this out. Somewhere in there, a few weeks in. Put those out. So probably about similar time. The inauguration for the governor is next week, and a lieutenant governor and so um this is all the

all the procedural things are getting in order at the moment um and then all bills save for a select few types must be filed by the 60th day of session which is set for march 10th after that point floor votes will begin happening and then it'll be a sprint to the various deadlines that are there. Second reading deadline, third reading deadline. And we'll start to see the House and Senate throwing stuff back and forth at each other. I'm excited for that. I'm excited to see the dynamic, particularly between the Speaker and the Lieutenant Governor this session to see what changes from last session.

There were some very big scuffles between the two chambers, particularly after the freeze. Constitutional carry was a big issue, and they had very different perspectives on how that all should go down. And the biggest issue this time is this massive surplus that they have. How do they spend it? How much do they spend? How much do they leave sitting in escrow in the savings account, basically?

It's going to be a big fight. A lot of different interests already come to the table for that. It's going to disappear pretty quickly. And that'll kind of be the umbrella issue for everything else below it. about policy this session, but it's not like we have a heartbeat bill looming or constitutional carry looming, even though that was kind of a late addition to the conversation last session. It's not like we have those big items. It's the budget. That's what people are talking about right now. Emergency powers, that's largely off the table. Post-COVID, that's not part of the

conversation anymore, where it was a huge topic of conversation last session. We'll see what ends up being the big ticket items. But as you said, right now, it's really the budget. Yeah. And things will change a lot. Everybody goes in with their expectations and you can bet that many of those are going to be thrown out the window at some point because that's how the legislature works in general, especially when they have this protracted session of 140 days,

and that's it. Absolutely. Legislature loves to be a heartbreaker. That's exactly right. Well, Matt, let's talk with you about the upper chamber of the legislature, the Senate. You'll be reporting from the Senate for the majority of the session. There are some new dynamics at play regarding the political structure of that body. Talk to us about that. Well, the midterm elections gave us some interesting results. And there's a couple of different ways that you can look at it. You can look at the partisan makeup of the chamber. You can look at the personalities of the members and then the procedures, the rules governing the chamber and how those elements play into it.

So the basic structure of things is the Senate's a 31-member body. Presently, Republicans have 19 seats in the majority, which is up from 18 last year with one new Republican coming in. There's also a bit of an interesting dynamic whenever you think about the procedures. While legislation passes the chamber on a simple majority vote, in order to bring a bill to the floor, it takes a supermajority. And the percentage, I guess I should say, of that supermajority is determined by the members whenever they vote to adopt the rules every session. So it's a, it's a majority vote that sets a super majority threshold on bringing a bill to the floor and that rule stays in place for the rest of the session. Uh, and the reason that they have that is because ordinarily, uh, I believe it's a constitutional mandate that says the Senate

will consider, uh, bills, uh, in the order that they're filed. So, bill 1, 2, 3, 4. In order to set an agenda that's outside how things were filed, there has to be a motion to suspend that rule and take a bill out of order. So, that's where that supermajority threshold comes into play in order to bring that bill to the floor and craft a calendar for the day. They need a supermajority. Last session, that number was lowered to 18 because all we had were 18 senators. This go around, we have 19. So the Republicans can comfortably bring a bill to the floor without obstruction. There was one other interesting part to play, which ties into the personality aspect of it, and that was last session we had State Senator Kel Seliger from West Texas, who was able to threaten to not give Patrick the votes to bring a bill to the floor, which could ultimately kill a bill.

So that gave him some leverage. And you ended up with some pretty tense moments last session between Seliger and Patrick. That ended up with Patrick endorsing a primary candidate for Seliger's seat in now state Senator Kevin Sparks. And Patrick, who was Trump's campaign chairman in Texas, lo and behold, President Trump made an endorsement in that race, which ultimately led to Seliger not running again. Fast forward, Sparks swept the election. And so overall, you have a much more friendly caucus, Republican caucus, to the lieutenant governor this session, in addition to a larger majority. Absolutely. It's a very different dynamic, this session. Thank you so

much, Matt. Hayden, we're coming to you. What you've called a largely symbolic race for the speakership ended without much or any real fireworks. How did the nomination of Representative Tony Tenderholt of Arlington for speaker play out? I call it symbolic because Dade Phelan and his family were already staged next to the press box, and he was waiting with a prepared victory speech. So it was symbolic in the sense that he already had the votes to be elected speaker, and it was unlikely that anything that was said on the floor the other day was going to change anyone's mind. But it was a message that Tenderholt, Representative Slayton, and Representative Schatzlein sent to the leadership that they intend to advance conservative priorities, and they intend to force the body to consider matters that are important to the grassroots.

The speaker vote was presided over by Secretary of State Jane Nelson, because of course they had not elected a presiding officer, so she filled that role. The primary argument for Phelan was that he is considerate of all points of view and that he leads the chamber differently than Congress functions. The argument against him, as we've talked about on this podcast before, is considerate of all points of view and that he leads the chamber differently than Congress functions. The argument against him, as we've talked about on this podcast before, was Representative Tenderholt and others opposing the appointment of Democratic committee chairs, which Brad is going to discuss later. Representative Slayton nominated Tenderholt and gave a speech criticizing Phelan for not passing enough conservative legislation

and slayton said democrats have quote created an environment where republicans believe we can only get a few wins each session end quote and tender hold in a speech of his own said quote the status quo remains because people want their power they want their committee chairmanships they want their So that is a summary of the speeches that were given. There were several speeches by Representative Angie Chin Button, Representative Cody Harris, and Democrat Tony Rose in support of Phelan. So a wide bipartisan base of support for Phelan and there were several speeches in support of him and as i said before representative schatzlein gave a speech in support of tinderholt as well did uh democrat tracy king also give a speech in support of phelan he did okay because he's that was a funny one also he goes uh how did it start out i always wonder how people find people to come up

here and give nomination speeches and here i am i. I don't know. He said something really that cracked up, I think, a lot of the folks watching. But the final vote, as you're saying, was pretty definitive, to say the least. It was 143 to 3 in favor of the incumbent speaker. What could this mean for the small number of lawmakers who did oppose him? Well, and you're correct that I wrote that here. That was the final count in the moment was 143 to 3. And later, I think it was updated a little bit, 145 to 3, something to that effect, because they have the opportunity to go back and change their vote in the journal. But Tenderholt and Slayton, as Brad is going to talk about, teamed up with Schatzlein during

the rules debate later. so they continued their coalition. And I will mention that Schatzlein's tone toward Phelan was considerably led the chamber in the conservative direction that the grassroots demand. Schatzlein framed it as more of him fulfilling a campaign promise, but he still said that he was supportive of Phelan's leadership and that he appreciated him. And it is notable that Tenderholt also said he appreciated Phelan's service to the chamber. Phelan did not visibly react to anything that was said. I happened to be sitting feet away from Phelan and his wife during the opening ceremony because where I was on the press box just happened to be right next to his family. So I was able to glance at Phelan a few times while Slayton and Tenderholt were giving their speeches. And he kept a straight

face for most of the time. He didn't really make any grimaces or faces like that. It was, like I said before, there weren't many fireworks. There were critical words exchanged, but there were no angry outbursts. There was no huge confrontation. The whole thing wrapped up pretty quickly, and Phelan won an overwhelming victory. And to your point about Tenderholt saying he also appreciated the speaker, I think this was one of the more civil challenges I've seen to an establishment candidate in any primary or speaker's race in a very long time. Even when you interviewed Tinder Holt, the day after he announced, the tone was very different like it was it's rare to hear a candidate speak

um in that way where he's like you know i you know our wives are friends this and that but like it really comes down to conservative priorities republican party priorities which is tinderhold's main talking point throughout the whole campaign just a very interesting tone when you don't see that very often in politics for better or for worse right it just was not as aggressive of a tone as we've seen in the past from these kinds of challenges um thank you for your coverage and it's so fun also to hear y'all's stories when you come back to the offices you're on the floor and able to watch it so close like that's a really fascinating dynamic as well okay folks if you haven't already heard the texan is hosting our first ever legislative kickoff event on january

24th here in aust. To start off this 88th legislative session, we're holding an all-day panel discussion on the hottest political topics of the day with some of the state's top lawmakers. Patriot subscribers get one free ticket, and premium subscribers can purchase a discounted ticket for $35. But don't worry, if you're not already subscribed to the Texan, tickets just went on sale to the general public for $75. Use the code ROUNDUP today and score a ticket at just $50 as a loyal podcast listener. For more information, go to thetexan.news forward slash kickoff. See you there. Brad, we saw a very sizable update to the budget surplus this week as we talked about the largest issue looming over the legislature as of late.

Give us those details. So Comptroller Glenn Hager gave his updated biennial revenue estimate the day before the legislature gaveled in, and it showed a more than $5 billion increase from the july estimate in total the state now expects to have 32.7 billion dollars in treasury surplus dollars and 27 billion in estimated estimated in the economic stabilization fund which serves as basically the state savings account um the texas legislature will now have to decide how much of that to spend and on what, as Hager has maintained throughout the last year and a half or so, when we've seen these huge numbers of consumption tax collections. He said that the drivers of these, of this record surplus are, um, two pronged one, the return of commerce after the pandemic's economic slowdown and its government shutdowns and then inflation which is driving the prices up which increases consumption taxes paid by consumers that means a lot of money available for the legislature to

spend if they so choose but they have said that they they don't plan to spend all of it um and that's really it uh that could be you know we we don't spend we spend uh you know 31 of the 32 billion that's available um but if they don't spend it all it could uh just sit in the treasury as balance um for the next time so that's kind of how they would bank this savings um if they have any yeah and i know the comptroller has a lot to say about all of this um real fast the comptroller remind us what the comptroller's role in all of this he's basically the state's chief fiscal officer um so he sounds the alarm bells he does the math yeah presented to the legislature he is constitutionally required to provide this before each legislative session by any by any old revenue estimate yep yep and uh that just

gives them it's basically a prognostication on what they have available to spend. And sometimes it's a lot like this, this year, sometimes it's not a lot and it ebbs and flows based on the economy and, um, and tax collections. And so because the state doesn't do property taxes or income taxes, they rely on consumption taxes or funding. And then that goes out into the massive budget that

we're going to have um overall i think it was um in the general fund they have estimated of course this could change they'll have 188 billion dollars to do something with um except for the cap that exists so well let's talk about that that. So Texas has that spending cap. How will the legislature spend this very large sum of money that goes well above that cap? Yeah, so the cap set by the Legislative Budget Board in December last year was 12.33%. Very complicated, these different caps,

because I think there's two or three different caps. There's the constitutional cap, which is this one. There was a stricter spending cap placed or passed in the 2021 session. But overall, it ties in a population and inflation percentage. Very complicated economics, but all that to say the amount they can spend without busting the cap is about $12.5 billion more than they spent in the last budget. Now, that's the starting point. There are some different proposals. We talked about what the lieutenant governor has kind of vaguely pointed to in passing constitutional amendments to get around the cap. I heard from multiple people a more concrete version of that,

which it would be creating this property tax cut fund, basically, that exists outside the general revenue fund that they would then use to compress rates, local rates, which is what they've been doing for the last couple sessions is compress, local rates. Which is what they've been doing for the last couple sessions is compressing the rates. That's how the bills go down relatively.

Obviously, it depends on what race your localities pass, but that has basically been the strategy, rather than just trying to overhaul the entire system. So, I was told by um an official with the comptroller's office that a similar maneuver to this occurred in 2013 when the legislature created the state water implementation fund which is money that exists

outside the general fund that they can use to fund infrastructure projects or water specifically so that's the general idea i have no idea if that's going to be the plan they move forward with but with the governor talking about using at least half of this massive surplus to cut property taxes that half of the surplus is already more than that $12.5 billion spending cap. So they're going to have to get creative some way. That seems to be a prevailing option at the moment. Absolutely. Did the comptroller have anything else notable to say about this?

Yes. He noted that they expect a recession to come. And because of that, advised the legislature to not expect two years from now to have this kind of record surplus. A word of caution for the legislators as they convene. We've seen Patrick say we're not going to spend it all. This is just another official saying, you know, you plan for bad economic times when you're in good economic times and uh in the very narrow scope of the state budget with this influx of money this counts as uh good economic times for them but you know that that differs on on the on the um the broader scale with individuals and facing

rising home appraisals and taxes and all this other stuff. So that's kind of where we're at right now. And it will be a very big point of debate as we move on. Absolutely. Thank you, Bradley. Hayden, we're coming back to you. The opening ceremonies in the Texas House included a kind of victory speech from the speaker.

Did he have anything to say about the challenge from Representative Tenderholt and kind of victory speech from the speaker. Did he have anything to say about the challenge from Representative Tenderholt? And kind of walk us through his comments in that whole situation. He did not address Tenderholt or any other of his opponents directly, but he did allude to his role as a servant of the entire chamber, not just the ones who voted for him, which was also a theme that Tenderholt emphasized when he came into the office and gave his interview to us. But Phelan did seem to criticize the rationale for the challenges to him. He said, directing these comments to new members, he said, quote, words of caution, please do not confuse this body with the one in Washington, D.C. After watching Congress attempt to function last week, I cannot imagine why some want Texas to be like D.C., end quote. the chairs of committees in the Texas legislature because Republicans are in the majority.

And in Congress, the majority party always has all the committee chairs, and Phelan and his supporters contend that that's not how it should work at the state capitol. So that was a little bit of a response to a rebuttal to what Tenderholt and Slayton had laid out. He also admonished new members to learn the rules and not, quote, flee from their responsibilities, end quote. No doubt a reference to the 2021 quorum busts. So he seemed to have a little bit to say directed toward everybody in his opening speech. Yeah, absolutely. Fascinating to watch these issues from two years ago just start to be talked about all over again. He also outlined some of the work he hopes the chamber completes in the coming months. What were some of the policy items that he listed? Well, he did talk about a lot of things that have been hot button issues around Austin and Texas

statewide. He first mentioned property tax relief. He said that his constituents and others have expressed to him that they feel like they're renting their home from the state, which is a common criticism of property taxes, because whether you own your home or not, even if you pay off your mortgage, you still get to send your bills into the local taxing district. He also mentioned criminal justice reform. He said the legislature needs to prioritize, excuse me, needs to balance compassion and cracking down on violent offenders versus giving programs and leeway to nonviolent ones to restore them to society. He also talked about border security. He said border security funding needs to be based on measurable results, and he even gave a nod to the 40 or so counties that have declared invasions along the southern border. He also

mentioned health care access, particularly for rural mothers. He said his definition of pro-life includes providing health care access. And then, of course, he referenced the tragic shooting in Uvalde that took the lives of 19 schoolchildren and two teachers. He said the legislature would address that. He said, quote, this is going to be an especially tough conversation, but this body has proven capable of handling conversations like this in the past. I'm confident we will do so again, end quote. But he did not mention anything to do with gun restrictions or gun control or anything like that. He just broadly said that it would be addressed during the session. Although Senator

Gutierrez out of San Antonio, who represents Uvalde, has already introduced a compensation fund for Uvalde victims and is already pushing for gun control measures such as increasing the age to purchase a firearm to 21. So the Uvalde shooting will be a feature of this legislative session. Bradley, I know you were a part of a press gaggle earlier today. Did the speaker have anything to say about those issues particularly? Nothing really new other than he doesn't foresee that he did discuss Tracy King's proposed raise the age to 21 to purchase a an ar-15 um type rifle uh not sure exactly how that's constituted how broad a range of rifles that applies to but uh the issue's been discussed before and uh feeling that he doesn't see much

uh attraction within the body to do that but he expects a discussion on it and he expects especially considering what happened and the fact that it's tracy king who represents uvalde um presenting it he expects there to be it's not just gonna be pushed under the rug yeah um it will be discussed i think we've also seen abbott uh been asked on that topic before about raising the age It's not just going to be pushed under the rug. Yeah. It will be discussed. saying adults age 18 under 21 struck down state laws banning under 21-year-olds from carrying handguns. And so basically implying that the courts wouldn't let a law like that stand. So kind of ended that conversation right there. Phelan also discussed that, and he said,

there's been a lot of developments on this, and we've seen the courts go in a different direction than what this bill hopes to do and so interesting that is um he did not take any personal stances on it um but he did say he doesn't see doesn't foresee that passing the house and not only would it have to pass the house it has to pass the senate and that the governor's signature that too so a lot of roadblocks to that kind of thing certainly but notable that the big the big lawmakers and you know the big uh executives are talking about this thank you for that coverage hayden and brad will both be in the house for the session covering everything going on there so make sure to follow them and matt

on twitter i'll i'll always follow them and Matt on Twitter. I'll always plug y'all on Twitter because I keep on in touch and a lot of this stuff, but I'm not able to watch what's going down. Brad, the feature of Wednesday's rules fight in the Texas House focused on the Democrat chair issue and amendments to ban them that were not adopted. Give us a rundown of how things happened. We'll walk through all the details. Yeah, so it kind of began on Tuesday late afternoon when leadership sent out the proposed rules and housekeeping resolutions and announcing that they were going to be up for a vote

brought to the floor the following day on Wednesday. So that kind of set off this scramble the history of when they bring up these rules is a little spotty like the last session they brought it up two days later the two sessions before that it was the first day after they gabbled in and so and then there was another instance a few sessions ago that they did it two days after. So there's a mix here. But the reason that's notable is that

there were a lot of GOP activists that planned on coming, and they're actually, as we're speaking, at the Capitol right now, I saw them there earlier, coming en masse to sit in the gallery and voice their, or at least show their support for banning democrats from committee chairmanships and so uh they were counting on that being thursday

we all this went down on wednesday and so um sitting in the in the house you saw there were some of those activists up there in red band Democrat chair shirts, but not nearly as many as are there right now. So that's kind of the beginning of this. Once we get to the floor and talk about this, we have the housekeeping resolution that includes a $2,000 office budget rate increase. And a couple other things, one of which would become incredibly important, but nobody realized in the moment. So they pass the housekeeping resolution. As I recall, normally rules is passed first. Because usually that takes longer.

They get the big business out of the way. Yes. Past housekeeping, everyone says aye, nobody bats an eye. Right. And that's exactly what happened, only they did housekeeping first. Reverse. Yes. Nobody, I think only Tinder, Holt, and Slayton voted against the housekeeping resolution.

But then when the House rules came up, they had a lengthy debate on this amendment to, uh, place punishments on quorum breakers. So that received a lot of debate, uh, that passed. Uh, so that's something that's notable to pass in the rules, something new. Uh, there was a lot of fight after what happened last year over that or 2021 over that but then when we get to the democratic chair amendment representative slayton presents his and he presented two uh and then a third far later after a lot of things happened but the first two were the same that he presented last in 2021 first one um was a an outright ban across the board of democrats chairing committees second one restricted democrat chairmanships to rather low level uh committees that don't see as high profile legislation it's like it would restrict democrats from chairing state affairs public ed um calendars things like that and so

um he is he's presenting this and then representative charlie garen from fort worth a republican a republican uh comes up to the back mic which is where you where members can talk to the one laying out whatever they're proposing and he calls a point of order which is this procedural maneuver to point out some sort of flaw in the bill and kill its consideration at least in the moment so after a really long scrum and and um consideration by the uh by the parliamentarians a lot of members um they uh they rule they sustain garren's point of order and what they justified it with was this provision passed in the housekeeping resolution that had just passed by almost everybody that prohibited um uh the use of state resources and staff for quote political purposes and so the parliamentarian and leadership construed political purposes as identifying who is a republican or democrat

and prohibiting them from being a chair a really interesting parliamentary maneuver with a lot of issues and drew a lot of criticism but uh it accomplished what leadership did or wanted to not have this vote on the the two democrat chair um amendments and then slayton tried another one much later at the very end that was kind of like a hail mary that would prohibit actually this was tinderholt i believe that would prohibit restrict chairmanships to only members in counties that are below two million people and tony's tinderholt said this would restrict me as well um but clearly you know an effort to try and prevent big city Democrats from chairing committees like

in Houston. As many of the Democrats that are in the Texas house are from urban areas without touching the political issue. Cause that's what torpedoed the other efforts. Yep. So, I mean, just sitting there watching this go down,

it was very interesting. How heated was it? Oh, very, very. I mean, I don't, i don't recall hearing any like screaming that's a low bar but the yeah right but you could see the parliamentarian and then garen and slayton really in a heated discussion over this and um and basically what this

prevented was a vote a vote which is why they did that in the first place they don't really care that it's proposed although they hate that it's proposed being they being leadership whereas you know these can a couple conservative members super conservative members grassroots however you identify them right the tinderholts the slatins of the world are proposing it because they feel that's their mandate from their voters but what leadership is attempting not to do is to put their uh the folks that align with them either politically or even just procedurally in the house their allies from having to take a hard vote that's just how it works right i mean in any any party in power too would

would likely do these kinds of things so party or faction yes um to avoid taking hard votes yes but at the same time this wasn't like unprecedented is a word i don't want to use and i shy away from but it was incredibly rare yeah to see something this happen. And the broad scope with which this could be applied, the word political being in these housekeeping rules, something that is not accepted, could cause major issues. And we don't know how it'll be applied. We don't understand the precedent that this is actually setting. Well, right after that was the rule was issued. Ruling was issued ruling was issued uh matt schaefer from tyler republican chair of the freedom caucus went up the back mic and questioned question the chair about does this apply to the the democratic and republican

house caucuses are they not allowed to use um facilities in the in the house for their purposes? Where's the line drawn, basically? There's no real resolution to that. And I don't know, maybe this thing comes up later on. I can't envision a scenario that it would,

like a detailed one at the moment, but whenever you pass things in rules, they can come up and bite you in the butt later um by calling points of order by trying to strike things down you can use the rules as your own weapon well and there's there's an example we'll get to later on in the tweetery that i thought was really really cool but i want to i want to point out one thing to kind of add definition to something you're talking about you know whenever you say what what does it mean whenever you say a hard vote? And I think I saw it on Twitter somewhere or

something like that, but somebody basically explained it, you know, whenever elections roll around and you have attack mailers and stuff going out, it is a mailer that says, your representative voted to keep Democrats in power sort of thing. You know, if you just lay it out like that. And so this way you cannot send out those attack mailers in the primaries and the members get to say, we didn't even get to vote on it.

You know, there was a point of order. So that's, and those mailers are even better when they have to take multiple votes because then they can go, your representative voted 17 times for the past committee chairs. Exactly. And on top of this, at least based on the public numbers we've seen, like the Texas GOP puts out, there were only 19 members that had publicly supported, said they would vote to ban Democrat chairs.

And that is a long way away from getting it passed now here's okay keep going then i have there may well have been people that were not on that list that then decided to pull the trigger on it but at least as it stood publicly there it did not have a very good shot at passing unless a lot of members felt that they couldn't sit it out. Mainly Republicans, right? Obviously, Democrats are not going to vote to ban themselves from committee chairmanships. That's not going to happen. The other context to this that I think is notable of this issue is that the speakership is a numbers game.

You have to get to 76. And one way that speakers, including Phelan, gets to 76 is by awarding chairmanships to Democrats because he gets their vote. vote and he managed this happened in 20 before the last session um uh he got he announced this 83 member list of support 11 of them i think if i have the number correctly we're given chairmanships eventually um and that's politics right um it's negotiating uh yes you can have my vote um in exchange for this like that that happens all the time um and so it's the reason a big reason why whether it'll be said publicly or not that there's such opposition to banning democratic democratic chairs is either a threat to the speakership or threat of democrats to break quorum again and um in the quorum uh punishments that we saw there was no explicit um uh punishment to revoke chairmanships from anyone that breaks you know i'm surprised that didn't come up as a rule proposal you could you because they could have done a rule that just

simply says if you participate in breaking quorum, you're not eligible to be a chair. And that would have avoided the political aspect of it. I could have swore I heard some talk about going that direction. I didn't see anything like that. Well, just sitting there watching, I think everyone was preoccupied with the Democratic chair stuff. Yeah. watching i think everyone was preoccupied with them with the democratic chair stuff yeah and less the the quorum i mean there was a lot of attention given to it but everything centered on this one fight now okay real fast to answer the question as to why they're a republican speaker would want and need to court democrats in some way just so folks can understand why this is even a

discussion because there are more than 76 Republicans in the House. There are 86. Yes, 86. So there's 10. There are 10 more. But if those 10, like, let's say 11 Republicans decided Phelan's not serving our interests, maybe even more liberal to moderate portion of the caucus, they could say, hey, we're going to vote with the Democrats, choose our own candidate, probably still a republican and say hey this person might be more amenable to the democrats priorities but it's also he's also more amenable to our priorities he's kind of from our you know faction of the party let's band together with the act like the democrats have these 11 republicans join in they obviously then would have the majority and they could elect someone other than phelan so So there is strategy there for the speaker. And this is what we.

Well, yeah, absolutely. That's how former speaker Joe Strauss came to power and ousted former speaker Tom Craddock from Midland, the Republican from Midland from, from his past position as speaker was a small group of Republicans. I think it was nine.

I think it was 11, 11. Okay. Literally 11 plus was nine. I think it was 11. 11. Okay. Literally 11. Plus Strauss. Literally the same. Yeah. Yeah.

Literally the same. Got together with the unanimous Democratic caucus and removed Speaker Craddock. And that's where this coalition has kind of come to play since then. And there's a lot of comparisons made between the senate and the house on this but the lieutenant governor is elected statewide it's not the same constituency as the speaker of the house and um like it or not that is the the reality of it and he's elected in a much different way and so he has to get the numbers to be the speaker. Otherwise, he's not going to be speaker. And obviously, there are many different arguments on whether he should be more amenable to certain policy items or not, whether this issue is something that Texas should reconsider because most other places do not do this right including congress well and there are the arguments that there are not 10 republicans who would go with the democrats anyways so there

is it's not like phelan for sure has to do this in order to keep his power yeah we don't know obviously the members in the in the chamber know a lot more than we do about the dynamics but that is not something that is publicly like the math has not publicly been done or people have a list of the names who would go with the democrats if they didn't have chairmanships but that's the argument yeah and back on the when feeling secured the speakership um there was an opposition to feeling uh the most formidable one or the most formed one was genie morrison and that was more of this like strauss coalition but they could not get the votes um because largely because there were

not enough democrats to give them the majority yeah in addition to the republicans they had exactly so this is just a giant numbers game and that's that's the internal workings of this but this issue has been boiling up for years. Since last session, the Texas GOP has made this its biggest issue going into the session, I would say. Which will change once they start lawmaking. But at the beginning of the session, this is all there is to do. They put it on one of their legislative priorities. And it has to do with the legislature, but it's not policy.

It's not a bill that's passed. It's rules but and so um i mentioned all the all the people that were coming uh here that was from the the gop the lobbying effort has been pushed on this quite a bit and so um matt rinaldi the chairman of the texas gop had some harsh words for what happened, but it happened. And we'll see what the implications are down the road for other things. Unsurprising that there was no ban, but surprising the way it happened and surprising that there was no record vote. Yeah, I certainly expected a record vote, as did most people. Yeah. And there wasn't one.

Well, we could talk about this all day long. It is fascinating. It's our bread and butter but folks we certainly are going to be focusing on the legislative session for the next 140 135 however many days there are left once this podcast is published so folks know out throughout texas what their representatives from their area are doing down here in austin it's important it's reported we also want to continue to reporting on all the other issues that are happening in texas outside of Austin. And one of those that's incredibly important is what's going on at the border. So Hayden, we're going to talk with you about this.

Days before the legislature gaveled in, Governor Abbott provided an update for Operation Lone Star. What were some of the statistics in that report? It is hard to believe that it has been almost two years since Governor Abbott launched Operation Lone Star. It was March 2021. And sometimes I go back and reference that very first article. And I had put in the subtitle, the state has dubbed its efforts Operation Lone Star. And it feels weird to think about a time where this was not in the political conversation in Texas. But the number of arrests that Governor Abbott announced reached a new threshold. He said that more than 340,000 illegal immigrants have been arrested via Operation Lone Star, including 23,000 accused criminals. And that is from the beginning of the

operation. And there have also been hundreds of millions of deadly doses, overdoses of fentanyl have been confiscated by state authorities, including National Guardsmen. The governor's busing program, which is part of Operation Lone Star, has resulted in 16,000 illegal immigrants turned migrants or non-citizens, whatever term you want to use. They have been bused out of state to Washington, D.C., New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia. So 16,000 is a small number compared to 340,000. But that, as Abbott has contended, has been to relieve some of the pressure on these border areas and nonprofit organizations that are handling the border crisis. Certainly. So how might the legislature respond to these numbers?

Well, there have already been a number of bills filed, and the Republican Party of Texas has made a list of bills that they support, including a border wall bill by Representative Slayton, who we've talked about a lot on this pod. He introduced a bill to name it after Donald Trump. Senator Hall from Edgewood has introduced a bill similar to one by Representative David Spiller to require border security agreements. Spiller's legislation would make it optional but would enable Governor Abbott to do so. Operation Lone Star received about $4 billion in funding during the last legislature, including special sessions. And as I mentioned before, Phelan would like to

base this legislature's funding of Operation Lone Star on concrete measurable results. Certainly. Well, thank you so much for that coverage, Hayden, and the border will not cease to be a topic of conversation even during the session. Brad, Governor Abbott weighed in on the power grid redesign this week. Give us a quick overview of what he said. So he kind of planted his flag for a specific policy proposal for this ongoing, very complicated redesign of the ERCOP market.

There were two things notable about it. First, he chose the performance credit mechanism. Go to the article. You can read what the heck that means and what that would entail. That was different from what was recommended by the third-party consultant that put out this report last year to the public utility commission they recommended a forward liability market again check that check the article for what that means but the other notable thing about this is he did not seem to express any desire to wait for the

legislature and we talked about this before that the legislature now wants to say before the puc just makes a decision on this but the governor's now saying time is of the essence let's hurry up come on and so that's basically the update there but this is going to be a long unless the puc goes with what abbott recommends uh is calling for this is going to be a long drawn out fight during the, not the least because it is so very complicated. Yeah, absolutely. We'll continue to watch that. Thank you, Bradley. Hayden, we're going to come back to the border. President Biden took the first trip of his administration to the southern border.

What were the reactions of key Republicans, particularly in Texas? Well, predictable reactions from the predictable cast of politicians who usually comment on these issues. But Greg Abbott said that he handed a letter to President Biden outlining border security policies that he once reinstated, like Remain in Mexico, Title 42 deportations, which are in place only because of a Supreme Court stay, and increased deportations. So government, excuse me, Governor Abbott handed President Biden that letter right off the bat. Ted Cruz said about Joe Biden's visit, quote, finally, after 5.3 million illegal alien crossings with over a million who got away, President Biden is visiting the border, end quote. And he accused the president of, quote, gaslighting the

American public, end quote. And there were other Republicans who were not impressed or pleased with this visit at all. Yeah, absolutely. So in conjunction with the visit, the White House announced some border security policies. Give us a quick outline of what they had to say there. Well, there were a lot of boilerplate, you know, we're cracking down on human smugglers, we're coordinating with regional partners, that type of, you know, exactly. And then there were some numbers in there as well, though. They said they'll begin admitting 30,000 up to 30,000 foreign nationals from Nicaragua, Haiti, Cuba, and Venezuela under the humanitarian parole program that has already been used for Ukrainians and Afghan nationals in the past because of obvious turmoil in those countries as well. So those

are some of the policies, just a sample of what they outlined. And that, of course, is not going to quiet the concerns of Republicans. One Republican, Congressman Pat Fallon, filed articles of impeachment against Secretary Alejandro May Fallon, filed articles of impeachment against Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, two articles of impeachment, one on account that he has neglected his duty to secure the southern border, and another article for perjury against Congress because he testified that the U.S. has operational control over the southern border. So lots of criticism continuing against Biden on the border issue as the Biden administration seeks to continue to enact its border policy agenda.

Absolutely. Thank you, Hayden. Okay, gentlemen, we have so many more stories we could talk about this week, but there's just a lot of news to cover. So we're going to move on to the Twittery section of this podcast. Brad, why don't you start us off so uh after the speakership vote um i saw something from state rep brian harrison uh if you think back during uh november december whenever it was uh the texas gop caucus voted on whom they would support in um in the speaker race and 78 of them voted for phelan six voted for tinderhold but it was a secret ballot so we didn't know who who the six were well we learned who one of them was um on top of tinderhold himself and slayton who has publicly endorsed tinder or tinderhold but brian harrison stated after the

speaker vote that he was one that voted for for feeling he cited um voted for feeling in the in the floor vote but voted for tinderholt in the caucus vote he cited plank 233 of the texas gop platform that says that um they should vote with the caucus decision on a speaker. So basically the caucus, which was a whole thing with the Strauss situation years ago, was that the caucus, the Republican caucus, should nominate their nominee for speaker. And then everyone is bound by the bylaws of the caucus to support that person which is what harrison is citing here yes yes and so uh that gives us three that we know of that voted for tinderholt in the caucus vote but i think you can probably assume that schatzlein is another one because he voted for tinderholt on the floor and nominated him and nominated him so uh but yeah that's that's why i saw it was

interesting just to something we didn't know before. And now we do. Awesome. Let's stay on that topic. Matt, what did you have? What did you see on Twitter? Okay. So I'm, I'm nerding out about this. who put out a tweet weighing in on an interesting potential impact of the housekeeping resolution that was amended

and then used to uphold the point of order on the banned Democratic committee chairs. And as you'll recall, as we talked earlier, the precedent was if you have to look at a piece of paper and pick out Republicans and Democrats to assign committee chairmen, then you're essentially using House resources for a political purpose. So Tony on Twitter said one of the most intriguing things about the House precedent was the no political purposes ruling. Well, this session, we have to redo redistricting because the Texas Constitution says that the legislature will redraw boundary lines after the first general session after redistricting. And we redrew. After the census.

After the census. And so the present maps have been done during a special session last year, not the. Because they came out late in 2020. Because they came out late. It took forever for them to get them out. So it missed the general session. So they called subsequent specials until they got it done. So we have to, and it's probably going to be a quick process.

I have no idea. But, you know, I can imagine I'm just going through it and reconfirming and not changing anything. But they still have to do it this session. So he points out that the U.S. Supreme Court precedent for drawing lines is that it's OK to do it, gerrymandering, drawing lines, et cetera, for political purposes, you know, identifying Republican and Democrat voters and everything like that, which is how they legally draw boundaries. put them into an interesting potential problem whenever they come up and they want to reconfirm the boundaries that were drawn for political purposes. But you can't use House resources now for political purposes. So he's saying that Democrats will undoubtedly call a point of order based on today's precedent, saying that redistricting maps fulfills a partisan purpose, and undoubtedly Phelan will say that it doesn't the problem here is that the supreme court has told us that partisan gerrymandering is okay

so when the democrats sue over the map it's going to be difficult to say that the map accomplishes a partisan political purpose when the speaker rules it doesn't so i complicate that's what we're talking about there's unintended consequences that we're very curious to see what exactly they might be and this might be. And this might be one of them. Keep your emergency stash of popcorn ready. Oh my gosh. It's going to be an interesting session. We probably should get some popcorn for the office.

I ate three bags of our Doritos yesterday. So anyway, I don't know why I needed to tell the listeners that. It's true. I ate so many chips. I'm really... You're still on Jamaica eating habits. Yeah, I just am hungry all the time. But that's not even new. Okay, regardless, Hayden, why don't we get back on topic?

What did you see on Twitter this week? I saw a tweet of an article from Border Report that talked about a 27-year-old man suspected of pointing a gun at migrants. Did not say whether they were legal or illegal. It's a real possibility that they're either one, but he was not protecting his property or at his home trying to prevent trespassers from entering or anything. He rolled up in a truck on a group of migrants, I'm not sure if they were legal or illegal and pointed a gun at them. And I think he did it more than once, in fact. So he's in custody in El Paso. Wow. Just an unfortunate example of someone trying to, I suppose, take the law into his own hands or just be violent.

And I'm pretty sure pointing a gun at someone for no reason constitutes assault. I'm not positive about that. But there's something there. I think that would be that would constitute assault. Not battery, but probably assault under our laws. I don't know, though. I'm not a lawyer. There's a law that says it's illegal to display a firearm in a manner calculated to alarm.

Oh, there you go. That's pretty that's a there you go. Answer question answered. Okay, gentlemen fun topic real fast. I just got back from Jamaica, as Brad just alluded to. Let's just frame this as not anything other than like a post-session trip. Okay, if you were to go on a post-session trip, you've worked hard for five months, you worked for 140 days of grueling reporting and staying late at the Capitol.

Our job is still very cushy, like all things considered with all the other jobs out there. But sessions are busy season. After session, let's say you had an unlimited budget to go somewhere. It could be anywhere in the world, tropical, mountains. You could do the all-inclusive resort thing. You could do the adventuringuring backpacking through the mountains thing what country or city or area of the world would you go to i would say as it's may in texas and starting to get really hot i would choose some sort of mountain skiing hot chocolate looking at pretty mountains and trees sitting on a cozy chair I have a future travel plan thing with this, I don't know, it was inspired by some travel article that I saw that floated through my news feed one day, but it was pointing out how there's all these cool U.S. territory islands

all over the world that are really cool places to go, and it's like being in a foreign country, but you're still U.S. soil, like U.S. Virgin Islands. Yes. And Mariana Islands and Guam and, you know, like this long list of places I didn't even realize. You don't even have to have a passport to go to. That's really cool. So I thought it'd be cool to, you know, start like a Delaware each year.

You know, you go check out one of the U.S. territories. That'd be a cool like bucket list yeah check through all those that's a really awesome one what about you brad or hayden what about y'all i'd visit italy oh oh my gosh i think italy has a rich history has a lot of legal history that i'd love to learn and and food. And I just think the Italian language is beautiful. I don't know Italian. I should learn it. And the best way to learn a language is to drop,

airdrop into it. That is true. And really good food. Did I say that? I know. Yes, and I love Italian food as well. My stomach is rumbling. That's neither here nor there.

Bradley, what about you? I think I'd want to go to Halifax, Nova Scotia. It's very specific. I have a specific reason. Well, I guess I haven't done all the research, but I assume it's fairly beautiful. And in the summer, it would be nice to be up there and not in the sweltering heat here but i am a big history buff and i read a book on the great halifax halifax explosion stop which what was that was the largest explosion in world history until the atomic bomb dropped on uh hiroshima and uh it was during World War I

this munitions boat jam-packed with explosives and TNT and bullets and all this stuff was getting shipped, was going to go across the Atlantic and it had to stop in

Halifax at the port. And it something happened that sparked Halifax at the port and it something happened that a spark went awry when it kind of collided with another boat and then

went into the dock and caught on fire and eventually it exploded and wiped out like three quarters of the city terrible terrible uh tragedy yeah and uh it um they managed to rebuild it and there were a lot of bostonians that helped send a bunch of resources up up. And yeah, it's just an interesting part of history that I had no idea existed until I saw,

until I read this book. Well, I hear the area up there is very pretty. That's the other reason. The pictures look very beautiful. I wouldn't, yeah, I wouldn't go to a place just for that. But that's an added bonus. The combination. That's a really fun answer.

Well, gentlemen, thanks for joining me. Was that a compliment? Thanks for... Instead of ripping me? Brad, your grandma sent me a picture of Winston. I need to be nice.

Okay, fair enough. She was very kind to me as I berate her grandson weekly, so I figured the least I could do is hold my tongue. My face... When you were talking about it initially, I did make a face and go, oh my gosh. Yeah, I saw it. Roll my eyes. I was waiting for the... could do is hold my tongue my face when you worked when you were talking about it initially i did

make a face and go oh my gosh but i saw it roll my eyes but i was waiting for the pretty well it was like the first couple of weeks that i was here before i figured out that it's winston is actually brad's dog and not mackenzie's dog i do really miss winston okay well folks thank you so much for listening gentlemen thanks for joining we will catch y'all next week thank you to everyone for listening if you enjoy our show rate and review us on apple podcasts spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts and if you want more of our stories subscribe to the texan at the texan.news follow us on social media for the latest in texas politics and send any questions for our team to our mailbag by DMing us on Twitter or shooting an email to editor at the texan.news. We are funded entirely by readers and listeners like you.

So thank you again for your support. Tune in next week for another episode of our weekly roundup. God bless you and God bless Texas.