The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - January 14, 2022

Episode Date: January 14, 2022

This week on The Texan’s “Weekly Roundup,” the team discusses Abbott officially launching his reelection campaign, a county Republican party censuring the governor, a lawsuit against Rice University over a “conspiracy” that privileges wealthy students, the latest Omicron numbers in Texas, a rundown of the latest border stories, the sanctuary cities for the unborn movement continuing to gain traction, a new lawsuit over private property and the Endangered Species Act, developments in Heartbeat Bill litigation, a lawmaker officially launching her bid for Austin mayor, and updates on crime and policing in some of Texas’ biggest cities.

Happy Friday, folks. Senior Editor Mackenzie Taylor here on our second weekly roundup podcast of 2022. This week, our reporters cover Abbott officially launching his re-election campaign, a county Republican Party censuring the governor, a lawsuit against Rice University over a conspiracy that privileges wealthy students, the latest Omicron numbers in Texas, a rundown of the latest border stories, the sanctuary cities for the unborn movement continuing to gain traction, a new lawsuit over private property and the Endangered

Species Act, developments in heartbeat bill litigation, a lawmaker officially launching her bid for Austin mayor, and updates on crime and policing in some of Texas's biggest cities. Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoy this episode and have a wonderful weekend. Howdy folks, Mackenzie Taylor here with Brad Johnson, Daniel Friend, Isaiah Mitchell, and Hayden Sparks. We're all here in the office post-holidays. It's good to see everyone's faces. And we have some news that we're going to walk through today. Brad, we're going to go ahead and just start with you. weekend governor abbott officially launched his re-election campaign now before we get into this we knew he was running for re-election

this was just a a formality it allows people to come out in support of the governor or whatever candidate is officially launching their campaign right so give us a little bit of detail daniel abbott's running for governor i think he's got a pretty good shot that is what the grapevine says okay i think he's like kind of held the position before but interesting yeah that's just the world of politics you never know you never know what to expect by atlanta okay brad but to walk us through what was significant about this specifically and what the governor had to say. So he was speaking to a large crowd. I could only see it on the webcast, but it looked like there was quite a few people there.

Speaking to a crowd in McAllen, Abbott touted the importance of the Rio Grande Valley for Republicans. I've written on this before, but Republicans are generally placing a higher emphasis on that part of the state, South Texas, more broadly, trying to go after the Hispanic population vote that has historically been kind of a gimme for Democrats, but the last couple cycle or last two to four years or so, we've seen a bit of a shift toward Republicans. Nice golfing term, by the way. Thank you. Yeah, you cut that from my article. I was very upset. But anyway, so Republicans see it as a more competitive area now. And I think we've seen some of the results bear that out. I think it was nine of the top 10 biggest shifts toward Republicans of counties in the country were in South Texas. And so very strategic choice by the governor. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And so while there, he touted accomplishments that the state has had, such as the state's job growth, property tax cuts.

The governor said that throughout his time in office, the state has engaged in $18 billion of property tax cuts. Now, he then stipulated that with saying that many people haven't actually seen these cuts in their bills because of rising appraisals, and that's obviously an ongoing issue. And he also mentioned the constitutional amendment that bans church closures by local governments and broadband expansion. And so, those are some of the issues I list out more in the article, but those were some of the top lines. And then he focused heavily on Democrats and Beto O'Rourke's support for such things as police defunding, gun confiscation with AR-15s and the Green New Deal.

Now, all of these issues Beto took during his presidential run and he avoided during his Senate run in 18. And so he's been asked if he's going to shy away from any of those positions he took during the presidential run. He said no. So that'll be interesting. How does that play? Obviously, the governor is using that to his advantage and we will see a lot of that going forward, hitting O'Rourke for taking those positions, especially in Texas. And I do think it's fair to say that, you know, Abbott of any incumbent period is going to be less apt to talk about their challengers as opposed to the challengers themselves. Right. They're, by definition, in some sort of a position of power, having held the office before, currently, all that.

And I'd say Abbott is even more notorious for that than a lot of the race is about him because he's the incumbent seeking re-election if you are running for governor you are challenging his incumbency right period regardless of whether you're a republican or a democrat at this point that's who you're that's who you're challenging um so again abbott being very notorious for not addressing or even making note of his opponents is just kind of that's just how he is that's how he goes about running for re-election we've seen this before um but we haven't seen a primary challenge like this for the governor before we've talked at length about it you've covered it how did he

acknowledge his primary opponents at all i do think there is something to be said for him being much more apt to talk about Beto as opposed to his primary challengers. So while he didn't explicitly acknowledge his primary opponents, those being Don Hoffines, Allen West and Chad Prather, Governor Abbott did say we need a proven winner who will fight to secure Texas's future. And that was about all the lip service he gave to the three were there being proven right i mean that's really the only way we can say that he's an at all talking about his primary opponents is he's saying i've been in office before i'm proven he's won before right that's like that's really all the race so um that's he's describing himself as the proven winner exactly um and so uh but we have seen those challengers have some effect on on policy with certain actions taken by the governor um you know for example the the changes to internal documents whether it was i think one

was a critical race theory themed thing or and one was an lgbt uh talking point by the department of family and protective services and we saw abbott after months of criticism from his primary opponents but also others that um filing the lawsuit against the federal government to prevent uh the texas national guard from having to adhere to the vaccine mandate. And so that was issued by the Secretary of Defense. So we've seen some tacit acknowledgments, but the governor is clearly looking ahead to Beto O'Rourke and the general. And, you know, he has a huge advantage in both name recognition, having run statewide multiple times, and in those contests being a very high vote getter.

In addition to that, he also has the advantage in fundraising. The last report, he had $55 million in his war chest. We'll see how much that expands in this next filing period, but I think it's safe to bet that it's going to go up, even with what he's spending on TV for the primary. So the governor is in a position that he likes right now and he has his eyes on the general. Yeah, he likes to the extent that he can. I don't think any incumbent likes seeing a challenge come at you in this regard. But and it's the first time really we're seeing it for the governor.

Now, let's talk about specifically one of the governor's opponents, Alan West. Big name here in Texas. Big name in Florida. But he released an internal poll that suggested that the governor might be behind him in terms of polling, behind Alan West in terms of polling. Tell us about so the top line it showed that alan west was ahead of abbott had west at 38.4 percent abbott at 32.5 percent rick perry not the former governor the other rick perry um at about 12 percent huffines at 5.2 percent and prather at three percent so um that was the poll generally that he released. Now, that differs greatly from every other poll that we've seen.

There hasn't been a ton out there, not like we saw with the presidential race when there were Texas polls just constantly. But there have been a few, and these results don't mirror those at all. And so take that with a grain of salt. Um, and also it's not primary day yet. So we've got how many weeks left, you know, a couple month and a half or so. And so, um, you know, one, one thing, one additional thing was, um, if you looked at the, the cross tabs of this poll and I posted the entire thing was, if you looked at the cross tabs of this poll, and I posted the entire thing on Twitter,

so if you want to go look at it, you can find it there. It had additional questions that were pretty slanted against the governor. Things like, what do you think of the governor's progress on property taxes or the border situation, things like that. And so, you know, the order that anyone that knows polling knows that the order of questions are asked can affect the outcome. And so how the questions are asked. Yeah, I don't know how this was this was framed. You know, if you ask all those negative questions before asking who are you going to support, it can slant it one way. And that was what Mark Davis, the radio host, was getting at when he asked West this morning whether those questions were read first or whether the

gubernatorial preference for the candidates was asked first. And West said he didn't know. He said, I didn't do the poll but the governor should be concerned with those results and so um you know how much does how accurate does this prove you know we'll see a lot of people are dismissing it out of hand um but uh it's something and you know at at some point we'll be able to gauge whether the poll was even close to accurate or not. And so that will come on election day. Absolutely. Well, thank you, Bradley, for that.

We're going to stick with you here, continue talking about the governor. But one county GOP party this week voted to censure Governor Abbott. Tell us about that. Yeah. Yeah, so the Wise County GOP, representing a county northwest of Fort Worth, voted unanimously to formally censure Abbott, citing a number of grievances. Eric Marnie, the chair of the county GOP, told me, as the governor of Texas, Abbott has done some great things. However, in the last few years, his ideals and some actions, especially on personal liberties, have not lined up with a vast majority of his Texas constituents or the Republican Party of Texas platform. Some of the grievances included not calling a special session to ban Vax mandates legislatively. Now, notably, the governor has issued executive orders and we've seen a lot of different court cases on the federal mandates and all this stuff.

We'll see where that goes but to date no no special session has been called the continuous border situation was another item mentioned creating law via executive order was specifically quoted in there and another thing was the contact tracing loss contract that the governor signed the state up for back in 2020. And so- A $300 million, well, $295 million contract. Yeah, $300 million basically. And so if this were to be sustained, which is, you know, it's only one county, right? And so, but what they did was they asked the party,

the state party to take it and bring it up for consideration at the convention. If that were to happen, if it were to be sustained by the delegates, then there would be a couple things done, including forbidding the party from providing the governor any financial or other support in the election. It would also eliminate the kind of neutrality clause in the party um it would also eliminate the um the kind of neutrality clause in the party where they stay out of intra-party fights meaning primaries and um and yeah so that that if if it were on the off chance that this were to get brought up and done and

approved that's what would happen but i spoke to mark mckay he's a head of the texas republican initiative he didn't like this he said in addition to being filled with numerous factual errors about governor abbott's record the resolution and these penalties would prohibit the republican party of texas from providing any kind of support financial or otherwise to governor abbott's general election campaign against beto O'Rourke. Not only would these penalties aid Beto's campaign, such a move would also hurt down ballot Republicans as well. One thing McKaig also pointed out was that when the conventions in June, they just announced the dates that comes after the primary. So the staying neutral in a primary would be moot at that point and it would just apply to the providing support

financial or otherwise so this is the only county across the state so far this year to issue such a censure back in 2020 there were at least eight that sent that passed censure resolutions against the governor against the governor and wise county was actually not one of those. So this is a new one. Yep. So that's where it stands. Well, thank you, Bradley. Isaiah, let's talk with you about Rice University in Houston. It was sued along with some other universities across the country. What does this lawsuit allege? Essentially that Rice is breaking the law by taking part in what they call a conspiracy

that has the end effect of privileging wealthy students and artificially inflating the price of college. what they call a conspiracy that has the end effect of privileging wealthy students and artificially inflating the price of college. So there are these five college graduates from across the country who are suing a group of schools known as the 568 Presidents Group, claiming that these schools consider students' financial situation when deciding whether to admit them. Although the plaintiffs say Rice is not one of the schools that actually does this itself, doesn't actually consider students' finances, Rice is included in the lawsuit because it's a member of the group. So they accuse Rice of being part of the same cartel.

That's their terminology. Yeah, that's literally the terminology used in the lawsuit, right? It's a cartel. Cartel, conspiracy, that kind of thing. Where does that 568 group name come from? So the number refers to a section of federal law that Congress passed in the 90s called the Improving America Schools Act. Section 568 of that law carves out an exemption in existing antitrust law, which normally outlaws collusion or agreements for prices among businesses. And the exception, 568, says that universities can make those kinds of agreements if they admit students on a need-blind basis.

So in other words, they get this exemption from a law meant to stop monopolies if they don't pay attention to students' financial need as part of the admitting process. The lawsuit claims that Rice's cohorts in the 568 group are paying attention to students' financial situations while still using this exemption. The 568 group is just this affiliation of top tier schools, a lot of them Ivy League, that have agreed on a method for determining financial aid. And so the plaintiffs say this agreement deliberately decreases how much aid the universities give to students and that most of the schools in this group do take students' finances into account when deciding whether to admit them. And they prefer to admit wealthier students as that means they don't have to pay as much financial aid. And that's also a way to hunt prospective donors. And so you want wealthier donors. And it alleges that these schools are always in fundraising mode. So they have a vested

interest in making sure that they admit wealthier students. Among other evidence, they cite an article that says Harvard refused to join the 568 group since membership in this group would have required Harvard to award smaller and less generous financial aid packages. Yale left the group for the same reason, but later rejoined, and so they're a it's really almost a pseudo Ivy League school in a lot of ways in terms of how it's considered across the country and where it kind of ranks among universities. But how has Rice responded to all of this? Well, they haven't had time yet to respond in court. I'm on the lookout for their filed response. They have released a statement saying that their financial aid policy does help students that need it.

And they refer to, for example, in December, they announced that all students who qualify for need-based financial aid would be able to pay for attendance without taking out loans. So they'd be able to go to RIS without putting themselves in debt. And so that's their side of the story.

Obviously not the same breadth of material that you'd find in the original complaint, but that'll come as the case continues. Well, thank you for following that, Isaiah. Daniel, we're going to talk to you about COVID numbers at the very outset of the pandemic and throughout the last, oh my gosh, it's like almost two years exactly. We're like 22 months, depending on when you really mark the start of the pandemic. You've been at the forefront of talking about these numbers, how they relate to Texas, the nation at large.

And we haven't talked about these numbers in a while, but with Omicron, we really have an opportunity to break this down. And you did so in an article published this week. Where is Texas currently at in terms of its COVID numbers? I remember when I was reporting on these numbers daily and tweeting out the numbers every day that got really old. How long did that go for? How long were you doing that? I think I did it for about four or five months, maybe six, um, back in 2020. It was a long,

like I remember I'd be leaving the office and I was like, Oh my gosh, you're still here. And you're like, yeah, I haven't tweeted the COVID numbers yet. Yeah, and one of the big reasons I was doing that at that time was because the state had started sharing the data that they were compiling, but there wasn't any trend lines. It was just a number every day. And so to keep track of that and make sure that there was some kind of historical record for it, I wanted to keep track of it. And then eventually they, you know, they,

they continued, uh, evolving their whole dashboard and the system that they keep track of everything. And now all that data is available even from the time that I began. Uh, so you can go back and see the different trend lines that have happened. Uh, and we've had three different big waves of cases. Um, there was the first one in the summer of 2020, and then in the winter of 2020-2021, and then that slowly declined at the beginning of last year. And then we saw the Delta variant kind of spread around this past summer, around August, when we saw the peak of that. And then with the Omicron wave, we've also seen that go up quite a bit now. And actually, if you're looking at the positivity rate, which is basically how many people who get tested test positive, that's actually reached the highest it's ever been with Omicron at around 36%. Now, the interesting thing there is that it does look like it's peaked at this point um basically as we're releasing this

podcast uh in the past few days the positivity rate has kind of a level off and it's beginning to descent a little bit which is actually on track with uh where we've seen omicron before uh specifically in south africa um where i was like first originated. And so, you know, looking at when it kind of started spreading to Texas compared to South Africa, we're kind of on track to have the same bit of a timeline. So the positivity rate has been super high. The hospitalizations have not been quite as high. It's reached almost the same number of hospitalizations that we've seen in previous peaks. So we're about 12,000 right now, 11,500. Whereas previous weeks, peaks have gone to about 14,000 in the past two waves, which are really

the Delta. And then the last winter were the ones that were most hospitalizations. Now, the interesting thing about that is if you break it down by not just hospitalizations in total, but if you look at the number of occupied general beds versus ICU beds, you can tell that this is definitely a less severe variant, and that ICUs are about 60% of what the previous peaks are versus the general beds being around 90 percent of the previous peaks so that is a notable difference there with the omicron variant and then the last thing the last statistic that you kind of follow is of course fatalities which the state has not really reported any notable increase in fatalities, which the state has not really reported any notable increase in fatalities since the Omicron variant really began spreading last month.

Now, an important caveat to that is, of course, the reporting of fatalities of people with COVID is often delayed because of different processing things. And then it also is naturally delayed because first it's hospitalization and sometimes those deaths are a little bit more drawn out and don't immediately follow the spike in cases. So we haven't seen anything yet in South Africa where we have seen a little bit more stuff because it happened longer ago.

It reached about, the fatalities were about 50% of what the previous waves were. So we could see an increase in fatalities reported by the state sometime soon, but at this point we're not. Got it. Now talk to us about how vaccines have played a role in this latest variant. And, you know, we only know so much at this point, but what can we, what can we say right now? Well, the things that we can say is much at this point, but what can we what can we say right now? Well, the things that we can say is we can look at the data about how many people have been vaccinated in Texas. And so there have been a large number of Texans who have received who've been fully vaccinated. And that would be receiving generally like the first two shots because the vaccines, I think two of the big ones or three of the big ones came out with two different shots.

So you had to get one. And then a couple of weeks later, you had to go back and get your second one. And that would be fully vaccinated. I think there was the Johnson and Johnson shot, which was just one. So that one, you only needed one shot and that would be fully vaccinated. But since then, they've also developed these booster shots, which is kind of like an additional thing on top of the original thing. And the state has checked that separately. So 16.6 million Texans, which is roughly about 70% of the population in Texas who are five and older, have been fully vaccinated. Now, notably, the people who've received a booster is a lot smaller number at 5.3 million. So about a third as many people have received the booster as have been fully vaccinated.

So even with those high vaccination numbers, of course, we're still seeing this huge wave of cases that is just as high as, you know, back last winter when we didn't have any vaccines because it was still being developed. So obviously the Omicron is spreading just as rapidly now when there is a ton more people vaccinated versus then when it was not. So that's just an interesting case. Now, the state of Texas does not actually really keep track of cases broken down by people who have been vaccinated and people who have not been vaccinated. So people who have been vaccinated who receive or who get infected with COVID are referred to as breakthrough cases. And while the state hasn't really tracked this, they did release a report a few months ago back around the Delta wave, but they haven't done anything since. However, looking at some data from other states that do keep track of this a

little bit better, you can see like Massachusetts in the past week from January 1st to January 8th, they released some information about how many breakthrough cases there were. And about a little bit over half of the new cases were breakthrough cases. So that just gives you an idea of how it's spreading pretty evenly between people who are vaccinated and unvaccinated. You certainly now talked to us about how Texas numbers compare to these other states. It's simplified to say that every state has its own response to COVID and has since the outset of the pandemic. So where are we at in terms of comparison? Yeah, I would say the big takeaway here is that, you know, even though these states have very different policies, you know, I hear

friends from California who live in the Bay Area being told that they need to have these vaccine passports to go into restaurants versus Texas where vaccine passports are banned, at least by law. So even when you have different policies like that in very vastly different states, it's still spreading through just as fast. The Mayo Clinic actually released, they have this data where they show a map of the cases in the past 60 days by state. And you can look how it's spread just about everywhere. So, you know, it really kind of started in a little bit more of the center of the country, South US, and also some of the Northeast. So like New York and Arkansas and Louisiana, it all just pretty much spread at the same time. The West Coast actually, it did not spread quite as quickly there, but now it is. And so if you look at the other kind of data of where cases are at right now. You have states like Texas and Arkansas and

New York that kind of saw waves come on a little bit sooner, where now the cases are beginning to descend, while cases out in the West Coast, where it didn't spread as quickly at first, they're still going up. So it's kind of spreading the same way across all these different states without much variation. Yeah. Well, Daniel, thanks for breaking that down for us. It's like an ode to your, um, you know, 18 month ago reporting. Yeah. Throwback. What an enjoyable topic. What an enjoyable, enjoyable topic. Well, wonderful. Hayden, we're going to come to you. You wrote a piece this week that was a roundup of different border stories. Uh, talk to us about some of these interesting smuggling occurrences and drug seizures on the border recently? Well, there were a few things that happened. But the one that cost the most probably was the 1.5 million in narcotic seizures at the Hidalgo International Bridge since New Year's Day.

Sometimes CBP will report several confiscations at once, several seizures at the same time. So they said that there were a couple of arrests of alleged smugglers who brought in dozens of pounds of cocaine and, of course, fentanyl with that. And that was on January 4th. We had an individual who's an 18-year-old American citizen actually living in Tamaulipas who attempted to cross with 38 pounds of cocaine. And that was in addition to 448 grams of fentanyl. So he was arrested. And then a few days later, just three days later, a 42-year-old American was caught and accused of attempting to smuggle in 90 pounds of methamphetamine in his Chevrolet Silverado. So of course, this highlights the

dollar value that can come with just a couple of smuggling attempts. But 2022, grimly off to an expensive start for drug seizures. But there were also some smuggling incidents as well. The Hidalgo County Sheriff's Office got in touch with West Laco Border Patrol after they got a 911 call that someone was being held against their will. And that person was an illegal alien at a stash house where nine people were found. And two of those people were, and they use the term caretakers, that's a very poor term, because one of these people reportedly threatened this group with a knife in order to gain compliance. And both of those people were Mexican citizens. The remainder of the people

who were being held at the stash house were from Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico. And of course, all those people were taken into custody. So a lot of activity at the border just in the first few days here of 2022. And also there are rescues that occur regularly. A recent example would be a 29-year-old Guatemalan illegal alien who activated a border patrol rescue beacon in the wilderness of Kennedy County. And of course, that occurs on a regular basis. Border patrol agents are often out there rescuing people who are in dire straits, having attempted to cross illegally without the resources and the plan to get safely to their destination. Well, Hayden, thank you for rounding that all up for us and putting it in one spot so

our readers can be informed. Isaiah, there are a few fairly big towns here in Texas that may end up outlawing abortion at a local level. Where might this happen and how? Citizens have begun the signature collecting process in San Angelo, Abilene, and Lindale to get their respective proposed ordinances that would ban abortion citywide on the ballot for a regular election. collecting process in San Angelo, Abilene, and Lindale to get their respective proposed ordinances that would ban abortion citywide on the ballot for a regular election. If you've been following the story for a while, this is the same deal that happened in Lubbock, and if you recall. I mentioned Lindale, which isn't nearly as big as San Angelo and Abilene, and it is on the other side of the state, but it's interesting because the Lindale City Council

actually made national news two years ago when it declined this proposal. Citizens that support the ban made another attempt last week. And when it proved fruitless, they decided to go the ballot route. Is that the same reason they're attempting to get on the ballot in San Angelo and Apolline? Essentially, yes. And it's part of an interesting phenomenon that I've seen while covering this initiative across Texas, where you have these very solid Republican areas, very solid Republican populations with mayors and city council members who are very opposed to passing these bans. And they do often have very substantial reasons for their own opposition, usually boiling down to a fear that the ordinances are unconstitutional, which is a whole other discussion. I reached out to the mayors of Abilene and San Angelo and didn't get a response yet. But in Lubbock, for example, the city council first

declined to take up the ordinance after consulting with some attorneys who said that it would be unconstitutional. And they then rejected it unanimously after a petition forced the council to consider it at a real meeting. And for the most part, they all gave the same reasons that it violated Roe v. Wade and Supreme Court precedent and so forth. And for the most part, they all gave the same reasons that it violated Roe v. Wade and Supreme Court precedent and so forth. And after all that, the citizens passed with over 60% support. And that's a big difference between the population and the politicians. And it's a very common difference that we see and usually as the towns grow larger. Yeah, absolutely. How have these ordinances changed over time? I've tracked their evolution more closely and in greater detail in some other articles, but generally they're becoming more restrictive and more detailed.

The centerpiece, the civil enforcement mechanism, same deal that enforces the Heartbeat Act, that has remained the same. But over time, I remember this is a much older development happened a while ago. They added they began to add thresholds, legal thresholds to pass where the city could act in a public enforcement manner. In theory today, even under government or Supreme Court precedent that would, you know, facially prevent that. Again, that's that's a very complicated topic and I've got more detail on that in other articles. Unlike previous towns, Lindale's proposed ordinance would have a section explicitly outlawing any aid for abortions performed outside city limits. So, offering transportation, a ride, or providing referrals to an abortion facility or giving directions over the

phone for what they call chemical or medication abortion. All of those are explicitly outlawed in Lindell's ordinance. Well, thank you for following that for us. And we'll continue to watch for further developments. Brad, we're going to come to you. We saw a team up here of the General Land Office and the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank based here in Austin, suing the federal government over the endangered species act what is the center of the issue so the golden cheeked warbler a bird which nests entirely within the state of texas has been on the federal government's protected list for the endangered species act since 1990 it was put on there i thought this was actually a particularly

notable aspect of this it was on put on that list by an emergency order after the regular process of designation, which takes time, requires a petition, all this stuff. Once that was deemed insufficient by the regulators, they granted this emergency order. At that time, the warblers population in texas was estimated to be between 15 000 and 17 000 it's now estimated to be 19 times that in the hundreds of thousands so that's kind of the background of this with in esa protection comes regulation of land esa being endangered species act yes and that's the the focus of this lawsuit um namely that the the bird itself is no longer it doesn't need protection anymore because it is not threatened um its population is soared and its habitat, potential habitat is like millions of miles, square miles. And so, the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the General

Land Office have sued the federal government to revisit whether the warbler should be classified as a threatened species. And this comes after a back and forth over the past six years ago ruled that the um the federal government the agency itself had declined previous petitions to do this errantly um they did it while not following statute and um uh basically they they incorrectly kept or denied these petitions. And so this is the third attempt to get them to revisit it on the grounds that these petitioners would like, specifically the population change and the habitat, the score mileage. So it's really preliminary at the moment, although we've seen where it went. The Fifth Circuit eventually ruled in favor of the petitioners. And I think if it were to get back to that point, we'll probably see that happen again.

But the human cost of this is that the federal government can regulate what people do with their private property. And they can impose fines. In the thousands of dollars, they fine someone to have been in violation. And also added to this is that you don't even have to have, in this case, warblers on your property in order for them to restrict your land use. So this is another attempt to force the agency to revisit this classification. George P. Bush, the land commissioner, said of the suit, by ignoring a court order, the Biden administration is knowingly trying to circumvent state sovereignty and further threaten Texas's management of our public lands.

Well, thank you for covering that for us. We'll continue to watch. Certainly an interesting story here. Isaiah, we're going to come to you. Speaking of lawsuits, there always seems to be new things happening in terms of the Texas Heartbeat Act and legal challenges that this bill has been facing. What's new on that front? Well, just after we put out our podcast last week, there was a new development in the federal case that's been bouncing back and forth from the U.S. Supreme Court. And we'll get to that here in a minute. Keep in mind that the field of challenges to SPA has narrowed down to two main cases. And there were a lot. Now, there's pretty much just these two. One is in federal court, specifically the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and is between a group of abortion facilities, counselors, funds, and such on one hand, and several state agencies on the other.

That's the one that was really the first major challenge filed in federal court and was first sent to the Supreme Court and first rejected on the very day, like the very eve of the effective date of Senate Bill 8, the Heartbeat Act. The other lawsuit is in state court, the Texas court system. And it also has a bunch of abortion facilities, funds and such on one side, but they are suing a single group, Texas Right to Life, which is a pro-life advocacy group that lobbied in support of the bill and has been encouraging people or had been encouraging people afterward to sue as part of the bill's civil enforcement mechanism, which if y'all probably already know, it doesn't use government enforcement and instead it authorized citizens to sue anybody besides the mother herself that performs a post-heartbeat abortion. So those are the two main ones. The Biden administration sued as well,

and the Supreme Court just dismissed that one. And so it's kind of narrowed down to those two. The latter one that's in state court, we talked about how that started with like 14 different lawsuits and the Supreme Court consolidated those into one. Planned Parenthood opposed that move when it happened because they felt that it would slow that down. And so that was kind of one bad turn for them. They did win at district court in this consolidated state court case recently in December when the district court judge ruled much of the Texas Heartbeat Act unconstitutional. And when I say much, I really mean like a lot of the bones and the major parts of the Texas Heartbeat Act, a lot of the procedural parts of it. So that was an early victory for the plaintiffs who are several Planned Parenthood branches, abortion funds, and so forth. So after that, the defendant, Texas Right to Life, appealed. And since the case took place in Travis County, normally that would mean that it would go to the third court of appeals, which is staffed almost unanimously or judged almost unanimously by democratic judges and you know just recently for example the third

court of appeals cited with harris county in a conflict with um regarding redistricting maps that's mostly a democratic run county i just bring it up as an example that usually the third court of appeals is a very democrat friendly appellate court in the state court system however inadvertently a process called docket equalization meant that a whole bunch of cases just in a given bracket of cases were moved from the third court of appeals in austin to the seventh court of appeals which is based in amarillo and is judged entirely by republican judges and again this wasn't like the Supreme Court plucked out this one case and decided we're going to put it over here in Amarillo instead of Austin. This is just

kind of a regular process that the Supreme Court does. I looked into it a little bit. It's kind of unique among states for Texas to have this kind of system, but it's just, it's docket equalization. So between the appellate court circuits in the state system, they just kind of layer out the cases as evenly as they can. So the plaintiffs, the Planned Parenthood branches and friends filed a motion recently to get the case moved back to the third court of appeals. And they have a lot of motives at play here. Like for one, they want a friendly record, that's obvious. They also have several motives for this case to move as quickly as possible. One of them is that just being opponents of the law, they want courts to enjoin it as quickly as possible so that it stops being effective. That's, that's obvious. But also to get back to

the federal cases at the U S fifth circuit right now, they recently decided, again, just after we put out our podcast on Friday, to, well, they may decide to certify a key question of the case to the Texas Supreme Court. And it's kind of rare, but it is specifically outlined in, like, the Texas Rules of Appellate Procedure that they can do that kind of thing. And so the fifth circuit, um, is generally has generally has a conservative reputation and so does the state Supreme court. And so that outcome would not be favorable for the, for whole woman's health and Planned Parenthood and these abortion facilities that are challenging the law. But the fifth circuit can only send this case to the Supreme court. If another challenge to SB8 doesn't reach the Supreme Court first. So if this goes to the Seventh Court of Appeals, which, you know, by their reputation would likely not favor the plaintiffs in this case, then those judges at the Seventh could aid the law simply by stalling moving slowly and letting the fifth circuit certify this question to the state supreme court first and likely get a favorable outcome for

the law just again that's all that's all speculation based on the reputations of these various courts but it's interesting because it was an inadvertent process that could have, you know, a pretty big ramification for this, the foremost state court challenge to the heartbeat act in Texas. So it's interesting. Yeah, absolutely. And there's a lot of layering of, you know, judicial jurisdiction, which is really interesting in and of itself. But thank you for that. Brad, let's talk about Austin, the city of Austin here. A state representative finally made a decision about running for another office. Tell us about what happened. So state rep Celia Israel announced her run for Austin mayor this week. It was long expected as last year, I think it was October, November, she announced that she wouldn't seek

reelection and was exploring a run for mayor in Austin. And obviously, the exploration has become an official campaign. In her speech, Israel cited Austin's growing cost of living and public transportation issues as part of her campaign. And she is the second, at least that I've seen declared candidates. There's another one, uh, Jennifer Verdon, who, um, I believe she's a Republican at least unofficially, um, since these, these races are nonpartisan nominally. Um, but, uh, Verdon was a 2020 council candidate who narrowly lost, I think it was like 900 votes. And we've got a couple other rumored candidates, including former state senator Kirk Watson, who also used to be mayor.

And then councilwoman Kathy Tovo. Those are the biggest names that seem to be considering a run. But we'll see what happens and who knows maybe matthew mcconaughey decides this is the office that he wants to hold and not governor so we'll see interesting who knows um well wonderful thank you brad uh hayden we're going to come to you let's keep it local let's talk about dallas what was the dallas police chief's crime report and was it good news? Crime is down in Dallas, which of course is very good news. Chief Garcia was hired in December of last year, right before Christmas.

I'm sorry, December of 2020. That would no longer be last year. And he pledged to make lowering crime his number one priority. He said in an interview with local media that overall violent crime is down by about 13%. It's down more than 6.5% for aggravated assaults. Murder is down by more than 27% and robberies have decreased by about 28%. Those were the numbers that he gave to local media there in Dallas. Of course, he was sworn as chief of police of Dallas in a turbulent time. The chief before him, Renee Hall, had also sought to decrease violent crime, but she had a rough working relationship with the mayor. They had interacted or they had disagreed with one another publicly. At one point, she said she was offended

and exhausted by the mayor because he had made some comments about the violent crime rate and her supposedly not doing everything she could have done to decrease it. Of course, everyone knows 2020 was an extraordinary year. Many may not remember this, but in late 2019, we also had in Dallas some severe tornadoes that created huge problems in the area. So the police department had to contend with that as well. So Hall's term was not very, it was not smooth. And Garcia was the first police chief hire that the city made after the race protests in 2020. And of course, everyone remembers that. The protests slash riots, which Hall was very strong against criminal activity in downtown Dallas during the riots, although she was also criticized by

people on the left slash far left for some of her tactics in quelling the unrest in downtown. Of course, now Garcia and Mayor Eric Johnson seem to be pretty well on the same page, and they are both seeking to continue to decrease crime according to the crime plan that Garcia and the city implemented in May of last year. So while Garcia has been in office for nearly a year, he is discussing a crime plan that was implemented in May of last year. So these results are a crime plan that is still within its first year. And that's a stark contrast to November of 2020, when the National Guard, when Governor Abbott ordered national, not National Guard troops, pardon me, but state troopers and other backup to Dallas to decrease the spiking crime rate. So things are looking up in Dallas

related to violent crime, and hopefully that trend will continue. Well, thank you for covering that, Hayden. Let's continue talking about the police and crime on the local level. Brad, a study on Austin police staffing levels and response time was released this week. What did it say? what did local officials have to say so in case nobody was paying attention over the last five months or so the police staffing in austin has been a massive massive issue five months i feel like it's been longer than that since may of last year really is when the the ballot initiative got started um but so this has kind of been a backdrop to all of the public safety issues in the city of Austin and chief Joseph Chacon talked about unveiled a study that

was done. I unveiled it this week and it showed it was an algorithmic analysis and it's recommended adding 108 authorized patrol officer positions to reach a 6 minute and 30 second response time for the most urgent of calls. As I mentioned, this calls for an increase in authorized positions, which is different from actual staffing levels. The department is severely understaffed right now um currently they're authorized for 774 uh patrol positions and there's a you know a bunch of other specialized units detectives all this other stuff and if i remember correctly the um the total employed or the total staff level is like 1500 1600 officers So there's quite a few other miscellaneous types of officers.

But the people you see driving, walking around downtown, those are the beat patrol officers. And this is what we're talking about here. APD's response times for urgent calls is currently, according to the chief, around eight minutes and nearly 10 minutes across all different kinds of calls. And he also said that the department is operating at, he didn't give me an exact number because it fluctuates from day to day, but well below the 774 authorized positions. And so he said he's going to take this study, figure out a recommendation that he will make to council on how many positions to authorize,

and that may come in the next few weeks or so. Talk to us about the current status of APD staffing. Yeah, so as I mentioned, it's a problem. It's been a problem but the degree of its problem has changed um the department is losing roughly these are numbers given to me this week roughly 13 to 15 officers every month around august last year then that number was 15 to 22. So we've seen it level off slightly. And, um, the, the, uh, department has a cadet class graduating this month, but so far only about 60 of the original hundred recruits in that class remain.

So pretty substantial attrition on that. We'll see how many of them fall out even more before we get to the graduation time. is that there was talk of 150 to 200 officers leaving at the end of January. Now, the reason for that would have been there's a policy change for retirement going into effect, how much time you can buy forward with money that you have. For example, we saw officers paying hundreds of thousands of dollars of their own money to buy forward retirement time to the the um i think 23 years um so if you're at 20 years served you can buy forward three years of service and retire early with your full pension and all that so the rumor was that um and i heard a lot of a lot of officers talk about this. Their co-workers were talking about leaving en masse before that change occurs because it will require more money to pay for less buying forward time.

And so that's not going to happen. At least it looks right now. According to the chief Chacon, he said that so far in January, only 17 officers have informed the department of their departure this month. But, you know, we still have half a month left. So who knows? That's already above the average that we saw, the 13 to 15 that I was given, 17 officers. So they'll only add to that. But the question is how much?

Certainly. Well, Brad, thanks for covering that for us. Gentlemen, let's start with a fun topic now this is a topic i may be the only one to actually find fun but isaiah's looking at me as if that is uh not the case regularly yeah i see it you're right am i correct in my um my assertion, I think you are. We'll see. We'll see. We'll see what kind of debate or just conversation it sparked. I would like to say I suggested this topic and I forgot that it was a sore point. So sorry, guys.

It's a sore point? Why is it a sore point? Because of your... Are we talking about what I think we are? The organization? Yeah. I think we've talked about your organization planner before and people have reacted negatively. Yeah, I think by people we're specifically talking about Isaiah who loathes my love of dockets.

I do. Yes, that's what I'm thinking of. Is that what you're thinking of? Okay. So the question, and of course, I think it's funny that Hayden's is the one I pick out from this list. It just seems, anyway, I won't go into that. How do you keep yourself organized each day, gentlemen?

Isaiah, do you want to, why don't you start us off? I don't, I'm not prepared. I'm not prepared. You're not going to talk about your- You're not organized? Your wall board that you have that you just pin things to. I shuffled the pins up once and he didn't notice. Wait, shuffled what pins?

Like I just moved the board. Yeah. Is this the first time you've heard? This is the first I've ever heard of this, ever. So Isaiah has a cork board. It's a cork board, right? Yeah. Next to his desk where he pins various

pieces of paper that have whatever significance to him and apparently daniel mixed them up and isaiah had no clue yeah i truly you actually yeah i did it it was like it was before christmas okay somebody else should answer first uh daniel i'm not organized enough to answer this question that's not true you always have a little notepad with you and you always write little lists on them no i don't i can't find a good organizational system i want to oh but i just give up i like find something that works for a little bit and then i just give up so usually what i end up doing is just having a note a notepad yeah or a sticky pad of like just like post-it notes yeah and that's what i'm talking about i use it as i need it and then i just throw it away and forget about it well i guess that's more what i mean is you have always a little and it's never lined i

notice your notebooks are never aligned they're just like paper with no lines. Yeah. But you write little. Lines get in the way. See? Is that true that you prefer no lines? Generally, I think so, yeah. Okay. The mark of a genius.

The mark of a genius. It's true. If he just wants to start sketching out brilliant thoughts, he can do so without any sort of, yeah, boundary. Brad, what about you? Well, I have a notebook i write stuff in but whiteboard that i occasionally write stuff on and that about does it what do you write in your notebook i've wondered this myself really yeah it's a fancy well like i write interview notes

um stuff like that i do a content layout thing every week that I then get to cross off articles that I've written and that's satisfying yes but I don't have anything more complicated than that I don't really back in school

they would give us well Isaiah is the only one that went to public school so they would give you the well as a is the only one the one that went to public school so they would give you the planner yes and you'd start the school you're like yes i'm determined to use this i write all my homework assignments i think that was probably just you brad no i got the same way yeah what but did you feel the same way about okay yes this is the year i'm going to use my planner around like seventh seventh or eighth grade. Okay. You know, when you get a little older. And then by the second week, ain't no way that I am actually using it.

Well, they were huge. Yeah. Were yours gigantic? Mine were like a foot and a half long. No, ours were about the size of this. No,

mine was like, imagine a spiral notebook, but just a little bit bigger all around and like an inch thick i think when i was younger like in middle school i think we had bigger ones and by the time i got to high school they managed to put it all in a smaller version and i would like i would try and write test dates and then i would never look at it so like what good is it doing me yeah and you over, and the girl next to you has got the next month all color-coded and everything.

Yeah, she's got five different colored pens that she carries with her everywhere. A little zipper bag. That's certainly not Mackenzie that we're describing here. Yeah. I felt very attacked by the whole thing. I'm just sitting here listening to you guys. Oh, those people.

Yeah, those people are the worst. I just had the color pens remark, and I saw her in the corner of my eyes. Just scrunch up into a ball. So, yeah, that's my system and I'm sticking to it. I like how when I asked you about your notebook, you were like, oh, I don't know. And then you had exact specifications. I mean, it's not that. But it's a moleskin, isn't it? It's not rigorous. It's a moles you were like, oh, I don't know. And then you had exact specifications. I mean, it's not that. But it's a Moleskine, isn't it?

It's not rigorous. It's a Moleskine notebook. Is it? I don't know. Yeah. I think it's off-brand because I got it from Walmart because I don't want to pay $60 for a freaking notebook. That's a good hack, though.

If Walmart has Moleskine dupes, that's awesome. Oh, sweet. Yeah. Hayden, what about you? Well, much like brad i like well and and i think multiple people will say they like lists i like to make lists and i'm also do not care for multitasking so i have if i feel overwhelmed I have to write everything down and then finish one task, cross it off and move to the next one. So I usually keep a work notebook and then I keep a journal for personal writings that I make at the beginning or at the end of the day. And that helps me keep my mind clear.

That's awesome. And stay organized. I saw a tweet the other day some actually she's from cincinnati which is why somehow she popped into my my feed it was a journalist and she said reporters need to stop recording commenter things yeah and i thought how you can't if i'm listening to Governor Abbott give a speech or something, I can't write quick enough to get all of his remarks down and then get whatever he's saying next. This person's doing the old wagging the finger, you youngins and your recorders. That hasn't been a thing for 40 years. What was her argument?

She said that it interrupts the flow of the conversation. But you just hit record and am I Truman Capote? I'm just supposed to remember everything this person says and write it down later? It makes it easier. I would think it would allow better conversation because I can hit record and then actually

have a conversation with the person I'm talking to rather than constantly looking down to write notes. Well, she also said it would lead to an over-re down to write notes. Well, she also said it would lead to an over-reliance on quotes. And you can't have an article where it's like, Oh, there's maybe too many quotes in the bulk of the article itself. But like,

if you want to verify that you're summarizing somebody clearly, you should make sure that it's just common sense. Right. Anyway, but also I've done both for I'll record and take notes. And think my notes are foolproof and i go back and i listen to the recording and because i was so mentally occupied with writing down whatever the person was saying i missed the next 10 seconds yeah and i have like the if the recording didn't exist it would not be an accurate presentation what the person said right like that's just you gotta record a lot

harder and it's not as fair to the person you're interviewing. So I'm 100% on board with you guys. And it's a CYA provision, you know? Well, since none of you asked, I'm going to go ahead and tell you about my organization because this is important to me. Is there color coding involved? Yes. You haven't seen the multiple colored pens on her desk? It wasn't a rhetorical question. It was the other kind.

It was the other kind it was the other kind and no every year i have a planner and i've gotten very like it used to be small like probably seven by five i don't know the dimensions but a small planner and now it's gotten to be like an i don't know nine by seven i don't know what it is but it's not it's not full size but it's pretty Allows me to take notes of every process, keep a look at my calendar, all written down. I go off a Google calendar, but I also need it written down on paper. And every step of a story from conception to publish is written down.

So I'll say, hey, we need to get this part approved. Like here are the four steps before this next step. I have it all written down and it's necessary. And then I'll write meetings because Lord knows I get so tunnel visioned and i'll forget i have a call so i write those down so i don't forget it's just helpful it's very important so time consuming but it's not and also this is a riveting discussion you guys know i forget things so easily this allows me to forget far less. And I will say I've been without a planner because my planner is apparently in high demand and it's on back order.

And so I'm the first several weeks of this year I am without a planner and it has been awful. It's stuck on the canal boat. It's literally part of why I'm grumpy today. It's because I don't have my planner. I'm plannerless. I'm like a ship with no rudder. Your thoughts are floating untethered in your brain yes flying it's the worst yes and i can't

keep track of them and it's driving me up the wall i was gonna say maybe you should have planned more i did did you write down i did actually buy a planner early like four weeks ago four weeks ago that was like the in the middle of December. Yes. But you have like a planner per year. Yes. You think like this is my planner for 2022. Yes. And it has to be,

it has to be very specific. I don't want any, like a lot of women, planners for women have inspirational quotes throughout. They drive me up the wall, up the fricking wall. Like I cannot handle them. So I just need a planner that's lined. Simple.

Now I'm going to send you an inspirational quote every day just to get on your nerves and you do send inspirational quotes every day but they're not inspirational they're like academic that's yeah inspirational today was from willie mckinley so yeah yeah exactly he's pretty inspirational those are great i'd i'd be fine with that if that wasn't my planner. How long is he president? A year? Yeah, that's a whole other thing. He followed his dreams.

Enough to have a mountain named after him for a time. Oh, I caught a, this is totally random, but I caught an error in a book I was reading. Oh my gosh. That's so smart. They said that Lincoln's second inaugural address was the shortest of any president at 750 words roughly it's not true it was washington's second inaugural that was like 230 words oh really so i was very proud of myself i should send an email to brian killmeade about how there's an error it was a kill me it book. It was a kill me book. It's a very enjoyable book. I like it a lot, but not anymore.

That stuck out. Speaking about errors in books, I've had this on my mind for like the past week and I can't get it off my mind. I have this growing fear that I'm going to self-edit my book and I'm going to miss an Oxford comma. Why has,

Daniel, tell us why this fear has been growing. Well, you see, you asked me to help edit an article from Holly and I'm sure this was just an oversight on Holly's part because it was an oversight on mine, but it managed to slip through the cracks without an Oxford comma. And slip into regular journalistic standards?

Yeah. Oh, no. Now, I think what did it for me, I went back and I looked at where I had made this mistake, and it was because it was, I think she was listing the three of the commissioners on the Harris County Commissioner's Court, and she had their party affiliations in parentheses and I just skimmed by

those parentheses too fast that I missed the missing punctuation. And I do understand, like that, I'm glad you went back and found it because I knew you would go back and see because he loaded it up for me and I was about to press publish and he was very gracious in helping me when the end of

the day rush came and doing a preliminary edit. it was wonderful he did a great job but because of those parentheses i think it just was harder to spot and um and every time and when i say every time this happens it's only happened like two or three times in your entire tenure here that i've caught maybe you missing an oxford comma it's very very rare but i dread telling you every time because it can send daniel so i just try and stay away from it just makes me nervous but i also know he'd be really mad if i didn't tell him that it happened because he'll stay ever vigilant with that reminder well i will say after listening to all y'all uh it's kind of cool y'all use real paper i dig it i also have a real notebook i recommend the right in the rain

notebooks um you can write in the rain with them but are they waterproof they're waterproof that's awesome if you use a pencil or one of their special pens more just a pencil then yeah you can like i've shown people like i'll hold it under the sink you're writing it you can write it when you're swimming around in water what kind of pen will allow you to do that often you're just writing when you're swimming around the first time i got one i'm going to the pool i'm gonna write some things on this notebook um you okay so you can write during rain or underwater whatever with a pencil if you're out with a regular pen when it's dry it'll stay it'll it'll be preserved yeah in the water if you use a gel pen then it'll smear off

that makes sense that's just the ink's problems all the papers problem okay well it's very interesting i like that a lot i almost bought a my my last planner i almost switched and got one that was waterproof but i didn't end up doing that. I recommend it. Yeah. I kind of do too. Now I'm going to spill on my planner this year. I should not have said that. Okay.

Now I'm nervous. Well, gentlemen, thanks for obliging me on this delightfully fun topic. I enjoyed it. I know you guys all did not, but Hayden and I definitely did. Folks, thanks for listening, and we will catch you next week. Thank you all so much for listening. If you've been enjoying our podcast, it would be awesome if you would review us on iTunes. And if there's a guest you'd love to hear on our show, give us a shout on Twitter.

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