The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - January 2, 2025

Episode Date: January 2, 2026

Show off your Lone Star spirit with a free "Remember the Alamo" hat with an annual subscription to The Texan: https://thetexan.news/subscribe/The Texan’s Weekly Roundup brings you the latest news in Texas politics, breaking down the top stories of the week with our team of reporters who give you the facts so you can form your own opinion.Enjoy what you hear? Be sure to subscribe and leave a review! Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast.Burrows and Patrick HarmonyAbbott Finally Gets School Choice Across the LineHemp HappeningsBail Reform Finally Gets Across the LineLegislature Passes Another Abortion Restriction and Bathroom BillCentral Texas Flood FalloutMid-Decade RedistrictingCelina ISD BombshellSpecial Election SurpriseLina Hidalgo Bows Out

Are there any New Year's traditions that you guys have in your repertoire for your families? You have to eat black-eyed peas on New Year's Day. I've never heard about black-eyed peas on New Year's. What is that? Serve them over rice, it's really good. Yeah. Peppers, onions, mustard. Can't do it.

Black beans and avocados and corn and peppers and cumin and garlic. So basically you can't taste the black eyepie. That's my point. Mustard. Who said mustard? Well, happy New Year, folks. It's McKenzie here with quite a crew. We have Mary Lease.

We have Kim. We have Meredith. We have Holly. And we have Rob. Rob, the token male on this podcast. So, Rob, I want to first thank you for braving a podcast full of all of your women co-workers. We appreciate you.

you joining on this new year's podcast yeah i think somehow i managed to survive mac rob also is very the most festive of all of us on his festive christmas background so we love that all of us women we are except for mary lees and my peppermint candy cane shirt yeah we are well represented with the this is a new year's podcast but we are recording this before christmas so i think it is fair to say that we're all in the spirit of christmas we have lots of red, all of us wearing red, except for Mary Elise, I think. So, you know. Yeah, I don't know what this is.

I didn't get the memo, I guess. Is it white? Is it bridle? It's got, it's white and blue. So it's got stripes, kind of like pen stripes, I think it's called. So not very holiday. Okay. Well, that still counts. Well, it's still Christmas because Christmas starts on Christmas Day and last until January 6.

So it is the Christmas season. That's right. Leave your tree up through Epiphany. That's exactly right. That's right. We are always happy to have Holly and Kim remind us of that every year. It's very appreciated and helpful. Well, on this episode, we're going to go through Top Stories of 2025.

So at our site now, we have an awesome piece up that basically details a lot of the stories that we're talking about. So if you want more information on anything we talk about today, certainly go and read that. The team worked hard to put that together. And it's a great story with all sorts of information, but we wanted to also go over this on our podcast and talk through the top stories, what were big moments legislatively in the state in general, and walk through all of these at large. So that's the aim of this podcast this week, and we have quite a team of folks to jump in here to help us with all of this. So we're excited. But right off the bat, Rob and I are going to talk a little bit about Burroughs and Patrick.

So we want to talk about statewide leaders and how their relationships changed this last year. There's a lot to go into here. Certainly between Lieutenant Governor and Patrick and Speaker Dustin Burroughs, there were many, many questions at the beginning of the year as to what their relationship would look like when this time of year came around. A year later, what would it look like? This was an unbelievably contentious contest for the speakership where Dustin Burroughs did emerge victorious. But the question was whether this would be another legislative session, were these two leaders of the two chambers of the legislature, would be at a very dramatic odds. Prior to Burroughs, there was Speaker Dade Phelan, and he was certainly at odds with Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick for essentially the moment he maintained the gavel.

That was, it was contentious all throughout his speakership. And so when Burroughs did get elected, with a Democratic majority, no less, it was like, how is this going to be received? And we saw, you know, the lieutenant governor leading up to that election really has have a lot to say about how boroughs, what his candidacy was and how he was going to be elected. And so when it was decided and with a Democratic majority, there were certainly questions about how that criticism would be extended. But Rob, what was your impression leading up to that election and watching it all go down? Well, this is something, you know, it was very interesting.

interesting to follow, I remember, back in December, because normally the Texas House Republican caucus decides who they're going to vote for for speaker before the legislative session starts. So that's normally already in the works. They're already looking at who's going to be assigned committees. This way, when, you know, everybody can hit the ground running on the start of session, you know, chairmanships can be assigned, all that stuff, all that's been negotiated in the background. But with this one, we really had no idea who the speaker was going to be. So we had to go through the rounds of voting, and then after that you have to decide, all right, who's going to be assigned what? One of the changes that was made this year compared to

the last session was that there were absolutely no Democrats, no members of the minority party serving as chairs of committees, but a lot of them still got vice chairmanship of committees, but they weren't actually chairing it, which was a big point of contention in the last legislative session. A lot of people on the more conservative flank of the Republican House caucus were very upset that members of the minority party were being granted the ability to chair committees at all. What I thought was, as you pointed out, Mac, interesting as well as that Burroughs won with a majority of the, he won with the support of the Democratic. ocratic caucus, as opposed to state representative David Cook, who was running against him and was sort of the figure that had attracted more of the, I think the word that we used to refer to them was the reform caucus. People who really wanted to shake up the way that the House rules were being

implemented in order to make it easier to get their policy priorities passed. But something else that happened later on in the middle of the session. was state representative Brian Harrison filed a motion to vacate the speaker's chair, which would, you know, knock Burroughs, it would knock him out, take away the gabble, and then you'd have to vote for a new speaker. And for that vote, if I recall correctly, it was Harrison and State Representative David Lowe. If I recall correctly, it were the only two people who voted for it. Yeah, that's correct.

Yeah, so Burroughs went from having, like, this majority Democratic-winning coalition to winning every Republican, if I recall correctly, but two, you know, by the end of it, that that motion to vacate showed that by that point, speaker boroughs had won over the House GOP caucus. Absolutely, huge turning point. And notable, too, that at the very beginning of the race, both the governor and the lieutenant governor basically came out and stopped short of endorsing David Cook, who was the other candidate running as a Republican for the speakership, stopped short of naming him, but said essentially that whoever the GOP caucus nominates, that's who should be speaker. And the lieutenant governor, you know, was very calculated in that

move, didn't say his name explicitly, but it was notable regardless. Mary Elise, you were on the floor the day of the speaker's vote. Walk us through what that was like. What do you remember about election day? Okay, so that day was definitely interesting for a number of reasons, one of which was, I was a newbie reporter there. This was my first time being in session, so that was exciting, but that's kind of as an aside to this speaker's race, which captured really everybody's attention at the beginning of the session. Of course, like Rob was describing,

folks weren't sure which way it was going to go, and Bros ended up collecting a lot of support in the end, obviously just enough. But something I really was interested in when they were giving their different speeches, the supporters for the different candidates were giving their speeches. in support of a certain individual. And what I'll know is that speaker, Dustin Burroughs, supporters, his slave supporters, really focused on kind of railing against what they call the outside forces, kind of referencing the Texas GOP activists and political action committees,

mentioning all of those weaved within their speeches, talking about how they were all working together to pressure membership to support Cook instead. So that was kind of a theme that you could see. borough supporters revolving around, but also something else, and I think that this does paint a good picture of what the atmosphere was like after Burroughs won. I think that maybe we were expecting a lot more drama than there was, or a lot more intensity, and it actually moved pretty quickly. But this particular statement, which was given to the Texan by Representative Mitch Little, and he had been a representative cook supporter. This was Mitch Little. He said,

I think you're going to see business as usual at the Texas House. He said, I don't think there will be any material difference between Dave Phelan's regime and Justin Burroughs regime. And so I think that was the general attitude, at least on the House floor, of course things were different for activists just outside the chamber, but that was the general response afterwards. But the overall tune before the election of the speaker was very excited and very curious. And, you know, everyone was milling around and talking to each other and saying, you know, what do you think the outcome will be? This is, you know, something I haven't seen in a while. This is very interesting.

We have a lot of key players here that are going against each other. And so it just seemed it was interesting waiting in line with the reporters before we went in. to the chamber right before the election began, the reporters were all kind of talking amongst each other very excitedly and saying, you know, how do you think this is going to turn out? A lot of people asking, Brad, do you have any inside scoop here and how this is going to pan out in the end? But I do think that my takeaway in the end was that it was calmer and quicker

than I thought, and there was a lot less drama in the end, although, of course, it was very heated leading up to this moment where Burroughs was elected. Absolutely. And I'd say, too, that like you said, or Rob mentioned, after the election, that was the, you know, business as usual was really the thought behind, I think a lot of folks who were on the David Cook side of the coin here. And as session went on, it really kind of got ironed out. And there was a lot of support for the speaker from the Republican caucus. At our kickoff event, the listening to governor said, you know, this is the very beginning of session. I'm not happy that Democrats picked our speaker again, but I'm going to give him a chance. He says he's going to. He's going to. to be the most conservative speaker ever. So that would be a great thing for all of us. I'm going to do everything I can to help him succeed and we'll see what happened. You know, he addressed criticism where he, you know, kind of talked about the process by which Burroughs was elected and mentioned the caucus endorsement and said, I didn't care who the speaker

was. And the governor and I put out the same note. We didn't care who the speaker was. We thought it should be the Republican caucus nominee. But soon after session started, we saw the big three were at breakfast again. This is kind of a tradition as we see the governor, the lieutenant governor and the speaker sit down for breakfast throughout session, and that had not happened in years, particularly since the speaker did feel and and, um, and Lucian governor and Patrick were at the home together. And, um, you know, seeing those three, we got pictures on social media of Patrick Burroughs and happen at breakfast and we're like, what is happening? Peace has been brokered. This is wild. I think that continued throughout the legislative

session. So, um, really is interesting that, you know, school choice was a big litmus test for that, I think, too. And school choice being passed during the session in a house where there was certainly questions of whether that piece of legislation could pass that chamber, that voted very well for the speaker. Rob, what do you have to add? I was just going to say one last thing was that in 2021, Phelan and Patrick had more than amenable relationship. and that really started to sour, from what I understand, in 2023. So even though, it's interesting that even though Burroughs and Patrick have a very good relationship right now, you really always have to keep watching because you don't know

what's going to happen in the future. You know, new political fractures show up, coalitions change. It could be, you know, I'm not saying that they're going to like break up or anything at this point. But, you know, it's always, it's always fun to watch because anything can happen. So, yeah, absolutely. A breakup among state leaders. Interesting. Who knows? But regardless, it's been very notable that there was such a, um, chummy relationship, especially toward the end of the year. So we'll keep an eye on how that all goes down. And, you know, I mentioned school choice is a big part of this, um, whole, uh, kind of lead in through session and perhaps even

a plot point where we saw Burroughs and Patrick kind of link arms and be in, you know, unison here. Holly, I want you to talk about, you know, the governor's priority piece of legislation finally making it across the finish line. Sure. And let's just note that this effort has been at least a generation in the making. I remember when I first became involved in Texas politics in 2004 hearing about the school choice effort, but you just really didn't have a lot of push from the public at that point and the political landscape was not conducive to passing anything at that point. Abbott was interested in the topic way back. I remember interviewing him, I think in about 2013 when he first announced he would be running for governor and he and I

talked about that quite a bit. But the general public, again, wasn't really ready. And I think a key turning point came in the COVID pandemic when you saw a lot of students. students at home, their parents were getting to see what was happening with the public education curriculum. Some of the problems there, you also saw the teachers' unions pushing to keep schools closed when parents were saying, no, this is not working for our kids. For most kids, they need to be in person and really prefer in an open school rather than isolation. So you saw a lot of cracks exposed in the public education system. and you started to see more of a public support for that in the state of Texas. Of course, it had passed in other states.

And then when Abbott pushed for it in 2023, we had our multiple special sessions, ending without a bill. And Abbott went to war, of course, in that 2024 primary. And we saw a lot of media reporting on some of the outside influence from the state of Texas, like Jeff Yass, a Pennsylvania billionaire investor. But we also had powerful voices here in the state of Texas, people like Stacey Hawk and Doug Deeson and Leo Linebeck, the third out of Houston, very powerful donors and influencers within the political climate,

but also just more of a groundswell and support from the general public in the state of Texas, including from minorities who typically vote Democrat. And so you combine all of those things, and you finally had the stage set in a way that allowed this measure to finally pass. And of course, you know, you had your usual horse trading on the House floor, because as usual, the House is where a lot of these conservative priorities go to die. But you did see with the changes that came from the 2024 Republican primaries, see more support there and far beyond the, 76 votes, I think, that were needed in the House. I think it was, what, 83, 84, 85, something like that. So you had beyond the margin that was necessary, right? You did have a couple of Republicans who, in the end, I think it was Phelan in Van Dever, who cited with perhaps putting it to a popular

vote instead of having the House pass something, but ultimately all of the Republicans who were elected sided with Abbott and the push for this education savings account. And so I think we'll see a lot of scrutiny of the program as it unfolds. And a lot of the detractors looking for weaknesses or any missteps they're certainly going to make a big deal about. But this was a huge accomplishment for Abbott. And he, I think he's going to employ that strategy in the coming year, but I know we'll talk about that more later in the podcast. Absolutely. And notable too that the, you know, as the Republican caucus was preparing to go out on the floor and vote on this piece of legislation with the full house, the governor came in to the caucus meeting and got

the president on the phone and said, the president basically said, you vote for school choice. You've got my endorsement. And what did we see? Only two Republicans from the caucus. opt against voting for the proposal, which had you told us that would be the case a year ago, two years ago, we would have not believed you because there are plenty of rural Republicans who were not just, you know, critical behind the scenes, but critical publicly of such a proposal and then ended up voting for it. And in one case, you know, you had Jeff Barry out Perland was one of the primary races that Abbott was not successful in swaying to the more pro-school choice candidate. But Barry read the writing on the wall and voted for the initiative in the end

and had to put out a statement to his constituents saying, you know, you've got all these forces coming against me. If I don't vote for this, none of my bills will pass. You know, this is, I have to basically go with the caucus on this. And so that pressure was very effective coming from, as you put it, you know, not just the governor's mansion, but the White House as well. And, you know, like it or not, Trump still has an extensive influence over Republican elections in Texas. Absolutely. And no, no examples more pertinent than that one. But Holly, thank you for covering that for us. We'll, you know, speaking of big priorities, the one that I think shocked a lot of us when it was rolled out as something that was going to be important and take up a lot of the oxygen in the room when talking, this legislative session was THC, a THC ban. And the lieutenant governor came out and said that this is going to be a very big.

It was a priority of his. He was rolling out SB 3, Senate Bill 3. And it was certainly not something that before that announcement came, we foresaw as a policy issue that would take up so much conversation and even be pushed to special sessions. But this was, like I said, a priority of lieutenant governors. And it passed both the Senate and the House to quite a bit of back and forth and, you know, figuring out of different proposals and different methods or which to pass. something like this. It was finally sent to the president, or excuse me, the governor's desk, and rumors started to fly pretty quickly about a potential veto. And there were, you know, an unbelievable amount of pressure mounted against this legislation from outside groups,

advocacy groups, hoping to get this proposal thwarted. And at the last minute, the governor did veto the bill. And I think what was shocking here as well was the lieutenant governor who usually is very deferential to the governor publicly in terms of how he talks about different issues held a very fiery press conference that had all of us in shock and basically said the governor wanted to legalize marijuana after making this move, which was wild. Mary Lisa, what do you remember about this whole debacle? Yeah, well, I mean, that press conference you're referencing just right after the veto was an extremely interesting one to be at because the lieutenant governor, as you were saying, would not usually speak in this way about the governor, but he was clearly

concerned, very concerned that there had been a veto of this bill, this huge priority for him, and he kept repeating several times throughout the presser. I'm not mad at the governor, but emphasizing he was concerned that the governor was wanting to legalize this and just expressing that maybe there's a kind of a misunderstanding here, but it seemed as though he was really not expecting the veto. There was also a press conference that he had held before this veto that got a lot of attention online because it was advertised to the press as there would be, I believe, snacks and drinks there. So, of course, you get a great showing from the press. And so we're all there standing around and he unveiled, he had a table of all sorts of hemp-derived products,

and he was speaking about all of them and kind of sharing why he felt a personal conviction to regulate these or to ban them and at one point there he was kind of joking around with a reporter and tossed him a bag of the product and that was something that went kind of viral online but the lieutenant governor was just explaining really his this personal conviction that he felt that this legislation was necessary to protect Texans and then seeing him be so convicted about it and then going to this other presser after the veto where he seemed kind of caught unawares potentially about this veto and trying to speak about the governor in a respectful manner but also being extremely upset that this huge piece of legislation for him

had been vetoed and it was something that folks were watching and kind of speculating oh is a governor going to veto this it would be so significant because it's going so clearly against lieutenant governor's priority and of course like mackenzie was saying we did eventually see the veto of it. And of course, if you would have told us, you know, a year or two ago that it was going to be the lieutenant governor and the governor as the ones at odds and not the speaker and the lieutenant governor publicly over such a contentious issue, we would have thought you were crazy. And here we are watching Patrick and Abbott kind of come at it here. Really wild to see all of that go down. And of course, in special sessions after that, the issue was on the call.

And they never did end up passing. We've seen different approaches to how this issue would be kind of. have dealt with in the interim at least, but there's no age minimum in state, a lot of purchase, consumable hemp products in Texas, but the governor did issue an executive order in September that tasked the TABC, the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, and the Department of State Health Services with reviewing state regulations and coming up with a proposed age limit for hemp-derived THC product purchases, and both agencies have said that there's now a 20 year age minimum for selling and purchasing hemp products in Texas.

So who knows? Will the lieutenant governor be satisfied with that? Who knows? There also could be more legislative action taken this coming session. And I think something that will surely affect the legislative action moving forward on this topic is that the White House has been signaling kind of a different approach to this issue. I mean, just recently Trump was announcing a new drug policy where they were expanding access to cannabis. And then, of course, in Congress, with the funding bill, which does expire in January, but they did put essentially some bans on hemp-derived products. So there's, of course, you've got the federal conversation about this. And the White House, I think,

signaling something a bit different than what the lieutenant governor is looking at this topic from the perspective he's looking at it from. So it'll be very interesting to watch how the White House moves forward with this, especially with the new truck policies they're coming out with, and then to see if that kind of has a ripple effect in Texas, if that it all affects the messaging around this issue and whatnot. Especially with Patrick being someone who has been so historically in lockstep with the administration and has been the, you know, the president's chairman, a campaign chairman here in the state. So we'll keep an eye on that.

Thank you, Mary Lees. Holly, let's talk about another huge issue that was passed as legislative session, bail reform, finally got across the finish line. Yes, so that one doesn't have quite the history that the school choice legislation had, but it has also been years in the making largely due in the state of Texas to things that were happening in Houston and Harris County, which I've covered for, I guess, the past six years. In Harris County, you saw a lot of these judges releasing suspects on bail and pointing to a measure that's in the Texas Constitution that says you basically have to grant bail unless

its capital murder. So what they had been trying to do since probably 2019, really, the effort got launched in 2021, is changed the Constitution so that judges would have the discretion to deny bail for certain violent crimes. And that measure failed in 2021 and 23. Of course, it passed the Senate and stalled out in the House where you need that two-thirds majority to get constitutional amendment across the finish line. We were on the House floor the day that this latest proposal came down. It was introduced on the Senate side by Joan Huffman, who's worked on that for years and carried over into the House. And there were negotiations going on right up to the last minute. We watched the governor staff there on the House floor huddling on the

sidelines with the Speaker staff and some prominent Democrats like Ann Johnson out of Houston and some of these Democrats that they really needed to draw over to support this and they did finally get it across the finish line you saw a huge margin there a lot of bipartisan support for it went to the ballot of course in November and passed with the voters voters approved it and so now the judges do have the discretion there has been some reporting suggesting that oh now they have to deny bail in these cases, but that's actually not true. It's going to be dependent on the local district attorney or a prosecuting county attorney to make the case to the judge

that this particular person accused of these certain violent crimes, like continuous human trafficking of persons, persuade that judge that this person is a risk, either to the public or to the victim, law enforcement, or a flight risk. And we are, already starting to see the fallout of that. We had a case here in Harris County that the judge in this case did completely deny bail and particularly heinous offense there. But yeah, it was years in the making. And again, a lot of that amputus came from Harris County, but it was happening in other parts of the state too, where we saw some of these defendants that, for example, in Houston, you had one guy who had been arrested 70 times.

It was out on bail and stabbed to death an elderly woman in a Walgreens parking lot in the middle of the day. And so I think, you know, again, you have not only a push from your politicians, but that public outcry that helps these politicians who want to make these changes, helps push that legislation across the line. And I think, you know, in addition to the governor and lieutenant governor coming out, at the start of session and saying, we're going to basically declare war over this issue, you also had a lot of the population putting pressure on some of those prominent Democrats in those urban areas who are seeing the effects of not making this change. So another big win for Abbott

and for all of those who were pushing for these kinds of changes to promote more public safety in the state of Texas. Absolutely. And watching the governor outline that and his state of the state address at the beginning of session. I mean, we knew before that that it was one of his big priorities, but it really just kind of took a lot of his momentum throughout the course of the legislative session. So I'd encourage folks go read Holly's reporting. She's been covering it for many, many years. So get all the details and the rundown of all of it. Thank you, Holly. Mary Lisa, let's come to you here. Two very contentious social issue related bills passed during the second special session. So this took a little while to get these across the finish line, walk us through

these proposals. Right. And both of these bills have been in the works for a little while, particularly the one that folks call the bathroom bill. It's a bill a law now where it separates publicly funded intimate spaces, so bathrooms, locker rooms, domestic violence shelters by biological sex. And it was called the bathroom bill throughout session, but it had been previously attempted at being passed in 2017. It didn't make it through until this second special session and so I went through lots of committee hearings and debates and then the other piece of legislation that was major when it comes to social issues this session was a crackdown on chemical abortion pill providers distributors it allows a civil liability for these individuals who are

distributing chemical abortion pills and this was really a capstone moment for the pro-life movement within the Texas Capitol because we've seen so many different abortion-related laws being passed successfully. This one was what a lot of the lawmakers were saying was kind of the last-standing branch of the abortion industry in Texas for it to be able to have access to Texas women, for Texas women have access to abortions here in Texas. Chemical abortion pills are kind of last-standing branch here. This employed civil liability for anybody who is giving chemical abortion pills to Texas women. It allows civil penalties of up to $100,000.

And as Holly was saying with the bail, there were negotiations up until the last minute during special session to get this across. But it had persicarily to do with ensuring that it didn't turn into a bounty hunter situation. So this was something that the Republicans and Democrats were kind of working together to say, okay, we see that this is, they saw that this bill was going to get across, and so they were working to make sure that this wasn't written in a way that would encourage bounty hunters. So they did the very last minute, I believe it was the night before it passed, they crafted it in a way to make it so that if someone is related to the affected pre-born child, whether it's a woman or her family, you can collect the full.

full $100,000 in one of those lawsuits, but if you are unrelated, the individual can only be given $10,000 in damages, and then the remaining $90,000 will be donated to a charity. And that also, after the bill was passed, sparked some conversation about some of the left-leaning individuals are saying that they're concerned that the pro-life groups were working towards potentially being one of the charities that this money could be donated towards, of course, That was just conversation afterwards. But this was House Bill 7, and it was authored by State Representative Jeff Leach. And it sparked some of the most contentious committee hearings and floor debate.

And actually this bathroom bill and this chemical abortion pill bill passed on the same night during the second special session. So it was a long day. So they argued for several hours about both of these pieces of legislation. And a lot of the conversation, some of it was. technical and legal. And some of it was philosophical. They were arguing about very deep questions about what does human life begin? What does gender mean? Is it a social construct? And different, these topics, these issues bring up these topics. And so it was very interesting to watch the conversations between the lawmakers. And it was extremely heated. We had Democrats and Republicans

pulling out their Bibles and reading different verses to each other that they felt would guide other party in the right direction and it got that was one moment in particular where it got pretty heated and we saw lawmakers step to the side and argue with each other about um what the what the verses really meant there um so this was i'll go back to the chemical abortion pill bell was just really this summit moment for the pro-life movement because and i talked to some activists about this you know where we where where the where's the pro-life movement looking to move forward after this because this is so significant. And of course, the Democrats recognize that as well. And that was something I talked about in committee hearings. They said this is Texas women's last chance

at access to abortion in Texas. And so where's the pro-life movement even going ahead moving forward? So I would like to plug a piece I wrote a while ago about the future of the pro-life movement in Texas because there were some interesting conversations with some of the activists and the lobbyists that were behind this legislation and talking about kind of where their sites are set moving forward. But this was, and I think we'll talk about this shortly, but the redistricting did kind of interfere

with these bills getting across, which some people noted that the quorum break by some of the Texas House Democratic members not only stall the map passing, but some conservative priorities such as this, the bathroom bill and the chemical abortion pill bill. They were pushed off until the second special session when Quorum was finally met, and there were a lot of different priorities passed then. And during the regular session, they had both died and committee, and that was something that drew a lot of attention to those specific committees, the House State Affairs Committee, when you saw the Chemical Abortion Bill was left in House State Affairs for a couple weeks, and it looked like it wasn't going to receive a vote after hearings had been held.

There was a lot of pressure from pro-life activists. And it was eventually, there was a vote taken in the committee, but it was never reported to calendars. So it was never on the House floor for the regular session. And so after the regular session wrapped up, we saw more pressure from pro-life activists saying, Governor Abbott, you need to add this to a special session because it died unnecessarily during regular session,

and we believe we can get it across. And so I'm sure that next session we'll see These bills will be brought up again, and kind of similar to school choice, we'll see some of the folks that are opposed to these bills talking about the improper ways that's being implemented. I'm sure we'll have conversations about maybe how these laws need to be, if there's any further laws that need to be passed to kind of clarify these. But, yeah, two very major, very major social issues that just really started some of those heated debate between members. major to say the least mary lee's thanks for covering that for us Kim let's do a pivot here as we know there is incredibly devastating flooding

that happened this July in central Texas the largest of which was in Guadalupe River the Guadalupe River in Kerrville give us a recap of some of the ways that this flooding was addressed legislatively yes so as you mentioned over 130 people died in the flooding this summer just catastrophic flooding along not only the Guadalupe River, but the San Gabriel, Lano, Lampas rivers all flooded and it devastatingly included children, 27 campers and counselors from Camp Mystic and Hunt, Texas. So it really, the Texas Department of Emergency Management stepped in under

the leadership of NIMKid and did a lot over the weeks that followed to rescue and recover in the flooded regions. But the legislature, it did change the special session call because the governor wanted it addressed immediately. So he put that on both special sessions. And it was another piece of legislation like Mary-Alee's pointed out that was delayed because of the quorum break. But first, there was a joint special committee

on the disaster that had members of both the House. in the Senate and they held hearings in Kerrville they held hearings in Austin lengthy hours long hearings allowing both the officials who were in those localities to testify but also allowing the impacted families to come and tell their stories and share their concerns and share the suggested reforms that they would like to see and so all of that culminated in a couple of reforms bills that were passed and have now taken effect requiring, well specifically camps like Camp Mystic to submit state approved emergency plans to train their staff on flood procedures to install

warning systems. It prohibits camps in floodplains. It mandates evacuation routes and those to be posted and for rooftop ladders to be present in the cabin. So a lot of reforms that these camps will have to put in place. Obviously, these affected families are still dealing with their grief and sorrow and processing that, and several of them have filed a lawsuit against the camp for gross negligence, a wrongful death lawsuit, so we'll be following that lawsuit to see how it turns out. Another issue that, from a local government perspective that happened, because Kerrville was so impacted. There's a thing that's allowed by the legislature called the disaster tax

rate that allows cities and counties and other municipalities to raise their tax rate without voter approval based on a disaster. And that drew a lot of attention because some residents in the area were like, haven't we already been hit hard enough? Do we really need to pay more property taxes this year? But in the city of Curville, they're going to have to. The city of curville did adopt its disaster tax rate but the county declined to and they chose to adopt the no new revenue rate so a couple of local government issues that also came out of that flooding in response to that the city of curville justified it saying we we are going to have to do a lot of repair and rehab of our city and so we're already strapped financially and we just have to raise

taxes you know other people didn't agree necessarily that they had to do that because they're going to get a lot of government aid to do a lot of those things. But anyway, it was one of those issues that came up. So we'll see how things proceed, but camp Mystic has announced it's going to be opening at least a portion of its camp next summer. And so we'll see how that goes. Absolutely. Kim, thank you for chatting through that with us. Mary Elise, let's come back to you here. You know, last summer Texas kicked off a redistricting battle, you know, across several states. This is where we saw kind of a coordinated effort by Republican states that was met with efforts by Democratic states to kind of combat or even out those efforts. Tell us why this

happened and how. Yes. So obviously one of the biggest stories of this past year with Texas politics, but it's also been having its ripple effect across the nation. redrew their congressional map and this followed pressure from the White House to gain an additional five seats, Republican five seats. And so then we saw a summer full of very heated committee hearings. We had all sorts of press conferences that were going after each other. And then television hits from various figures who were kind of leaders. this in this fight and then there was the quorum break which we mentioned a little bit earlier

by a lot of the members of the texas house democratic caucus and that was very interesting because it took this battle from texas and brought it to the national level because we saw folks from various different states observing this happening because there were different political leaders from other states, such as Illinois Governor Pritzker, and lots of different leaders from different states, Democratic states in particular, were kind of throwing their support behind our Democratic members who were breaking quorum and applauding them as kind of holding the line here to prevent these new maps from being passed. The Democrats were arguing that this mid-decade redistricting was part.

partisanship and that it was stifling the votes of minorities. And so that was kind of the big message there that Democrats wanted to get across is that they felt as though this would be dwindling the votes of minorities. And then Republicans were saying essentially that they were just leveling the playing field after other states, some of the states of which our members actually went to during the quorum break. They were arguing that those states have already held unfair redistricting. And so that was kind of the two messages that were warring with each other. So then we saw the district court panel rule against these maps.

And very interesting dissent from one of the judges, which we covered on this podcast a little bit earlier. But that captured a lot of attention as well. And then Texas appealed the ruling, which everyone was expecting they would do after a ruling like that. And they appealed the ruling directly to the United States Supreme Court. and then right before the filing deadline, just before the Supreme Court sided with Texas and then allowed that this map will be in place for next year's midterm. Of course, then that has a major effect on lots of different campaigns. We've got Republicans who are launching campaigns to jump into different districts that they see

will be more red after this redraw, and then we see different Democratic members who are hanging up their hat after being kind of pushed out of their district. and having another candidate who's now, you know, already elected. So a Democratic member who's already representing that district and they've been kind of pushed into each other. An example of this is Congressman Lloyd Doggett and Greg Gassar. And so we saw them kind of having, being put in this really awkward situation as major figures in the Democratic Party

where the redraw kind of pushed them into the same area. And Congressman Al Green saying he's, going to be running in a different district because the district that he has served in and that his home is in, he said, is now in a new area. So it had this just major ripple effect not only for all of these campaigns once the Supreme Court decided, but just the redistricting in general triggered a response from a lot of democratic states. One example, say, is California. They passed Proposition 50, which was their own redistricting. And we actually went to a rally that Governor Gavin Newsom held,

and he was kind of almost doing a victory lap in Houston. Because at the time, this redistricting was still held up in quarantine. And so he was holding this rally with different major figures, such as Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, and saying, look, you know, we can fight back. This is our own redistricting, if you're going to, He called it rigging the maps, then we're going to have our own redrawing that we have go on here. So this will be, I mean, now that the Supreme Court has decided, we'll kind of observe these campaigns.

The filing deadline is passed, and we'll see how this has an impact on the races. It's not certain that Republicans will pick up all five of the seats that they were aiming for, but they will at least collect a few. So it's definitely, it might not be exactly the amount of seats. that they were gunning for originally, but it definitely will be an advantage to them for sure. Absolutely. And Mary Lee, thanks for covering it. It's a lot of back and forth through a district and effort like that in courts, legislatively. It's a lot of details. So thanks for running us through all of that. And it will play into these next few months in a huge way

in how these races are covered and shape up to which candidates end up winning and entering these races. So thank you for that coverage. Meredith, let's come to you. Let's talk about a local story that certainly, and very unfortunately, rose in the ranks in terms of what was talked about in the news this year. Yeah. So Celina ISD, this big sexual abuse scandal, unfortunately, isn't really going away. It's not wrapping up in 2025. There's still things to look towards in 2026 for how things will, what the outcomes will be for some of these lawsuits and all these different charges. So just a quick reminder, Caleb Elliott, It was a former coach and football, a former football coach and teacher at Slina ISD, who was,

it all started on October 3rd when he was arrested and then basically hasn't really, it's snowballed and continues to pick up charges along the way. He was indicted by a grand jury with seven counts of production of child pornography and one account of attempted production of child pornography, which if convicted, he would serve a minimum of 15 years and a maximum of 30 years in federal prison. And then on the state side, he's been charged with four state felony charges of invasive visual recording, possession, and promotion of child pornography and decency with a child and sexual performance with a child, which was added on later when new charges came forward that he was forcing students to do jumping jacks or burpees naked in the locker room. So there's a total of four lawsuits that have been filed against him starting in October and then culminating with state rep Mitch Little and his lawsuit that represent. 17 different families.

There's so many different allegations and claims, like I said, that we will just have to wait and see which one of these we get the different pieces of evidence about. Little had really harsh and very strong words about towards the police department and the school district and obviously Caleb Elliott and any of the staff involved that allegedly might have known about any of these things. So some of the claims that he brought forward more recently, which was in a piece that I covered last month, I believe, or yeah, about a month ago, claiming that other adults were aware of Elliott's actions, that there was evidence about a confrontation between him and another staff member and his previous attempts to photograph children in the locker rooms. And then there were some Snapchat subpoenas put out because of the distribution of these images. So all of this also is made possible because of state rep Mitch Littles, his, I'm trying to find the bill number, because of House Bill 4623 that passed during this last legislative session, which removed sovereign immunity from school districts in certain situations and allows the families to sue for negligence.

So if they are, they can be held civilly liable if they're negligent or reckless in hiring, supervising, or employing a school employee who commits. sexual misconduct or fails to report suspected child abuse or neglect. So like I said, we'll be watching to see how to all of these wrap up, but the victim count is roughly around 40 students at this point. And I was just listening to the Salina ISD's most recent board meeting, which was about a week ago, and there were still parents coming up and asking questions specifically about communication. The added level of this onion is that his father is the head coach at the high school, which is one of the best

ranked high schools in the state in 4A football and just recently are out of the running for the state title. But there was a lot of, there was petitions to allow his father's on administrative leave pending, you know, investigation into his potential or alleged involvement in his hiring. And so there's there was petitions to allow him to attend certain events, which someone on administratively would not be allowed to. And so the school district responded to that. And there was one parent who's like, if you can communicate about these issues, how come we can't have more communication about what's going on in the locker room? I've been here since October asking these questions. And it's December now. So there was other questions as well. But lots of allegations, lots of things going on there. So absolutely. And Meredith has been reporting on this and has all sorts of pieces of Texan to go. get caught up on this issue, a very important one. So we're going to thank you so much for your coverage. Kim, let's talk a little bit of election news. North Texans had a special election for

a Senate seat. It was very expensive, very hotly contested. Remind us of what happened there. So the former state controller moved on to greener pastures. And so former Senator Kelly Hancock, who had occupied the seat for Senate District 9, was appointed by the governor's two. clerk to take the lead at the controller's office. So he left SD9 vacant. And it's, you know, the Senate seats are not all up for election every two years like the House, but it is up for a general election in 2026, November 2026. But the governor did not want it vacant until then. So he called a special election for November to fill the seat. But that did not include a primary. So any party, any candidate, any number of candidates could jump into the race. And in fact,

Three did. Now, Senate District 9 is a Republican-leaning district, and it's been held by a Republican since the 90s, so at least since the 90s, over 30 years. And so two Republicans jumped in, and one Democrat jumped in. The Democrats are looking to try to win a seat in North Texas. And so Lee, Wams, Gons, and John Huffman were the two Republicans, and Taylor Remit was the Democrat. Now, on the Republican side, as you mentioned, a lot of money was spent. Not a lot of money was spent on the Democrat side because they only have one candidate to vote for. But the Republicans spent a lot of money on the Huffman side, a lot of pro-gambling money from the Adelson Group and casino sands. they spent a lot of money supporting Huffman.

And then on the Wamskons side, she was endorsed by Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. She got a lot of anti-gambling money. She ended up winning the most Republican votes, but the Democrat won the most votes. He, however, did not get enough to secure a majority. So the Republicans ended up splitting the vote. Wams-Gones and Remit will go now to a runoff.

that will be held on January 31st. So this race is still not over. We'll still be following it. It's heating back up again, a lot of block walking going on. Still a lot of signs everywhere. I live in this area. So I'll be following this race. The first, the vote will be on January 31st to decide who will occupy the seat until November. But then in March, voters will go to the polls for the primary to see who will run in November. So it's kind of one of the of those awkward situations where there are if you're not keeping track you're like how many times do i need to vote a lot the answer is a lot and uh kim has great coverage as well to go check out but it's it's these special elections do cause so much confusion locally so if you are confused

listen to kim go read her coverage it helps to know when you're supposed to go out and vote but But first one, January 31st. And then a month later, co-vote again. That's right. Just keep an eye out. Keep an eye out. Well, Kim, thank you. Holly, coming to you, let's talk about more local news and wrap this up with our final

story of this podcast. But a rising star at the Democratic Party here in Texas had some very notable news and an unexpected move here. Walk us through what happened. Yes. So Lena Hidalgo is the county judge of Harris County, which is the most populous county in the state of Texas, or about 4.7 million people living in Harris County now. So, you know, a lot of sway over what happens in Texas and Texas politics, limited, of course, because of the Republican majority. But Lena Hidalgo was swept into office in 2018 on that kind of Beto wave when Beto O'Rourke was running for Senate, even though he was not It helped bring a lot of Democrats out to the polls in the urban areas like Houston and Harris County. Lena Hidalgo has been a star. I mean, she's been profiled in Vogue magazine and, you know, in a number of national publications as this, you know, very promising rising star in the state of Texas for the Democratic Party. She won re-election in 2022, but things have gone steadily downhill for her since then.

later after being re-elected, she started to conflict with some of her fellow Democrats on commissioners court. Later that year, there were some strange outbursts at county commissioners court meetings. She claimed that she'd been groped in the Harris County Commissioner courtroom, and there were some kind of weird breakdowns and things like that. She did take a leave of absence for several months, was hospitalized reportedly for depression. And so, you know, there's been a lot of concerns about her mental health. But she came back and has continued to push for, you know, a more progressive agenda. But there's been so much speculation about whether or not she would run for a third term.

And she had been teasing that out all year. In the meantime, conflicting with her fellow Democrats. She tried to get them to support a ballot initiative that would have raised taxes again after a pretty steep property tax hike just last year, she thought that voters would approve a tax hike to continue what was intended to be a pilot daycare program launched in Harris County using COVID federal relief dollars. Her fellow Democrats, two of them,

Adrian Garcia and Leslie Brioz, refused to side with her on that issue, and at the same time joined with the courts one Republican to support a raise for law enforcement that had been pushed for for years. So right up until after that, she'd been teasing whether or not she would run, but did make that announcement that she would not run for re-election. But she's not going away quietly, that's for sure. She appears to be wanting to stay active and influencing her own party in Harris County politics. Last week, one of our top stories was over her kind of launching,

broadside against the Democrat who seems favored to replace her as county judge. Former Houston Mayor Anise Parker appears to be the leader there and Lena Hidalgo took a, you know, took a broadside against her and said she didn't represent the values of the Democratic Party, you know, referenced the former Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, because Anise Parker and Kim Ogg seemed to be somewhat aligned. And really, kind of exposed once again the fracture that has happened amongst Democrats, particularly in Harris County in Houston, where you have a former Democrat state senator John Whitmire now serving as the mayor of Houston. But being more on the side of that kind of law and order, favoring public

safety, a little more relatively conservative in his approach to tax and spending rather than seek a tax increase from the residents of Houston this year. He implemented an efficiency audit and has been trying to cut some of the city spending and make it more efficient, get rid of some of the administrative bloat. But Whitmire and Hildago have clashed quite a bit since he was elected. So you see that tension just really exploding in Harris County in particular, but I think we're seeing elements of that across the state as Democrats try to decide, you know, are they going to lean more towards this progressive element in the party or the more centrist Democrats who, you know, compared to Republicans, they're still, you know, left of center.

They tend to be pro-abortion or pro-choice and, you know, some of these other things, but fall along the lines of Republicans when it comes to public safety and, you know, We're trying to make sure that we're not letting people out on bail who've been arrested 70 times and so forth. So it's been interesting to see the development over the years. I've covered Harris County again since 2019. So I've watched this whole development of Lena Hidalgo is this kind of star of the party. Now her star seems to have faded somewhat, but I don't think we've heard the last of her, even when she leaps office. we'll keep an eye out absolutely i know i know you'll be your nose to the ground holly we appreciate

your coverage all throughout this it's wild um intentions in harris county man a tale is old as time um so we'll keep an eye on all of that a lot of fodder for reporters absolutely absolutely yes well and and to you know to just talk a little bit more about that you have governor abbott now saying he's going to be very involved in harris county in 2026. He's already endorsed a Republican who's running for Harris County Judge. That would be President of the Houston Professional Firefighters Association, Marty Lankton. And Marty is, you know, possibly the frontrunner amongst about, I think it's five or six Republicans who are running for that seat. But it was really interesting. We just saw right before Christmas Abbott

coming out and endorsing Lankton. which, you know, could be a bell weather for what happens in Hurst County. Absolutely. A lot of attention coming into Harris County this primary cycle. In general. But Holly, thank you so much for your coverage. Well, y'all, we're recording before New Year's, but happy New Year's. Do you guys have any, does anybody have any, like, New Year's traditions? We talk so much about Christmas, and I know I'm probably the culprit for that type of conversation, but are there any New Year's traditions that you guys have in, you know, in your repertoire for

your families. My dad is a believer that you have to eat black-eyed peas on New Year's Day, and I don't like doing that. I do do that. I hide them in Texas caviar. They're much better hidden with lots of other flavors. I'm not a fan of just plain old black eyed peas. Oh, but if you make them as what they call hop and john with some good red pepper and onions and mustard, serve them over rice it's really good yeah mustard who said mustard can't do it texas caviar is like black beans and avocados and corn and peppers peppers and cumin and garlic so basically you can't taste the black guy be that's my point it's a vessel it's a vessel it's a it's so good though too like eat it on a chip eat it alone i can just eat texascavare all day long

I've never heard about black eyed peas on New Year's. What is that? I wish I knew. I think it's like a good, good luck tradition. It's a southern thing, I think. You're supposed to eat black eyed peas and greens and greens, right? It's for luck, luck and money. I don't think I've heard any of this or eaten any of those things.

So, yeah. I'll have to try. Yeah. My family's from New Orleans, and it's always been a family tradition on New Year's Day. you have black eyed peas and cabbage too. Cabbage is better than black eyed peas, so. I disagree. I disagree as well.

That's kind of a, yeah, a hot take. I'm with you, Rob. I like cabbage. Well, folks, we appreciate you joining on this end of your podcast. This beginning of your podcast, rather, we're excited to continue to bring you all the news and the updates as we do throughout the year at the Texan. So thanks for tuning in. Thank you for subscribing. Thank you for listening. If you've not subscribed, please go and do so. That's how we can pay the bills

and make sure that we're bringing you the best news you possibly can. So thank you for that. And all of you, thank you for joining me today. And Rob, thanks for joining the, you know, this posse of gals here. We appreciate it. Well, thank you for having me. Hey, always. Ladies, thanks for joining folks. Thanks for listening and we'll catch you on next week's episode. 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.

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