The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - January 20, 2023

Episode Date: January 20, 2023

Use the coupon code Roundup to get a ticket for the 88th Session Kickoff for only $50: https://thetexan.regfox.com/88th-session-kickoff Get a FREE “Fake News Stops Here” mug when you buy an annual subscription to The Texan: https://go.thetexan.news/mug-fake-news-stops-here-2022/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=weekly_roundup The Texan’s Weekly Roundup brings you the latest news in Texas politics, breaking down the top stories of the week with our team of reporters who give you the facts so you can form your own opinion. Enjoy what you hear? Be sure to subscribe and leave a review! Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast. This week on The Texan’s Weekly Roundup, the team discusses: Gov. Abbott and Lt. Gov. Patrick taking their oaths of office The proposals to increase homestead and business exemptions at the inaugurationAbbott saying he is not “ruling in” a 2024 presidential runPatrick claiming that he and Abbott are “all in” on school choiceRepublicans’ election bills to empower Attorney General Ken Paxton to prosecute election fraudPaxton filing a brief on behalf of the Texas Nationalist Movement in their lawsuit against FacebookPatrick calling exceptions to Texas’ abortion ban “unlikely” this sessionCongressmen Chip Roy and Tony Gonzales sparring over a Republican border security bill’s effect on asylumGonzales filing his own bill for funding a border security grant programUT Austin banning TikTok on university-issued devices and university Wi-Fi networksState Rep. Erin Zwiener filing a climate change bill and “Action Plan” for Texas

Happy Friday, folks. Senior Editor Mackenzie DeLulo here, and welcome back to the Texans Weekly Roundup podcast. This week, the team discusses Governor Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Patrick taking their oaths of office. The proposals to increase homestead and business exemptions at the inauguration. Abbott saying he is not ruling in a 2024 presidential run. Patrick claiming that he and Abbott are all in on school choice. Republicans' election bills to empower Attorney General Paxton to prosecute election fraud. Paxton filing a brief on behalf of the Texas nationalist movement in their lawsuit against Facebook. Patrick calling exceptions to Texas' abortion ban unlikely this session. Congressman Chip Roy and Tony Gonzalez sparring over a Republican border security bill's effect on asylum.

Gonzalez filing his own bill for funding a border security grant program. UT Austin banning TikTok on university-issued devices and university Wi-Fi networks. And State Representative Aaron Zwiener filing a climate change bill and action plan for Texas. As always, if you have questions for our team, DM us on Twitter or email us at editor at the texan.news. Thanks for listening and enjoy this episode. Howdy folks, Mackenzie here with Hayden, Brad, Rob, and Matt. We got a lot of news to jump into, so we're going to jump right in. Matt, the state's top two officials were sworn into their third terms in office this week

during an inaugural ceremony that you attended held at the Capitol. Give us the highlights of that event. Both Dan Patrick and Greg Abbott started their third four-year terms in office this week after taking the oaths administered by Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court, Justice Nathan Hecht. Both officials gave speeches following their oaths where they highlighted not only the spirit of their visions for a future Texas, but also laid out a lot of legislative priorities for the upcoming or the presently ongoing session of the Texas legislature, including a number of priorities that overlapped. We have actually taken a look at some of those

major priorities and written further content exploring those issues. But among some of them that overlapped was border security, school choice, teacher pay, school security, higher education funding, and property tax relief. Well, as you were there, I kind of want a behind-the-scenes look of what it was like to be actually at the inauguration, how many people were there. It was held at the North lawn of the capital not the south lawn right yes on the north lawn and i'm just glad we decided a long time ago to do this in january because it was a hot day the sun was out and it was beating down on all of this and uh it's about 80 degrees or so something like that but you sit out in the sun with no clouds it

gets a little tiring but um it was pretty well attended, I'd say a few thousand people. And there were a lot of events that accompanied or that was part of the inauguration ceremony and basically all day long. Starting the night before, they had a firework show on the south end of the Capitol. And then that morning they held the inaugural ceremonies. And then immediately after that, they held a Taste of Texas, which was a big feed where they had about a dozen restaurants from around the state with different types of food, lots of barbecue, et cetera. And then that evening they had an inaugural ball in downtown Austin.

That was a private concert that they sold tickets for and everything like that. So a whole two days of festivities. I think Parker McCollum was the singer at the concert, which was awesome. Texas country music star. And I saw the Lieutenant Governor joined the Randy Rogers band on stage to play guitar. I didn't know he could play guitar. That was interesting. Yeah. What other speakers were there at the inauguration? Former State Senator

Eddie Lucio spoke doing a part of an introduction for Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, which I thought was interesting. Lucio was a Democrat from South Texas, a member of the Texas Senate. And it's kind of an interesting political dynamic back in the day, whenever he was a member of the Senate, as well as Cal Seliger, a moderate Republican, now former state senator from West Texas. Sometimes Seliger would threaten to hold up legislation, particularly on socially conservative issues. And Patrick could always look over towards Lucio, who is, you know, sort of a rare thing these days,

a socially conservative Democrat, and, you know, get the vote that he needed to bring a big bill to the floor or something like that. And so it was interesting to see Lucio up there being one of the two speakers that introduced the lieutenant governor before the oath of office. The other one was Republican Senator Brandon Creighton, who also spoke. And I believe he was co-chair of the inaugural committee along with

a member of the Texas House. Justin Holland, I think. Yeah. Yeah. And the House member. And of course, up on the stage, they had a lot of dignitaries and supporters and things like that. Speaker Phelan was also up there. And it was kind of an interesting up on the stage, they had a lot of dignitaries and supporters and things like that.

Speaker Phelan was also up there. And it was kind of an interesting way the way the process worked. It was actually a joint session of the Texas House and the Senate. So whenever it started, both the lieutenant governor and the speaker had to bang the gavel and gavel in and declare that they were in session. So that's pretty cool. Yeah, absolutely. Well, Matt, thanks for your coverage of that. Bradley, during his speech, the Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick provided more details on his plan for property tax reform. Matt alluded to this earlier. What specifically did he say?

So the Lieutenant Governor's made raising exemptions a part of his plans on property taxes basically from the get-go this cycle during the speech he stated his intention to raise the standard homestead exemption from 40 000 to 70 000 that's basically a reduction in the taxable value of your home so that would be a larger reduction and that would if not reduce tax bills it would reduce the amount that they go up in a vacuum. That also is wholly dependent on what the locality does, what rate they adopt and so on. But this has been a strategy the last few election or the last few legislative cycles. In 2021, the legislature and statewide voters raised it from 25 000 to 40 000 and so

now the lieutenant governor wants to do another jump in that and he also said that he aims to raise the business personal property tax exemption which is a tax on inventory and all other property a business owns that's not the land or the building it's on. So like a warehouse could be taxed on his forklift that they use or any other machinery, anything that produces income, but also inventory. So Patrick aims to increase the exemption on that from $2,500 to $100,000, quite a jump.

It was raised from $500 to $2,500 in 2021 by the legislature. And so we're seeing quite an emphasis on reducing the amount of dollars that the government can tax you on. In addition to what else we'll see here, which is compression, which that has been a topic the last few cycles as well. So governor Abbott has previously called for the a hundred thousand dollar business personal property tax exemption. So this is, that part isn't exactly new, but the exact figure of the homestead exemption increase was

that we saw. Got it. What does this mean for property tax relief as a whole this session? So as I said, the homestead exemption and the business exemption will be part of the broader action taken by the legislature. In its draft budget release yesterday, Patrick noted $15 billion is set aside for, quote, the largest tax cut in Texas history. That's something Abbott has called for. Lieutenant Governor has talked about. And so of that $15 billion, $3 billion of it is earmarked for the exemption increase. And so because you're reducing the way the school finance system works is it's like a seesaw when between local rates and the state's funding.

And so when you have an increase in the state funding, that lowers the local rate side. And so that's both how it works in compression and and the exemption so the state is basically replacing the funding that would be lost through the um the increase in the exemption um but more uh most of that that set of dollars will probably we haven't seen the exact plan but go towards further compression of rates which is also that kind of seesaw type of thing um only more acutely on the rates themselves specifically lowering that side of the equation and so uh the previous largest tax cut ever was 14 billion dollars in 2006 so if they do final or settle on 15 billion, it will in a pure number wise, uh,

eclipse that. Now, if you adjust it for inflation, uh, eclipsing that largest tax cut in history, it would, in today's dollars, it would equal about 20 billion. And so I'm sure there'll be some discussion of that going forward. Uh, but now, the starting block is $15 billion. And one more thing, I'm not sure yet where this fits into the announced figures, but the legislature did set aside $3 billion last session in ARPA funding, the federal coronavirus aid for compression this year. And the reason they set it aside was there was a court case going on congress had set a stipulation that you cannot use this to cut property or to

cut taxes and a court ruling basically nixed that so that's invalid so now it can be used and at some point it will be divvied out for compression at least as i understand it but where that fits in this broader 15 billion dollars section i i'm not quite sure yet but uh details will probably come out at some point and at least we have a little bit more uh specifics in terms of what the session might look like at least in dollar amounts so we'll see how that all shapes up as the session continues to go on bradley thank you for your coverage. Hayden, let's continue talking about our state leaders this week. Governor Abbott was, like we said, inaugurated for a third term, but there was some chatter about his possible aspirations for a higher office.

What did his chief strategist have to say? Well, as Matt mentioned, Abbott took the oath of office for a third time since 2015 to serve another four years here in Austin as governor. But it has long been the subject of speculation that Governor Abbott has his sights set on being president one day, and that could be in 2025 if he decides to run in 2024. His chief strategist, Dave Carney, reportedly commented when the subject came up, quote, What he's always said is when the session is over, he will take a look at the situation and see if there's a need for his voice, his experience to get into the fray. But until then, we're not

going to New Hampshire or Iowa or South Carolina or the things that you'd want to do if you're blindly ambitious to run, end quote. So his strategist is saying that Governor Abbott is approaching it in a calculated way. And while he's not committing to running one way or the other, it is something that he will consider after the 88th legislative session. And candidates for president, though they have been announcing earlier and earlier, traditionally begin announcing the summer before the primaries begin, sometimes as early as May. So that would comport with the Texas legislative schedule. They wrap up at the end of May. June or July would be probably a time when Abbott might make that decision and even announce a candidacy, though August or September announcing would probably be considered

a little bit late. So this is a decision that Abbott will likely have to make pretty soon this year. And he, in the meantime, is focusing on the session. Abbott said when he was asked by Fox News the day before his inauguration, if he was ruling it out, and he said, quote, I think a more accurate way to say it is it's not something I'm ruling in right now. Very interesting quote. Right. He said, I'm focused on Texas, period. So weaving the semantics very delicately on that answer. So it's clearly something that is on his mind. He is simply not commenting on it right now.

And he's focusing on the legislative session. Fascinating. So obviously, with an announcement like this if it would if it were to happen a lot of political dynamics would be uh shifted to say the least what could emerge politically from an abbott presidential run what dynamics could be at play well trump president trump and governor abbott have been tight uh they endorsed one another Abbott was with Trump at his presidential, I won't say presidential, at a rally of his a year ago in Conroe, and we attended that. So it would be a considerable change in the political landscape if Abbott and Trump went from being partners

politically to being opponents. And Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, is also widely considered to be a possible contender. So it would be an interesting shift in the political landscape. And as I mentioned, the Democratic National Committee is trying to shuffle the presidential primary schedule. I'm not sure what the definitive word is at this point on when the primaries will be. Traditionally, Iowa begins with their caucus in January, but it's possible that that won't happen this time. I'm not sure what the schedule will be at this point. On the whole, we're about a year away from the first primaries. So time is running out for Abbott and other possible contenders to make up their minds. And I'll be watching for Trump's reaction if Abbott does

decide to throw us out on the ring. It'd be interesting to watch different, like you're saying, Texas Republicans have to decide who they're supporting. I mean, even the Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick was the chairman of Trump,, I believe, was the chairman of his Texas campaign. Yeah. And he's been very, you know, politically tied with the governor for years now. So imagine that political dynamic if that was to happen. It would be an interesting spot to be in. Yeah. To say the least. Well, Hayden, thanks for your coverage of that um let's pivot to the lieutenant governor um brad and a very emphatic proclamation that he made during the inaugural speeches

on school choice specifically what did he say so patrick told the crowd quote the governor and i are all in on school choice we are going to pass school choice and i hope finally that this is the session that we join over 30 other states in giving parental rights to parents to choose the school of their choice the lg further said that he and the governor have a plan to bracket out rural districts where possible quote to make sure those and to make sure those parents have choice also where they are that's kind of a big question mark. How do you do that? First off, what does school choice entail? Is it a full-on voucher system where you can take the property taxes you pay to schools and take that elsewhere, whether it's to pay for tuition

or to pay for homeschooling or whatnot? So there's still a lot of question marks here. But he is, there's at this point, no question that he, and if he is representing the governor's views, which it sounds like he is based on previous comments from the governor, both of them are fully behind something on this issue uh interesting to note patrick did not say the same thing of feeling in this declaration it's it's widely known if you've looked if you've paid attention to this issue at all that the house is the one where that has um kind of the biggest roadblock to something passing in this. And I thought it was notable that such a big declaration was made by him on behalf of the governor as well. And the third member of the big three wasn't really mentioned. So I think Patrick probably doesn't know how it would fare in the house um at least enough to make a public statement and patrick has been very willing to throw the house under the bus previously and

this is not the same this is not him throwing the house under the bus it is him perhaps declining to do so yeah but at the same time he's never been shy further into the session when there's more of a track record of political persuasions between the house and the senate to say hey we're doing this and the house isn't we're more conservative whether or not that's true when you look at the the score after the end of the day the lieutenant governor is very willing to do so and he has a track record oftentimes of being able to push kind of this big quote-unquote red meat legislation that grassroots conservatives want school choice is obviously fit that obviously fits into that category um so we'll see what happens there but on that note let's talk about phelan and the house where is the speaker and

his chamber on this issue so phelan himself has not really come down hard on the issue he's more spoken in broad terms of where the house membership is at and in an interview last may he said he told a radio host chris salcedo when i asked this question it's something we've had on the house floor on budget night which was a test vote for vouchers basically they had a budget rider that proposed that could have that would have implemented some form of um voucher system uh to the state funding mechanism so he said it's um during that vote it was about 40 to 45 out of 150 members. You'd need 76. So pretty well short.

And I'm not sure if it would involve if there's anything that needs to be done with amending the Constitution on this. And if so, you'd have to hit 100. But still, as Phelan says, so the Delta is pretty large on getting school choice across the finish line. It's unclear where the numbers will fall this session with the governor and Lieutenant governor quote all in on the issue. They have a lot of push, a lot of sway. Um, and so how many members that were against it or were kind of on the fence

are now for it. Uh, we won't know until a vote eventually happens, but, uh, there are some pretty strong gop opponents of a voucher system in texas members like clint rogers and ken king come to mind um i don't foresee based on their previous public statements i don't foresee them budging at all and so that's there's about a if you're going strictly down party lines there's 86 members

gop members in the house and so if you lose 11 you're not going to be able to pass this unless you're able to pull in a democrat or two and so um it is a big question mark on what the house is going to do with us. And, uh, I think we, there'll be no light shed on, on that until a vote actually happens because of how chaotic the house usually is. It's not regimented like the Senate is,

uh, under Dan Patrick. So, uh, and also, uh, feeling has indicated that he's going to leave it up to the members on this like this is not something he is taking a strong stance on and so um all that said we're not

going to know for a while uh what the fate will be and what compromises they the senate must make on its its desired legislation in order to get it through the House. And let's drill down on this for a second. And I'm curious, Hayden, Matt, Rob, if you all have anything to add to this. But the political dynamic at play is, okay, let's say the House has 150 members, the Senate has 31. The Senate's ruled way more than the House is by the quote-unquote supermajority. That's just how things work. Things are planned behind the scenes, decided before you even get to the floor, what will happen.

There are very few surprises, if any, in this Senate. Even filibusters. You kind of know about filibusters before they happen. Floor action is pretty much a ceremony. Exactly. It's kind of a constitutional requirement,

unless so, an opportunity for a lawmaker to propose something new or unexpected, rather. Whereas in the House, you have 150 members, an amendment process, a chaotic back mic, front mic situation that requires, you know, folks to kind of stake out their territory if they want their voice to get heard. It's an entirely different situation. You have Democrats who are sitting there very much against school choice, by and large, I'd say probably, I don't know, 90% of them in the House, give or take on a good day are against school choice, or on a good day for school choice. And you have those rural Republicans who are against it as well. So Phelan is in this position where, okay, I'm a Republican, the other two top Republican elected officials in the state

who wield a lot of power are voicing a lot of support for this. It puts me in a tough position with my voters, and it puts me in a tough position for my members when I may not have the support that the Senate does, whether or not that's equally or contrived or the ratio is different because of the supermajority. It puts him in a very difficult position if he is not ready to go gung-ho for school choice

it also um the fate of school choice in the house may be decided by the appointment of the public education committee chair that was the case last session where it died in the pub ed committee chaired by democrat harold dutton and so um does is dutton appointed again or is another democrat appointed to that or do you get a republican in there and i think you'll probably see a lot you can tell you'll be able to tell a lot from the appointment whether it is someone who is friendly or somewhat friendly to school choice or if it's someone who is not at all i completely agree with that and i think uh we'll have to be watching very carefully to see kind of what the strategy uh comes about you know historically leadership does a lot to protect members from taking hard

votes on some things and i think this is a really good example where you have a lot of leaders from these rural areas who are adamantly against school choice. But then you have reps that are the other direction on it. So if you hold a hard vote on this issue, are you going to be putting them in a tough position? So then you kind of have this interesting dynamic where you have the lieutenant governor and the governor coming down to bear pretty hard on the issue that that puts you in a predicament where you do you let it come to the floor and let the members decide or do you protect the members from a vote on it? Once again, I think all this is going to come down to who's that committee chair. Is that committee chair going to put it to the side and not let it go through? Or are they going to say, let the votes fall where they may?

100%. We'll watch it. Okay. On that note, I would like to pivot to y'all before we move on to other items from this week. What surprised you, if anything, about the inaugural statements from specifically Patrick and Abbott? What kind of dynamics do you think were at play? Kind of walk me through just y'all's thoughts after hearing. It's the first time we've really heard from Patrick and Abbott in meaningful political and policy oriented ways since the

beginning of session. And we talked last week, the budget was pretty much the only talking point for a while. And now we have new talking points, right? State leaders are coming forward and kind of shaping the narrative. We'll start with you hayden of any surprises you saw from this week or just general takeaways after hearing from our state leaders well they did allude to their contrasting priorities when it comes to the budget surplus which i thought was interesting that they used the inauguration as a venue for that. I don't think Speaker Phelan said anything about that. His speeches were pretty short and sweet because it was not his inauguration.

He laid out his priorities when he got re-elected Speaker. But Patrick did talk about needing to shore up the grid, which is obviously something that is less of a priority for Governor Abbott because he believes that the legislature already took care of that. While Abbott wants to use, I believe, half of the budget surplus on a massive property tax cut or property tax relief. And it's uncertain at this point what form that is going to take, but he wants it to be used mostly on that. But they still both applauded each other when they talked about their competing priorities for the budget surplus. So I'm sure that was for the

cameras, but they both took their inauguration speeches as an opportunity to sell their different agendas for this budget surplus, which has not been seen before and likely won't be for a very long time, if ever. So, that is what stood out to me.

Yeah, 100%. Brad? Something that stood out to me was on the power grid stuff. And I think we actually saw the governor move a bit more towards lieutenant governor on this. Yeah, the governor has said frequently that everything that needed to be done was done. And that has caught a lot of headlines, but less noticed is the fact that the governor put out a letter after the 2021 legislature, basically laying out all these problems that needed to be fixed further and specifically related to the market redesign of ERCOT, which is currently being discussed as we sit here in the public utility commission. And so the governor had not really talked about that much, um, publicly saying,

Oh yes, we need to make sure that we get more thermal generation development. He didn't say it explicitly as much as the lieutenant governor has said it, but I also, the governor has, has, if you're looking for it the governor has acknowledged that more needs to be done despite his declaration that everything that needed to be done was done and in my view that statement when viewed in the context of the following letter was more about the physical reforms the is the system weatherized enough um did we fix that critical infrastructure loophole that caused a lot of

problems um but that wasn't really that hasn't really been unless you're reading between the lines that hasn't really been um voiced by the governor himself until we saw his speech where he did actually mention building more thermal generation dispatchable power so that's something that stuck out to me absolutely matt what about you i just kind of like the overall uh way their speeches were crafted to include so many specific details about their priorities and using those inaugural speeches for that purpose. You know, they talked about, you know, their vision for a future Texas and, you know, general terms and everything like that. But I just thought it was so interesting how they had so many specific issues and highlighted their overlapping issues, which just shows, kind of gives us an inside look at the political structure of the governor, the lieutenant governor in the Senate and the House. And Speaker Phelan just being shortened to the point, really weighing in on anything you know i know

it wasn't his inauguration as you mentioned but he still had the opportunity to um back up one of those two on a particular issue or something like that if he if he wanted to you know signal a strong united front of the big three on something in particular um so i just uh i think to me it was just the i guess symbolism yeah for sure i think uh committee chairmanships in both the house and the senate will be huge and um that will shape a lot of the discussions going forward so i'm excited for those to come out and we saw more detail from the governor but we're going to see a lot more detail when he announces emergency items that's the other big question mark is the governor's emergency items because although he mentioned things in his speech those were not

his outlined emergency items he wants to see addressed for this session and those should be coming out pretty quick because those those take priority uh those are the only things that the legislature consider during the first, what is it, 60 days of the session. So now that they're underway, it's time to drop those because this is the time that they can only consider that and not do other business. Yeah. It'll happen whenever he delivers the State of the State.

Oh, that's right which i'm checking now and i don't see any date for that yet so got it we'll keep an eye well gentlemen thank you hayden we're going to pivot away from the inaugural talk a little bit um a decision by the texas court of criminal appeals essentially gutted attorney general paxton's ability to prosecute election fraud tell us about that decision and why it matters. In December 2021, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals decided that a decades-old Texas law giving the Attorney General the power to prosecute alleged election fraud and other violations of the election code on his own volition is unconstitutional because it,

in their view, violates the separation of powers. So that statute was stricken down and is no longer enforceable. The Court of Criminal Appeals is the highest court in Texas that considers matters pertaining to criminal law. So there is no appealing that decision. And the Election Integrity Protection Act of 2021, the major election reform law passed by Republicans, was built on the assumption that Paxton would be able to prosecute fraud on his own and he wouldn't need to seek the cooperation of big county DAs in Harris County, Kim Ogg in Dallas County, John Cruzot, Travis County, Jose Garza, some of these Democratic DAs that are not as fired up about prosecuting fraud and seeking it out aggressively as Republicans are. That is why this decision was important.

And it served as the pretext for some bills that were recently introduced in the legislature. Yeah. So let's talk about that. Two Texas lawmakers introduced bills pertaining specifically to this issue to return some of that power to Attorney General Paxton or just any future Attorney General. How would their bills go about doing that? The first bill by Representative Keith Bell, a Republican of Forney in the Dallas area, introduced a bill that would allow county and district attorneys in adjacent counties to serve as special prosecutors at the request of the Attorney General to prosecute fraud. And as I mentioned before, that Court of Criminal Appeals decision says that it is only up to local

prosecutors to pursue these charges. It would keep it within the local prosecutor's purview. They would just be in an adjacent county and they would be serving as a special prosecutor for that purpose, which is not uncommon. That happens in other cases as well, where there's a conflict of interest or I'm working on a piece right now I won't get into, or if the DA dies or there's some other extenuating circumstance, special prosecutors do happen. So that's what Bell's proposal will do. Representative Brian Slayton, a Republican of Rice City, introduced a bill that would make it illegal for a local prosecutor to have even an unwritten policy of not pursuing fraud cases as they should.

And it would provide for a civil penalty of $1,000 for a first violation and $25,000 for every subsequent violation. The attorney general under Slayton's bill would also be required to pursue removal of office for local prosecutors who did not prosecute fraud. or Jose Garza or John Cruzzo, I'm not saying that they have done this, but if they did something like they did with the abortion law and said, we're not going to prosecute abortion in this county, if they said, we're not going to prosecute people for distributing unsolicited mail ballot applications, which is now a felony, then they could be fined or removed from office under Slayton's proposal. So these bills are intended to work around the Court of Criminal Appeals decision and reinstate some of the Attorney General's power to prosecute election crimes. Got it. Well, Hayden, thank you so much for your coverage. Okay, folks, if you haven't already heard, we've talked about it at length

on this podcast. The Texan is hosting our first ever legislative kickoff event this Tuesday, January 24th, here in Austin. To start off this 88th legislative session, we're holding an all-day panel discussion on the hottest political topics of the day with some of the state's top lawmakers, including Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. Patriot subscribers get one free ticket, and premium subscribers can purchase a discounted ticket for $35. But don't worry if you're not already subscribed to the Texan. Tickets just went on sale to the general public for $75. But if you use the code roundup today, you can score a ticket at just 50 bucks as a loyal podcast listener. For more information, go to the texan.news forward slash kickoff. See you there.

Hayden, we're coming back to you. We're just sandwiching you with topics as we are going to do during the panel. Hayden has back-to-back panel discussions. Everyone else has like a break between their panels. Hayden says he doesn't mind it. I really don't. It doesn't bother me.

I literally, when I was making the schedule and working with people on their schedules and lawmakers and staff, I was like, poor Hayden. But you weren't phased by it at all. I was nervous the schedule and working with people on their schedules and lawmakers and staff. I was like, poor Hayden. But you weren't fazed by it at all. I was nervous to tell you because I would not be happy with that. It's nostalgic because I remember in high school speech and debate tournaments where you'd have a debate round, then a speech round, then a debate round, then a speech round. Just back to back.

Subsequent. And by the end of the day, it was just exhausting. You have elections in border? Right. It's going to gonna be fun we'll talk about the event later on i get excited talking about it with y'all um but let's go back to talking a little bit about ken paxton here but a different topic the attorney general filed a brief in a social media censorship lawsuit this week who was involved in this lawsuit and what is at stake? The Texas nationalist movement sued the parent company of Facebook under a new social media censorship ban in Texas after Meta, the parent company, blocked access to its Facebook page. I think what they did was they posted a ban on linking to the page. In other words, if somebody tried to post a link to the Texas nationalist movements page, they could not get

to the page. And this, the TNM contends, is a violation of HB 20, which is the social media censorship ban enacted in 2021 that prohibits social media platforms from discriminating against specific viewpoints. And it only applies to giant social media platforms. I think 50 million users was the threshold. I'm not sure about that. But it's not applicable to the two smaller websites just these large companies policies against harassment and violence are still allowed under this law but

not viewpoint specific censorship this lawsuit is alleging a violation of that law got it so Got it. So what arguments did Paxton make a brief, a friend of the court brief, that argues the lawsuit should stay in Texas and should be governed by Texas law. And there's no reason why it should be moved to federal court. One of the reasons he presented is they're trying to venue shop and get out of arguing the merits of the case by moving it to a court that's going to be more favorable to its arguments. Specifically, Paxton's office believes that a federal court in California is going to use California state law and judge the lawsuit in light of that instead of using HB 20. And the Ninth Circuit is decidedly more progressive than the Fifth Circuit. So, Paxton is trying to keep the lawsuit in Jefferson County, which is where it was filed by Texas secessionists.

So, talk to us about the affiliation between Paxton and this Texas nationalism movement or Texas secession. Is there any bridge there or is this simply a role of a state official no this this has nothing to do with paxton's stance on the lawsuit itself or his stance on texas nationalism or texas session so if there's anyone out there saying you know this means paxton is for texas nationalism that's false he is not making any statement on what he believes about Texas being its own country or anything like that. that he's making taking no side in the lawsuit it's a friend of the court brief advising the court making the decision on issues that are relevant to the case that he hopes will influence this particular issue i.e whether it should be kept in texas state court or moved to federal

court in california got it well hayden thanks for breaking that down for us and this is also i mean you talked about it at length but we've written about this previously hb20 has been in the courts for a while now it's been going back and forth and paxton as the state's uh elected top attorney there is something to be said there for him having to step in with these kind of matters right and i left out a pretty important detail the the law is on hold right now it's been back and forth in the courts but the most recent i think the most recent decision is in october the fifth circuit though it upheld the law decided that the decision has stayed for now while the case is appealed to the supreme court so this law which was entangled in

litigation before it even went into effect is currently on hold, which complicates issues further. Can you sue somebody under a law that's on hold? So it is a very complicated case. But right now, HB 20 is on hold for the time being. Got it. Hayden, thank you so much. Matthew, we are coming back to you. Some are saying that Texas's abortion laws are too broad and are calling for exceptions to be added. But one of the top figures in the Some are saying that Texas's abortion laws are too broad and are calling for exceptions to be added. But one of the top figures in the legislature is saying that that's unlikely to happen this session. Give us those details. Texas law post Roe v. Wade, or maybe I should say in the new Dobbs court era, only has one exception for allowing abortions, and that is to protect the life of the mother.

Those on the left and some moderates on the right say that this is too broad, specifically saying that exemptions for cases of rape and incest are needed. During a TV interview with WFAA, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick was asked about where this issue stood this session, and his response pretty much ended the issue. Patrick elaborated on how his personal pro-life beliefs do not condone adding the exceptions, but that he respects the opinions and viewpoints of those on the other side who are supporting the addition of the exceptions, including one Republican senator and Senator Robert Nichols. But he said he would need to see a groundswelling of support to add the issues, which he added to say simply he isn't seeing anything. And he went on to elaborate that the issue isn't a very big one, giving a statistic to show that it really isn't a

major issue. Ultimately, Patrick said he believes it would be very unlikely for anything about adding the exceptions to the law to the rise this session, which is a strong signal from one of the top figures in the legislature that the issue is dead on arrival this session. Yeah. And that's kind of how we've talked about the gambling issue too, right? If there's openness on one side of the legislature, one chamber, it does not mean that there will be any success in the other. And so even if the House came forward and proposed something,

I don't think the House would be able to even get the votes in the in the chamber or has the appetite to kind of make room for those exceptions. But regardless, even if the House did, it probably, you know, it's kind of dead on arrival in the Senate. And to be fair, Patrick, you know, left the door open in a way, in a manner of speaking, by saying, you know, if there was this huge groundswell of support, you know, people calling for and saying, you know, we want this, you know, he'd probably take a harder look at it. But that simply isn't happening. With gambling, you have, you know, the Las Vegas Sands, political action committees and lobbyists spending a lot of money to, I guess, try and create that groundswell at least i'm

seeing the ads float through my social media feed right now i don't know where the issue stands beyond that but there you go absolutely well thank you so much hayden we're coming back to you two members of the republican congressional delegation in texas sparred this week over a border bill. Always fun to see some homegrown conflict here in terms of the policies being talked about in D.C. What were Congressman Tony Gonzalez's claims about Chip Roy's bill? Well, now I don't want to talk about this.

I want to talk about gambling. Do you have anything to add about that gambling discussion that we just had? I mean, you're right. Every Patrick and Phelan just did the same thing that they did two years ago which is patrick saying oh yeah we can do it it's a good idea as long as it's high quality and then patrick going no and then everyone forgetting about it so maybe we'll have one or two committee hearings on it but who knows but you you're right. Congressman Tony Gonzalez

and Congressman Chip Roy had a little bit of a conflict this week after Congressman Gonzalez said that Chip Roy's bill, border security bill, one of his proposals, bans all asylum, even legitimate asylum claims. And Gonzalez said that on Fox news. And he gave this anecdote about something about throwing a little girl over the other side of the fence or something, something like that. Very emotional anecdote that he gave. And it was, it was jarring, but Roy countered that the process under his bill would be similar to the process of Title 42 expulsions, which is still being enforced because of, again, Supreme Court stays.

You know, I get the sense that a lot of the decisions in this country are made by judges, and public policy often is decided by a nationwide injunction, which is a debatable topic all in itself. But Roy's bill more or less requires the Secretary of Homeland Security to either detain people seeking asylum or return them to a contiguous country, i.e. Mexico, just like the Migrant Protection Protocols or the Remain in Mexico policy. In other words, it would not allow the secretary to just release them into the country because not everyone who seeks asylum is legitimately seeking it. But for the people who are, Gonzalez said that this bill would somehow preclude them from doing so. And I sought clarification from Gonzalez's office on

what specific provision in the bill he was referring to, but we did not hear back a response. The only way I can see that happening is if there weren't the resources to detain an asylum seeker, that they would be sent away and not allowed into the country while their case is being adjudicated. And I imagine that's what he's talking about. If there aren't the resources to detain, then them just being sent back to Mexico. But the statement that it bans asylum is strong, and we didn't hear back as far as what provision of the bill he's talking about. Very true. And Gonzalez has been in headlines a lot recently. He's parted ways with the GOP caucus more than once. This is not the first time. And he's made, like I said, headlines as a result of those moves. Where else has he differed from his caucus, from his party, Republicans, on? Well, he voted for the bill concerning same-sex marriage and religious freedom protections as they relate to marriage ceremonies,

which I think he was the only Republican that voted for that in the Texas delegation. He also did not sign his name to a Republican border security framework presented in December. He was the only member of the Republican caucus who didn't. And he proceeded after the speaker's election, Speaker McCarthy's victory, to call some of his colleagues insurgents. And so they were proposing anti-immigrant proposals. That was his term.

They're strong words so he has uh not exactly been on good terms with other republicans yeah absolutely well let's continue talking about his actions and what he's been proposing in congress tell us about the border bill that he filed he filed a bill that would add funding to a grant program called Operation Stone Garden, which is a program for local border security efforts. It's a grant program. And it would set up a trust fund where money seizures from CBP would be deposited for Operation Stone Garden. And it would increase the appropriation for the program from $90 million to $180 million for the next three fiscal years. And it says that $60 million of the funding must be spent on technology for enforcing the border. So border security bill slash appropriations bill. But this is likely

his way of saying, I have my own plan. It's not nearly as extensive as what his colleagues introduced, but it is a border security bill. Yes, absolutely. Okay. Well, thank you so much for that, Hayden. Rob, we are going to come to you. I love when we can have you on the pod as you report for us here and there when the need arises and you're fantastic at it. Let's talk about some higher education. Why did UT Austin choose to ban TikTok on university Wi-Fi? Well, thank you for the kind introduction, Mackenzie. It's always a pleasure to be here. Normally, I'm in the room right over as they're recording this podcast, but I do like it when I can step in. Do you twiddle your thumbs and just sit over there and think, oh, man, I just wish I could be on the podcast? You know, that's all I do, really, is I sit there. I listen to you all through the walls, and it's like the Little Mermaid. I wish that I could be part of their world.

Oh, my gosh. That's actually hilarious. We walk in the other room and see him dabbing the tear tracks from his eyes. I went and bought a handkerchief just to be even more dramatic. That's perfect. But UT Austin chose to ban TikTok on all of its university Wi-Fi networks because on December 7th, Governor Abbott wrote a letter to Lieutenant Governor Patrick and Speaker Phelan explaining that he had issued an order to ban TikTok on all devices owned or issued by state agencies of the state of Texas. And, you know, the University of Texas is a public university, so it's following the same policy. TikTok is now banned on university-issued devices and computers, and they decided to ban it on all of the Wi-Fi networks as well.

Wow. So why is TikTok considered dangerous in this context? Why did UT raise its eyebrow? So there's a lot of fears about TikTok because the company TikTok Incorporated is owned by a Chinese corporation called ByteDance. And there are a lot of Americans who are afraid that TikTok is sharing users' data with ByteDance and that because By tiktok is sharing users data with bite dance and that because bite dance is a chinese corporation and in china corporations are required to turn over data to the

chinese communist party government if the government requests it then this could allow the chinese government to have access to potentially sensitive data from american citizens so the director of the fbi chris ray said um i believe shortly before abbott's uh order last year it's funny saying last year and isn't it now it's still in january a few days ago right the fbi director said that the app could be dangerous for this reason for possibly allowing the government to access american data now the tiktok incorporated uh they say you know we're a u.s company and we follow u.s laws um but they are owned by bite dance so this is what introduces that ambiguity and and and

has led a lot of um american government agencies to straight up ban the app on on their issued devices in fact the federal government actually followed this i believe president biden has made it illegal on or not illegal but uh banned restricted right ban restricted these devices on um agencies uh 22 other states or sorry 21 other states 22 including texas have followed suit many public universities have also followed suit so it's an interesting issue you know relating back to the, in fact, the issue Hayden was talking about earlier about, you know, social media and how do you deal with these big social media networks. So it's an interesting issue seeing what's happening. But I'll tell you, one of the most interesting things we're seeing on Twitter, all of the salt that a lot of University of Texas students had over over banning TikTok. I have to say it was it was at least a little funny to go through and read all the people who were expressing their absolute horror

that TikTok was banned on that, which is, I guess, that's what you get for living in the dorms. Certainly. Absolutely. Well, thanks for your coverage of that issue. Hayden, I mean, it's just a lot of Hayden stories this week. We're just chatting with Hayden all over the place here. And this is an entirely different topic too i'm looking at this story like this is entirely different um state representative aaron zwiener introduced a mandatory climate change action plan in the texas house give us an overview of her bill the climate change action bill would require the state of Texas to form a climate change action report that details impacts on not only the natural landscape, but also the economic impacts of climate change. And it would require the state to explore what it calls alternative sources of energy and the possible economic benefits of that. Although in the

climate change action plans we've seen before, they usually involve spending money, not making money. So that was an interesting note that I noticed about that. But the report would be publicly available and it would require that a climate change action plan be submitted to the legislature by December 2024, including a greenhouse gas emissions inventory that catalogs the source of all greenhouse gas emissions in Texas from all sources. Representative Zweener introduced this bill in November and it is one of many bills that lawmakers pre-filed certainly there you go well let's move on to the tweetery section here we're already at 54 minutes of the pod and i definitely want to save some time at the end to talk about the event so brad why don't

you start us off by telling us what you found on twitter this week so i'm going to pull a classic move and cite one of my own tweets but it is uh it is about a story that i saw in the wall street journal this morning and turns out twitter is having a fire sale and i take it they're having some cash flow problems. And so they're selling off a ton of things. And the very first item that the Wall Street Journal runs with in its headline is kegerators. You know what that is? No. Seriously? No, Brad.

Say it again. Kegerator. I have no earth it is a refrigerator specifically designed for a keg of beer brad with this audience who in this room would you think would know that you're right it was foolish of me to assume that you would know what a very common thing is so they say why twitter uh had a kegerator and multiple multiple kegerators plural do we have a kegerator no i'm glad you asked that but i because i asked this morning very formally in public on twitter uh connie and phil about that and it sounds like Connie is 100% behind an office kegerator.

That tracks. Maybe only if we get a margarita machine. Speaking of hits, on lawmakers, there was a margarita machine scandal a while ago, and I forget which rep it was for, but there was a rep, I don't think she's in the house anymore, who bought a margarita machine for her office, I think with campaign funds.

Just as a thing, and then that got stuck on a mailer and printed and blasted out to her district anyways keep going bradley on random fact did y'all know the frozen margarita was invented in texas i did actually anyway if you were looking to furnish your office or your household with a random assortment of twitter castaways then the wall street journal has some information for you ah so there's also a giant neon bird sign that is being sold and currently the auction is the the bid is currently at twenty seven,500. So if you've got a crisp, you know,

$30,000 laying around and for some reason you want this stupid neon sign, how did we maybe to put next to your kegerator? Wait, wait, wait. How did we go from kegerator to neon bird sign? That's things from the, it's literally in the headline Hayden.

What? That's what, that's what the wall street journal's literally in the headline, Hayden. That's what the Wall Street Journal led with in terms of what items are being auctioned off from Twitter offices. The internet is so dumb. I might have to go look at this auction. Yes.

So I actually just stole the mic from Brad because I was struggling to find a tweeter myself this week. But because Brad said neon sign, that gives me the perfect segue. Did you know that today, this day in history, January 19th, 1915, was the day that the U.S. patent for a system of illuminating luminescent tubes was issued by the u.s patent office which would later become the neon sign created by parisian george cloud which i probably just butchered but because you said neon sign i had to say that which is yeah so that's today's the day that that was that patent was issued wow that is pretty cool that's a pretty good uh uh switch there and it is also the birthday of Dolly Parton.

How exciting. Wait, today? Today, January 19th. I'm a huge Dolly Parton fan. I love Dolly Parton. Hayden, okay, we have a few more minutes. Hayden, your Twitter, Twitter, Twitter, Tweeter-y? Tweeter-y. Let's just end there.

A leopard escaped from the dallas zoo and i was enthralled by the emotional roller coaster of them tweeting about this leopard that escaped and my favorite part was that they said it was non-dangerous and i don't know about y'all but if i saw a leopard my first inclination would not be to walk up and pet it so to me that is a dangerous animal but anyway also it's interesting they said it was not dangerous when anytime you mention a wild animal to anybody who has reverence for those creatures there are the first thing he says it's a wild animal it's unpredictable it's dangerous even if it's like i don't know parrot you know what i mean like people always if you talk to a zookeeper they will always say it's a wild animal it's dangerous no matter what the animal is and then all of a sudden a leopard like a like a predator a giant

big cat is loose and it's not dangerous can i ask for a clarification you said parrot right because my ear heard pirate and i didn't think of a pirate as a wild animal but pirates are dangerous too if we really want to get into it i mean typically pirates are dangerous yes i am amazed that you had all of the animals in god's kingdom to choose from and you chose parrot as the example of a dangerous wild animal it has a beak that it can peck you with. Exactly. Are you just worried about it saying cuss words at you? Like, is that... Brad...

Okay, do you realize how kind I was to you during the kegerator segment? I barely made fun of you. And here you are. Yeah, because you didn't know what a kegerator was. No, that's not why I didn't make fun of you i had i had enlisted so much self-control your grandmother would be proud of me and here you are lambasting me i'm the victim in the situation matthew what did what did you see on twitter

this week uh i basically saw something that is a sign of the future robot wars. Um, wow. So there's this company called Boston Dynamics that builds, uh, humanoid like robots. And I thought the video was fake and then I Googled it. And the more I looked, I was trying to find something somewhere where a fact checker said this is fake or that sort of stuff. And no, it is terrifyingly real. This humanoid shaped robot running around doing things that a human can do, like moving construction equipment around and etc.

And yeah, it's it's it's pretty terrifying. So that sounds pretty terrifying have you have you seen the boston dynamics stuff before is this your the first time you saw this is the first time i've seen okay yeah these guys are notorious for putting out all these videos and i mean i was adamant that this was fake but i kept looking and i this this robot looks real and i mean it was it was running up and down construction scaffolding and moving stuff very agile all this stuff my goodness it's going to be a few more years and uh some fellow wearing a leather coat and sunglasses is going to walk up to me and say i need your car well if you actually want to go back and look at them and it's really

interesting because i believe they got started in like the early 2010s but some of their early I need your car. Well, if you actually want to go back and look at them, and it's really interesting because I believe they got started in like the early 2010s, but some of their early videos, you know, the robots are very goofy. They're falling all over the place. And it's incredible how much progress they've made in the last 10 years. It is. It's fantastic. I'm a big fan.

I can remember those stumbling around robots, you know, trying to make it like work and all this stuff. And now the thing is like crazy agile, like running up and down scaffolding and stuff more agile than many people yeah including me so so yeah um robot wars it's gonna happen i saw a tweet this morning um a similar type of anxiety against like ai artificial intelligence uh but that's still a long way because when i the section of a book that i saw posted to twitter said that a group of marines tested this ai system uh and it could not detect them because they were not walking like human beings and so they were all they did was like one guy pull a bunch of branches around him and

started shuffling around. So he looked like a tree. The AI didn't recognize him. Another one hid inside a cardboard box and the AI didn't recognize him. So I think we're a bit away from, you know, Skynet, but,

but like, then you get on Twitter and like every now and then Elon Musk will tweet out something along the lines of, we should be very cautious about AI. He'll put some sort of vague warning out there about how AI could just go wild and be the Skynet sort of thing. And of course, it's the sci-fi part of me loves it, but then the realistic world is like, is this happening? Whole different thing.

Okay. Well, that's pretty crazy folks. I'm going to try and pivot us here before Daniel gets mad that we went to an hour and 15 minutes again. So we're going to pivot directly to the event. It's only an hour and four, but still with the intro. Anyway, whatever. What are you most looking forward to about the event on Tuesday? Again, the Tech Sledge 88th session legislative kickoff hosted and presented by the Texan. Is this Tuesday? All day event. Panel discussion. Bullock Museum. Here in Austin. Buy your tickets. Go to texan.news. forward slash kickoff. Was I supposed

to know about this? Was I supposed to be there? This is the first time hearing of it. Brad, I'm really sorry that we've neglected to communicate so clearly with you within our organization. Most looking forward to. Hmm. Are you nervous? I'm nervous.

Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, I get a little nervous about this. I think it's different interviewing in front of an audience. That's a different to have. I'm just glad I'm the interviewer and not the interviewee. Ah, that's a fair perspective. Absolutely. I'm looking forward to it. I am excited about interacting with lawmakers in front of an audience. I think it will be interesting to see how they answer all the questions that we spent two hours workshopping yesterday. And we have so many different interesting members going to serve on the panels, a lot of different viewpoints and backgrounds on these members. So it's, it's, it's, it is primed to be a very interesting discussion on each one. I would think so as well. Um,

so quickly for the audience, say which panels you're hosting. Hayden, we already said yours, but go for it. And border security and elections. I have a local versus state power and energy in the power grid nice gender modification child gender modification specifically modification

matt that's a spicy one i'm interested i'm excited to meet the people that attend and ham it up with our subscribers and it should be a pretty full crowd too yeah it'll be I'm sure there will be people that come up that have talked to us either over Twitter or email and it'll be good to put faces to names and and

you know have an actual in person gathering like this it has a very quickly become the event if you want the best preview on what's going on in this legislative session. That's true. Timing couldn't be better. I'm pumped about it. It's going to be fun. Holly Hansen will be hosting the PubMed and School Choice panel as well as the Abortion and Vaccines panel.

And I will be interviewing Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. So it should be a very fun event. I think it'll be great. And our venue's awesome. The Spirit Theater at the Bullock Museum is just great. And not to mention the Bullock Museum, just a wonderful place to spend an afternoon. They're even letting me come along,

which I'm very excited about. Rob's going to keep us on track and hold us all together, as he does every single day, especially this week. Rob's going to do his best to do that. so they're even letting me come along which i'm very excited about rob's gonna rob's gonna keep us on track and hold us all together as he does every single day especially this is gonna do his best to do that rob is especially not binding to do that for me this week because i'm a little scatterbrained not that that's unnormal but we appreciate rob filling in the gaps as he always does um okay folks we'll go to the texan.news forward slash kickoff and make sure to go buy your ticket today. Again, the code.

What is the code, guys? I said it earlier. Roundup. What's my code? Go to. Yes, Roundup. Use that code and get a $50 ticket for an all day event. It's a pretty sweet deal.

These things are usually pretty darn expensive. And this is actually a pretty fairly priced ticket for a legislative preview type of event that's put on by an organization. And I want to emphasize it's bipartisan. We have both Republicans and Democrats, and it's not just one or two Democrats to balance out a host of Republicans. I know that we report the news from a right of center perspective, but we have lawmakers on both sides of the aisle offering their viewpoints on the legislative session. Incredible. I'll tease a couple names at that. We have I'll just name some names that are on the panel. We have Republican Senator Brandon Creighton. We have Democrat chairman, Pubhead chairman Harold Dutton.

We have Brian Slayton, Nate Schatzlein. Nate Schatzlein is a freshman who's made a lot of waves this session. So it'll be interesting to hear his perspective. We have Pete Flores, who's returning to the Senate as a Republican. We have Representative Eddie Morales and Representative Terry Canales, two Democrats from the border area, the Valley, all sorts of different members and a lot of freshmen. Donna Howard will be on our abortion and medical freedom panel. That will be a great perspective to have. She's a health care professional and a very vocal opponent of some of these pro-life policies.

And she really knows her stuff on the issue of abortion. So we're excited to have all of this, all of these awesome voices of Texas lawmakers on our panels. It's going to be really awesome. Go to the, again, go to the website to see a full list of who's going to be on each panel. Everyone's, we're just excited. It's going to be awesome. And we got dozens of lawmakers that you'll get to hear from if you do in fact come. So anyways, we're excited. Awesome folks. Well, again, you've listened to us blather. We appreciate that so much

and we will catch you next week. Thank you to everyone for listening. If you enjoy our show, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you want more of our stories, subscribe to The Texan at thetexan.news. Follow us on social media

for the latest in Texas politics and send any questions for our team to our mailbag by DMing us on Twitter or shooting an email to editor at thetexan.news. We are funded entirely by readers and listeners like you, so thank you again for your support. Tune in next week for another episode of our weekly roundup. God bless you and God bless Texas.