The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - January 21, 2022

Episode Date: January 21, 2022

This week on The Texan’s “Weekly Roundup,” the team discusses new fundraising numbers in Texas’ hottest campaigns, a top state official’s consultant being indicted for theft, the stances GOP gubernatorial candidates have taken on property tax reform, details surrounding suicides in the National Guard and criticisms levied at Governor Abbott, the Texas Supreme Court looking to weigh in on the last major challenge to the Heartbeat Act in federal court, a conversation with Dr. Peter McCullough on the Omicron variant and treatment options, a Houston doctor suing the hospital she formerly worked at for financial data relating to COVID-19, homicide rates in the state’s largest cities, recent drug trafficking at the border, and a rundown of the Colleyville hostage situation.

Howdy, howdy, Senior Editor Mackenzie Taylor here on our weekly Roundup podcast. This week, our team discusses new fundraising numbers in Texas's hottest campaigns, a top state officials consultant being indicted for theft, the stances GOP gubernatorial candidates have taken on property tax reform, details surrounding suicides in the National Guard and criticisms levied at Governor Abbott, the Texas Supreme Court looking to weigh in on the last major challenge to the Heartbeat Act in federal court, a conversation with Dr. Peter McCullough on the Omicron variant and treatment options, a Houston doctor suing the hospital she formerly worked at for financial data relating to COVID-19, homicide rates in the state's largest cities,

recent drug trafficking at the border, and a rundown of the Colleyville hostage situation. Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed this episode and have a wonderful weekend. Why, hello, it's Mackenzie Taylor with Brad Johnson, Daniel Friend, Hayden Sparks, and Isaiah Mitchell. Usually I say howdy and I feel off because I didn't say howdy. That's how routined I am in my greeting on this podcast. You've gone and ruined the podcast. I already within 15 seconds.. That's how, um, routine I am in my greeting on this podcast.

You've gone and ruined the podcast. I already within 15 seconds. You might as well just go home. I know. If this turns into a podcast like last week where I had to do like 10 bazillion edits. Last week was rough. I'm going to be sad. I will be too.

I'll be sad on your behalf. Every time I had to write down a note of something you had to edit out, it made me sad. I felt sorrow empathy guilt a lot of things you are an empathetic person so that would be not in the healthy ways sure yes um isaiah i want you to do something for our listeners you are a man of uh of great musical skill and you can play a myriad of instruments. I want you to play one for us into the mic without saying what it is.

We'll reveal at the end of the podcast what the instrument is. It's like a radio. It's like a promotional. Exactly. Yeah, all right. Okay, I have a question when you play this instrument is there there's obviously a rhyme or reason how much time have you put into learning this instrument a pretty good amount of time wow um there's a guy on youtube uh that's an expert at this he's like unattainable okay he's beat everybody else in the world at you know to

that level of skill yeah and these instruments and he knows all different kinds of variations of him from around the world and he can do overtones and all of the kinds of tricks with him change pitch with him but yeah so first when i found him out i thought okay i've got to practice till i get good at this guy and then um i realized that there are other instruments that are cooler i'm gonna try and get good at those first like the spoons yeah the washboard and some other stuff how long have you been able to play this or how long have you played this instrument a few years i don't know yeah yeah it's been a hot minute have you ever seen miss con I have not. That was really hard for you to say. That was hard for me to say, yeah. She plays glasses with water as her talent. Oh, that's a good one.

Her finger on the room with the glasses. Yeah, that's pretty good. It's a fun part of her. You should learn that. Of course, Brad would mention Miss Congeniality on a podcast. How dare I? How dare you? Bringing up a cultural reference that's 20 years old.

Yeah. But more than that. That's totally not something I would do. Miss Congeniality. It's a good movie movie i don't know what you want me to say oh man well let's actually get into the news daniel we're going to start with you we relaunched a feature on our site that we have uh pretty much year around for the most part but particularly during campaign season is when we have this available to our readers. It's called the War Room. It's a one-stop shop for all things campaign finance, polling, coverage we have of each

individual race, and it's the top races in Texas. But talk to us specifically about what kind of information you can find on the War Room, what the utility of it might be. The War Room is something that we're trying to load up with as much information on these races as possible to really give people an idea about each of these races and just a big picture of what does Texas politics look like in the campaign season? What are the big races to be watching? Where are the candidates standing in this? What do these races look like?

What could we potentially see as outcomes in these races? And just give people a good overview of what's happening in Texas politics. So there's a bunch of different races that we cover. We do cover all the major statewide political races. So that's the governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, the agriculture commissioner, land commissioner. And then we also just added the railroad commissioner and the comptroller races. Since those have gotten a little bit more interesting than they had like a year ago when everybody was just really focused on the governor.

Attorney general. So those are some of the big statewide races. We also will be adding our congressional races to this list soon. At the current moment, we do not have that on there just because the campaign finance numbers for congressional races don't actually come out until a later time than the state finance numbers. That'll be a later launch, yeah. But we do have kind of a list there if you want to get a little sneak peek at what we'll be adding. And then we also have the state senate races and the state house races. This was a redistricting year, so there's been a huge amount of turnover in the house, lots of open seats. We actually have an open seat tracker that we had for several months now that gives you just a list

of all the races where there's not an incumbent serving that's running for reelection. And so covering a lot of those races, just the states and state house races, there's just a ton to cover. So if you want to get a good picture of what are the big open seat races, and then also there's some interesting primary races as well that we'll be watching and keeping an eye on just to see how incumbent to do, especially when they're challenged on different policy issues that other candidates might be challenging them on and kind of running on that platform,

just to see kind of where on that platform. Yeah. Just to see kind of where the electorate stands and whatnot. So how do we choose the races that we put on the war room? So a lot of our decisions in what races to cover is based on my fun little analysis called the Texas Partisan Index. my fun little analysis called the, the, uh, Texas partisan index. And what that is, is basically just looking at the, um, the voting over the past, uh, two election cycles in each district. So, uh, there is numbers compiled by the state, uh, that have, uh, you know, what on the, on the statewide ballot, you know, what people running for Beto O'Rourke race, the Beto O'Rourke versus Ted Cruz race in 2018 and the Trump versus Biden race in 2020. And then all the other statewide races that were covered throughout the entire state.

You know, those votes were cast in each district. So breaking it down there to look at the partisan leaning of each district. And so then that's given a number, um, are, you know, 55%, for instance, is a district where Republicans got about 55% of the vote in the past two elections. Um, so that kind of breaks it down. So we're looking at all the open races for the primaries, um, which, uh, you know, that's again, I think there's like 30, 30 seats at least. Um, and that's just the state seats, not to mention the congressional ones as well. So all the open seats.

And then for the competitive seats, we have some that will be, we'll also add later for the general election. One good example is HD 118 down in San Antonio. There's no primary for it because you have just one Republican and one Democrat running the race, John Lujan and Frank Ramirez, who are also the ones in this recent special election. So we'll add those later on for the general election race. But right now, we're focused a little bit more on the primaries. So in a competitive primary, for example, HD70 is going to be one of the most competitive seats in the state. It has a D50% TPI. And so there's a number of Republicans running for that open seat and there's a number of Democrats running for that open seat. So that's one that we're watching. And then also we kind of went through and culled some just different primary races that are interesting for different factors, whether it's, you know, you have Representative Andrew Murr in West Texas who's being challenged by someone who's really criticizing him for the election bill and the lowering of the penalty for illegal voting. And then you also have members like Representative Stephanie Click, who has four primary challengers,

which is a significant number of primary challengers. So for different reasons like that, we just looked through and saw, you know, what are these interesting races? And we might add some more depending on like how the races go. How they speed up. Yeah. Right. Absolutely.

And fundraising numbers is a huge part of this page being that if you want to go find fundraising numbers for particularly state races, federal is actually a little bit easier. But for state races, you have to go into the TEC website, fill out these search bars that are a little complicated for the average user. It's complicated even for me, and I've had to search many times. And there's not one place. You have to search candidate by candidate. And so this is really a compilation where you can see all of these numbers for each race in one place in addition to all these other features that you're talking about so a wonderful wonderful tool daniel thank you for your work on that and the whole team is put together check out the war

room um there's a bar right on top of our website that will take you right there brad let's go ahead and talk about fundraising. Speaking of the war room, you can find these governor fundraising numbers on the war room. But now that this first fundraising filing period as we head into the primary is over, talk to us about what the governor candidates have raised. So Governor Greg Abbott, he pulled in $18.9 million. That puts him around $65 million cash on hand that's obviously a massive amount of money Beto O'Rourke in the 46

days that he has been running he raised $8.9 million with $4.7 million of it remaining now with that $1.7 million of it came from his pack that he launched earlier last year to support Texas Democrats when they were fleeing to D.C. to block the election reform bill. And then former state senator Don Huffines raised $3 million, and he has about $3.6 million remaining.

Allen West, former Texas GOP chair, has raised $2 million in the half year that he has been running since he launched in early July. Has $166,000 left. And then Chad Prather, the Blaze TV host, has raised $108,000 and has about $20,000 of it remaining of it remaining got it now i think it is you know fair to say i mean abbott's a prolific fundraiser he's one of the best in the country when it comes to just a a campaign war machine being ready at all times and we've talked about you know before this is the first time he's really facing serious primary opponents and the fact that they're raising millions is notable he just is raising millions more right so it's going to be an uphill battle for these folks regardless of

whether they're putting up some relatively big numbers are we dealing this is an aside note are we dealing with any loans this time around for many of the candidates for those three candidates didn't see any no um obviously notable the last time don huffines loaned himself, I think it was five million of the roughly nine million that he brought in. And that was not the case this time. I did see his family donated like three hundred sixty thousand dollars. Huffines boys have lots of businesses going on. But yeah, that was that was it in terms of things that are of note in the fundraising totals. Okay.

What does this tell us about the race generally and how it's shaken out at this point? So as you said, you know, Habit is kind of head and shoulders above everyone else on fundraising. And he actually raised more this time than he did in the last filing period, which makes sense. It's close to the election. But that itself was a record, setting a record with $55 million cash on hand. And now he has 10 million more. So that right there is quite notable. That's a lot of money, not just to get him through March, but to get him through November if he emerges from it, from the primary. And I'm sure he's just going to continue adding to it.

O'Rourke, I mentioned, he raised that total in 46 days. He's got strong fundraising chops, too, at least in the two state races in Texas that he's had. He raced 84 million against Ted Cruz in 18. Which, that was the most expensive U.S. Senate race of all time between those two candidates. Just money. Oh, yeah. The Beto and Ted race was beyond expensive expensive let's say ad it spends all the money

which i don't he could if he's really worried about re-election um that might get get beat in terms of uh total amount spent so we'll see how that develops but i wonder what the most expensive governor's race has been because it's two different kinds right i mean the the record for ted and beto was this uh it being a u.s senate race so i'm curious how what what the most expensive governor's race has been because it's two different kinds, right? I mean, the record for Ted and Beto was this being a U.S. Senate race. I'm curious how what's the most expensive. That's just an aside. We'll have to look that up at some point. Another thing notable with Beto is that he announced $7.2 million raised.

And that was just from that was the total of the contributions, not from his PAC. So he didn't, in the initial announcement, mention the total that includes the PAC money. So he's tried to have a big focus on especially online small dollar donor contributions from things like ActBlue, which Democrats use to pretty substantial effect across the country. And I think a sizable portion of his haul came from that, too. So that was something noticeable. And, you know, also, as you mentioned, the challengers, the GOP challengers, they are fighting an uphill battle. Not only were they way behind in terms of cash on hand to begin with but the governor's out raising them by quite a bit um you know combined those those candidates combined he's out raising them so absolutely um they're gonna have to do with more with less money and which is

that's historically how this works when you're challenging an incumbent right you know it that's not it's a very different race compared to what we saw in in the primary uh the biggest shock in the primary of 2020 the railroad commission race where jim wright who is now on the commission uh beat the incumbent ryan sitten by being outspent a lot to very little and so it's possible it has been done before, but this is, you know, a race that is substantially different than that one. Certainly. Real fast. I want to,

I do want to say too, that we'll continue to watch how this works and it'll be interesting to see how much is spent in the primary versus the general, right? I think that will be a huge question. How much does Abbott keep in, in his back pocket? Cause I'm sure he expects to advance.

He's going to need quite a bit of money, probably. Absolutely. Well, Brad, thanks for that. Let's keep on this fundraising bandwagon. Going back to you, Daniel, let's talk about the other big statewide race that most folks have been watching for the last year. The primary specifically, but let's talk about the Attorney General's race. What did the fundraising for the GOP attorney general candidates look like? Ken, this is one of the bigger races to watch. And of course, that is reflected in the fundraising numbers. We saw Republican candidates pulling quite a bit of money. Usually in races, you might

see a large sum of being like six figures of like $200,000, $300,000. And that's a big race. But in this case, you actually have all three GOP challengers to Paxton pulling in over a million dollars. So you have Paxton himself, the Attorney General, who reported receiving $2.8 million. So quite a big haul on his part. But then his challengers also pulled in quite a bit with George P. Bush, the current land commissioner who's running against him. He was the first one to enter the

race against Baxton, and he raised $1.9 million. Then you have Eva Guzman, who's the former Supreme Court justice. She actually pulled in $3.7 million, so quite a large haul there. Currently, Bush has a little bit more cash on hand. Guzman spent a little bit more. She has done some TV ads and whatnot, and Bush is actually launching a new TV ad as well. And then you have current Congressman Louie Gohmert, who's also running the race. He was the last to enter. He entered kind of the last minute during the filing period in the fall, and he raised just over a million dollars. And that is for the campaign period from July to the end of the year of 2021. So quite a significant haul from all those candidates. Now it's interesting, like the different sources of where these people are

getting a lot of their fundraising. For instance, you have Ken Paxson, who had a fundraiser with Trump. Of course, he has had Trump's endorsement in the race, and he also had a big fundraising thing with him last fall. And then you have Louie Gohmert. It's interesting, his entry to the race, of course, he was trying to raise $1 million in 10 days. And he said that he did do that. If you go and look into the campaign finance report, the time that he received that money, he didn't receive it at the time of that, but he did end up receiving $1 million. And a huge chunk of that actually came from Representative Matt Krause and Representative Maze Middleton to Texas lawmakers who contributed a combined $550,000.

Wow. And while Krause was the one that contributed to this, essentially it was all coming from Maze Middleton because Middleton had funneled, I think, $250,000 or $300,000 to Krause's campaign when he had been exploring and actually had launched a bid for attorney general. And so there was some shuffling there where the candidate said, you know what, let's actually back Louie Gomer instead of Matt Krause. And now Matt Krause is running for district attorney in Tarrant County. So some interesting shuffling there. So it'll be interesting to see how that shapes up, but it is going to be quite an intense race and you have candidates, all four candidates are really viable contenders in this race. Yeah. And big names.

It's very interesting to see how big these names are. Let's talk about the Democrat field of candidates. What are we seeing from them? I think these numbers are giving us a little bit more of an indication of who the big players are. Yeah, and again, I think this is an indication of kind of who's coming out on top. Now, money isn't everything in politics. If you look back at some races in the last election cycle, there's one that comes to mind, a congressional race that Troy Nails actually

ended up winning in Fort Bend. He was the Fort Bend County Sheriff. His fundraising was really terrible, but he had good name ID, and so that ended up boosting him a little bit more. So it might be something similar where these people who don't necessarily have raised as much money might end up coming out on top. But by all indications, there are a couple Democrats here who are raising more than their other opponents in the primary race. So you have former Galveston Mayor Joe Jaworski, who actually raised the most on $453,000. Then you also have a Dallas civil rights attorney, Lee Merritt, who raised $404,000 or $405,000. I need to round properly in my head.

And then you also have Rochelle Garza, who I think she had been exploring a congressional bid. And then after redistricting and some shuffling there, she decided to run for attorney general instead. And she's a former, if I remember correctly, ACLU attorney. And she raised $120,000. So those are really the top Democrats in the race. It's kind of a race between those three. There's two other candidates, Mike Fields, who I've at least seen some campaigning from him, and another candidate, S.T. Bone-Raynor, who the only thing that I've really seen is that there's a filing for this person, so they'll be on the ballot. I haven't actually seen some campaign material from this person. So not sure where

they're at and they didn't give any campaign finance reports other than some small expenditures. So I'm not sure how much they raised, but that is kind of how the democratic field is shaping up for the race. Yeah, certainly. Are there any big issues that are at play at the race that have kind of come to the forefront? Yes, of course uh the big issue in this race especially in the gop primary is criticism against attorney general ken paxton uh after last not last year it's now been a year and a half ago uh back in 2019 was it 20 no 2020 i it all runs together. These allegations started surfacing in 2019, and then 2020 was when it really became a big issue. And several of his senior aides in the Office of the Attorney General actually raised some criminal allegations against Ken Paxton. It was about that time, too, that we actually saw some whispering that George P. Bush might be considering a run against Paxton, and that

turned out to be true. So these allegations of just criminal misconduct and abuse of office from Ken Paxton is really one of the big issues, both in the Republican and Democrat race. Republicans are saying, look, Ken Paxton is going to cause some problems and he might not be electable down the road in November. Louie Gohmert in particular has said that or cautioned that he believes the FBI might be dropping an indictment after the primary. So if Paxton wins the primary, then there'll be a situation where Paxton is very vulnerable and doesn't have a chance of winning because of the FBI indictment. But at that point, Republicans won't be able to replace him on the ballot. So that's kind of Gohmert's argument.

And we've seen similar things coming from George P. Bush and Eva Guzman as well, whereas Democrats are criticizing him on that front. And then also, of course, on the very different policy positions that they have. Very good. Well, Daniel, thank you for that. We'll continue to keep an eye. Isaiah, let's talk about another statewide elected official or rather his consultant, but there have been ethics violations against one of Sid Miller's, who's the agriculture commissioner here in Texas, top political consultants. And they've been brewing for a long time what recent developments have taken place.

So the consultant's name is Todd Smith. He's one of Miller's top guys and or was. And Smith was indicted for theft. He and one of his associates were both arrested some months back on charges of selling fake hemp licenses. And shortly after the indictment this week, Miller said that he and Smith agreed to part ways. Wow. So what do you mean selling fake hemp licenses? Walk us through that. So the feds, Congress passed the Farm Bill in 2018 that legalized hemp production. And so the legislature legalized non-smokable hemp in 2019. And afterward,

the Texas Department of Agriculture promulgated this rule that said licenses to produce hemp would cost $100. Todd Smith had been telling would-be hemp growers that the Ag Department was only going to hand out a handful of these licenses across Texas, and it would cost them thousands in cash. And according to the arrest affidavit from the Texas Ranger that was investigating the case, at least one of these transactions where Smith took a lot of cash actually took place in Texas Department of Agriculture offices. So that's kind of the connection largely that's being talked about is that it happened in state offices.

Right. Yeah. Okay. So talk to us about how this has affected Miller's campaign. Well, you mentioned a connection and that's, it's classic politics is his opponents are trying to pin this on him and connect him to it. He's facing two Republican primary challengers, current state rep James White and an outsider named Kerry counsel. Both have made this a major wedge issue and White has confronted Miller about it in person on the stump at debates and town halls um one of his leading democrat opponents susan hayes has also made this a central issue for her campaign since the beginning in her campaign slogans and everything regarding ethics

and so forth so it's a it's an albatross around miller's neck for sure yeah certainly well thank you for that we'll continue to keep an eye and it really is interesting to see the different kinds of issues that come up. I think Paxton and Sid Miller both have a lot of these issues come up from time and time and then they find their way to the news as they should. Brad, let's talk again about these governor candidates, but the governor himself announced his taxpayers bill of rights this week, a very notable introduction. So let's start there. What is in that proposal? So it's a number of different things, all kind of tinkering with the current system and trying to find ways to reduce ultimately the amounts taxpayers pay on the back end.

And so they include, it's more of a goal, the first one reducing school district rates across the state every year. A state can do this by compressing the rates, injecting state funding into the school finance equation, lowers the amount automatically that school districts charge. They've done that the last two sessions, and Abbott says in this that he wants to continue doing that. Provide an up to 3% discount for taxpayers who pay their bill in full early. So if you pay it as soon as you can,

they'll reduce the amount by 3% according to this. Now, keep in mind, all of this is just a proposal. There's no law attached to any of this at the moment. Allow property tax bills to be paid off quarterly or semi-annually. We see that with IRS payment plans. Similar, but not exactly

the same. That way, you don't have to pay the full amount in one bill, if you so choose. Reduce the taxable amounts of a newly purchased home in line with the price paid. This means if you buy the house for lower than the appraisal district sets its value at, then you will pay taxes on the price you paid for the home. That's the taxable value rather than what the appraisal district says. Creating exemptions for small business equipment, up to $100,000 of equipment that a small business owns would be exempt from the taxable value of their property.

Increase transparency in the appraisal protest system and streamline the process. And then require all debt issued by local governments to have either two-thirds support of the governing body whether it's county commissioners city council what have you the school boards or two-thirds support of the voters so that's in a nutshell is what the governor has proposed so then talk to me about what his challengers have called for yeah so each of each of them have, to varying degrees, called for removing Texas entirely from the property tax system. And they have various different approaches to it.

Former State Senator Don Huffines wants, through a constitutional amendment, to have a gradual tax swap. He said this last night at the forum that I was at over 10 years. I think it was 10 years, yeah. And have kind of a tax swap with consumption tax. And none of the candidates wants an income tax. Abbott has repeatedly decried an income tax and said we will not do that. The legislature actually in 19, I think it was, made it harder to establish an income tax in Texas and raise the threshold basically for a vote in the legislature.

Allen West wants to also replace property taxes with consumption system. He also mentions scouring the Sunset Advisory Commission's recommendations from the last 20 years and finding spots to cut spending whether it's agencies wholesale or programs within agencies wants to find some savings there and use those to buy down property taxes and prather says he wants to first rein in spending and debt before evaluating a transition from property taxes he also wants to freeze the taxable value at the home's purchase price, what I mentioned earlier that is in Abbott's bill or Abbott's proposal. So that is the gist of it. Yeah, absolutely.

Now, this is something that we've seen in previous cycles. Either property tax is the big issue in GOP primaries or the border is the big issue in GOp primaries we're kind of seeing a combination of both i'd say borders kind of maybe taking a little bit more takes the cake particularly in the governor's race but is that that's my question is do you think it is the border that will be the big issue in this yeah yeah each of the candidates um made the primary candidates at that forum mentioned that the border is the top issue. Abbott, you know, spent a lot of time talking about the border for various reasons over the last year and a half or

so. So I think border definitely, but property taxes, as you said, especially in GOP primaries is always an issue. At the Speaker of the House, Dade Phelan has talked about the need to continue to reduce property taxes in the next session. So I think this is not going away. And especially with the governor campaigning on this proposal, how many of these actually become law? Who knows? But I think we'll see a continued focus by the legislature in the next session to do something on property taxes but who knows what's yeah what form it'll take absolutely well thank you for that bradley hayden um more on the governor's race but on that issue of um kind of the border kind of not but it relates to down there let's talk through this but

why is the topic of national guard um suicides suicides within the national guard a topic of conversation and what have the governor's opponents had to say about this issue a retired senior enlisted advisor in the texas, Command Sergeant Major Jason Featherston stated in a press conference earlier this month, I had better conditions than that in Iraq than some soldiers have it on the Texas border, end quote. And he was appearing with Allen West, who was describing reports that originated in the Army times of suicides and conditions on the southern border during Operation Lone Star, which of course is the effort that was launched by Governor Greg Abbott last March to fill in the gaps left by the federal government's

less stringent enforcement against illegal immigration. So, Allen West was really stoking the flames of the criticism of Operation Lone Star. That was right after New Year's Day. That's why this has become a topic of conversation as of late, and it has highlighted suicide deaths among service members, particularly guardsmen. They have reportedly been living in, I think the word austere conditions has been used. They have faced delayed or missing paychecks. They've had to cash paper paychecks and deal with issues related to being given very short notice of having to be deployed on this border mission. This is all ostensible according to the reports that are coming from down south. Many of them have strong opinions about the execution of Operation Lone Star and the

nature of the mission itself. Abbott's political opponents have criticized it, but from different angles. Of course, west and huff finds are strong border security proponents they believe more needs to be done to secure the border not less however they criticize the execution of operation lone star whereas opponents such as better auroric have stated that this is a political ploy that that this is not necessary, and Abbott is... The border crisis. Exactly. Right.

That it's not... And we've heard this criticism before. This criticism was stated during the debate on funding in the third, pardon, the second called session, that the characterization of the border as a disaster area is unfair and exaggerated. That's generally the argument coming from Democrats on this issue. Of course, the border security funding that the legislature passed received support from both parties and both political leaders and both political parties have said there needs to be

more done on border security and to assist these border communities. But those are some of the criticisms of Abbott as it relates to Operation Lone Star, especially in view of these tragic suicides of guardsmen that were reported. And I believe there were four confirmed slash suspected cases. Of course, all those are under investigation. And then there was one suicide attempt that was reported as well. Yeah. Now, in terms of the scope of this problem, let's talk numbers a little bit so our listeners can get an idea of how many lives we're talking about here. But how many suicide deaths did the U.S. Department of Defense report for last year? event in San Antonio, and he mentioned that this could easily, just as easily be attributed to President Biden and his leadership, and that these suicides should be viewed, as tragic as they are, in the scope of the broader problem. The Defense Department reported there were at least 476

suicides among service members, and I believe 93 of those were among guardsmen in the first three quarters of 2021 and we don't have the fourth quarter numbers yet and those would give the complete picture for last year. In terms of the suicide problem overall the CDC reported 47,500 people committed suicide in 2019. And the numbers for 2020 are still estimates. And they're slightly below that. But of course, they're still estimates. So it's, in other words, roughly the same ballpark as the 2019 numbers. The National Guard has resources they provide on their website for anyone struggling with issues such as suicidal ideation, sexual assault, domestic violence, and things that

the general public struggle with. But of course, when you're in the military and you face a unique set of challenges, so the National Guard has resources available on its website for anyone struggling with that. Operation Lone Star, of course, is intended to enforce the border from illegal immigration. And multiple people who have vast experience in border security have talked about the value of having troops on the border guarding the waterfront guarding gaps that are being left by border patrol while they tend to humanitarian issues that arise from the sheer volume of people who are coming across so the rebuttal to the claim that operation lone star is reckless or that it's being poorly executed is while it may seem that it lacks purpose and there may not be as much action on the border on a day-to-day basis,

having that deterrent effect there, according to, for instance, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, Colonel Steve McCraw, adds value to our laws against illegal immigration because it shows that the state is willing to enforce those laws, even if the federal government is unable to. So those are some of the criticisms of Operation Lone Star and then some of the responses that have been offered. Yeah, well, Hayden, thank you for following that for us and breaking it down. We see headlines and it's important, especially on these issues that are so personal to get down to the brass tacks of what's actually going on. Isaiah, the big lawsuit against the Texas Heartbeat Act system where lawsuits will go from federal district court to, in Texas, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and then the Supreme Court if they make it past that. And in the state, we've got the state version of that with district courts and then our own circuits and then the Texas Supreme Court. So the big lawsuit that's remaining, the Biden administration attempted a lawsuit and the Supreme Court just dismissed that one entirely on an eight to one vote.

And the one that remains is the first one actually brought by a group of abortion providers and supporters against the state judge, state clerk, Texas Attorney General, pro-life activist Mark Lee Dixon, and a bunch of state agencies like the Texas Medical Board, Texas Board of Nursing, and so forth. The Supreme Court dismissed everybody but the state agency defendants. So they're the only ones left in this now. And the Fifth Circuit has decided to certify the question of whether or not these agencies can enforce the heartbeat act to the Supreme court. So in other words, they've asked the Supreme court of Texas to weigh in on whether or not the Texas medical board and so forth have this residual or indirect power to enforce the heartbeat act. Got it. Um, now in terms of, you know, the two sides of this case and how they feel about this decision, where are we at with, with that argument? So it was the defendants.

In other words, uh, the state agencies who actually asked the fifth circuit to certify this question to the state Supreme court and the plaintiffs, the abortion providers and supporters oppose this move. Um, there, we go into detail in the article on the procedure reasons for that, especially with the judge's opinions. It was a two-to-one decision by the Fifth Circuit to certify this, and we quote from the majority and the dissent, and so that legalese is interesting. But down to brass tacks, a lot of it comes down to venue. The plaintiffs had asked the Fifth Circuit, instead of certifying to the Supreme Court of Texas, to instead send the case back down to district court. And if that were the case, it would go back before Judge Robert Pittman, who has twice, in this case and in the Biden administration lawsuit, shown disfavor to the law.

And so that would be a more favorable court for the plaintiffs to operate in the fifth circuit is not a favorable court for the plaintiffs to operate and they have a reputation for being very conservative especially with regards to abortion and we've covered some of that recently um like it was just in 2021 when they upheld the state's ban on dismemberment abortions on bank or however you pronounce it and so they don't want to be in the fifth circuit um and the supreme court of texas also has a conservative reputation as well and so they really don't want to be there either right and so you know just in the nitty-gritty it comes down to that i think for both of those sides for the judges

um the majority of two um essentially said that the certification is proper in this case the texas rules of appellate procedure say that they outline this certification process and say that it's appropriate and in general in layman's terms they don't want to rule on this law and on this you know this question in the law that divided the supreme court by the way this particular question without knowing from the state court system what this state law says and so they want clarification from texas courts on texas law stephen higginson was the judge that dissented and he said that this was defiant of the supreme court's order of remanding to the fifth circuit he said that he was defiant of the Supreme Court's order of remanding to the Fifth Circuit.

He said that he would prefer if the Fifth Circuit just worked through this case regularly instead of certifying it to the Supreme Court of Texas. And he noted three times in his dissent, very markedly, that this is kind of an unprecedented decision. So I'll just quote from him directly, so I won't screw it up. He said, again, counsel for the defendants acknowledge an oral argument that they know of no inferior court ever before seeking such intercession on remand from the Supreme Court. This further second-guessing redundancy without time limit

deepens my concern that justice delayed is justice denied. Here impeding relief ordered by the Supreme Court. In general general with this lawsuit and with the other challenge to the heartbeat act that's in state court right now stalling will benefit the supporters of the heartbeat act and the challenges of the heartbeat actor in general shooting for speed they want this to get resolved as quickly as possible so got it um well thank you for following that. What does this mean going forward for the case itself? Just very quickly? Well, like I mentioned earlier, the

defendants that the Supreme Court, the US Supreme Court dismissed from this case, were all central to the plaintiff's argument against the civil enforcement mechanism, the lawsuit based mechanism through which this law is enforced. And so without that state judge and clerk and Mark Lee Dixon and the attorney general, I don't see how these plaintiffs can continue pursuing their challenge to that central mechanism of the law. All that remains in this case is the question of whether or not these agencies can take indirect action to enforce it. The heartbeat act says that no government official or agency can enforce it. The plaintiffs claim that they indirectly can through licensing and things like that. And so even if everything goes

their way from here, the state Supreme court takes it up and says that they agree with the plaintiffs that these agencies do have indirect power. It seems to me that what the state Supreme Court could do is enjoin these agencies from that indirect enforcement, which is already essentially what the law does. So for the most part, the outcome, the case has not gone well for the plaintiffs up to this point. And most of the heartbeat act, it seems to me, will be intact regardless of what the state Supreme Court decides. Certainly. Well,

thank you, Isaiah Hayden. I'm going to have you spotlight a piece from one of our delightful remote reporters, Kim Roberts. Dr. Peter McCullough has been on the forefront of a lot of the COVID-19 early treatment discussion. We spoke with him months ago.

We spoke with him again this week. Kim really did put out a wonderful piece on this so i just wanted you to spotlight this for our readers our listeners as our readers have really loved this piece this week well as more and more people test positive for omicron i believe i'm pronouncing that correctly it's kind of a frankenstein word yes um well not not a long word but it's hard to pronounce I mean it's all Greek to me

oh my I think Brad is the only one here who can sing the Greek alphabet can't you yes it's one of my useless talents that my middle school teacher drilled into me can you do it now? I was impressed by it you've never shown me this.

I didn't know. Not on the podcast. I don't want to listen to that. Isaiah played music on the podcast. So anyway, maybe he'll do it one day. We'll do this at the end. Yeah. But Kim did a great job summarizing some of the observations

that Dr. Peter McCullough has made about the new variant. And she discussed different treatments that he recommends and over-the-counter and at-home regimens that can be used, possibly, if you find yourself testing positive for this variant. And she did an excellent job overviewing some of the scientific observations that have been made and other issues related to how long it lasts and the severity of it. So I recommend that you head to the texan.news

and to read Kim's piece. She was very thorough and did an excellent job with this. Absolutely. Isaiah, we're going to have you spotlight another piece from now Holly Hanson down in Harris County, but Houston Methodist Hospital down there has long been in the news for various COVID-related stories. So talk to us about what is going on with Dr. Mary. I think it's Bowden or Bowden, Bowden. I'm going to go with Bowden. I like it. And phonetically, I think that makes sense. Yeah, I'm just going to take a wild gamble here.

I like it. And I'll let her correct me. So Dr. Mary Bowden was an employee at Houston Methodist. She was suspended for, in the words of the hospital, spreading dangerous misinformation about COVID-19. And then she herself submitted her own resignation letter two days later and says that she is fighting back against what she calls secrecy on the part of the hospital by suing for information related to COVID data and financial information.

Bowden has made a reputation as an outsider for promoting ivermectin and other early COVID treatments and opposing vaccine mandates. Stahler requires nonprofit tax exempt corporations to give certain information to the public. So Bowden, her attorneys expect to prevail as Holly quotes her attorney in the article. The hospital did not provide Holly with a statement for the incident, but they did refer to some past statements on related parts of the story that Holly did link in the article.

So you can go check those out there. I love it. Well, Zay, thanks for following that for us, Holly. And thank you for Holly's reporting. Wonderful. Well, Bradley, let's talk about homicides in major cities. Some light conversation here. Some light conversation. here um my conversation but you wrote a piece last year detailing um the homicide rates and

numbers in texas's large uh five largest cities what is the upshot of it last year 2021 sound like you said the piece was written last year oh well that was unintentional yeah um i did write a piece last year though that's basically the same thing but i think i forgot a preposition now that i'm thinking about it yeah you wrote a piece about last year's homicide yes yeah so you know the last two years in general we've seen um a lot of tension um with the pandemic kind of bubble over into increased crime rates. And that has affected basically every big city in the country, especially the big cities, but other ones as well.

And no more is this more pronounced than in homicides. Obviously one of, if not the worst crime among them at the very least. And so I kind of tracked out the increases of the five largest cities in Texas. It's Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Fort Worth and Austin. And generally we saw increases across the board, except for Dallas, which actually featured a decrease and not a not a very minor one. It was 13 percent. So that's it wasn't like one or two percent decrease. Yeah. So that was an odd thing to see, I think. Yes. Let's dive into that. Why did Dallas see a decrease where others increased? So the police chief, garcia he actually just started

i think it was he started our last year in february i believe yeah um he's relatively new and um he said the the department focused more intently on hotbed pockets of crime within the city increasing the police's visible presence in those areas and increasing seizures of illegally owned guns. At the same time, Garcia said the department pulled back from arresting individuals for lower level offenses, things like possession of marijuana, not low level like theft that we're seeing in some places like San Francisco. And so that allowed them to focus more of their time on these more serious crimes in

the parts of the city that are of more severity. And so he talked about that they also focused heavily on robberies and aggravated assaults and another thing that that they got at some point last year they got some state help the texas dps was sent in to help them when i think there was like a couple weeks of a lot of homicides. I think that's what caused this. And the DPS kind of flooded in there and assisted law enforcement where they could. So there's no easy answer for that. I mean, there's clearly things that contributed to it, as Garcia pointed out.

But, you know, with crime, there's always things that you can't account for that that lead into whatever trend happens certainly even things the department did that he didn't mention probably had an effect on it of course yes there are tons of policies that are behind the scenes and even just trends among officers all sorts of stuff can you talk to us about the cities as all the biggest increases yeah so so Austin, obviously that has been a big focus in the national news. It's always in these kinds of articles when they're written. It had a near 90% increase from 2020, which 2020 itself was a substantial increase from 2019. Now, Austin is historically a very low crime city. And so the number of

homicides this year was 88, which was an all time record, blew away the previous one of 60. In pure number, that's a lot lower than what Houston faces because A, it's a much lower population. And B, it's just historically does not have as much crime as other places. But, you know, a trend is still a trend. And so we saw Austin trying to deal with that as they struggle with their police staffing problems. And then the other big one that I mentioned, Houston, 25% increase. They had a total of 473. They especially have been dealing with a lot of bail bond issues.

And so those are two policies that have affected these in some way. And they're top in the list of homicide increases. Certainly. And interesting to see, again, like you were talking about how 88 in Austin and 473 in Houston was popular. Like it just, they're two very different cities right um which is why you look at the rate increase that's that's what gives you a an apples to apples comparison certainly well thank you for that folks can go and look into those those numbers in more detail at the texan.news hayden let's talk about a recent drug trafficking

convention uh not convention lord in heaven let's hope that does not happen will you be attending the drug trafficking convention mackenzie you know hayden i think you should be there just to ensure that it's covered well yeah you just get behind the scenes um you know intel from these from these folks no but tell us about how you're working i told you before the podcast i could not speak today and that's just we're seeing that evidence okay but talk to us about this uh this conviction and the possible consequences of this action well this one's pretty cut and dry a mexican citizen 20 years old is looking at life in prison for trafficking marijuana in the brownsville area cameron county

according to the criminal complaint he was caught with several other people running across US Highway 281 and they ran into a field and they used police dogs and were able to arrest them with several bundles, thousands of pounds. Thousands of pounds might be an exaggeration. I think it could be a little over a thousand pounds of marijuana. More than 319,000 pounds of marijuana were seized in FY 2021. And his sentencing hearing is scheduled for April. But in the meantime, he remains free on bond. So, we've got a 20-year-old facing life in prison, and he is currently not in custody. According to the DOJ, he was bailed out and will remain bailed out until his sentencing hearing in a few months. Yeah, absolutely. Well,

when we tell these stories, even though a lot of them are one-offs, just to make sure folks know what is happening down at the border, and Hayden, you were the reporter on that, and you do a phenomenal job, so thank you. Bradley, over the weekend we had a quite an incredible um situation that really it's really just shocking in a lot of ways it's hit really close to home um and more than anything it ended in in a way that you kind of hope if these things ever happen they will end all right um but talk to us about um the the Colleyville congregation up north in North Texas, the synagogue and the hostage situation that took place there over the over the weekend. Yes. So last Saturday, a man named Malik Faisal Akram, he's a British national. We later found out took hostage four people in the Colleyville Synagogue, which was Congregation Beth Israel.

He was armed with a pistol and said he had explosives. He entered by posing as a homeless man, which, of course, you know, churches and synagogues and other places, establishments of faith, they often take care of, you know, downtrodden people. And so he used that to his advantage to gain entry and then took them hostage now this was all live streamed on the synagogue's facebook live stream so people are watching and and they can listen and they can hear the the guy talking um and ranting on the phone too i'm sure it was negotiators he was talking to. I sat and listened to it for like hour, hour and a half or so before it got cut off. That's how police became alerted to this. And so they quickly got to the synagogue and set up a perimeter and engaged hostage negotiations.

During those negotiations, they found out that Akram wanted to free a convicted terrorist, Afia Siddiqui, who is in prison in Fort Worth for shooting at U.S. military in 2008. I think she was sentenced to 86 years in prison or something like that. Odds are she will never get out. But he was trying to use these hostages to negotiate her release. And the whole thing ended after about 11 hours. Each hostage made it out alive, thankfully. And the attacker was killed when the FBI's hostage rescue team breached a little after 9 o'clock on Saturday evening.

Now, talk to us about how this person got into the u.s in the first place we don't know a ton um but we do know a few things first he flew into new york city's jfk airport about two weeks before the attack he is from england the hometown that i saw was blackburn uh actually, in which he was banned about 20 years ago from a community court after ranting that he wished he had partaken in 9-11. When he got here, apparently he bounced around from homeless shelter to homeless shelter. It's not clear how he got to Texas yet, at least that I have seen. That may have been put out, but I've not seen it yet. And that's largely it right now from what, from, you know, from what I've seen again. But I'm sure there's a lot more going, being investigated. You know, there's a worldwide

investigation going on with this. So I'm sure we'll, we'll find out some more, how much we don't know. And talk to us about how the hostages find out some more how much we don't know. And talk to us about how the hostages got out and how this thing wrapped up. Yeah. So there were four hostages and around five or 6 PM, one was released. Now, when I was listening to the live stream, the guy was talking on the phone to negotiators saying that one of the hostages, um, had low blood sugar. I don't know if that was the hostage that got out, but logically that would make sense, um, that they would negotiate some exchange for that person. Um, since that's a

time sensitive health concern. Um, but it actually ended around 9 p.m. when Rabbi Charlie Seidren Walker, he said after he escaped that in an interview with media, he said he threw a chair at the gunman at Akram, which allowed them a window to escape. And the story on our website, I linked to the video by WFAA. One of their cameramen caught it. You can see just very, it all happened very, very quickly within the span of five seconds or so. The three hostages that remained running out the back door and running around the corner.

And as soon as they poke around the corner, the Akram sticks his head out the window or the door, and you can see he's holding his pistol and then he goes back in and then the uh the feds breach and you can hear gunfire and i think flashbangs were thrown in as well so um you can see that there um but thankfully it ended the way it did and now the investigation will it already has begun but it will continue trying to figure out why this guy did it how connected he was to other people oh actually one thing i didn't mention manchester police they arrested two teenagers uh shortly after this for

in connection with this there hasn't been any disclosure on how connected they are but there have been arrests made yeah emphasis on manchester this happened overseas yes okay well thank you for covering that for us and again we're just grateful uh folks got out on uh unharmed okay well folks i know this is the moment you've all been waiting for let's talk um that well was so resigned later well all right here we go the moment we've all been waiting for well it has to do with isaiah's musical abilities and i always brace myself for it because he's just able to do so much with musical instruments. Did you like that?

Abilities able to do so much. Okay. That was fun. That is the definition of abilities. Yes, certainly. I just was redundant, but it was fun for me in the moment. But Isaiah, let's talk through this. Your instrument.

Play it one more time for listeners and then please reveal what instrument this might be. And folks, if you've been listening to the podcast and you know what it is, please tweet at us. This is the one that stars in the theme song of a fistful of dollars. Clint Eastwood. Okay.

Uh, either a juice or a jaw harp harp whichever one I don't think there's an official name for it it's also in uh I think somebody plays it in big j no it's a different John Wayne movie where a guy plays it okay anyway that's where I first heard it we should tweet out a photo of it tomorrow um yeah you should tweet out a photo of it tomorrow we should we'll we'll have we'll have someone take a photo and we'll tweet it out so people can see but it literally looks like it might be found in a toolbox or something it does not look like it should be something that creates like part of a wrench that fell off yeah i'm trying to think of exactly what like it has a it reminds me of

an allen wrench but like kind of brought together in two parts and a horseshoe welded over top yeah i don't know it's difficult but there you go mouth harp isaiah thank you for playing um the jaw jaw harp sure okay i don't really know brad we're gonna come back to you now now that isaiah has performed for our listeners can you please recite no this is not happening the greek alphabet no no nobody wants to listen to this except you i do and so does hayden hayden's i object brad please i want to hear you saying the greek alphabet on the podcast i i'm gonna feel like it should be on the record thank you isaiah it should be on the record come on this is a room full of reporters it's not that

long it's like how many letters are in the alphabet? 26? I'm spending far too much time on this because I'm not going to do it. It's true. I agree. Okay, fine. Fuddy-duddy. Wow, you gave up so fast, Hayden.

I was expecting you to really go at this with me, and you did, to your credit. These are such fun topics. You were just providing entertainment for our listeners. Yeah, the performances and the lack thereof. Fine. Well, maybe I should choose one of the other things to talk about. Or we can just end on that note. I think we should end on the mouth harp note, truly.

I think it's a B note. A B note? I found one time on my piano what it was, but my piano wasn't tuned very well at that point. Is this the piano that you currently have yeah the one that brad and daniel helped me move in the dead of night all up the stairs the dead of night it was like 8 p.m and you're making it sound like it was super late by the time i got done it was like 11 30 p.m really yeah well y'all came by my house

afterwards right yeah what time was that i was not that it was not that late because i still had my church small group over at my house and these two people hooligans show up at my doorstep and i'm like what they're like we're just gonna surprise you what time was that do you remember i think we we showed up at mac's place around 11 30 okay or 11 i don't think it was probably like 10 30 so we're not doing any of these actual fun topics none of them are fun to you or which one looks fun to you pretty good suggested all of these worst advice is a pretty good one i love that worst advice that's fun okay let's do that what

is the worst piece of advice you've been given okay um i've got a lot of candidates to pick from i think and so i need some time to think about it. Okay. If any of y'all have one off the top of your head. Noodle. Well, I was told by my middle school, mind you, middle school counselor that I needed to know. Like your school counselor? Yes.

That I needed to know what I wanted to do for the rest of my life so I could set set my. High school. Curriculum. To reach that. In middle school. In middle school. That sounds excessive. Awful. Piece of advice. That is pretty awful.

I didn't realize. What I wanted to do until. Ninth grade of course. Yeah. Of course. In the ninth grade. I had no idea what I wanted to do. No. As you should not have to.

So. That. Counselor. Is. Just. of course in the ninth grade i had no idea what i wanted to do as you should not have to so that counselor is just do you want to name them on the podcast no don't i can't remember her name good i don't i was joking but with you i never know if you'll actually do the thing that you shouldn't well that's really bad advice that's a good one daniel or does hayden have one either of you guys have one off the top of your head i'm really trying hard to think i mean this one's a little bit vague but i think a generic piece of advice that's offered to people in their 20s is like oh just live your life you got plenty of time don't worry about the future which is terrible terrible advice for your 20s which is a very important time for your life and career.

Yeah. Development, everything. I'm going to say something. Oh, dear. And it's going to be really controversial. Okay, bring it on. And then I'm going to explain, like, oh, okay. Okay.

Bad piece of advice that I got was don't plagiarize. Now, my explanation for that... You're making my heart palpitate. Yes, mine as well. My explanation for that is I'm defining plagiarism drastically different. Than what the dictionary defines it as? Than what the actual

definition of plagiarism is. So, like, taking someone else's work and claiming it as your own? Wrong. Which is plagiarism yes but my point is i was thinking about like writing a blog post of this just quickly get to the part where you save yourself hopefully yeah instead of evil where basically it goes back to the idea that there's nothing new under the sun and so like you're never going to have like an original idea you're building off of someone else and you're building off of other things. So this is something

that C.S. Lewis talks about in mere Christianity, where he's like, you know, originality in art, like people who strive to be original just end up failing miserably. Whereas if you take something that is tried and true and you build off of that and you say, I'm going to, I'm going to like use these ideas to kind of construct like something else you're gonna tell truth in a you're just you're just repeating what's been done before right so like you know a story that you tell might be like really post-modern and it just could end up like trash if you're trying to be original and new whereas if you go off of a tried and true formula with a beginning and middle middle and an end with a hero's journey arc to it,

then you're going to be more original than if you're trying to be original on yourself. So here's the thing. You could have said all that without bringing the P word into any of this. The P word. I know, but that wouldn't have been as clickbaity, right? This is a podcast. You don't know. Number 10 will surprise you. That's a good point. This is a podcast. You don't know. Number 10 will surprise you.

Number 10. Daniel's told the reason. Oh, that made me. And number 10 never surprises you. Do you know all about the Library of Babel? The infinite library? Well, yeah. It's like, well, it was from a short story, and then somebody turned it into a real website.

Oh, wait. Oh. Yeah. I was like, I know about the institution but well the concept is that like the infinite library has every possible combination of all the letters and so everything that's ever been written or will be written is in the library but yeah got it so there's no no a site that supposedly has that yeah and so you can like send somebody like look at page 1 million and 32 and it says happy birthday brad surrounded by entire gibberish or something like

that you know gibberish is fun yeah okay um well did you think of the bad advice that somebody's given you oh yes um i've been told more than once that grades don't matter. And in some arenas of life, they totally don't, you know? But, and so I respect that, you know, I don't think that like college is a panacea or school is a panacea that like being good at school means you're going to be good at all kinds of other things. Cause that's certainly not true. But at the end of the day, like like if you there are certain areas in life where your grades have to be this high to ride the ride right you know what i mean and so like uh i did not i did not start strong in college and my older brother really did he graduated with a 4.0 remember after he said like you know i think i'm gonna apply to oxford and i don't even know if he

ended up doing that actually um because he got married life took him elsewhere but um i said like oh i'm gonna do that too and he said well your gpa has got to be like such and such and i thought dang i cannot apply to oxford yeah i can't even be i can't even give it a shot you know so if you don't want to ever do anything like that then then you're fine there are other things that are even just as worthwhile more worthwhile but you know i want to apply to oxford yeah what yeah they're like they're just certain jobs and we're looking at grad schools grad schools other jobs will be affected by that but there are jobs in the like if it comes down to just pure practicality there are jobs in the world where they want to know how you did in college so yeah that's true yeah absolutely there's two sides to that for

sure but that it all depends on what you want to do with with uh with your life professionally and even educationally post-college right um well very good stuff wait do you have terrible advice i actually can couldn't think of one i'm sure i've been given terrible advice many times and i think oftentimes my folly is the application of the advice where I take something someone says very literally because shocker, I'm a very literal person. I'm like, I will do it exactly to that to that T. Like, I will follow that advice exactly. And then I just become swallowed up by a time consuming task that need not be so time-consuming. I don't know what you mean.

Yeah. There you go. Why are you looking at Daniel with that? Because he's very literal, too. Yeah. I'm way more literal than you are. Yeah, you are. That's true.

But, well, I guess we're both kind of goody-two-shoes. I was like, my goody-two-shoes takes over when I have... I'm literal and I humorous. What? What's so funny? It's funny you just described yourself as that. Yeah. I'm literal and I humorous. What? What's so funny? Just funny you just described yourself as that. Yeah. I don't know.

You guys, I don't know. I'm trying to be self-aware, Brad. An open admission. An open admission. Never a crime. Okay, well, we're already at an hour and ten. Hopefully, everyone has the gumption to ignore the terrible advice in their life. Inspirational.

How do we end on that? Yeah, truly. What if that is bad advice that he sends every day? What an inspirational quote. Yeah. Max favorite. My favorite. Oh, Hayden, here he comes with the inspirational quote.

Nonsense. Absolute nonsense. I'm sorry. I was trying not to make the microphone squeak. But I feel like we should offer some anti-advice to close close out go around and offer some anti-advice do not be intentional about your friendships focus all your energy on social media and don't think about the future live for the moment and don't take the advice of anyone older than you.

That's my anti-advice. Wow. That's such wisdom. In other words, don't follow that. I like that. Anti-advice. Do the opposite. Well, folks, now that we're ending on opposite day, thank you for listening and we will catch

you next week. Thank you all so much for listening. If you've been enjoying our podcast, it would be awesome if you would review us on iTunes. And if there's a guest you'd love to hear on our show, give us a shout on Twitter. Tweet at The Texan News. We're so proud to have you standing with us as we seek to provide real journalism in an age of disinformation. We're paid for exclusively by readers like you, so it's important we all do our part to support the Texan by subscribing and telling your friends about us. God bless you, and God bless Texas.