The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - January 22, 2021

Episode Date: January 22, 2021

This week on The Texan’s “Weekly Roundup,” our team discusses executive orders from the Biden administration affecting Texas, public school revenues in the age of coronavirus, bonds issued by school districts, drama in Dallas over elections, fundraising numbers from the “Big Three,” the Alamo being referred to as a symbol of “whiteness,” a special election slotted for Saturday, confederate monuments attacked by a Texas House member, and a proposed grant for the “Walker, Texas Ranger” reboot.

Howdy folks, Mackenzie Taylor here, Senior Editor of The Texan, introducing another edition of The Texan's Weekly Roundup podcast. This week, our team discusses executive orders from the Biden administration affecting Texas, public school revenues in the age of coronavirus and bonds issued by school districts, local drama in Dallas over elections, fundraising numbers from the Big Three, the Alamo being referred to as a symbol of whiteness, a special election slotted for Saturday, Confederate monuments attacked by a Texas House member, and a proposed grant for the Walker Texas Ranger reboot. Thanks as always for listening and we hope you enjoy.

Howdy folks, Mackenzie Taylor here with Daniel Friend, Isaiah Mitchell, Hayden Sparks, and Brad Johnson, all sitting around the table here at the Texans office down in Austin, ready to talk through this week's news. Brad, are you ready? In the wise words of SpongeBob, I am ready. Does SpongeBob actually say that? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. All the time.

Oh, okay. I'm not proficient in SpongeBob. Great. Daniel, are you ready? Well, mostly, yes. Mostly. We have a doc, and there are things that are still being added to said doc. We're getting there, though.

We're getting there. Well, Bradley, let's jump right into the news. We'll start with you. This week, we saw the inauguration of a new president. Walk us through a few of the—well, you focused on one particular item, one particular executive order. Walk us through the implications of that and what it entailed. Yeah. So one of President Biden's first executive orders issued was on the Keystone XL pipeline.

Obviously, for Texas, anything oil, anything energy pertains a great deal. But this one does especially. The Keystone XL pipeline, well, I should say, President Biden revoked the permit for this pipeline. connect there to a point near the Kansas-Nebraska border that connects to an already existing pipeline that runs down to Port Arthur and the refineries there. And essentially, this would just enable higher capacity of oil to be shipped from point A to point B and then be sold, you know, from Port Arthur generally outside the U.S. And so this plan itself has gone on for like 10 years. That's when construction started.

But it's run into a few road bumps, specifically. Road bumps. Road bumps. Did I just mix a metaphor like Connie? Mixed your metaphors. And she doesn't listen to this podcast anyway so it doesn't matter um but specifically the main blocks have been uh reversals in the permit itself and president obama did that in 2015 um president trump reversed that as one of his first orders in 2017. A lot of about faces.

Yes. And then President Biden has now done the opposite. So, yeah, that's where it stands at the moment. What kind of economic impact are we talking about with something like this, with a project of this size? Yeah, well, the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline, because the Keystone pipeline is already in existence, but the company behind construction of this, TC Energy is a Canadian-based company.

They estimate $8 billion worth of economic impact for North America. Now that obviously includes the amount of oil that will be shipped between Alberta and Port Arthur, the value of that. But it also includes construction. Obviously, this is like a 1,200-mile pipeline, so it's going to require a ton of construction, digging, all this stuff. And so any company hired to to do those um will you know benefit obviously but it also it will have impact in terms of um indirect economic uh spending such as you know purchases at restaurants nearby um where these uh construction

hubs are so uh they estimate $8 billion. Now, obviously, that is disputed by especially people opposed to the deal. But it is safe to say it would have a large impact regardless. Now, it's opposed for various reasons. You have the environmentalists who object to largely any use of fossil fuels. And so by establishing this pipeline, it would, by nature, increase the use of fossil fuels, specifically the oil up in Alberta, in energy. And so those who want to see us move entirely away from fossil fuels into renewable energy, such as the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's, they are opposed to this outright just based domain across the path of the pipeline,

especially regarding American Indian tribes and where the pipeline goes through their property, their reservations, there's been conflict bubbling up there. That's been going on since the project was started. And the other aspect is that this oil in the tar sands up in Alberta is not the same as what we know in, you know, in Texas, basic crude oil. It has apparently more acidic qualities to it. And therefore it makes, you know, it creates leaks more often in the pipeline. And at least that's, you know least that's the justification from some. So it's kind of this combination. President Biden, when he issued this, his executive order press release stated,

the approval of the proposed pipeline would undermine U.S. climate leadership by undercutting the credibility and influence of the United States and urging other countries to take ambitious climate action. Another one of the actions he took during inauguration day was to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord. And so you can clearly see this effort, this green energy environmentalist effort by the Biden administration to basically appeal to his progressive wing, which was one part of the electoral coalition that elected him.

So obviously in Texas, a lot of people oppose this. Senator Cornyn added, you know, the biggest losers from this decision are the energy workers who stood to benefit from the pipeline. There's no doubt our energy industry has already suffered during the pandemic. And President Biden's answer is to kick the industry further down the well. You know, this would create back to the economic impact, this would create like over 100,000 jobs. Now, a lot of those are two year construction jobs to create the pipeline itself. The maintenance of the thing would require far, far fewer workers. One number I saw was like 2,000. I don't know

how exactly accurate that is, but that was one estimate. And so with this not being right now built any longer, then that's obviously a direct impact to these people's livelihoods. Certainly. And it was interesting last night, I believe the prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, came out and said that it was a disappointing move. Yeah. On behalf of the Biden administration, which is fascinating considering his more adversarial relationship with President Trump prior to this. Right, right. I think it shows you, though, how reliant the Canadian economy is on the little bit of oil industry that it has. Because it doesn't have what the U.S. does.

Certainly. But it's significant enough to be reliant on it. And a lot of Canadians make a lot of money and have energy-reliant jobs on this kind of thing. And so that, especially Trudeau being pretty progressive left as, you know, leaders of the free world go, for him to, you know, draw a line in the sand against President Biden on this is pretty telling. Absolutely. Thank you for covering that for us. Daniel, let's talk about another executive order issued by President Biden on his first day in office. Walk us through what's happening with the border wall. So if you weren't aware, there is a new president and he has

gone a little bit in a different direction than the previous president. Just to lay out the facts as it is. You know, Daniel, you're doing a great job. Thank you so much. And this includes the subject of immigration and the border. So he completely has reversed course on a lot of what Trump has done with the border. I sense a theme. Yeah. Or a lot of reversals.

There's a theme going on. It'll probably continue for a little bit. Maybe for four years. If there's a Republican president, we'll probably be saying the same thing except backwards, kind of like in Tenet. Wow. Yeah, sorry. I like it. I watched that too many times here we go back on track um yes so biden signed an executive order after his or on his first day of an office uh that essentially halts the construction of the border wall uh this was the way trump was funding the border wall. Of course, he tried getting it funded through Congress. If you remember back in 2019, when there was the

government shutdown at the beginning of 2019, they were still haggling over the budget, couldn't come to an agreement. Trump was pushing for more border funding. Of course, in 2019, later that year was when we saw the record high numbers of apprehensions at the border. And so he was trying to get funding for the wall then. Congress, they couldn't work it out to get it in there. They passed a budget that did not have funding for the border wall itself. And so Trump signed an emergency declaration that allowed him to essentially funnel money from other military construction projects toward the border wall.

And so what Biden's executive order does is in that emergency declaration, which was extended just a few days ago by Trump, and so now the border wall spending is halted. And the administration is going to review, you know, what they're gonna have to do with contracts and whatnot. What kind of money are we talking about here? So there was 3.3 billion that was still in the count that was going to be used toward the construction of the wall by Trump. And there are different estimates going around. The most notable one comes from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that was reported by,

I think, the Washington Post. And in that, you know, talking about this potential, it was potential when they were reporting on this. Now it's actual reality that Biden has done what he's done, ended the emergency and stopped construction on the wall. Now there are still contractors that are still going to have to be paid fees because the government signed contracts with them. There are different materials that the government has already purchased. They're going to have to figure out what to do with that. There are different things like that, those costs, the sunk costs of building the border wall. And so the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

estimates that the fees alone from the contractors could be about $700 million of that $3.3 billion. So you can look at it two ways of the government is technically saving money because they're not spending as much on the border wall, or you could look at it two ways of the government is technically saving money because they're not spending as much on the border wall. Or you could look at it and say, well, we're wasting a lot of money because we spent some on contracting work that's going to go to nothing. So, yeah, interesting. In light of this new administration, what other kinds of immigration policies or moves can we expect to see from President Biden? So President Biden has also introduced or he hasn't introduced, he's he announced that he's

going to be pushing a wide sweeping immigration bill to Congress called the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, which, among other things, you know, the primary thing that it does is offer a path to citizenship for, I've seen estimates of 11 million illegal immigrants who are here in the U.S. right now. Now, this does have to go through a long process. The other immigrants, if you come to the United States legally and you want to become a citizen, you have to take a citizenship test, you have to have an English proficiency test. Those things are still included in this, but it does offer a way for people who have been here illegally for how many ever years, whatever the process, to apply for citizenship and do that. Now, the bill also provides some funding for border security, but obviously not a wall. Democrats are very opposed

to the wall. They say that's a waste of money. This is something that we've seen even in the Texas delegation with the Democrats down in the border district areas. They say we shouldn't be spending money on the wall. We should be focusing our money on the ports of entry and focusing really on increasing the technology there, especially as it relates to really trying to lock down on the narcotic smuggling that's going on. So that's what his bill will focus on. It'll provide funding on that. I don't know what the numbers are on that funding, but that's one thing that it does in regards to border security. It also changes in the U.S. code. I believe it's from the term alien to something else, I think immigrant.

So they changed the U.S. code, changing that to try and appease the left to say that using the term alien, illegal alien, illegal immigrant is politically incorrect. So they're trying to change the U.S. code with that too. So those are some of the big things in that bill. Obviously, it sounds like a very massive piece of legislation. I haven't seen any text on it released yet, but there are a lot of parts to it. Absolutely. Thank you for covering that for us as well. Let's talk public education for these next couple of stories. Brad, I'm going to come back to you first. Talk to us about a new bond that is being talked about up in North Texas. So obviously this occurs in the context of the

pandemic and the economic problems that have been brought with it. So the Richardson ISD, their bond steering committee, they have recommended issuing a $750 million property tax bond for this year. It would be on the May ballot. Now that's if the school board elects to go forward with it. So this hasn't been, this isn't a final decision yet, but they intend for the $750 million to go towards things such as classroom expansion and infrastructure improvements because they've had, uh, you know, an increase in students. Um, I haven't been, I, I looked for the story, I looked up, you know, the last school year, uh, numbers, but they didn't have that. So neither them nor the TEA. So that's unclear, but, um, you know, the last few years

they've had somewhat of an increase, although not, not in, uh, you not in a massive one. And so this property tax bond would increase the property tax rate to $1.40 per $100 valuation. And so when I calculated this out, it would be roughly for a median home median homeowner in richardson in the school district uh be an increase of about 240 um dollars from last year to this year so obviously it's no small small ask of voters and you know this is one school district and school districts have a tendency in texas to be among the worst offenders for property taxing, property taxation. And, you know, this is just another example of that. Talk to us in light of that about, you know, previous bonds passed by the district. Have large bonds been passed for Richardson ISD recently?

Is this something that, you know, these taxpayers have seen a lot of? Yeah, back in 2016, they they passed a 437 million dollar bond now obviously that was in better economic times um and it was still smaller yeah uh numerically than what the what they're going for here now the school board could revise it they could drop the number the fiscal note they could uh you know change what all their uh the parameters for the spending um all of that could be adjusted but right now, this is what was recommended, $750 million. And it will have to be separated on the ballot because they're also spending on technological purchases.

So that, through in-state code, has to be separated in ballot language from the rest of the spending. So, you know, it's unclear what will happen, although, you know, if history is any guide, this will probably be placed on Richardson ISD voters ballots come May. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you for ensuring our readers are informed of that. That it's what is it like a 40 percent increase from the 2016 bond? Something along those lines. Yeah. In a very difficult economic.

Not small at all. Certainly. Isaiah, let's zoom out a little bit to a 30,000-foot view, just of PubMed revenue in general. Walk us through a little bit of what we're seeing in terms of revenue streams and how the system works. Sure. So my story and Brad's story overlap somewhat. They both involve Richardson ISD's bond. What I noted in my piece is that the schools are pushing these bond proposals, as you just noted,

Brad, amid this pandemic, but also amid steady funding, especially when you compare to other industries and even other kinds of taxes that other government agencies can use for their revenue. Yeah, absolutely. So in terms of, you know, what kind of revenue streams we're looking at here, walk us through what that looks like. And as well, you know, we're looking at a big enrollment differences between last year and this year. Walk us through what that looks like for school districts in terms of funding as well. Sure. So public schools in Texas rely on two streams of money. On the one hand, accounting for about 60% of the money that they get on average, they collect property tax revenue from the neighborhood that they're in. And on the other hand, they get money from the state. The pandemic did not really affect property values. The

shutdowns didn't really affect property values that much statewide. So the revenue that they're getting from property taxes has been pretty stable, especially when you compare it to, you know, other industries and the private sector, especially. Can I, if I could add one thing to in there, places like Austin that are high demand, the pandemic has caused them the values to increase because there are a lot more people that can now work from wherever. And a lot of them want to,

are choosing to work from Texas and moving here. And so, you know, you're seeing not only just regular increases, but in certain places, irregular increases in the value of the property. On top of that, sales taxes and other consumption taxes in certain arenas and industries have dipped because a tax on alcohol, right? You're not going to collect that much when you're shutting down all the bars. So in layman's terms, other kinds of taxes have been less stable than property taxes, which have been pretty fruitful as always.

So in terms of the money that they get from the state, that's based on enrollment. So the more students a school has in attendance, the more money that they tend to get, the more money that they get from the state, according to the state's formulas. The money that they get from Texas is about 40% of the average school's budget in a Texas ISD. Enrollment took a pretty sharp nosedive this school year. And we've written about that pretty previously. But that would normally result in a concurrent drop in funding, but it didn't thanks to state relief. Texas has the Coronavirus Relief Fund.

A lot of that is fed by the stream of money from U.S. stimulus packages or whatever label you want to apply to them. And we got one that trickled down to Texas and was distributed to school districts for 2020, the fall semester. And we have received another package as a state that hasn't yet been distributed down lower. But what we do know is that in 2020, early fall semester up to now, Texas school districts were made whole. So even though they took a pretty steep enrollment hit, they didn't take that same hit in their budgets. I like it. In terms of what this money is being used for, what kind of justification are we hearing from districts who are moving forward with different bond packages? Right. So the money from bonds anywhere in Texas is typically used for renovation and other building

projects. A lot of these schools that I mentioned in the piece are building new campuses to accompany what they expect will be more students based on projections that vary in age. And other of the bond renovations are going to use for renovations to existing campuses and other building projects like that. Waxahachie, near where I grew up, is going to be using it for new sports facilities. So it is entirely reasonable on one hand to expect that this shock in enrollment, probably caused entirely by the pandemic, will go away once the pandemic goes away. And all those students will come back, and then those new facilities won't be so empty. But in addition to the fact that property tax revenue has remained stable compared to other industries, we've also got this, you know, we've got schools asking for money from the voters or asking the voters to approve loans to build these new facilities. When, you know, on average, they've lost 3% of their students, depending on the grade that they're in across the state and, you know, depending on the school. So, I mean, long story short, school districts across the state are asking approval to get

loans to build new facilities. And what could be the first year since Texas started measuring enrollment that we've seen an enrollment drop statewide. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you for providing that context for us and for our readers. Hayden, let's talk some local news. Walk us through some of this drama. I think Dallas County doesn't disappoint with drama. No, I think at this point the network should just take the soap operas off the air and replace it with a live stream of the Dallas County Commissioner's Court. That is one of the nerdier things I've heard you say. I don't inherently disagree, but, you, but I think that is very nerdy.

I love it. Well, walk us through what's going on up there this week, particularly between one commissioner and the county judge. Yes. Well, I think it's safe to say that Commissioner J.J. Koch and Judge Clay Jenkins do not have the best working relationship. Although this week, a lot of commissioners have been at odds with Judge Jenkins. So that's not just Commissioner Koch. But they were especially at odds this week over a resolution that Judge Jenkins introduced concerning election law. And he really had a lot of strong things to say about that resolution.

Walk us through a little bit of what that looks like and what the resolution is. And also, I think it's important for our readers and our listeners to understand a resolution and what that means as opposed to other things the county can do. Well, the county cannot actually institute election law. So when I say a resolution concerning election law, these were going to be recommendations that the county would make to the state legislature. And it wasn't so much, well, it was the recommendations themselves, which were to institute online voter registration and to expand vote by mail. But part of the

controversy was over the list of what they call the whereases. In a resolution, it'll say, whereas this, now therefore, and then it'll say the resolution, as you know. But in the whereas piece, it had some politically charged language condemning the riots and condemning President Trump. And when I say the riots, I mean the Capitol riots. Which riots are we talking about? Right, we've had riots for the past year. So the latest riot, the one at the Capitol, and Commissioner Koch had took exception to some of the language in that resolution, calling it inflammatory, saying it was overly political. And it was interesting because Judge

Jenkins really tried to rush to a vote on this resolution. And Commissioner Koch had to speak up and say, this stuff is inflammatory, this language is politically charged. And he said the key to election reform is transparency, and not instituting some of these online voter registration reforms, and even automatic voter registration, which the resolution didn't directly call for. But again, in the whereas section, and some of the reasoning and some of the justifications, it cited the Brennan Justice Center, which is a part of New York University Law School. And that is a very progressive group that has some very progressive ideologies when it comes to elections. And the sentiment of Commissioner Koch's criticisms were, was that

the county should not be maligning an entire political group as racist or discriminatory because they're concerned about election fraud. Absolutely. Good, good coverage. And how did it all end up? Where are we at the resolution? And how many dissenting votes did we have? Well, of course, J.J. Koch is the only Republican on the commissioner's court. So he was the lone dissenting vote, and the other commissioners supported it. It was a voice vote, but it was clear when there are only a few people in the room, you can always tell, or you can usually tell. But it was interesting because this is a subject and this manifested itself on the court that day, where both sides really just seem to be talking past each other because you had, you know, you had one side that, you know, they are intensely concerned about fraud

and the possibility of fraud. And then you have the other side that they were just perplexed that this was controversial to exercise their right to vote, which of course is sort of a mischaracterization of what Mr. Koch's position was, which was that there is a population of people that is concerned about potential voter fraud, and the resolution did not give attention to that. And it did reference a poll that was conducted in October by the University of Houston Hobby School of Public Affairs, which did show that there was wide support for some of these reforms, like online voter registration,

and that most people do support giving some of these reforms attention into making into increasing access to the ballot box. However, the same poll actually also did show that there were concerns about fraud as well. About 58% of Texans were concerned about fraud related to mail-in balloting, which is what this resolution was endorsing. So there was substance and arguments to be made for both sides. But all of that was kind of drowned out by the emotion and the politically charged issues that are tied into election law. And it's always interesting to see these political issues, these lightning rods on the national level trickle down to the local level and see our local officials begin to debate those kinds of issues as well, particularly when it's something like a resolution. So thank you for covering that for

us. Daniel, we're going to come to you. Our eye will be a little bit off of the fundraising, our collective eye at the Texan will be off of fundraising largely over the next few months on the state level as the legislative session has begun. But walk us through the latest fundraising numbers, particularly for some of the biggest officials here in Texas. So now the campaign season is basically over for the 2020 elections. There is still one more election later this week, which I'll get to. But there's a lot fewer filings now. When it is election season,

candidates have to file a lot more campaign finance reports. They have to give a little bit more disclosure about who's funding them, where they're spending their money, et cetera, et cetera. Now that that is kind of over, it'll go into a very semi-annual thing for most state-level offices and then a quarterly-level thing for most federal offices. So the congressional candidates they still haven't filed their final report for the end of year 2020 they'll do that in january

31st or 30th i guess how many days are there in january 31 31 there you go do you ever use your knuckles to count the months you know someone tried explaining that to me yeah and i could not follow that february february always threw me off yeah well but i'll teach you this is an important uh this is an important tenant of i think the american education system we'll have to make sure this happens i think someone yeah someone is pushing for more civics education i did hear about that uh but that's that's more of a legislative thing. Politically, that's what we're talking about. Raising monies, campaigns.

Well done. Nice transition. So the state offices filed this past week disclosing how much they raised in the final portion of the year. This was pretty much after the general election, before the end of the year. So this shows us how much money they're going into 2021 with. Kind of interesting to see which legislative members have the most money. Now, the most legislative House members at the state level do not have anything compared to the big three in Texas, that being the governor, the lieutenant governor, and the Speaker of the House, or the new Speaker of the House in this case. So that's kind of what I focused on is those big three and how much they raised. And it was significant. You had Governor Greg Abbott raise about $11 million, I believe, which is not his highest reporting period on record, but it is still a pretty high record for him.

And he's a prolific fundraiser. He's one of those, you know, anywhere in the country, his fundraising numbers are revered by many other statewide elected officials throughout the country. He knows how to bring in the dollars. Yes. And it should be noted that, you know, comparing the fundraising that Abbott did compared to Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and Speaker Dave Phelan, his donations, the contributions that he received were on average much, much lower than what Patrick and Phelan received. So his average donation, you know, even though he raised 11.6 million total, the average donation was $329. So that's pretty small.

Which denotes some grassroots support, right? It would make sense considering most folks in Texas may not know who their lieutenant governor is or their speaker of the house, but they likely know their governor if they're a voting Texan. Now those organizations, those entities, the super PACs, those types of organizations give a little bit more. There are 535 entities that gave 2.4 million of AVID support and they gave an average donation of $4,725, so much higher than the average individual, and I think pretty on par with what the average entity was giving for the other two. Now, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, he had his best fundraising period yet. I had to go back and look and see how much he's raised in previous periods. And even looking at the 2018 election, when he was on the ballot, and he raised more this period.

Now, the period for these three officeholders, I should note that unlike people who were on the ballot in 2020, like most of the House members and whatnot, who reported the finances from the general election to the end of the year, the finance reports for these individuals who are not on the ballot, for Abbott, for Patrick, for Phelan, all run from July to the end of the year. So a good period.

Now, I say that because in 2018, when that was not the case for Patrick, when he did have to file for the election, he still raised less than he did this year, which is kind of notable. Yeah, that is very interesting. Walk us through what kind of money was spent by these elected officials because there was an election this year or last year. Wow, 2021. Yeah. My gosh. Well, I mean, I think a lot of us are still stuck in 2020 specifically like march yeah but the perennial the perennial month but walk us through what was spent um by

these statewide elected officials who weren't on the ballot on some races that were so uh dade phelan who was elected as speaker you know he came came out in November and announced that he had the votes. He raised 4.5 million after that. And, you know, before that, he really wasn't spending on other campaigns. He really didn't have as much as these other statewide officials. Um, so he really didn't spend anything compared to the other two. Now, Dan Patrick, um, he really didn't get involved in many races except really Pete Flores's campaign, the state senate because that was the competitive state senate seat. Dan Patrick wanted to hold on to his Republican supermajority. He still sort of has in a different way. That's a whole other story.

But so he really didn't contribute a whole lot to the campaigns. He did report spending $164,000 on advertising. And the bulk of that, about $122,000, went to Flores' campaign. Now, the bigger spender in Texas state politics in 2020, of course, was Governor Greg Abbott. Of course, he has a massive war trust of $40 million. And he raised about $11 million. He spent about $11 million as well. Now, a lot of that he spent on political advertising. He spent on running his own campaign apparatus, which is like the biggest in the state. He also spent about 2.6 million from TEC records on other Republican races in general elections. And then about 835,000 during elections between Republicans because you have the primary races that he got involved in back in March and those runoff races in June and July when the elections got pushed back because

coronavirus. But then he also got involved in the SD30 race for Senate District 30, where there was, it was not a primary race technically. It was a special election, but it was two Republicans in the race. But he did get involved in that and spent about $2.6 million again on general election by 835 with Republican versus Republican races. And then the rest of his $11 million that he spent was poured towards probably like the back of the blue campaign that had, paying his campaign staff and doing whatnot. Now, interestingly enough, he also spent $364,000 on polling. Wow. Which, you know, that is more than Ken Paxton raised in this previous filing period, which is very significant. Now, Paxton himself, the Attorney General of Texas,

of course, he's been kind of in a bit of a controversy of late. You don't say. Yeah. But he's also been making some very brash political statements or very strong political statements. He's taken stances on the election results, you know, having the whole stop the steal thing. So he's come out very strong on different political issues. But that really hasn't helped him with his fundraising. It was a pretty poor fundraising period for him where he raised $305,000, which is his weakest performance

since 2015. Then you also have a few other statewide officials that will be on the ballot in just a couple of years, which is just around the corner. And I'm not going to go there. We're not ready for that yet. No, it's so soon, but it's so not. Anyways, you have a few different statewide officials. You have Land Commissioner George P. Bush, who raised $766,000, and he reported about $1.8 million cash on hand. Notably, you had Comptroller Glenn Hagar with an even stronger period, reporting raising $877,000 and bringing his total war chest to $7.9 million, which, of course, I haven't followed campaign finance for a long time, but that seems like a lot for a Comptroller. And then you also had Railroad Commissioner Wayne Christian, who's the

next in line for reelection of the Railroad Commission seats, and he raised $254,000 with a little over half a million cash on hand. And then, of course, you have Sid Miller, the Agriculture Commissioner, who he's also kind of tossed around the idea of running for a higher office. And he reported raising $165,000 and has $154,000 cash on hand. So that's what it looks like for statewide officials. I like it. Thanks for covering that for us. Isaiah, we're coming to you. Speaking of George P. Bush, let's see if this transition will hold the lane commissioner who has made headlines with respect to the Alamo and his plan for it. Let's talk about something not related to George P., but related to the Alamo.

Walk us through a story that happened this week with a Texas historian and some comments they made on the historic symbol. Well, that was one heck of a preface, Mackenzie. Thank you. I tried really hard to make the transition happen, but we'll see how it goes. I'm not solid on it.

Sure. Well, I was surprised that this made news because anybody who went to texas public school has has read this before in a textbook but an influential texas historian said that the alamo has become a white supremacist symbol and i guess i should say i didn't read those exact words in a textbook but you know my textbooks always pitted the villain straw man against the hero straw man to give both sides, so to speak, to the Alamo tale. But it didn't seem terribly new to me that an academic would describe the Alamo that way.

But yeah, he made the news in a USA Today story that quoted him alongside another one of his UT colleagues saying that over time, the Alamo has been used for white supremacist purposes symbolically. Yeah, for sure. So walk us through what specifically he said in terms of what the Alamo, like what he means by whiteness, define that a little bit more for us, and what his quote was in response to. Well, this was part of his analysis on Trump's visit to the town of Alamo. And don't work too hard trying to disentangle the town of Alamo from the place of Alamo. They're really far away. But Trump meant to evoke the symbolism of the battle.

And this professor, William Banger, also meant to tap into that evocation and the connection between the two places. So it's all the same symbolic ball of wax. But he said that white racists have used the Alamo as a symbol of Anglo-Saxon prominence, moving west, manifest destiny, that kind of thing. It gets fishy because the USA Today story doesn't quote his particular examples of this kind of use of the symbol in direct quotes. So in his exact direct words, we have him saying, it became in some ways a sort of symbol of Anglo-Saxon preeminence. The Alamo became

the symbol of what it meant to be white. And then Trump wants to tap into this theme of the Alamo as a defining moment in American history and the triumph of Anglo-Saxon civilization and the move west. It is again tapping into a defense of white privilege he said of of trump's visit to the to the town of alamo um the story also says it makes connections to um symbolic uses of the tale by the same guy that directed birth of a nation which is a an old racist film i think it's a silent film um and some other historical it was the first motion picture shown in the White House. Oh, really? Oh, wow.

By, I believe, Woodrow Wilson. Oh. Woodrow Wilson rears his head again. There you go. I heard Woodrow Wilson was a fan of Birth of a Nation. I didn't know that he had a little party in the White House with popcorn and everything. Very Woodrow Wilson-y, isn't it?

Yes, so I've heard, yeah. He also refers to, well, the article says that he refers to a backlash to African Americans gaining more political power and Mexican immigration increasing in the 1890s. Somehow the Alamo is allegedly related to that, according to Banger. So this is all, again, connected to his analysis of Trump's visits to the town of Alamo and his allegation that Trump is trying to tap into the same tradition, if you will, of using the Alamo for racist purposes. So naturally this surprised a

lot of regular Texans who do not view the Alamo in that light. Certainly. So walk us through the background of this professor and why comments made by him, particularly in the positions he holds, were newsworthy. That is a little bit more newsworthy. He's a professor at UT. He has taught at A&M and written textbooks that are listed on the syllabuses of a lot of different Texas history classes around the state. My brother is an Aggie. He graduated with a 4.0 and waves it in my face a lot. He had to read one of Banger's textbooks for a Texas history class. More notably, he is the chief historian of the Texas State Historical Association, which is a private nonprofit, not governmental. Not to be confused with the Texas Historical Commission. Right. They have very different jobs. But the Texas State Historical Association, of which Banger is the chief historian,

has a considerable amount of influence that it wields over Texas history education. It hosts and, I guess, produces continually the online encyclopedia Handbook of Texas, and all its little spin-offs. There's an African-American Handbook of Texas, a women's Handbook of Texas,

and so forth. Michelle Haas, an editor at the Capano Bay Press, lashed back at Benger's remarks. One of the other publics in the same sphere as Benger to do so, saying that Benger controls the levers of power in the world of Texas history. She said, anytime the media needs a credentialed someone to sound off on Texas history, they go to Banger because he's a reliable source of talking points. He also occupies the two most visible positions of authority in Texas history, Haas said. So he does wield some considerable influence in Texas history circles, especially with regards to education.

If you're going to Google something, an obscure fact of Texas history, odds are the first and most reliable thing that's going to come up will be the online handbook of Texas compiled under Banger's leadership. Certainly. So you mentioned earlier the comments of another professor in this piece. Walk us through that and how the two can differentiate. Yeah. Menger was quoted alongside another UT professor who said something even more professory, alleging that the Texas war of independence was actually Santa Ana's effort to free slaves. A bit of a revisionist view of history.

And Menger did not quite take the same interpretation of the Battle of the Alamo or of Texas history. His colleague, his other UT professor who did make those claims, said more that the Battle of the Alamo itself should not be viewed in that light as a hero versus villain battle of Texas versus Mexico. And Benger's remarks were more along the lines that over time it has become a symbol of white preeminence and so forth. However, Benger has written in favor of diversity measures in history, education and museums and such. He's got a quasi academic piece on the Texas State History Museum in Austin that he visited about his visit to it. And as I mentioned before, the organization under his leadership abides by a diversity code and has produced a lot of spinoff encyclopedias for the African American Handbook of Texas, the Hispanic Handbook of Texas, and so forth. Certainly. Well, thank you for covering that for us. Definitely a nuanced set of arguments from those professors. Daniel, we're going to come to you.

Like you mentioned earlier, some foreshadowing going on in this podcast that there is another election going on this week. It'll be likely the final for a while. Walk us through what's going on and why it's significant. Yes. So if you've been following Texas politics for the past year, you've seen the dominoes fall. First, we had Representative John Ratcliffe from Texas' fourth congressional district be nominated to be the dominoes fall. First, we had Representative John Ratcliffe from Texas' 4th Congressional District be nominated to be the Director of National Intelligence. And then after he was nominated to be DNI, then they elected State Senator Pat Fallon to take his place in Congress. And then Representative Drew Springer went to be the State Senator in Pat Fallon's place. And now we have a special election to fill Drew Springer went to be the state senator in Pat Fowlton's place. And now we have a special election to fill Drew Springer's House seat.

So that election will be on Saturday, this coming Saturday, January 23rd. Wow. What a time. So walk us through the candidates. And I know there's a couple of notable endorsements. So walk us through those as well. Yes. So you've got four different Republicans running.

You also have a Democrat running. The Democrat has not filed any TEC reports. He's been filed to be placed on the ballot. I can't find any social media information about him at all. I don't know if his campaign actually exists outside of being placed on the ballot. But there is a Democrat in the race. So there could be, you know, upwards as much as 15% of the vote going to him if Democrats come out and vote like they have in previous elections, because this is a very red district where 85% of the vote usually goes to Republicans. So now the four Republicans running the race, you've got John Berry, you have Jason

Brinkley, Craig Carter, and David Spiller. Now I'll go over each of those in a little bit more detail. So John Berry is a financial planner. Now one of the notable endorsements he's received was from Representative Maze Middleton, who also gave him a $2,500 contribution. So there's some support there, some confidence with his wallet as well. Now, Barry has also received the endorsement on Thursday from the Texas Homeschool Coalition. So he has some of that more grassroots Republican support coming in for him.

Now, you also have Jason Brinkley, who was the Cook County judge. He resigned from that position to run for this House seat in December. And so, you know, he lives in Cook County, which is the largest county in this district. This is 22 counties wide. It's a very rural district up in North Texas, but his is by far the largest county, so that might play into his favor. We'll see on Saturday if that works out or not. Now, one of the things, he has been quarantining because of the coronavirus. I don't remember if he was infected or if he just came in contact with someone who had it, but he's been quarantining, so hasn't been able to knock on doors or go to campaign events. There was at least one debate that he missed, or forum, I guess, with the other candidates.

Campaigning in the time of coronavirus. Quite a time. So, yeah, there's Jason Brinkley, and then another person in the race is craig carter uh craig carter ran in the sd30 race uh did not even uh did not get into the runoff with shelly luther and drew springer um but he lives in springer's district and so now he's running for the house seat uh he owns a a boot store up in nocona um that's a small town up there um and i think he also does some some non-profit work as well uh so you have him and then lastly you have david spiller um who is

an attorney in i believe uh jacksboro i want to say i have it written down somewhere in district yeah if you go to our website and read the article that we've published on this, you'll find some more information on him. Now, he has received the endorsement from former Governor Rick Perry. So I would say probably the biggest endorsement that I've seen in this race so far. Of course, this is Thursday. There could be another endorsement coming on Friday or Saturday, who knows. But it is getting close to Election Day, and Perry is so far the biggest name I've seen to endorse any candidate. Spiller has also by far out-raised and out-spent the other candidates in his TEC filings. He was shown to have raised about $80,000 and spent about $80,000 as well. No, that's not right.

He raised about $80,000. I think he got a loan for $30,000. So he still has a bunch of cash on hand that he'll probably spend. We'll see. And so, yeah, that's kind of the layout of the race. We'll see who comes out on top. Now, if no candidate receives over 50 percent of the vote, then it will go into a runoff election like it did with the SD30 race. We'll see if one of these four are able to get over 50 percent, you know, if they've gotten out and gotten enough support. If so, then that representative will probably come be sworn in before too long,

maybe even before the legislature meets again next week. I like it. Thank you, Daniel, for covering that for us. Isaiah, we're coming back to you. You were not off the mic for long. Let's talk about some more details here. Confederate monuments are back on our homepage. Walk us through the reasons why and the bill that has been filed to address the monuments. Sure. So State Rep.

Raphael Anchia, I believe out of Dallas, has restarted the effort to remove Confederate memorials from the state capitol. There was another lawmaker that tried this last session, and the conversation about it is drummed up every year around Confederate Heroes Day, which is this week on Robert E. Lee's birthday, January 19th. Yeah, absolutely. So what exactly would the bill do? So it would remove a number of statues that occupy the Capitol grounds, including the cannons near the south door and there are statue monuments to hood's texas brigade one to confederate soldiers in general and one of the to terry texas rangers and so these are all big installations on the ground inside the capitol itself there are a couple of portraits of

confederate leaders in the senate chamber and one in the house chamber and so the bill would take those down as well. It would also rename the John H. Reagan administrative building near the Capitol to the Jackson Weber building. And I had to look up who John H. Reagan is. I didn't know who he was. He was the first and last postmaster general of the Confederate States. And then he went on, I believe, to go into Congress. So kind of an obscure namesake in the first place for a building.

But Angie's bill would take his name off the building and rename it after a couple of abolitionists. Yeah. And that building, for those who don't know, maybe you haven't visited the Capitol recently, is essentially on the Capitol grounds. It's one of the administrative office buildings right there on the Capitol grounds. Walk us through, you know, what kind of support he has at this point and what kind of opposition he has from other lawmakers. Sure. So he filed this bill on January 19th on Confederate Heroes Day. And this is a state holiday that celebrates the Confederate dead on Robert E. Lee's birthday.

He and a number of other Democratic lawmakers held an online press conference i guess with each other so not even a press conference they held a regular conference with each other um uh to discuss you know efforts to end the commemoration of this day which is also an ongoing effort um a lot of democratic lawmakers feel like it's outdated and should be done away with. On the other side of the party line, state reps, well, the state rep Kyle Biederman out of Fredericksburg and state senator Brent Creighton out of Conroe have each sworn to file bills to ensure the orderly removal of monuments. seen these yet, and we check the reports of newly filed bills pretty daily. But these wouldn't quite, these would kind of pass by NCHIA's efforts, since the representative and the senator filed their respective bills in response to mob attacks on monuments. And NCHIA is obviously legal. Yes, it's a different kind of approach. Right. Yeah. I like it. Well, thanks, Zae, for covering that daniel we have uh one more thing we want to talk to our listeners about before we jump on to a fun topic walk us through walk us through walker texas ranger yeah this is a nice bridge to

a fun topic exactly fun little um when i was a kid i loved walker texas ranger i would always during commercial breaks trying to do roundhouse kicks with my brother. Were you guys roundhouse kicking each other? Yeah, of course. Okay, that's good. Boys will be boys, am I right? Of course. Now, Walker, Texas Ranger is getting a reboot from the CW.

It comes out this week. It comes out on Thursday. So if you're listening to this podcast, you still have time to watch it online if you want to watch the new reboot starring Jared Padalecki. I believe that's how you pronounce his last name. He's a star for another CW show called The Supernatural. the program that has received the largest or it's been approved to receive what will be the largest film grant through the state. So the state has a program called the Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Program. So that's TMI times 3P. It's a very kind of ugly acronym. But they've been approved or greenlit for a $9.3 million grant through that program

according to a memo sent internally through the Austin City Council. The Austin City Council approved a local grant to help out the project of $141,000 and they also cited that a local grant to help out the project of $141,000. And they also cited that it would bring the production of this TV show, which is based in Austin, is supposed to generate $17.1 million in wages for Austin residents, and then an additional $5.8 million for costs like catering and lodging for out-of-state crew, that sort of thing.

So this is by far the largest grant that has been approved yet. A list showing all of the grants received since 2008 show that the largest one was actually for the fourth season of The Fear of the Walking Dead the walking dead which received 8.9 million dollars and some other tv shows have also received notable grants of you know 3.8 4 million dollars for these seasons but 9.3 million would be the top if they're approved for the full one they still have to go through the long process of that. Now, as far as the show itself, there's been some earlier reviews of it that say that it's very similar in the style of the old one with Chuck Norris, in that it's kind of that cheesiness

of just like fun Texas action. But they do note that it also kind of shifts away from the the more conservative undertones of course uh chuck norris is a more uh conservative uh cultural figure yes yeah um you know with his roundhouse kicks he also supports lots of republicans um now i believe j Jared Padalecki actually supported Beto O'Rourke at one point. And the show is also carrying some more progressive undertones

with it as well. You know, it's not based in the DFW area like the old show was. It's actually moved now to the Austin area. The Austin area, of course, is more liberal than Dallas. So that's kind of what people are saying about the show. But it has yet to be released as of the recording of this podcast. There you go. Good stuff. Well, thanks for covering that for us. And what a fun scoop

from Daniel Friend of the Texan. Gentlemen, let's talk about a fun topic. Hayden Sparks, you came up with this one this week. Do you want to pose it to the team? Sure. Well, last year, I didn't quite know what to do with my stimulus check. So I spent part of it on a Rosetta Stone subscription. And when I first signed up, I knew that I had used Rosetta Stone before and had started the French language unit. But this time when I signed up, I started the Italian language unit. But this time when I signed up, I started the Italian language unit. And so I guess our fun topic today is which language would you like to learn and why? Because, you know, I need y'all to help me decide because I don't know. I've tried French, I've tried Italian. And the other

day, I started to do the Russian program. And you know, there are like 20 units in Rosetta Stone. And I know there are other, you know, language programs you can use. But, you know, are like 20 units in Rosetta Stone and I know there are other you know language programs you can use but you know I just can't decide so I need y'all to help me decide. I like it. Also I love that with your stimulus check that's what you chose to spend all your money on. I love that. Just some self-improvement from Hayden Sparks. Well gentlemen I know Isaiah you have some experience with French. Yeah a little bit. Yeah. Well what language would you learn if you could become fluent in a language? I've got to say Irish, man.

Irish? Yeah, the ancestral tongue of the Mitchell family. How interesting. It just sounds cool. I just know that there's a lot of cool poetry and other material written in Irish that I can't read. That bothers me. Wait, so forgive me. We have Gaelic, that's Scottish. Well me. I, we have Gaelic that's Scottish.

Well, they're both forms of Gaelic. Okay. I think Scottish, the Scots have kind of just grabbed the divorced child. That is the term Gaelic and decided to take full custody of it. Okay. But,

um, at once there were one language and they've split into two. Cause I don't even know there was an Irish language other than Gaelic. It's called Irish Gaelic, you know? Okay even know there was an Irish language other than Gaelic. It's called Irish Gaelic. I think in Irish it's called like Gaelga or something like that. I don't know because I don't know Irish. It's all Greek to me.

Sorry, I had to make the joke. That was good. I really like that choice. It's not conventional, which makes sense. Isaiah, you keep us on our toes. Daniel, what would you pick? Yeah. Now, if I had to pick one personally, you know, I'm really interested in learning Russian.

Why is that? Just, you know, I think, I think Russia is going to be significant in years to come. I think, I think right now in like the immediate future, if you want to go into the intelligence community or something, learn Chinese. I think down the road, even further, I think Russia and China are going to be like the two main, uh, main international other countries that are going to be a big deal.

Well, I think Russia, I mean, 40, 50 years ago, that was what you'd have to learn in the intelligence community largely too. Right. I mean, they were dealing with different times. Um, I, I mean, I took a lot of French in high school, four years worth. And I'm largely rusty now. I don't have as much in my brain as I would like. But if I was to choose a language other than French to become fluent in, gosh dang it, what would I pick?

I mean, I think French, but I'm trying to think of something other than, you know, a language I've already explored. Well, and Daniel pointed this out to me earlier today. Some languages like Italian and French, at least I think so. I hope I'm not about to say something dumb. But, you know, they're kind of based in Latin. So you don't have to necessarily learn an entirely new alphabet. Whereas with Mandarin Chinese or Russian, you to necessarily learn an entirely new alphabet whereas with mandarin chinese or russian you've got to learn a new alphabet so that could be fun but it also makes

learning a new language considerably more challenging so i guess it would depend on how much of a challenge you're up for yeah i think i go pig latin that's what i was thanks it's difficult so difficult study like a a low challenge yeah i know i don't want to have to think too hard yeah okay well gentlemen thank you so much for joining that conversation hayden you killed the fun topic folks thanks for listening and we'll 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

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