The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - January 26, 2024

Episode Date: January 26, 2024

Show off your Lone Star spirit with a free Gonzales Flag t-shirt with an annual subscription to The Texan: https://thetexan.news/subscribe/The Texan’s Weekly Roundup brings you the latest news in Texas politics, breaking down the top stories of the week with our team of reporters who give you the facts so you can form your own opinion. Enjoy what you hear? Be sure to subscribe and leave a review! Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast. This week, the team discusses: Abbott declaring in a statement that Texas has a “constitutional right” to “self-defense” on the borderThe Supreme Court allowing the federal government to remove Texas’ razor wire border barriersTexas continuing to create its border barriers despite the Supreme Court’s rulingA presidential campaign memo prompting discussion in the Texas GOP of whether or not to close its primariesTexas officials’ response to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suspending his 2024 presidential campaignThe Republican Texas House incumbents outraising their opponents for the 2024 raceA Texas Senate candidate’s residency eligibility challenge headed to trialLt. Gov. Dan Patrick set to speak at a February BlackRock event in HoustonWhere abortion policies stand in Texas, 51 years after Roe v. Wade

Happy Friday, folks. Senior Editor Mackenzie DeLulo here, and welcome back to the Texans Weekly Roundup. This week, the team discusses Abbott declaring that Texas has a constitutional right to self-defense on the border. The Supreme Court allowing the federal government to remove Texas's razor-wire border barriers. Texas continuing to create its border barriers despite the Supreme Court's ruling. A presidential campaign memo prompting discussion in the Texas GOP of whether or not to close its primaries. Officials' response to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis suspending his 2024 presidential campaign. The Republican Texas House incumbents outracing their opponents for the 2024 race. A Texas Senate candidate's residency eligibility challenge headed to trial. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick set to speak at a February Black Rock event in Houston and where abortion policies stand in Texas 51 years after Roe v. Wade.

Thanks for listening and enjoy this episode. Howdy folks, Mackenzie here with Brad, Cameron, and Matt in studio. Matt, you're back. Thank you so much. I'm happy to be here. Ooh, right off the bat, I have two things I want to talk about. One, Matthew, you just saved our bacon. We needed four AA batteries to record this podcast because apparently we lost track of how many we had in our office and you had them in your car. Uh-huh. Will you tell us why you had them in your car? Well, I try to have a little bit of everything in my truck for emergency situations.

Yeah, you're prepared. I am very prepared. That's what we like to hear. And Bradley, I want to talk about your choice of outfit today i mean i wouldn't say outfit it's a sweater it's a sweatshirt it's the same thing no it's not there is functionally no difference that's so untrue a sweatshirt is by definition far more casual and a sweater is usually knit in some way. I thought the difference was a hood or not. No.

I don't care. That's a hoodie. I like the picture on it though. Yeah. Let's talk about what's the picture on your sweatshirt, Bradley? I'm supposed to describe something now that our listeners can't see. This is far easier than some weird. It's a picture of a dog

walking itself, holding its own leash. A little golden retriever. Adorable little guy. It's very adorable. And the caption says, become ungovernable. I love it. It's so good.

You freak out every time you look at it. It's a very Brad shirt. What can I say? But it's also... It's just so... It's so good. Who gave it? Your brother gave it to you? out every time you look at it it's a very brad shirt what can i say but it's also it's just so it's so good who gave your brother gave it to my brother gave it to me to me for christmas yes it's just a phenomenal gift everyone volume down let's myself included but no it made my day thank you for wearing it you're welcome, I guess. Cameron, how are you today? I'm great. Good. I don't have such a cool sweater. Wait, sweatshirt.

I would, yeah. This is a sweatshirt. That's a sweatshirt, yes. Okay. I would say. And that's a sweatshirt, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. But, no, I'm doing good.

Yeah, it's been a crazy week. Yeah. Lots of stuff going on. Yeah. Lots of stuff going on. Yeah, lots of stuff going on in the Texan. Exciting stuff. But since you did not get to start off with some funny anecdote, we're going to start you off with a story. Okay, let's do it. Let's talk about the border.

The battle between Texas and the federal government has definitely heated up to even hotter than it was before, if it could have been. With the governor stating that the federal government has broken the compact between the U.S. and the states. Give us the rundown. Yeah, this is definitely an escalation in rhetoric, at least from Abbott, because he issued this letter, this statement, where he directly says, like you mentioned, that the federal government has broken this compact between the states and the federal government. And in the statement as well, Abbott talks about that the executive branch of the United States has a constitutional duty to enforce federal laws protecting states, including immigration laws on the books right now.

And the governor, he mentions that we're experiencing an all-time record of encounters at the border. In December alone, last year, over 300,000 encounters. And Abbott is not scared to, it seems to go after the federal government. He had called the Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas, he called him pathetic when he had listed climate change as one of the reasons that has spurred this mass immigration to the United States. So this is just another level though, this recent statement, because he actually listed three reasons for issuing this new letter. And he has said that President Biden has violated his oath to faithfully execute immigration laws. He says Biden has instructed his agencies to ignore federal statutes that mandate the detention

of illegal immigrants. And he also mentions the wasting of taxpayer dollars to tear open Texas's border security infrastructure. And the statement really comes on the heels of something that happened, was it on Monday, there was a SCOTUS, we wouldn't call it a decision. What would be the legal- It was an order. It was an order. So this order that would allow the federal government to remove razor wire from the border. And this razor wire and all sorts of barrier systems has been a huge point of controversy between Abbott and the federal

government. But what SCOTUS said is federal agents can remove the razor wire. There's nothing preventing Abbott from continuing to construct razor wire barriers. So that's an important distinction in a lot of the discussion that we've been seeing online with this SCO disorder. So for all of our listeners right now, we're monitoring all of the discussion from other red state governors that have said they support Abbott and his decision. And we've actually seen one Texas representative, Joaquin Castro, has called on President Biden to take control of the Texas National Guard if the state continues to defy the Supreme Court ruling that effectively allows them to take down the razor wires at the border. So this is a evolving story. It doesn't seem to be slowing down at any point. But it really is an escalation in the tensions between the state of Texas and the federal government.

And Abbott's actions have garnered him support and praise from folks who've been his critics in the past, saying he's not done enough to secure the border or not been aggressive enough on conservative policy. We see a lot of those folks, you know, lauding the governor on this move. And like you said, a lot of red state governors. And of course, then that also opens it up to a lot of criticism from Democrats. So it's, we're recording Thursday as we always do.

And it's very much the topic of conversation among electeds throughout the country and specifically in Texas. Yeah, and this discussion surrounding what does it mean when defining the word invasion? That seems to be a point of contention right now between what Abbott is saying, what SCOTUS has said, what's the legal precedent surrounding the word invasion, what the founders viewed an invasion as. So that's something that really is going to be coming to a head here pretty soon because, like I mentioned earlier, we're experiencing record numbers of encounters at the board. It was like 200,000 or 300,000 last month.

Yeah. So we're living through a time right now with the immigration issue that is really going to set precedent for the future and how we handle these sorts of issues. So this is something that is very important for the country, for the state of Texas, and something everyone should be paying attention to and we'll keep covering. Absolutely. Cameron, thank you. And Matt, on that note, we're going to pivot to you on something already alluded to. Tensions are very much flaring between the state and federal government over border security and the Supreme Court this week added fuel to the flames when it issued that order y'all were talking about, lifting an injunction from a lower court that prevented federal agents from removing the state's border barriers, specifically the wire we've heard so much about.

What are the details? That's right, Mackenzie. Things are heating up between the state of Texas and the Biden administration over the border crisis, with hundreds of thousands of people illegally entering the United States from all over the world each month. And the administration's consistent policy has been to essentially catch what's been described as essentially catch and release, with most of these individuals receiving notices to appear in immigration court as late as into the next decade. Texas has responded to this by seizing a city park in Eagle Pass, Texas, where untold hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens have regularly crossed the Rio Grande into the United States and have prevented federal agents from setting up on the site to continue the so-called catch and release policy. Under orders from Governor Greg Abbott, state police and the National Guard are arresting illegal aliens under criminal trespass related laws. And now tensions are boiling over and many legal challenges are piling up with Texas adding numerous border barricades, such as the razor

wire we've talked about. Some of the other examples would be like a chain link fence, et cetera, et cetera. Setting up gates with manned guards that are preventing Border Patrol from entering into the area to perform sort of the routine immigration related stuff. But they're allowing them in to access the boat ramps and to conduct, you know, medical rescues, et cetera, et cetera. This led the state to ultimately secure a injunction against the federal government when border patrol agents were seen removing a lot of the state barricades, pulling up the razor wire, cutting it, et cetera, et cetera. And the Fifth Circuit ultimately issued an injunction saying federal agents must stop removing state border barriers. So let's talk about the injunction then. What

happened after it was put in place? Okay. That's a good question, Mackenzie. The Biden administration appealed the injunction to the U.S. Supreme Court, where in a surprising five to four order, as we mentioned, the court lifted the appeals court injunction with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joining the court's three liberal leaning judges in making up the majority order. So explain then what the actual impact of this order is. So circling back to something Cameron touched on a little bit in the first article, the case itself has yet to be fully decided by the Fifth Circuit. So when the appeals court issues their final ruling, they could issue another injunction if they side with the state of Texas. It's just Texas does not get the luxury of enjoying injunctive protection during the course of the legal challenge. It has also not stopped Texas from continuing to place barriers like razor wire and prevent volley of heated rhetoric, as Cameron mentioned, between the state and the federal officials.

So it'll be interesting to see where the courts fall when final decisions on these key issues begin to be issued. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Matt. We have more border coverage coming in just a minute. But before that, Brad, let's talk about some breaking news this week. On Wednesday night, another update in the whistleblower case against Attorney General Ken Paxton and his office came through. What happened?

So last Friday, Paxton and the Office of the Attorney General, filed a motion to expedite a judgment in the case so that the depositions that are scheduled for next month do not happen, and then three of his other aides, first assistant Attorney General Brent Webster, Chief of Staff Leslie French-Henneke, and Senior Advisor Michelle Smith, are all set for depositions of their own in this ongoing whistleblower case in the following days after that. So this case, especially recently, has featured a lot of moves and counter moves from both sides. Paxton initially, like two weeks ago, basically pled no contest. Actually, the OAG, because that's the one who's being sued, pled no contest, conceding the facts of the case, hoping that that would just get the judge to rule and end this thing. Yeah.

The judge did not abide that. The whistleblowers oppose that. They want him to sit for deposition. And that's kind of been the struggle this whole time. How can that be avoided and or how can that be enforced? And even during the impeachment trial, that was a big point of contention. And when the rules came out from the Senate dictating how the impeachment trial would occur, Paxton was not required to testify. So this is something where we thought would happen during that trial. It did not.

And now we're looking at this one as the you know, this is really where it's all being met now with those expectations. Yeah. And it's a lot more stringent since it is an actual court of law. It's not a court of impeachment. Higher stakes, you might say. Well, I don't know if it's higher stakes, but impeachment is kind of a big deal. But it's a different, it's an actual court of law. Yes.

And so right now there's a subpoena for him to show up for deposition on February 1st. And that's what they're trying to avoid doing. They say that the OEG says that this is a waste of time. He's already been acquitted. This isn't going to yield anything new. On the other side, the whistleblowers say, well, actually it might, so let's do this. Who knows what will happen? We'll come out in depositions if indeed they do occur. But in this back and forth so far, there is the whistleblowers are winning.

The judge is very much on their side, at least procedurally. Initially, we'll see ultimately if there is any ruling how that comes down. basically announcing the judge's decision to deny the request to stop these depositions. The office of the attorney general said in a statement, by denying the Friday motion, the court is recklessly disregarding legal precedent, abusing the litigation system, and displaying shocking bias in an apparent effort to prolong this political charade and interfere with the day-to-day business of the Texas attorney General's office. It's notable that the judge, Jan Seufer, used to be the Travis County Democratic Party chair.

That's something that Paxton and the OEG have mentioned quite a bit during this. It's also notable that after acquittal, the court that restarted this whistleblower case that had been dormant during impeachment was the GOP-controlled Texas Supreme Court. And so right now, the battlefront is in district court in Travis County. Whatever's decided there will obviously be appealed, I'm sure. We may eventually have the Texas Supreme Court having to weigh in once and for all on this. But a long way to go. And I'm sure we're going to have a lot more moves and counter moves between the two sides. Absolutely.

Definitely something we're keeping around. Thank you, Bradley. Cameron, more border stuff. You ready? Let's do it. You've already talked about Abbott's statement from earlier this week and the declaration of invasion. But now tell us about what he's already done with continuing to build razor wire barriers in light of the Supreme Court order. That's exactly right. Because, you know, for people who say things never happen,

this is definitely a time where things are happening. Things are happening. We have, I will say, to peel back our curtain, we have a things are happening channel. Like that's literally a channel inside of Things Are Happening. Because after the SCOTUS order came out, we started seeing videos circulating on Twitter where it was like, are these Texas National Guardsmen still building barriers? Are they still constructing razor wire? And then we saw Governor Abbott put out a picture where he's saying,

yeah, they're going to continue building, constructing razor wire barriers. He says they're going to continue holding the line in Eagle Pass. So that was confirmed. At first I was like. Now they're circulating the image of the come and take it flag only instead of the cannon they've got some barbed wire wow i appreciate i was gonna touch on that i was leading to that i was leading but let the man work it's okay it's okay well i couldn't help myself over there.

It's like the funnest graphic that we've seen during the course of this thing. The funnest. The funnest. Most fun. Sorry. Well, because we've seen, like we talked about earlier, red state governors, they've been supporting Abbott and his decision to keep building these razor bar barriers. What we've seen inside the state, though, is a lot of support as well. We saw the Texas Land Commissioner, Don Buckingham, she called the federal government's actions regarding this illegal immigration,

federally sanctioned, called it a federally sanctioned invasion. Then we saw Rep. Tom Olverson, he talked about disobedience is the best way to lead sometimes. We saw Briscoe Cain shared a quote from President Andrew Jackson. And then, like Matt mentioned, we saw the Texas GOP take the – they restated the come and take it moniker and said come and cut it. And I thought that was... Oh, I forgot about that part of it. Yeah. So, you know, like we talked about, this is going to be a long battle between

Texas and the federal government. Not going to slow down. It's developing day by day, hour by hour. So we'll keep... Just now seeing a tweet from Idaho Governor Brad Little saying, the lawless southern border threatens the lives of all Americans, including Idahoans. I didn't know that's how you call that. Idaho is proud

to support Governor Greg Abbott's efforts to secure the border, fight fentanyl, and combat human trafficking. We've got to get a tally up on who all has come out for this and how many states leaders combat human trafficking. Yeah, we got to get a tally up on who all has come out for this and how many states leaders have backed Abbott in this. It's fascinating. Yeah. And who knows what's going to happen with all this? It seems like lines are being drawn right now. So we'll see. Absolutely. Cameron, thank you. Bradley, coming to you. The debate

within GOP circles to close its primary has revved up this week. Nikki Haley is at the forefront of that, if you can believe it. What happened? An internal memo from the Nikki Haley campaign sparked more debate on the question of closing Texas's GOP primary. The memo theorized that because many of the upcoming presidential primaries are in states that have open or semi-open primaries. Those that more than just registered as Republicans can vote in. Haley can outperform her current expectations due to a boom from independents, usually soft Democratic voters. What is a soft Democratic voter? Someone who probably has a Democratic voting history, but also maybe either flips to the Republican side here or there or also votes independent. It's not someone that would be considered part of the Democratic base.

Or maybe doesn't show up to every primary. Yeah. Yeah. Those kinds of things. So this sparked a response from Texas GOP Chair Matt Rinaldi, who said, quote, this is a very obvious call for a Democrat crossover voting in the Republican primary, which we know already happens in Texas on a large scale. The Texas GOP must prioritize closed primaries. lawmakers tried to shove in a provision back in 2021 into a bill requiring the party chair and srac members state republican executive committee to be elected on the primary ballot rather than

appointed at convention they view that as an infringement on their ability to run the party as they see fit um the that then caused at the 2022 convention, the Texas GOP Rules Committee to strip every explicit mention of election code in in their rules. And the attempt there is to set set the basis for closing a primary by untying the GOP rules explicitly from the election code. Now, there's debate on whether that matters at all. I'm sure if we ever get to this point, this will be litigated in court. Is the party itself subservient to election code? Notably, they kept all the requirements that are stated in code, but just removed the references to code.

The theory for them is we're still operating, we're still the references to code. So like they're, the theory for them is we're still operating. We're still adhering to code, but you do not, the legislature does not have control over how we run our business. And so it's kind of been a bit of a dormant issue in this Haley memo really sparked that up again. Um,

and I'm sure it's going to continue. And, you know, in about almost a month, we'll have data showing. Is this a thing this year? Is it not? Are there a lot of Democrats voting in the Republican primary? It'll be interesting to see. Let's talk about the data then. What is the current data say about Democrats voting in a GOP primary in Texas?

So I got a hold of data from Derek Ryan, a GOP consultant who tracks voter figures each election concerning the 2022 GOP primary. So it breaks down. It's in the piece. You can see if you want. It's a pie chart of all the voters that voted in that Republican primary. And then it breaks it down further by voter history. Three quarters of that are voters who had only Republican voters, primary voter histories and no history of voting in Democratic primaries. And that's that amounts to there were about one.9 million voters in that 22 GOP primary.

That category amounts to 1.4 million people. Of the other 25%, nearly two-thirds had either, or had only general election voting histories. They'd never voted in a primary before. Broadly speaking, those are independents, right? They don't consider themselves part of either party, and so they just vote in the general. Broken down further, around 80,000

voters had mixed histories between the two parties, and only 2.6%, which is 50,000-ish people of the entire 1.9 million voters in that 22 GOP primary had solely Democratic voting histories. That's a small number. There were a couple other categories that had mixed voter histories. So on the aggregate, this is not a huge phenomenon. Now, when you break it down into take a random Texas House race, you know, a smaller number of voters can have a large impact, but on the state level, this is not as widespread of an issue, at least right now. Maybe we get different data next month or in March, but it's not as widespread of an issue as Rinaldi's saying here. But again, the argument is that it shouldn't matter. This shouldn't happen regardless.

And that's a fair argument to make, and we'll see if they actually act on this. And we had a discussion after the New Hampshire primary because it's an open primary, right, in New Hampshire? Did we figure that out? I think it's one of those semi-open. There's some registration involved in it. Because I've been seeing a lot of the discussion you're talking about, open versus closed primary. And I sent you something. This is what sparked a conversation in the office is in New Hampshire, I came across a CNN exit poll that showed Trump voters in New Hampshire, 70% of them were registered Republicans, 27% were registered undeclared. But for Haley voters, 70% were registered undeclared. So it was inverse,

27% were registered Republicans. So this discussion about open versus closed, we're seeing something similar happening in New Hampshire. So it seems so, you know, I don't know if this is a more recent phenomenon where Haley is attempting to recruit Republicans to vote in these primary elections, Republican primaries that are open. I don't know if this is a new phenomenon that's happening, but it's definitely something interesting. It's definitely not new, but it is, I'd say, more politically relevant at the moment, especially because of the presidential race and because, like this memo shows, Haley is actively marketing herself towards those independents and soft Ds to cross over.

Which politically can be very treacherous for a Republican running in a primary. Right. If you're advertising that you want the support of Democrats or independents in a Republican primary, especially in the Trump era, that can be a very politically dangerous thing to do. Now, of course, she is the anti-Trump candidate. So that's part of the appeal there as well. So it's more complex than that.

But it's not an easy thing to do. Well, and the most notable example of crossover voting came in 2008 in the Democratic primary for president in Operation Chaos when Rush Limbaugh encouraged Republicans to cross over. I think this might have been just Indiana, but if not, that was the epicenter of it. Republicans cross over and vote for Hillary Clinton against Barack Obama. And I'm not sure the effect it had, but it was like a big thing. And you see, Shelley Luther comes to mind, I think,

you see Shelly Luther comes to mind. I think you see Republicans, Republican candidates. They get attacked for having a Democratic voter history. And it was the 2008 election that they were participating in Operation Chaos. Interesting. I remember Shelly Luther was criticized on that back when she was running for state Senate. Yeah. But there have been others as well that that have that and so um that's another mine landmine that they want to step on when i think of this issue i actually think of it

in the context of more local races because that's actually where i've seen more apparent cases of it going on like i can think of one instance during the midterms recently in one West Texas county, the local Democratic Party put an ad in the newspaper urging all the local Democrats to actually vote in the Republican primary in order to help the incumbent Republican county judge out against his Republican opponent in the primary. I mean, you know, it was a paid political ad by the Democratic Party, you know, literally like saying vote in this other party's primary. And so I've seen examples like that in local races just because the primaries usually determine who these local officials are. And it's for a lot of people in communities, these local offices are more important than all the fancy stuff going on up at the state and national level. And there's more interest in impacting those local races. And you can impact those local races.

So, and I mean, I could probably ramble off half a dozen examples like that that I've seen in recent years. Yeah. Well, you know, the arguments for and against this on the one side, like I said, those who think it shouldn't just shouldn't be the case at all. They say that pushing to close the GOP primary, that any amount of Democratic influence in their primaries undo and has an erosive effect on the party's ability to choose its own nominee for each office. Fair argument. You know, on the other side, though, that's what you were talking about. They say that, you know, allowing more than just registered Republicans to vote will, A, grow the party's voter base, but also allow those who are in heavy partisan districts one way or the other, but don't but are in the minority party in effect on who it is that's going to actually be their representative, because in a number of congressional districts are below 60% in their partisan rating either way. Similar for the state Senate.

In the Texas House, there's more that fall under that 60% threshold. But basically, once you hit 60, there's virtually no shot of the minority party candidate winning. And so even when you when you're above 55 percent, that gets pretty difficult. So that's the argument there. And, you know, take this election for H.C.2 that's next week. That's it's like R80 or something. Democrats, the only way they can affect who's representing them, because these people, these representatives represent the entire district,

is by voting in the Republican primary when we have the primary election in March. Those are the arguments. It's an interesting debate. I don't know the two sides will ever come to a resolution on it. It's just going to be which one acts on it first. And, you know, Rinaldi seems to be pretty intent on doing so. forego their opportunity to vote in the Democrat primary. So that is not something that maybe, or maybe it's something that works locally. If you're in an 80% Republican district and you

don't have the option of voting for somebody in your party that you think would represent your values, who has a viable chance of winning, and it might be worth it to cross over. Whereas in a statewide context, you're foregoing, even in the districts like any of the districts here in Austin, you're foregoing your opportunity to choose your representative who will be winning in the election if you were to cross over and vote for Nikki Haley. So how much would that work on a statewide level? How much crossover

would we actually see would be really interesting. And then in this election, we have the presidential race, and that's what voters generally care most about pulling the lever for. And there is more infighting in the Republican primary this year, as is typical in some ways. But the Democrat primary in the last couple cycles has been very contentious as well, particularly in border communities. So Biden has his primary opponent and it was a fairly close race in New Hampshire. sure so any democrat who chooses to go and influence the republican uh primary is ceding their ability to sacrifice yeah like joe biden as the nominee or even help uh dean phillips

mounts a an opposition you know that's that's the calculus that's got to be made when when these things these decisions are made again why it works better on a local level and we're you know the jury is out on how it will affect statewide um Bradley, thank you. Cameron, let's stick with some presidential news here. The race for the Republican nomination for president has one less name on the list. As Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has announced his suspension of his campaign, he garnered a lot of support from Texas politicians. Tell us a little bit about the reaction. Yeah. So he finished second in the Republican Iowa caucus with just over 21% of the vote. And shortly after that, he decided he would suspend his campaign. And what's interesting about the DeSantis campaign is he really seemed like he was going to be the front runner early on. You know, I came across one poll from December 2022, where 56% of GOP voters and independents preferred him to Trump. And another poll showed DeSantis would beat Biden in a head-to-head matchup. So there is a lot of support for DeSantis coming into things, but it didn't really quite

work out that way. His kickoff for his campaign sort of set the whole tone for his run because if our listeners remember, he decided he was going to use a Twitter space to launch his campaign. And this Twitter space was hyped up. It was going to be hosted by Elon Musk. And there was hundreds of thousands of people that were tuned into this thing. But what ended up happening is this Twitter space was plagued with all sorts of issues, audio issues, cutting in and out, connection issues. So didn't really work that great. But he was great at fundraising. He raised a ton of money between himself and his Never Back Down PAC that was supporting him. But I came across something interesting is in Newsweek, they did a calculation

based upon how much he raised in his campaign and the Super PAC. And according to Newsweek, they did a calculation based upon how much he raised in his campaign and the Super PAC. And according to Newsweek, they spent at least $2,263 per vote in the Iowa caucus. So that's just a ton of money to eventually then suspend a presidential campaign. But, you know, he had a lot of support here in Texas. You know, most notably, Chip Roy was someone who was very vocal about his support for DeSantis online, accompanying him to campaign events in Iowa. So that was very interesting to see the support from Texas politicians for DeSantis. But now that he suspended his campaign, like we talked a little bit earlier, it's Trump and Haley now. And even though Trump continues to win, Haley appears to be the favorite with a lot of the donor class. She's been getting a lot of endorsements from some big figures in the business community. But if you're looking at polling and you trust the polling, Trump has a commanding lead over Republican voters. And so I believe the next primary we have is South Carolina, which Nikki Haley was former governor of.

So we'll see how she performs there. But what's been interesting to see, though, I'll mention is he did not seem as active on social media as many would have wanted him to be during the campaign. And as soon as he suspended his campaign, it seemed as though he became reinvigorated on social media, posting all sorts of videos like with him and his kids. And he's posting selfie videos talking about Abbott and the border situation. And it's been very interesting seeing that transition from presidential candidate to going back to being just Florida's governor. And his engagement with the public has shifted drastically on social media. And I know for a fact that, at least me, it's been, one thing was the personability of DeSantis

didn't seem to connect during the campaign. And now I'm like, who's this guy? Yeah, that's what a lot of people seem to agree, yeah. So just that transition's been interesting. I don't know if that's an effect of stepping away from the campaign. People were giving him advice on how to present yourself. And now that he's sort of on his own, he can sort of be more himself. But I just think that's something to know. It's been interesting to see. Yeah, the transition, certainly. Cameron,

thank you so much. Bradley, you wrote a piece on the fundraising in the 16 races that feature House Republicans seeking reelection who voted against the school choice measure last November touted and supported by the governor. Give us a preview of those numbers. So there were 21 House members who voted for the Rainey Amendment. We talked about that a lot. Of those, only 16 are seeking reelection. I have a chart in this piece that goes through each of those races, notes the incumbents and their challengers, and then the fundraising numbers for the most recent filing. So, you know, if you want to see the whole thing, check that out.

Give you a couple top lines. Something notable that I thought it was interesting in House District 11 in East Texas, incumbent Travis Clardy, who is backed by Paxton, but not Abbott, is he raised $134,000. Joanne Schaffner, who it seems is one of the couple challengers that posted the biggest numbers of this list. She's endorsed by Abbott. She pulled in $112,000. So fairly close for what we normally see are these massive chasms between the incumbent money, the incumbent raised and the, the challenger Justin Holland HG 33 up in Rockwall. That's a very notable race.

Holland has not has not been endorsed, endorsed against by Abbott yet, but he was among the more vocal anti-voucher representatives during that whole debate. And partially probably the reason that it hasn't endorsed against him him is because Holland has been very close to Abbott. He served as the inauguration committee chair for the governor. So interesting dynamic there. He pulled in over $400,000 quite a bit, but he faces two challengers. One is the pretty high profile Katrina Pearson, former Trump spokesman back during the 2016 campaign. She raised under $50,000.

I think if anyone is going to pull in a lot more from the next report from the first one, she's going to be among them because of her profile. But who knows? We'll see. And then you also have Dennis London, who wasn't too far behind Pearson at $36 thousand dollars.

London ran against Holland last time, so he's been on the ballot before. Another one that's quite interesting is HG 55 in Temple. I believe that's Bell County. I hope that's right. Hugh Shine, the incumbent, he raised just over seventy thousand dollars but he has over 800 800 000 in the bank he faces hillary hickland who is among the most notable challenges in that she's been endorsed by pretty much the whole array so far of these top officials that are getting involved abbott paxton cruz um miller i would bet you that that Dan Patrick is going to jump into that one, but, uh, she raised 34,000. Um, and, uh, that's not nothing. It's fairly good, but also I bet if anyone's going to

get some of that Abbott money, the $6 million, it's going to be her more than almost any other. So then I think another notable one was Charlie Guerin's race incumbent notable because, well, he raised $350,000, but he has over a million dollars in the bank. So Jack Reynolds, who raised only a couple thousand really has an uphill battle there. That one is probably not going to happen, not going to flip for the challenger there, but that is just a lot of money. So you can check out the rest in there.

There's a lot of interesting snippets. And I go through the kind of support that the speaker has gotten or given to some of these members. Yeah, absolutely. Check it out. Notable to mention as well

that fundraising is just one aspect of these primary races. There's a lot more at play. It's not everything, but it's also not nothing. Absolutely. But Bradley, thank you so much. Cameron, coming to you at the Senate District 30 race, another high profile one has provided so many twists and turns. Give us a rundown of how this legal challenge to a candidate's residency in the district is now headed to trial. Yeah, this is a crazy story

that has not slowed down at all. So just a brief overview of how we got here. Carrie Damore is one of the candidates for the Open SD 30 seat, and she's challenging Brent Hagenbue, his claims that he is a resident of the district. So shortly after Hagenboe, he announced his run. He gained a ton of endorsements. Abbott, Dan Patrick, former governor Rick Perry, all jumped in supporting him. But some of the other people running against him were saying, hey, he doesn't live in SC-30. He lives in SC-12. And so we've seen briefs filed with appeals courts. We've seen criminal complaints, but it seems as though Damore's challenge is getting the most traction. And this lawsuit she filed, she's essentially challenging to have them removed from the ballot. And so we actually

had a hearing that was scheduled a few weeks ago, but that was delayed because of documents that were filed and the judge wasn't prepared for those and so it was delayed now um we have demore's request for an injunction that was denied hagenbue's motion to dismiss the case was also denied and now he go to trial is it hagen hagenbue is that how you say it i believe that's how we settled on yeah got it because it's been debated in our office heavily heavily debated but this man's name yeah because it's it's either hagen baugh hagen boo but it ends with the ch yeah i can bush yeah has been thrown around we are open to suggestions folks folks, but this is where we're at. You also spoke, Cameron, to a lawyer on the inside of the case. Tell us about some of the things he had to share with you. Yeah, this was really interesting. So

I got on the phone with Jack Stick. He's a lawyer representing Carrie DeMoor in this case. And some of the things he told me, he was very clear that he thinks that Hagenbue has lied and that he looks forward to deposing him because with this trial, we're going to have Hagenbue give deposition. So that'll be very interesting because this was another thing that he mentioned is there's been multiple chances for him to explain himself and he has refused to. And one of the things that I wanted to bring up because I keep coming back to the endorsements is Abbott and Dan Patrick and Rick Perry, they're endorsing this guy. Wouldn't they have done their homework if there was any controversy

surrounding his residency in the district? What's the deal? What's the deal here? And so I asked the lawyer, Jack Stick, about that, and he said, I don't know the answer to that. But what I do know is if you ask somebody for their endorsement, you're making certain representations to that person, one of which is that I'm eligible for this job. And he the Jack Stick told me that these officials, they get hundreds of requests for endorsements over the year and they don't have time to look into every fine detail of every person. And so sometimes,

you know, things might get missed, you know, so but this will be very interesting because this is a high profile race with a lot of eyes on it. So we don't have a date yet for the trial, but something will definitely be following. Certainly. Good perspective there. Interesting perspective there, Cameron. Thank you. Brad, coming to you. Some inside baseball here, but important nonetheless. The lieutenant governor is set to appear at an event sponsored by BlackRock next month. Give us the details. So per a drafted agenda that I obtained, Patrick is slated to provide both opening and closing remarks alongside BlackRock CEO Larry Fink at the event next month titled Texas Power Grid Investment Summit, Unlocking Investment Potential Through Enhanced Grid Reliability. Also set to appear are State Senator Charles Schwartner, the Texas Senate's lead author on its various power grid related bills last session.

And then also Electric Reliability Council of Texas, ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas, and then a few members of Patrick's legislative staff who were involved in all these discussions. It was a shock to see this given Lieutenant Governor Patrick's past posture towards Black Rock on the ESG issue that I've talked a lot about here. Patrick, though, said of the agenda once it was released, quote, Mr. Fink reached out to me last year to meet. We've had two productive and positive meetings to date. He is bringing potential investors to Texas to encourage building natural gas plants we need to strengthen our grid and to highlight the incentive plan we passed in Senate Bill 2627 last year by Senator Shortner. That is the loan program that was approved by voters on the November ballot.

Upon digging into this, I found that Patrick actually alluded to this event in a December interview with CBS up in Dallas. And though he did not name BlackRock explicitly, he said he was convening an event to bring investors to come together and discuss this. And that's what the event is intended to do. Get these people with money in a room, talk about what we need to do in order to attract capital towards the construction of new, especially natural gas power plants.

That's important because another thing I mentioned a lot is this influx of renewables that we have that increases the reliance on wind and solar, which can be tenuous. And so the biggest reason that is happening is the production tax credit at the federal government level has made it a lot more competitively advantageous and financially advantageous to build wind farms and solar and then kind of a plateau and even a little bit of a reduction when plants get mothballed of the thermal side of things and so this this all of the the reforms made uh during this past session are meant to try and uh maybe not correct that imbalance but at least provide a counterbalance to this. Then you add the fact that BlackRock is the face of ESG. Whether they believe that that's deserved or not is a different story.

Larry Fink has done himself no favors in things he's said, in touting especially decarbonization efforts, which obviously in Texas is not something that people really want to hear, given its massive Texas oil and gas industry footprint. So this is an interesting crossover event, I'd say. And it'll be interesting to hear what they actually say, what these investors need to be assured of in order to feel like they're making a good investment pouring money into natural gas plants and in the air cop power grid yeah absolutely fascinating stuff bradley thank you for covering it cameron we wow gentlemen we have really had a lot to talk about on this podcast so we're going to go through this quickly cameron you ready all right he's ready let's speed run it let's do it we had the um we wrote about the 51st anniversary of the original Roe v. Wade decision this week. And since then, there has been a lot of legal fallout, a lot of implications.

Give us a rundown of your piece and tell us what's happened and where we are now. Yeah. So, like you said, there's been a lot of fights over right to life or right to choose, which has sparked battles across the political landscape. The original Roe versus Wade decision came down 7-2, where SCOTUS opinion determined that Texas abortion law, quote, sweeps too broadly. There was many other justifications in their opinion at that time. They also stated that the 14th Amendment, the concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or as the District Court determined in the 9th Amendment, reserves the rights of the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision

whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. So that was the foundation for the original Roe versus Wade decision. Then since that, there was Planned Parenthood versus Casey. Then there was the fact Mississippi passed a law called the Gestational Age Act, where it prompted Jackson Women's Health Organization to sue Thomas Dobbs, the state's health officer, which then gave us the Dobbs v. Jackson decision, which came down in 2022, which overturned both Roe and Casey, which then returned the rights to regulate abortion to the states. And so here in Texas, we've had the Human Life Protection Act

in 2021. We've had the Heartbeat Act. And then most recently, we had the controversy over Kate Cox and her alleged need in the courts to procure an abortion as well. And that caused a lot of controversy, and we covered that quite extensively. So in these past 51 years, lots of legal decisions, lots of opinions, and it's really shaped a lot of discussion between the two sides, right to life versus the right for choice. And it's really, I cover this in the piece, I won't do it now, but it's really interesting because it's a lot of moral arguments that come into play in these SCOTUS decisions that I wasn't aware of before covering this. So if anyone's interested in how the Supreme Court at the time was viewing different issues of morality, go check out the piece. I include it.

Yeah, absolutely. Great stuff, Cameron. Thank you. Gentlemen, let's talk about tweetery here. Matthew, do you have some fun tweetery or rather a reminder for folks ahead of the primary election? I have some important tweetery ahead of the primary election. According to the Texas Secretary of State, which is the state's official source for election-related information, the final day to register to vote for the upcoming March 5th primary election is February 5th. So if you are not registered to vote, go online to the Texas Secretary of State. You can find all the information that you need right there to find out how to get registered,

signed up, make sure your information is updated, current, all that good stuff. So that whenever you head to the polls, all you got to do is show them some ID and go right in there and do the civic duty. That's right. Good reminder. Thank you, Matthew Bradley. What do you got for us? So this week I, uh, I had a meeting with, um,

a guy at Philip Morris international. It's just a random thing. PR group asked me to meet with him. So I, I did. And I get there and I sit down. I have no idea what it is we're talking about. I have no idea what Philip Morris international is.

So you didn't Google it before you went. I did not. No, I did not. I should have, but I did, and I get there and I sit down. I have no idea what it is we're talking about. I have no idea what Philip Morris International is. You didn't Google it before you went? I did not. No, I did not. I should have, but I did not. Turns out they are the manufacturers of Zin, the statement about wanting to ban Zinn in the country. And so as I'm sitting there talking Twitter feed is full of memes about protecting Zinn against the federal governments from, you know, Barstool Bros and those guys. And there are some that are freaking hilarious. And so, you know, like the 300 Spartans protecting against the Persian army, protecting a giant can of Zinn.

Has there been a come and take it Zin? There has been, yep. A lot of that. Oh my gosh. But all I know is Tucker Carlson, he would routinely have Zin sitting on his desk. Oh my gosh. While he was at Fox News.

At Fox? Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah, he's a huge Zin guy. And I heard him say, because, you know, the Zen stuff, it's nicotine. There's no tobacco or anything.

So people are asking him about it. And he's like, hey, Zen is not a sin. Oh my gosh. So I've been using that. That's so funny. Zen is not a sin. Yeah.

But the combination of this big news breaking and my phone sitting there, obviously listening to me as it does, just destroying my Twitter algorithm. My feed has been nothing but Zin memes and talking points for the last 48 hours or so. Well, now my iPhone that's sitting here listening to him, he's going to do the same thing. I received a handful of screenshots from Brad with angry, expletive written text saying he's angry about his algorithm currently. I need to correct that somehow. Maybe start talking about Marlboros or something. That way it's cigarettes.

Or just like dog videos or something. Yeah, that'd be less funny. Okay. Well, there you go. Thank you, Bradley. Karen, what do you got for us? Well, something we've covered before is there was a whistleblower that came out and revealed some information about Texas Children's Hospital and the fact that they had continued gender-affirming care despite them signaling they would stop doing that type of procedure and those activities at the hospital. And I came across a tweet from Chip Roy, who was sent some new information based on the Dr. Eaton Hom, and he's the doctor involved in this case, and listing out all the different things that had occurred. Because when the whistleblower documents first came out, it was just information from the inside of the children's hospital.

And a lot of the – like, for example, one of the big controversies surrounding the whistleblower docs was the DOJ that went after this doctor said that he didn't make the child's names on the documents blacked out. And so they actually went to his apartment and questioned him about this. Well, in fact, the names were redacted in the documents. And so that, again, what Chip Roy put out is explaining everything in the fallout. Like, for example, the DOJ prosecutor admitted judicial system and the federal government against certain individuals who might lean a certain way or reveal certain information. So it's just very interesting to see all this come to light. Yeah, absolutely. Well, good stuff, Cameron. Okay, mine real fast before we wrap up and let you all enjoy the rest of your day. We see some back and forth here after Governor Abbott's big statement. We see some back and forth from Republicans on his other statewide official counterpart, Ken Paxton, and his approach to this legal challenge. So Wade Miller starts with Wade Miller. Wade Miller is the executive director for Citizens for a New America, former Ted Cruz political director and

former Chip Roy chief of staff. A reminder, Chip Roy and Ken Paxton are not the best of friends. Chip has very much come out publicly and criticized the attorney general and was vocal in part during the impeachment and lead up to the impeachment, critical of the attorney general and was vocal in part during the impeachment and lead up to the impeachment, critical of the attorney general and some of the things that were being, the allegations are being levied against him. So fair warning, this is coming from that side of the argument. But Wade comes out on Twitter, says predictably Texas legal filings do not cite Article 1, Section 10, Clause 3 as an authority for Texas razor wire effort. It's a pretty long tweet. I'll move on. Greg Abbott needs to have a talk with Ken Paxton and get him on the same page. If the governor isn't or is citing specific legal authorities and the AG isn't defending those

specific legal authorities, then that's either intentional sabotage of the governor or a massive communication failure. I don't see the latter being the case. Ken Paxton needs to rise to the moment and defend Texas. And so far, his filings are falling short. Some pretty spicy language there from Wade Miller. I saw Ken Cuccinelli, the former DHS director under President Trump, also making that observation. Yeah, it was definitely circling Twitter a little bit. They're the same organization. That makes a lot of sense then.

We see Representative Matt Schaefer, a Republican from Tyler, who is retiring from his position as a House rep, who notably also voted against the articles of impeachment that were presented before the House, saying that procedurally they were not up to par. He quote tweets this tweet from Wade Miller and says Ken Paxton is not on his A game in court. So interesting there seeing him who did vote against the impeachment of the attorney

general, but also did endorse a primary challenger of Paxton. So kind of a politically complicated person involved in all of this, Matt Schaefer, but come forward and make that statement. Then later on, or actually this morning, that was last night, Wednesday night, this morning, Thursday morning, Ken Paxton tweeted, I stand shoulder to shoulder with Governor Abbott to defend Texas. As your attorney general, I stand ready to bring any legal means necessary to defend Texas. We will push back against this out of control federal government to defend our state sovereignty. So the attorney general definitely making it public that he is supportive of the governor's actions, despite the criticisms being levied his way. Fascinating political stuff.

There's some interesting debate about why exactly that hasn't been included. pointed to some previous court rulings that found the issue of what constitutes an invasion as non-justiciable, i.e. something a court cannot determine for whatever reason. But the court also ruled that the governor himself cannot determine that as well. So this is just kind of out in the ether. What exactly is an invasion? What constitutes it? And the court, at least so far, maybe a new challenge fixes this, but the court has avoided making that decision. I think I've seen some, read somewhere, there's a few questions like that that are actually legislative questions and it's simply a question of is there a legislative will in the legislative branch to to declare it as such and if so then it is um and there's a few examples like that throughout the these is that the federal legislature or the state well both but in this

instance there's in the in the u. Constitution, you have this kind of, you know, you have relevant clause in the U.S. Constitution, but it communicates a power to the states through it. So it's a question of who exercises or invokes that power. And the courts have generally said in some of these instances that, you know, if the political will is there, if they believe that, then so be it. And it's not really a judicial, it's not a question of, it's not a question of, it's not a case in controversy, so to speak. It is a power the constitution invests in the legislative body to decide whether or not to invoke. And if you look at the fine language of that constitution, and I'm not trying to get on my soapbox, but it basically puts it in the

legislature or if the legislature can't be convened, the executive of the state. There you go. There you go. Interesting. Lots of back and forth. Well, folks, we've only gone a little bit late today. So congrats to us. Congrats to you for making it to the end. We appreciate you listening each and every week, and we will catch you on the next episode. Thank you to everyone for listening. If you enjoy our show, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you want more of our stories, subscribe to The Texan at thetexan.news. Follow us

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