The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - January 6, 2023

Episode Date: January 6, 2023

Register for the 88th Session Kickoff: https://thetexan.regfox.com/88th-session-kickoff Get a FREE “Fake News Stops Here” mug when you buy an annual subscription to The Texan: https://go.thetexan.news/mug-fake-news-stops-here-2022/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=weekly_roundup The Texan’s Weekly Roundup brings you the latest news in Texas politics, breaking down the top stories of the week with our team of reporters who give you the facts so you can form your own opinion. Enjoy what you hear? Be sure to subscribe and leave a review! Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast. This week on The Texan’s Weekly Roundup, the team discusses: The themes to watch for the 88th Legislative SessionLegislative priorities for West Texas in the 2023 sessionRep. Jared Patterson’s bill on parental information rights and school gender instructionSpeaker Phelan pushing back on Trump’s words about the GOP’s midterm performanceA federal judge ruling against spending in the Texas Speaker of the House raceKevin McCarthy’s failure to secure the U.S. speakership in the first round of votingA federal investigation into Granbury ISD for its removal of certain books from library shelvesThe Texas Supreme Court rejecting a petition from Jeff Younger over California’s “trans refuge” lawPresident Biden saying he would visit the southern border for the first time in his presidencyThe ongoing dispute between the City of Kemah and its own mayor

Happy Friday, folks. Senior reporter Brad Johnson here, and welcome back to the Texans' weekly roundup podcast. This week, the team discusses the themes to watch for the 88th legislative session, legislative priorities for West Texas in the 2023 session, presented Jared Patterson's bill on parental information rights and school gender instruction, Speaker Phelan pushing back on Trump's words about the GOP's midterm performance, a federal judge ruling against spending in the Texas Speaker of the House race. Kevin McCarthy's failure to secure the U.S. speakership in the first round of voting. A federal investigation into Granbury ISD for its removal of certain books from library shelves. The Texas Supreme Court rejecting a petition from Jeff Younger over California's trans refuge law.

President Biden saying he would visit the southern border for the first time in his presidency and the ongoing dispute between the city of Kima and its own mayor. As always, if you have questions for our team, email us at editor at the texan.news. We'd love to answer your questions on a future podcast. Thanks for listening and enjoy the episode. Hello everyone, this is Brad Johnson, Senior Reporter with The Texan. I am taking over for Mackenzie, well now Mackenzie DeLulo. She is on her honeymoon right now. She had the foresight to schedule her wedding about 10 days before the legislative session begins um but that just means the inmates are running the prison this week yeah it's anarchy

and all kinds of chaos and pandemonium in the texan office and it's also an all-male office right now so it's dangerous times. Yes, yes. That's in office. We've got Holly and Kim, our contract writers from throughout the state, on with us today. Hi, guys. How are you doing? Hey there.

Good morning. Good morning. All right. So given that this is right before the legislative session kicks off, that is going to be the main topic of discussion this time. And we are going to kind of have a back and forth on it. We Tuesday, January 10th. The 181-member legislature will swear their oaths of office, and then largely it'll be kind of a boring day, except more than any other, we'll see the election of the speaker and then in the senate we'll see election of the president pro tempore but the first day of the session is largely uh very ceremonial um and then that kind of kicks off the 140 day sprint to the end to sine die which i believe this year is may 29th and so within that you know five-ish month stretch uh they have to get everything they want done um otherwise like we saw last year we'll have special sessions and i think one of the

things that uh probably the biggest thing to watch this time the biggest theme is this surplus that we're going to have that kind of trickles into many different issues uh currently it's projected to be 27 billion dollars although the comptroller puts out the updated revenue estimate on the day before session on monday and he's already confirmed that it is going to be larger than 27 billion dollars so that kind of impacts everything we're going to see this session. Matt, when we wrote this piece, you wrote a few of the segments. What do you see as some other top themes going into this session? Well, one that's kind of caught my attention that I've been following is kind of all the sides gearing up to potentially try and revive Chapter 313.

And for those that don't know, that is the tax incentive program that allows school districts to, well, the intent of it is to basically give a property tax abatement to incentivize companies to move into their district. Opponents of the program have said that basically it's resulted, studies show that it's resulted in companies who are going to come here anyway getting a huge tax break, which shifts the tax burden onto everybody else and that the program's just ripe with basically corporate, I forget exactly what the term is. Trivality and kind of abuse.

Very much abuse, yeah. And so last session, after some pretty extended fights, they did not get a sunset renewal through for the program. So as of January 1st of 2023, the program was done. So there's this fight brewing up in the legislature where there's a lot of talk about trying to revive, rehash a new form of it. You have school districts like the Ector County Independent School District in Odessa who passed a legislative agenda to lobby the legislature this session saying that, you know, we want to push for a redesigned version of Chapter 313. And then you also have people like House Speaker Dade Phelan who have signaled support for that as well. But then on the other side, you have kind of a conservative heavyweight think tank, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, that was part of making sure it went away last time, you know, saying, you know, they'll be there to stop anything from coming back and then you have a lot of the same key lawmakers like senator bob hall and lois cole corst um you know who

uh you know made sure the sun set and didn't rise again on the issue uh last session that are coming back this session so and that fight was particularly interesting you mentioned tppf but it wasn't just them opposing this every texan which is on the left side of the political spectrum also opposed this and still opposes this will again oppose this it was very interesting to see tppf and every texan um to uh on opposite sides of the aisle think tanks put out a joint press release last session supporting the basically sunsetting of the program so yeah it's it's it's shaping up to be an interesting battle this session yeah and it's related to property taxes obviously that's going to be a massive issue this session.

How much of the surplus does the legislature decide to spend on cutting property taxes? Now we see currently the spending cap is set at roughly $12.5 billion above last session spending. And so there's 27 right now, 20 estimated $27 billion. That's less than half. Now, governor Abbott's come out and called for at least half of the total surplus going towards property tax cuts.

How do they find a way around that? Lieutenant governor Patrick floated this idea of passing constitutional amendments for separate spending items. That's something they could go about doing. There's another idea that I just heard floated last night about using – creating this kind of fund that exists outside the budget to cut property taxes specifically um but regardless it's not just property taxes that's going to be you know vying for some of this money there's infrastructure we heard speaker dade feel and talk a lot about infrastructure um various other purposes maybe if if there's something to do with uh you know school vouchers or school choice passed we could see a segment of this this pot of money going towards that

but then also how much they set aside for future rainy days because um the comptroller has been has shouted this from or at the top of his lungs to anybody that will listen frequently is that this record setting uh surplus is not a sign of unalloyed great economic times yes um it's partially caused by the return of commerce after the government shutdowns of 2020 and then the other part is inflation that is kind of in fault that has followed that those shutdowns and is exacerbated by supply chain problems things like that and so when you have a spending mechanism that's based on consumption when consumers pay more for the goods they're they're purchasing they're going to pay more in sales taxes there's

an argument to be made that um uh there's there's a a rainy day approaching uh so don't spend it all yep and with the the actual rainy day fund there is a limit on what can be put in at least right now um in the regular order of business so all of this is going to be something that legislators debate early and often, basically every day of session, we'll see something on this in one way or another. So I mentioned school choice. Kim, that's something you wrote about in this piece. Tell us about what you're watching going into the session.

Yes, when you were talking about distributing the extra revenue, I mean, you some support for school choice. And Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick echoed some support as well, a little less fervently saying something about, I may not get this quote exactly right, but something about parental voice in education. It was real broad, yeah. Yeah, it was very broad. Then Speaker Phelan was even more reticent, saying in the legislative session during an interview he did on the radio that, I think with Chris Salcedo, that a test vote in 2021 relating to school vouchers did not indicate that the support was there that would be needed to pass it.

Only about 40 to 45 votes in favor of it. So whether or not something will pass, but things will be brought up already. There's one bill that's been authored by Republican Representative Mays Middleton. Soon to be senator. Yes. I guess next week. Supporting tax credits for school choice. So that would be an option.

But, you know, there may be others that will be authored. Not everything's in. Not everything's been filed yet. And then we, of course, know there will be opponents coming from various factions. And on one side, we have school districts like the Ector County School District that Matt Stringer wrote about in their legislative priorities opposing school choice efforts. And some people may not realize that the homeschooling community can often be a mixed bag, not always supporting school choice because some see it as a way of opening the door to government regulation. So. And it's, as you mentioned there, sorry to cut you off Kim, but as you mentioned there, there's a lot of different angles to this a lot of different opinions you have um some rural

representatives who are very much opposed to this glenn rogers was one during the primary who wrote a very fiery opinion piece um in his local paper about this and there when the speaker feeling was asked about this over the interim and he said that last time they did a test vote on this during the budget proceedings in 21, the votes simply weren't there. And there was about 40 to 45 votes for some sort of school choice program. And that's not nothing, but it's a long way from from where they need to be if they're going to pass something on this. And I don't know if the governor's support will change the minds of some of those representatives or not and how fervent his support is. So we'll just have to watch that and see. The budget will take priority, clearly. So whether some of these educational issues also involved in education is what I'm referring to as sort of controversial content.

We've seen a lot of action in that area just in the pandemic era that we've just endured. Awareness, parents have become more aware of content being taught in the schools and some finding some of the material quite objectionable and have gotten involved in that fight. And that has risen to the legislative level as well. We've seen library books being challenged and several legislators have been involved in that. And so we see several bills already having been filed related to giving parents greater access to information that the schools are teaching, rating books and the content in books, and especially access to information about sexual education and sexual identity issues that are discussed in schools that parents are concerned is being kept from them. And also, last session, we had a large bill passed about teaching issues related to critical race theory. And now there's a bill proposed by Representative

Christina Morales, a Democrat out of Houston, that requires ethnic studies to be taught. So my guess is that Democrats having a minority in the legislature will probably not get that passed. But they proposed it and we'll see if it gets any traction. Yeah. And with massive bills passed last session like the Heartbeat Act and the trigger ban on abortion plus constitutional carry there's a lot more oxygen legislative oxygen for these kinds of other more social issues to be brought up and hotly debated um another example of that is gender modification perspective ban on that and um that's going to be a very heated discussion um it last session it died in the house i think two versions of it did um but this session we've seen

more legislators come out really gung-ho about banning this kind of thing um and on the first day of pre-filing back in november there were multiple versions of a ban on gender modification filed so that's going to be another thing to watch um and then one more and from my perspective is the the urcot fight the second round over the market redesign i'm not going to get into all the details it's far too complicated for that i've got a couple pieces up on if you want to read about it but we saw what how much legislative oxygen that took out last session when everything collapsed it won't be the same quite the same level but this is a far more complicated segment of this, of the power grid issue. How do you correctly balance price incentives, price signals to get the distribution, the portfolio of generation that

you want on the grid? And different people have all kinds of different positions on this. The chapter 313 issue bleeds into that as well. So that's something else to watch. Holly, coming to you on this. Obviously, you focus on Harris County and a massive issue every year for Harris County is crime. And that's what you wrote about. Yes, crime has really dominated the news cycle in Harris County and the Houston area for the past few years. We started to see this increase at least in 2019, and it's just catapulted.

We had a record number of homicides last year. They are suggesting that it's come down a little bit this year, but this has certainly played into some of the bills that have been filed by our local legislators. Last session, they did pass some reforms regarding bail because of the number of violent offenders, repeat violent offenders, who were being released in Harris County on bond. In some cases, personal recognizance bond, PR bond, which really doesn't require them to pay anything to be released. We even saw some very violent offenders released in that way. So SB6 went in and created this list of offenses for which you could not issue a PR bond. However, the legislature fell short of the two-thirds majority needed in both houses

to amend the Texas Constitution. And the Texas Constitution pretty much guarantees that in almost all cases, you have to be given some kind of bond option to be released from incarceration pre-trial. So I think we will see another push on that. I haven't seen anything filed yet, but I've been told that that is in the works. They'd also like to see additions to the list of crimes for which there are no PR bonds available. Senator Joan Huffman will be pushing for that. I've talked to some other legislators, and that seems to be very likely. One of the issues that we've been talking about here in Harris County is the problem of felons in possession of a weapon. We're seeing something like 35 to 40 defendants per month being released on a PR bond for being a felon in possession of a weapon.

And in some cases, these individuals are going on to commit more violent crimes, including murder. So definitely, I think we'll see something there. Now, on the other side of it, we're also seeing concern about the amount that bail bondsmen are charging defendants for these bail amounts. So for listeners who don't really understand how this works, even if a defendant has a bond, set for $100,000, they don't pay that entire amount. The bail bondsman promises to post that and the defendant will pay a percentage to the bondsman. Usually it's traditionally 10%, but that's not in code. And it was discovered that some of the bondsmen were charging as little as 2% or even 1% of

that total bond. So, you know, you could have a dangerous person who is paying, you know, maybe $100 instead of, you know, what would be expected prior to release. Houston area rep Ann Johnson has introduced legislation that would make it a state rule that bondsmen must charge at least 10%. There is some concern over whether or not that's price fixing of the industry. We've seen in the state of California and some other areas, some legal pushback on that, but we'll see what the legislature does. This week, we saw the governor ask Phelan and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick to push for more legislation restricting or looking at how we treat parolees in the state. Last year, there were two individuals in the Dallas area who were on parole who had ankle monitors and went on to commit murders.

In one case, one of the suspects had actually removed or damaged his ankle monitor at the time. And it was discovered that removing your ankle monitor or damaging it is not a criminal offense. It's what we call an administrative offense. And they can take that individual and incarcerate them for a short time in a limited security facility. But they're really, it's not a criminal offense. And so one of the possibilities is making that a criminal offense that was proposed back in 2019, but it did not pass the Senate. And in that case, it would have made removing or damaging your ankle monitor a Class A or Class B misdemeanor. So we'll see what happens there. The other thing that I did not get to mention in the article that came to my attention this week is that there may be some

strengthening of the language in the state's defund police laws, which penalize larger counties and cities if they defund their police forces. There's been a dispute here in Harris County over whether or not the district attorney's office is technically a law enforcement agency. It has traditionally been described as a law enforcement agency, but the county leaders who don't want to add to the district attorney's funding have suggested that perhaps it is not. So I'm hearing that there may be some efforts to strengthen that language to make sure it's very clear that the DA is also a part of that law enforcement, that these larger entities cannot defund. Thank you, Holly. Hayden, coming to you real quick, the border is obviously

your bread and butter here at the Texan more than than anything else what are you expecting to we've seen a lot of developments outside the state government state legislature over the last few months on the border what do you foresee coming down the pipe on the um in the legislature on this issue well i'll just say y'all did an excellent job with this piece i wish i could have participated in it i I was working on another project about the 40 plus counties in Texas that have called illegal immigration an invasion and raised the stakes of this issue considerably. In this session, I'll be watching for how much the legislature decides to spend on Operation Lone Star. And because Democratic committee chairs

are still on the table, and that has been a practice in the past, and it's an issue in this session. There'll be a big debate on that in the day after or two days after the speaker's elected. Right. And I'll be watching to see if the chair of the committee that handles border security issues is an R or a D and what the reaction to that is. That's Homeland Security, right? Right. Homeland Security. And I believe this on the Senate side of Veterans Affairs as well. But the Appropriations Committee also has a huge influence over this issue because of the money that will need to flow toward Operation Lone Star. Since the last session, the last regular session, we've had the record-breaking fiscal year of illegal immigrant encounters. And there are also other proposals on the table to make border security pacts with

other states. Senator Hall and State Representative David Spiller have introduced those. There is legislation to increase the criminal penalties for criminal trespassing by someone who's in the country illegally. Brian Slayton has filed that bill. So we'll have debates on border security in this session. I think a lot of it's going to come down to appropriations. And I will be watching for bills that have to do with criminal penalties as well for illegal immigrants. Gotcha. Thank you, Hayden. Matt, you wrote a piece on legislative issues for West Texas. Can you tell us a bit education, and infrastructure are going to be at the top of everyone's minds out in West Texas this session. We highlighted a few of those you're from West Texas, a common complaint is everyone's aware that oil and gas production in the Permian Basin generates a tremendous amount of revenue to the state. associated with that booming oil industry have caused all kinds of problems, including highway infrastructure problems, increases on law enforcement demands, etc., etc.

And so there's this common complaint that they don't get enough money back to take care of the boom. So Representative Tom Craddock from Midland has filed a proposed constitutional amendment, which is legislation he's filed in previous sessions, something he calls the GROW Fund, which stands for Generate Reoccurring Oil Wealth. And it's essentially a fund that will take a portion of the tax revenue from oil and gas. Severance taxes. Severance taxes generated in those permian basin counties and set a portion of it aside to accumulate and then those funds can only be spent in the in the region that it's being produced and it will be ultimately allocated for

things that have increased costs due to the oil boom. Yeah. So we'll see where that goes. It hasn't made it through in previous attempts, but that's one to keep an eye on this session. Turning towards energy matters, State Representative Brooks Landgraf in Odessa has filed a bill to prevent state regulators from enforcing federal regulations on oil and gas that do not comport with Texas regulatory policies. Texas officials have been trying to find ways to push back on the Biden administration's EPA, largely because they're trying to impose regulatory burdens on oil and gas, the oil and gas industry over high ozone emissions. Something that Texas regulators and politicians have blasted as a policy built on false data that will only harm the oil industry.

So another thing you talked about in this piece was education. And that obviously has a lot of different avenues and that affects everywhere across the state. But there are a few aspects of this that particularly affect West Texas. What would you find? That's right. We covered a couple of different categories in our story that you can look at on the website. But one that really stands out on education is that there's a lot of a talk to create an endowment this session that will fund Texas Tech University in Lubbock. Lawmakers have been critical of the fact that the Permanent University Fund, or PUF, which is a public

higher education endowment that only funds the Texas A&M system and UT system doesn't include universities like Texas Tech and things like that. Several senators and state reps from the Lubbock area have advocated for creating a new fund or adding universities to the PUF. And then they got a huge ally when Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick revealed his legislative priorities and contained in there a priority that was worded along the lines of creating a new separate account endowment for Texas Tech. And I believe they mentioned possibly combining it with the University of Houston system. Yeah, that's what I've heard too. Yeah. So that's going to be an interesting one because you get a lot of lawmakers and policymakers very loyal to their alma maters and uh we saw that uh during when uh ut and oklahoma decided to go to the sec and there was legislative hearings over this and uh the the

legislators that graduated from tech and tcu and baylor were not very happy with the ut officials they were questioning yeah that school pride pride really can come out during the legislative session. So when they start to move on this, it's going to be an interesting issue to follow, I think. And yeah, that one and a number of other issues we've highlighted in our story. So be sure to go on to the Texan and check them out. Yes, absolutely. Matt, we appreciate your coverage of West Texas. Related to education, we had a piece this week.

I wrote a piece this week on a bill that was filed by Representative Jared Patterson. It, quote, is, quote, related to parental rights in public education and prohibiting instruction regarding sexual orientation or gender identity for certain public school students. So what that means in layman's terms is Bill lays out a list of parental rights to information about their children that the school may collect. And specifically about like mental health, health things like that and prohibits schools from providing quote instruction regarding sexual orientation or gender identity in grades kindergarten through eighth representative patterson said of this proposal the message is by the bill and from parents no more radical ideology in the classroom, particularly when it comes to inappropriate or obscene content.

Given that we've, what we've uncovered, this bill is needed to provide parents with the maximum transparency and control over health related services in our schools. We saw, well, this was before we were founded. It was when our founder was still in the legislature.

She had a bill. Connie Burton had a bill related to parental information rights, and it got a lot of pushback. It didn't go anywhere. I don't think it even advanced out of committee. But this is kind of a resurrection, at least part of this bill is a resurrection of that, that kind of issue um the other parts about prohibiting um gender identity instruction in certain grades um that comes that is following actions and statements from other officials including from out of state florida banned gender identity sexual orientation instruction from grades k through three it caused a lot of hoopla um got a lot of drew a lot of ire from national media and um those on the left side of the political spectrum um it was dubbed the don't say gay bill uh especially by media outlets which it doesn't if you read the bill it doesn't say that um and so uh we had uh lieutenant governor patrick last year call for a texas version of the bill um we saw representative steve toth shortly one of patterson's colleagues shortly

after that promised to file such legislation he He has filed legislation similar to Patterson's, although that goes from K through 5, and or minted this civil cause of action enforcement mechanism, taking the enforcement out of the hands of the state and putting it in civil lawsuits further on in the legislature um and these bills actually start coming up for votes where we'll see a lot of you know attempts to kill the bills on the floor by members who disapprove attempts to amend the bills in certain fashions and so that's something to watch from representative patterson um Hayden, coming to you. Speaker Phelan. Can I add one thing? I don't know if you mentioned this, but Ken Paxton filed an amicus brief today. I don't know if he filed it today, but he announced it today supporting the Florida law. And I think that might foreshadow how he could possibly handle Patterson's bill if it is enacted because it is even more expansive than, as you just talked about, more expansive than the Florida law. So

Paxton is already signaling that he plans to defend this law if it is passed. We see a lot of ideas trading back and forth from states on this issue, on abortion restrictions, Texas on that one, the civil cause of action, that was adopted by other states after Texas passed it. And on this one, we see Florida kind of set the tone first, and now Texas is following and trying to expand upon that. And now the Attorney General is weighing in, which is not really a surprise. It's very much up his alley, right? But we'll see if the can can push through something on that um hayden still to you so speaker phelan recently had a few things to say about uh former president donald trump's assessment of the 2022 elections trump kind of fired off a hot take and Speaker Phelan took umbrage with it.

What went down? Trump on his social media network, Truth Social, posted about the 2022 elections. And I always love when candidates or elected officials rehash past elections because it gives insight into their thinking. But he said, quote, It wasn't my fault that the Republicans didn't live up to expectations in the midterms. I was 233 to 20. It was the abortion issue poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on no exceptions, even in the case of rape, incest, or life of the mother that lost large numbers of votes, end quote. And this is behind the backdrop or in front of the backdrop of Trump being blamed by many for sabotaging the 2022 election for Republicans by endorsing candidates that critics say were not ideal candidates. And the Republicans lost key races in places like Pennsylvania and Georgia

and competitive races that it was a real possibility Republicans could have taken the Senate. And Trump is taking a lot of ire from the GOP for weighing in so much on the elections. And Speaker Dade Phelan responded in a tweet, quote, GOP has lost control of the Senate three cycles in a row, and it was not the fault of the pro-life movement. It was your handpicked candidates who underperformed and lost bigly. May 2023-24, bring the GOP new leadership proud to protect the unborn, end quote. And of course, Phelan sort of mocking Trump's signature phrase there, bigly. Phelan is pushing back against Trump, and Republican-in-fighting seems to be the theme lately, but it's always interesting to see here in Austin, somebody weigh in on national politics. But Phelan seems to be not only signaling his support for the

pro-life movement, but possibly foreshadowing how he would handle legislation to add exceptions to the Human Life Protection Act, because in September, he seemed like he might be open to that. But now that he's made this pretty strong stand against Trump on this exact issue, I really wonder if he will be open to that or if he'll say, no, we passed a pro-life law and we're going to stand by it. Yeah. Things can always change, but it appears here he's backing one of the signature accomplishments for Republicans in Texas last year to the hilt.

And these two have sparred before. This is just another data point along trend line. And so what happened the last time these two went at it? Well, last time Trump gave Phelan what Trump would probably consider the ultimate insult and called him another Mitch McConnell because Phelan wouldn't back a full audit of the 2020 election. But then, of course, later lawmakers passed a skinny audit, I full audit of the 2020 election but then of course later lawmakers passed a skinny audit i guess of the election of a random four counties and there are those who say that the four counties selected were not selected at random but they were supposed to be selected at random harris county ended up being on that list again because they were on the audit list

for the 2020 election um they were on both of the audits that have been done and uh the the lottery is for counties two counties above 300 000 residents and two counties below 300 000 residents so that raised the chances that harris county was going to be selected and it's both they choose one republican controlled one democrat i think so i'm not sure if that's in the law it might be but that is how that's how it turned out okay um but that that's that's how that played out yeah um on this recent dust up um did anybody else of note weigh in or is it just those two you know yelling at each other in the corner the feud between texas republican party of chair uh matt rinaldi and speaker phelan took a brief break as rinaldi backed phelan's stance on this particular issue rinaldi said quote trigger laws

states where dobbs effectively ended abortion and then he gave a list and he said the GOP performed well in all these states, end quote, and said that Dobbs wasn't the problem. So Rinaldi agreeing with Phelan that Trump is wrong about the reason for Republican losses in 2022. And they're sure to resume their feud next week once we hit the point where Democratic committee chairs are debated on the house absolutely that's why i say this is a brief stand down between between phelan and rinaldi hey in politics you know your allies can change the drop of a hat and uh normally though water finds

its level and it will next week absolutely um so related to the speaker's race, wrote a piece this week on kind of an ongoing lawsuit that is at this point kind of moot because we're so close to the race itself, came to a head this week. The judge, considering that lawsuit, which is challenging laws prohibiting third-party spending on behalf of speaker candidates, sided with the plaintiffs, the plaintiffs being State Rep. Brian Slayton, Grayson County Conservatives, and a Bexar County resident, Robert Bruce, I think his name is. And so each of those parties wanted to spend money on behalf of tony tinderholt who is challenging dade phelan for the speakership next week and so they sued and judge robert pitman in the case ruled while the texas legislature repealed the provisions of the code at issue in a previous case from 2008 it did not repeal the remaining provisions that use the same language here however the laws at stake are the remnants of a provision which has already been

ruled unconstitutional uh related provisions were nixed in that 2008 case i talk about it in the piece if you want to read more about it um but during before this case ruling came out uh the tec the texas ethics commission and the plaintiffs had already been in settlement negotiations and so that also kind of made this challenge rather moot um but the the judge still ruled on on the merits of the case we still ruled that these provisions were unconstitutional and, uh, in the future should not be enforced. So,

um, but what made this really notable, um, in terms of political, uh, perspective was when two house chairman, Dustin Burroughs and Charlie Guerin tried to intervene in the case to defend the provisions where the TEC would,

would not basically. And so, um, pitman ruled their their appeal was tardy they tried to um in this court you can't automatically intervene you have to um you have to show cause and standing stand he didn't use standing in this case in this uh specific one but yes basically standing um and so uh he the judge kind of dismissed that um that appeal and uh it basically went entirely slayton's way on on this one um now, Slayton issued a fiery statement saying today was a win for conservatives. I would like also to thank Dustin Burroughs who tried to step in and keep these unconstitutional laws in place because of his efforts. The federal judge went even further than we'd ever hoped.

No love lost between those two. It's pretty clear. Um, I think we'll see that frequently in the session once they reconvene. Um, but as I mentioned, I think we'll see that frequently in the session once they reconvene. But as I mentioned, this ruling comes about a week whatever future uh speakership races we have um on a different speakership issue the one that has gotten all the attention nationwide this week in congress matt you wrote about um kevin mccarthy McCarthy's failure so far to secure the

US speakership. As we're recording right now, he still isn't speaker. And who knows if that changes by the time this podcast goes out, but probably not, based on how things have been going. Have you ever watched the movie Groundhog Day? Yes, one of the greatest movies of all time. Well, to reference Groundhog

Day, well, it's the speaker vote day again. So just a little bit ago, 21 minutes ago, actually, the House gaveled back in for the third day. And they're holding the, I've been kind of sitting here on Twitter as we record this, watching things unfold, they're going under the seventh vote right now and haven't looked to see where the vote is, but I'm hearing that McCarthy probably isn't going to make it on the seventh vote.

So there will be an eighth vote. And yeah, it's been an interesting saga. What's the all-time record for number of votes? So over a century ago, well, actually in about 1850, wasn't it, Rob? Around 1850-something, there was a deadlock that lasted two months. Wow. They did like 144 votes. It was a pretty brutal saga.

Yeah. The last time a speaker failed to win on the first round of balloting was actually exactly a century ago in 1923. And they went to seven rounds of or nine rounds of voting. So they're getting close to breaking the record. Yeah. Unless they adjourn deciding they don't want to continue this. Texas has played an interesting role in this, though. We have three congressmen on the Republican delegation that have been part of the 20 votes that have consistently voted against McCarthy withholding the speakership.

And we've written extensively about that. One, Congressman Chip Roy, going into the beginning of all this, had issued a letter with Freedom Caucus Chairman Scott Perry and about six other congressmen making a list of reform demands to McCarthy or anybody who wants to be speaker, saying, you know, you've got to, you've got to, you know, basically coming under the narrative that Washington is broken, the American people are tired of what's going on, and you've got to do these things in order for us to even consider voting for you the top one was um they wanted a reinstitution of the rule to challenge the chair which is a rule written by thomas jefferson founding father that's been in place since like 1801 and was in place all the way till 2018 when democrats came to power and nancy pelosi

uh repealed it which was basically a rule that just said any single member 2019 probably after the 2018 yeah yeah yeah so as they came in in 2019 they repealed it um and basically all that said is any single member can at any time make a motion to challenge uh the chair um at first mccarthy and his surrogates um or just like no dice on that. We're not even going to consider that, et cetera, et cetera. And then they, as an unstoppable force hit an immovable object as this thing has gone on, he started to concede to some of these things. And I think the last offer I heard on it was, okay, we'll do a compromise version of it, and that's to drop it to five members, but we're not going to do where any single one member can make the motion.

So there's been a concession there. Some of the other issues were that they didn't want whoever is leading the Republicans to use their political action committees to go after Republicans in the primaries, PACs associated with the leadership fund, spent money against Republicans in primaries, and then didn't have money to fight Democrats with in November. And so there were some really close races that they say that we should have won if the leadership had focused on on November yeah and there's been last night actually there was one I'm hearing is a pretty substantial concession on their part or Club for growth which is the big pack that spends a lot in support of Freedom Caucus style members issued a joint statement with the congressional leadership fund pack saying that the the congressional leadership fund wouldn't spend uh in in future primaries so

that's another check off off the list and you can go read our story where we actually include that full letter and all those issues uh in it uh to see what it's going to take before chip and and these guys uh come around yeah uh matt will continue to be following this i'm sure you know we'll have might have another piece depending on how things go today up for readers by tomorrow but we'll see we'll see how it plays out kim coming to you now um that you wrote a piece on the federal government, uh, putting an eye on a local school district here in Texas. And it's one that's been kind of at the center of this, uh, inappropriate books in schools debates, right?

Um, you know, what is the, what happened? What's the nature of the investigation against Cranberry ISD? Right. So as we've mentioned several times already on the podcast, controversial content in schools and especially in libraries has been frequent over the last couple of years. And the United States Department of Education, the Office of Civil Rights within that department, began an investigation of Granbury ISD in December. Granbury is about 30 or so miles southwest of Fort Worth, and it has about 8,000 student population.

The complaint arises from actions the school district took about a year ago in which librarians pulled over 100 books off the school library shelves to review for containing objectionable material. Many of those, most in fact, were returned to the school shelves after the review, although some critics said the review wasn't thorough enough, but nevertheless, they were returned. The ACLU of Texas filed a complaint with the Federal Education Department, a complaint letter claiming that the school district was violating Title IX provisions. Title IX requires that school districts who receive federal funding do not discriminate against students

based on sex or sexual orientation or gender identity. And the ACLU argued in their letter that Granbury ISD was discriminating against students who identify themselves with the LGBTQ community because of the books that were pulled. And when the controversy originally arose, the superintendent, whose name is Jeremy Glenn, defended the district's actions in pulling the books, saying that he had looked at them, he had read them, and they were vulgar and explicit and they shouldn't be on the shelves. And he noted that Governor Greg Abbott had directed several state agencies, the State Board of Education, the Texas Education Agency, the Texas Archives Commission, to craft a policy for school libraries about what they should have on their shelves and what they

shouldn't have on their shelves. And he defended the district's actions, saying that they comported with Abbott's directive. But the Biden administration's Office of Civil Rights with the Department of Education is conducting the investigation. It'll look at various policies. It will request a lot of documents. It'll conduct interviews. If it finds a violation, according to the education department's website, it gives the district a chance for voluntary resolution if it does find a violation before it would take action like suspending federal funding toward the school district. Are there any other school districts facing similar investigations? So far, they're not under investigation, but the ACLU filed a similar letter against Keller ISD, which is in

Tarrant County in North Texas. In November, the Keller ISD school board had adopted a policy in line with the policy based on Abbott's directive that banned library books that discussed gender fluidity, and they defined gender fluidity. And the ACLU is claiming that they are discriminating. And of course, it's just part of a larger movement we've seen around the state where parents are objecting to books and materials and other parents say, no, those should be kept. They need to represent all populations in the school. And so it's possible that Keller and other school districts around the state may face similar investigations in the future. I think this is part of the larger culture

war that we're seeing around the country. In fact, not just around the state. Yeah, I think in one of our pieces, we described it as the newest political battleground. And that is going to continue to be the case, especially as the legislature gets in session. We see more bills about this um moving to a different topic um i wrote a piece this week on a ruling from the texas supreme court uh they issued a flurry of decisions on new year's eve and among the most notable which is actually kind of delayed which i thought was interesting it didn't come out immediately with all their other uh that they do every Friday at 9 a.m. But it concerned the case of Jeff Younger, who for years has been embroiled in a contentious custody case with his ex-wife.

At the center of that custody case is a dispute over the gender of their son, James. Ann Jorgelis, the mother, contends that James identifies as a girl named Luna, and the father says James considers himself a boy while in his care. This has been a really heated, and as these family disputes usually are, really personal, really difficult fight, especially for probably the kids involved in this.

But ultimately, early on, a year or two ago younger had his custody rights stripped um jorgelis got them entirely and the only the um the stipulation was that any decision on uh potential procedures of gender transitioning on james had to be agreed on by by both parents and so um what brought up this case is that jorgelis moved to California with the two children James and his brother Jude and then Younger appealed to SCOTUS

asking them to order Jorgelis to return the two children to Texas so the impetus for his filing the petition as stated by him is that California's SB107 that just went into effect on January 1st. It quote prohibits the enforcement of an order based on another state's law,

authorizing a child to be removed from their parents or guardian based on that parent or guardian, allowing their child to receive gender affirming healthcare or gender affirming mental healthcare. That's the law of, of the, um, or the,

the wording of the law. Essentially, um, it would protect, it basically creates a conflict between states conflicting laws on this. So California is very much planting their flag on this issue.

In this decision, Skodeks ruled that this court cannot intervene based on tenuous speculation about what other courts might do in the future at the request of a party who may never ask. The only court to have acted so far has preserved the father's right to withhold consent to gender transition therapy for his son. That right is enforceable in California, where the mother lacks legal authority to consent such therapy for the child, before and after sb 107 younger is concerned that in the future georgilis will challenge the uh the current um custody order uh in california court um and that is obviously a hypothetical but um that is something he sees as a possibility down the road and he tried to head it off at the pass the court disagreed justice john devine was the only dissenter among the court also the justices

further admonish younger for representing himself and for seeing his children and for not seeing his children in over a year um that was put in a footnote um in the in the opinion uh younger's justification for that is that he refused to participate in the abuse of his son at the court ordered supervision of visitations super supervised visitations uh younger refused to quote refused to violate his conscious conscience and sincerely held religious beliefs by affirming that his son is a girl. I got more details on it in the piece, so go check it out. But this is likely to resurface down the road as it has frequently over the last few years. But whenever that does happen, we'll be on it to relay what the actual details of the case are.

Hayden, coming to you, President Biden made a pretty significant announcement related to the border crisis this week. Tell us what he had to say. For the first time in his presidency, Joe Biden will be visiting the southern border. And he confirmed that as he was about to board Air Force One in Kentucky. He told reporters that it was his intention to visit the southern border and that the details were being worked out. Bill Malusian reported just this morning that according to his sources, he will go to El Paso as soon as Sunday, and this is going to be before his President Biden's trip to Mexico City, where he will attend the North American Leaders Summit and visit with the Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, and the Mexican president.

He had earlier, it had earlier been reported that he was considering this, but he did confirm that he will go to the southern border. This has been one of many sore points for Republicansans on this issue since the beginning of the biden administration um vice president camel harris did go uh at one point what was that like is that a going to serve as like a a window into what this trip looks like her visit was as biden's borders are more or less because she has been the point person for the white house's border policy. And at that time, she said the administration was making, quote, extreme progress, end quote. And then, of course, that was followed by the fiscal year 2022, which had a record number of enforcement encounters and ended with Secretary Mayorkas forcing out Commissioner Chris Magnus at CBP. So Harris said in September 2022

that the border is secure, and that's the stance of the U.S. lead on border policy. This time, President Biden is going to be the one front and center at the southern border, and there are a lot of different theories for why he hasn't gone so far, possibly because of the optics of the president being at the border, giving credence to Republicans saying that this is the foremost crisis in our country at the moment. But at this point, the president may have no other option politically, because at this point, we're more than halfway into his presidency and he hasn't gone yet but it is possible that he will announce border policies while he's there it's unclear at this time what exactly the visit will entail though and it's very clear that the

state governments whether it's governor abbott the state governments, whether it's Governor Abbott, the legislature, Governor Patrick, very much take issue with the contention that the border is secure and will continue to object to that. And so we'll see, as we talked about before, what the legislature does on this, especially in light of what the president has to say on Sunday. I'm sure everyone in Austin will have plenty to say when Biden gets here. Absolutely. Absolutely. Holly, last piece coming over to you. The tiny tourist town of Kima has been drawing a lot of attention lately with a lot of contention between the city council, the mayor, the residents and various attorneys. Can you give us a summary of the latest developments of this story and what's going on?

Yes, this is a very small town with a lot of big drama happening. They have multiple lawsuits pending right now related to the city's selective or allegedly selective code enforcement and permitting. Those lawsuits include some allegations that Mayor Carl Joyner interfered in permits because he personally opposed short-term rentals. And there's some other aspects. The article that we published this week includes a secret recording in which a former city council member warns the mayor that the Supreme Court of Texas has already rejected the kinds of regulation he's proposing to kind of rein in those short-term rentals and that the city is going to get sued. And the mayor

basically responds, let them sue. For our listeners who will go and read this article, we'll just warn you that that recording includes some very spicy language at the very end there. We do have a warning, but it is interesting. After listening to it, it sounds like a movie line. It does. In fact, everything that's happening in Kima, Texas right now seems to warrant perhaps a Netflix series or something along those lines. There's a lot more going on here. City council members have also accused the mayor of providing perjurous statements in relation to another lawsuit that's pending in a federal court. Last Friday, they posted a meeting

agenda with a request to censure the mayor. Along with that agenda, the council also posted a slew of email communications that implicate the mayor and some of the other city officials. But what's even more interesting is that many of these emails were supposed to have been turned over during discovery in the federal lawsuit, but were not. The plaintiff's attorneys have previously filed for sanctions against the city's representation. That same lawyer was years ago sanctioned for a similar problem in another lawsuit against the city of Kima. So the next hearing in that case is scheduled for January 13. We'll certainly be watching to see what

happens. Also, city council met last night, but after an executive session of lasting more than four hours, they took no action. It's believed that the city's attorneys, that's a law firm known as Greg & Greg, they may have advised them not to take any action as of right now. Interestingly enough, a few months ago, the city council voted to terminate the relationship with this law firm, Greg & Greg. And last night they were interviewing five possible replacements, but also re-interviewed Greg and Greg to perhaps rehire them. So, you know, there's a lot going on. We'll continue to follow that. And if there are any more spicy recordings, I'll be sure to share them with our readers.

Small town politics, man. Wow. Where everybody knows everybody. Everything is personal. Yeah, For sure. OK, guys, we're moving on to our Twitter section.in County, one of the few toss-up districts in the state. Republican strategy, Mr. Leach had commented that the GOP had not done a great job of backing Jolly, the GOP meaning the state Republican Party. He said, quote, not a single door knocked, not a dollar given, not a phone call made, etc., end quote. And this was replying to Aaron Anderson, who is, I believe, an author at Texas Scorecard. And Jolly went off on Anderson

and Chris Ekstrom, who was, I believe, a congressional candidate in the 13th district. And she said, and you got the exact Democrat, in all caps, state rep that you deserve. That makes so much sense. Let's bash someone that doesn't agree on 100% of the issues so that we can elect someone we disagree with 100% of the time, end quote. And then this thread goes on, Jolly lashing out at Ekstrom and Ekstrom lashing out at Jolly. It was just an airing of grievances over the election results in November. And clearly, Jolly is not pleased that she lost that election and she definitely holds it against the state Republican Party and

others. Yeah, there's been a lot of festivizing on text ledger Twitter in the last couple of weeks. And that is definitely one of them. You know, I've got a lot of problems with you and you're going to hear about it. That's basically what it's been like. And she lost and she lost by a slim margin. And I think this, some of these, these tweets give a window into some of the rumination of some of these candidates of thinking about what went wrong in their elections and which coalitions didn't and didn't,

didn't support them. And, uh, and some of these other grassroots Republicans who are, who reject this idea that, Republican is a Republican and you've got to back your team. and their own party, and that they would prefer a Democrat win than someone who is not as far to the right as them on the political spectrum. So it's an interesting philosophical difference within conservative circles, or I guess I should say Republican circles, because many of these grassroots Republicans dispute that these are conservative candidates. But it's always

fascinating when you see an unsuccessful candidate just air their frustration with losing an election. Yeah, this fight you're talking about is kind of like the domestic political version of, on a much less violent scale, but the Israeli and Arab fight that's been going on for literally thousands of years. And this, too, has been going on for a long, long time. It will continue to be going on. This will never be resolved. And but, you know, the parties may change, you know, all this stuff, but it burns hot and uh there's a lot of dislike um especially when things get more personal on in politics holly uh what did uh what caught your eye

there's a very interesting tweet from sylvester turner who's the mayor of houston that uh he put out on monday and this is his personal account, I should clarify, not his official city account. But he says that if elected officials have their own private swearing in, I think what he meant is even if, it is important to show up at the public swearing in ceremonies. And what's interesting is that tweet was sent out about the same time that there was this public swearing in of Harris County Commissioner's Court and County Judge Lena Hidalgo was not there for the official ceremony, although she showed up later in the ceremony. And things got even more interesting after that because she said she arrived late and then she gave this kind of 10 minute impromptu speech was very charged. She accused her fellow commissioners of trying to cut her out of the program.

She got very, she was pretty much shouting at one point and she said, you will not cut me out. You will not be beating me down. You will not tell me to sit down and shut up as Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick did. That's a reference to something that happened last year at a funeral for a slain deputy corporal, constable corporal here in Harris County, during which Dan Patrick and Lena Hidalgo had some conflict. She wanted to be up at the front where Dan Patrick was the speaker, and there was a lot going on there. We have an article about that. By the time this podcast is made public, I think we're going to have some more stories related to Harris County and what's going on. Incidentally, Lena Hidalgo has also announced she's taking a personal leave and will be in Columbia for some time, reportedly because her grandfather is ill. But there's a lot of a lot of drama and apparently some infighting amongst Democrats here in Harris County.

And we're not quite sure what's going on yet. I am shocked that Harris County is featuring in. Shocked, I tell you. Hey, keeps me employed. Yes, absolutely. shocked I tell you hey hey keeps me employed yes absolutely Kim for your section here you want to rub some salt in in the wound that football has has given me over the last week no it's not that at all I am not on Twitter as I have stated before but I'm certain that this topic is being discussed on Twitter, and that is that TCU will be playing in the national championship game before the legislative session starts. There's

another important event happening, and that's the college football national championship. And so, TCU will play Georgia. And since I live in North Texas and an alumni of a Big 12 school, I just have to say, let's go Horned Frogs. I hope the Fort Worth team comes away with the win. Aren't TCU and Baylor like really heated rivals? They are, but Baylor had a very mediocre season. Sikkim Bears, I'm still a fan, but you got to go with the Big 12. Hey, you know, I'm rooting for TCU. And that is despite the fact that they ran all over us, Michigan, in the semifinal game.

That was a very heartbreaking loss. I thought we had the chops to win it all, unlike last year when we were just out of our depth. But still, I hope Max Duggan can pull it out. I do not want to see Georgia or the SEC win another national championship. I'm with you on that. I'm with you on that.

So, go Horned Frogs. Matt, what did you see this week? So, I've got a few things back about the U.S. House Speaker vote issue. One, I want to draw our listeners' attention to an interesting fact that came out. As you tune in to watch C-SPAN and the proceedings in the U.S. House, you're getting to see this footage of all the interesting interactions of the lawmakers on the House floor. And that's not something that you get to see because after a speaker is elected, whether

it's Republican or Democrat, for many, many years, they have their people immediately assume control of the cameras in the House, And then they limit what the viewers can see. So they'll keep the camera either on a very narrow focus of the speaker at the podium or the person making the motion. But you don't get all this great footage of the members interacting in their caucus and seeing, you know, who's huddled with who and and discussing what and so uh there's there's been an interesting um uh result from that in one of my favorite youtube accounts called bad lip reading uh i don't know if you've ever seen it before but the guy great uh yeah all ones are fantastic oh it fantastic. So there's been some footage from this uncensored C-SPAN access where they're showing different Republican lawmakers having conversations with AOC, which is not something that I mean, it's been shocking for the American public to see, because all you see in the headlines is, you know, them going at each other's throat not you know a staunch

conservative like republican representative matt gates sitting next to aoc having a you know a chummy conversation and that caused a lot of speculation on twitter like what are they talking about and next thing you know here comes bad lip reading and they're like never fear uh we're experts at reading lips and they produce these hilarious little short clips of of what they're saying uh between each other but it's it's it's a fun a result of of this this ongoing election with the house speaker race with giving the tv journalists at c-span the ability to show the american people people a broader view of what's going on uh and one more thing uh before uh we move on i want to point out that as this is being recorded they are finishing up the seventh vote. It's going to be going to an eighth.

McCarthy has not received enough this go around. A lot of conservative Republicans are throwing their support once again to Florida Representative Byron Donald. But Representative Matt Gaetz, I just mentioned, he just stood up and threw a vote towards former u.s president donald trump and that highlights an interesting fact about the u.s speakership is that you don't have to be a member of the body to be elected speaker you just stole my thunder so mine mine was uh sorry no that's fine good lead-in uh mine was a story by the Babylon Bee that said, titled, An Overnight Vote, Buffalo Guy Elected as Speaker of the House. Which is possible. It's legitimately possible. I mean.

Because anybody can be speaker. Just about. While it will not happen. I think the only requirements are you just have to be eligible to be a member, like run for Congress. But you don like eligible to be a member like run for congress um but you don't have to be a member yep yep absolutely and that's just one of the quirky things about our about our system and one other thing that i'd like to to to wonder about on that is do you get a vote or can you just make the presiding decisions i am not sure but that is a topic for

another podcast we will we will cross that bridge next time um thank you everybody for listening to us we appreciate you following along and especially for following along in the coming months as uh we come we cover the uh the 88th legislative session session that is our bread and butter and we're glad to have you along for the ride we'll talk to you next week the 88th legislative session. That is our bread and butter. And we're glad to have you along for the ride. We'll talk to you next week. Thank you to everyone for listening. If you enjoy our show, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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