The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - July 1, 2022

Episode Date: July 1, 2022

This week on The Texan’s “Weekly Roundup,” the team discusses all things Roe v. Wade — giving you the full rundown breaking down the Dobbs decision, abortion clinics halting abortions in Texas, a judge blocking DAs from enforcing bans, the Texas Democratic Party calling on local officials not to enforce pro-life laws, and Texas lawmakers preparing relevant bills ahead of the 2023 legislative session.  Plus, a Texas GOP nominee is indicted, state officials announcing school safety funding, dozens of corpses are found in a tractor trailer in an apparent human smuggling attempt, updates on the lawsuit against Title 42, and Biden and Abbott sparring on energy.  Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast.

Happy Friday, folks. Senior Editor Mackenzie Taylor here on the Texans Weekly Roundup Podcast. This week, the team discusses all things Roe v. Wade, giving you the full rundown breaking down the Dobbs decision, abortion clinics halting abortions in Texas, a judge blocking DAs from enforcing bans, the Texas Democratic Party calling on local officials not to enforce pro-life laws, and Texas lawmakers preparing relevant bills ahead of the 2023 legislative session. Plus, a Texas GOP nominee is indicted, state officials announce school safety funding, dozens of corpses are found in a tractor trailer in an apparent human smuggling attempt, updates on the lawsuit against Title 42, and Biden and Abbott spar on energy.

As always, if you have questions for our team, DM us on Twitter or email us at editor at the texan.news. We'd love to answer your questions on a future podcast. Thanks for listening and enjoy this episode. Well, howdy folks, Mackenzie Taylor here with Hayden Sparks, Isaiah Mitchell, and Brad Johnson. I'm still getting used to Daniel not being on the podcast. It hasn't sunk in for me yet. It's weird. But you also get your own mic, which is kind of a sweet deal.

Yeah, I'd say, you know, there's a silver lining. Pretty dramatic one for you. Sometimes it feels like he's still here. Yeah. Like I can still hear him. Like he just poked his head in two seconds ago. That felt really real. Yeah, it did. Yeah. And if we still hear him. Like he just poked his head in two seconds ago. That felt really real. Yeah, it did.

Yeah. And if we both saw it, then that must mean something. Oh, you saw him too. Yeah. Brad, how are you today? Just peachy. Well, good. Winston is here, which makes me happy.

And I was singing a song to him earlier. I won't sing it on the pod. Okay, thankfully. But he is here and that does make me happy it was a play on the guest on song from beauty and the beast yes we're still guest on you know what i mean i'm glad we could share that with our listeners isaiah we're gonna go ahead and jump into the news with you um huge news long-awaited news after the leak of the Supreme Court opinion. Roe was overturned this week, Roe v. Wade, or last Friday, rather, a week from when this podcast will be released.

Let's first, why don't you just go over the Dobbs opinion before we jump into everything else? Yeah, so it regards the constitutionality of the Roe v. Wade decision pretty centrally. And one reason why that's important is because well the law at issue in the case is a mississippi law that that bans abortion after 15 weeks of gestation and that's it and so you might compare that to in texas where um texas the texas legislature has kind of nibbled at the edges of the roe v wade decision instead of that direct refutation that you saw from Mississippi. And so in Texas, you know, for example,

the Whole Woman's Health case that went to the Supreme Court involved a law that required abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at a nearby clinic, things like that. We passed a ban on dismembered abortions, I believe, and that same, you know, it was a session after that one. Um, they went to the fifth circuit and I mean, the one everyone's mind right now is the heartbeat

act, which, uh, is enforced by civil lawsuits, things like that. And so the Mississippi law was more, was I guess more direct. That's the only way to put it, uh, direct refutation of Roe and their only defense was asking the Supreme Court to just flat out overturn Roe. And so the Dobbs opinion does not ban abortion. Overturning Roe did not ban abortion and it does not reverse other Supreme Court cases regarding substantive due process. And we don't get into that because I'm not a legal expert. You saw a lot of stuff on Twitter saying, oh, they're going to go after substance of due process and regarding other cases like Loving versus Virginia or Grizzle versus Connecticut, which is one of the cases that undergirded Roe. But the majority opinion explicitly separated those cases

from this one because, as they said, none of those laws involved what they called the state's interest to protect, in quotes, potential life. So the ethical issue of ending life was not at the center of those other cases, which is a huge material difference that the Supreme Court recognized. Justice Thomas is the only one who said that we should also look at substance of due process in other cases, but he's been saying that for a very long time. If anybody's followed the court can see, I mean, he's been riding alone on that for years, that the whole substance of due process doctrine in his argument is not legitimate.

But the Dobbs opinion, you know, overturns Roe, only regards the constitutionality of that case in Mississippi's law. So that's the general meat and potatoes of it. There you go. So we've talked about these laws before and several were passed since last legislative session, particularly that we we've talked about at length on the podcast. But how do these bans that you've talked about work here in Texas specifically? Yeah. So Texas has two. We have discussed these before. One of them is called the Human Life Protection Act. There were a lot of states that passed their own Human Life Protection Acts. They're colloquially called trigger bans and they kick in after Roe v. Wade

in the event that Roe v. Wade is overturned, right? Which it was. And so in some of these laws in other states took effect immediately. In Texas, this is going to take effect 30 days that the Supreme Court issues its judgment. So not the opinion itself. And the other abortion ban that we have on the books is the one that was actually at the center of the Roe v wade lawsuit that started in dallas county and it's a ban passed in 1925 that is just a total ban on elective abortions and it punishes the administration of a drug to procure miscarriage or the intentional like surgical intentional surgical abortions just meant to end fetal life it punishes both of those with two to five years in prison or four to ten years

in prison if those are done without the mother's consent. So those are the two bans. Once Dobbs, the Dobbs opinion got released, Attorney General Ken Paxton said that the older ban is immediately enforceable because it was never repealed. And later on in the podcast, we'll get to that and some more details on that. But so that one regained effect because the only thing that was keeping it from being effective was Roe v. Wade. So got it. Well, thank you for clarifying that for us. Do these bans, how do they affect the mother in this instance? Yeah, I forgot to mention neither of these bans punish or impose penalties on the mother.

The Harbid Act, you know, not so relevant at this point anymore, but the Harbid Act does not impose penalties on the mother, does not allow lawsuits against the mother. There's no Texas law that allows for any kind of a penalty against the mother that seeks an abortion or attempts to seek an abortion. I mean, that's not in Texas law. I spend a lot of time trolling through the laws of other States, uh, mainly with an eye on how they apply to ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages

since there has been a lot of talk, a lot of, um, there's really no other way to say a lot of falsehood about, uh, how those procedures are affected. And every single state's abortion ban every state that has an abortion ban either defines abortion to not include ectopic pregnancies or miscarriages or explicitly allows them in their texts so to say that less cumbersomely treatments for ectopic pregnancies or evacuations of stillborn children are legal everywhere in America.

Only procedures that achieve fetal demise, to use the legal terminology, are illegal in states that have chosen to ban them. Which many states have not. Many states have not. But I went through the laws of all the states that either has had trigger bans passed or had uh abortion bans before the roe v wade decision came out in 1973 that have now since regained effect like in texas and none of those laws outlaw the evacuation of an ectopic pregnancy or miscarriage that is legal everywhere so um you can go to my twitter page if you don't

believe me um don't take my word for it i just included screenshots and links to all the statutes or bill texts of all these states laws and bills so go take a look at that if you don't believe me you're merely compiling the statutes and giving information to folks absolutely it's a great thread make sure to go check it out how many reporters say, don't take my word for it. Read the actual. They all say that, Brad. They say experts agree. Oh, yes.

The experts, they all agree on the same thing. Yeah. And experts agree that people are afraid to get miscarriage treatment if I convince them to be afraid of it. You know, so take that into consideration, Brad. I'll file it under things I will take under consideration yeah good job that was a good bit you guys well done clap clap but Isaiah really thank you for your coverage of this um there are very few reporters in the state I don't think there are really another there isn't really another reporter in the state doing what

you're doing on this issue so thank you for clarifying that for us and following this from the get go. Hayden, we're going to jump to you, my friend. You jumped in on this real coverage as well. And we're in great peace as you reached out to abortion clinics in Texas. How quickly did these abortion clinics close after the announcement of the Dobbs decision? Well, when I woke up on Friday morning, I did not expect to start out the day by cold calling abortion clinics, but you have to be prepared for lots of weird things when you're covering these issues. And I want to just repeat what pro-choice demonstration in a major park in Tyler, and somebody was holding up a sign that was critical of SB8. And a lot of these nuances get lost. And one of the things Isaiah mentioned that's important is SB8 being less relevant now than the Human Life Protection Act and some of these other laws. But there just aren't a lot

of people out there, very, very few people covering the nuances. So hats off to Isaiah for all his excellent work on this. Absolutely. And SB8 being the heartbeat act for those who aren't familiar. Right. SB8 is the heartbeat act. And of course, we have a much stronger law that's about to kick in as Isaiah just went over. But the abortion clinics that I talked to, many of them, ironically, did not have working numbers when I called. Some of them went to voicemail or didn't pick up. But all of the ones that answered the phone just hours after the announcement in Dobbs either said that they had stopped abortions pending a word from their legal departments or that they had

stopped abortions altogether because of the Roe versus Wade ruling. And the phrasing of some of the abortion clinics that I talked to was interesting. Some of them were very emphatic and said that they, one clinic responded that they had closed the doors, that the clinic was no longer in operation. One clinic worker, I believe in Houston, elaborated that they had not only stopped performing abortion procedures, but that they had also stopped dispensing abortion-causing medication. And again, this was just within hours of the news that, if not within the hour of the news, that the decision in Roe had been reversed. And virtually, and there weren't that many abortion clinics in Texas to start with. So the handful that we spoke to had shut down, and the ones that didn't answer presumably had either shut down or were in the process of shutting down.

And then, of course, Planned Parenthood of Texas came out with a statement later that day saying they had stopped the procedure. So, of course, there's a ruling in Harris County. I'm not too familiar with that. I'm sure Isaiah could speak to that more than me. But as far as in the immediate aftermath of the reversal of Roe being announced, abortion pretty much stopped in the state of Texas as far as illegal abortion goes. Yeah, absolutely. Isaiah, real fast, will you give us a quick couple sentence update on the Harris County situation? Yeah. So there are several abortion facilities that joined together in a lawsuit against the district attorneys of several major Texas counties and some state agencies that license and regulate the abortion industry. And they nabbed a temporary restraining order that prevents enforcing the older unrepealed pre-1973 abortion ban against them in those counties. And so that's

Bayer, Travis, Harris, and so forth, and some others. I've listed them in the article. Some of those DAs had already said previously that they wouldn't enforce, they wouldn't prosecute abortion crimes. So not really a big change in those particular counties, but there were some others that had district attorneys, like in Harris County, for example, where that wasn't the case. And so that is new for those counties. But it only applies to those facilities in those counties. Some of the note, Washington Post did not observe that in one article. So it is narrow, and Attorney General Kempakson said that he's going to appeal it. So it's an ongoing lawsuit.

Got it. And his hero is as its name so succinctly states is very temporary. Right. I mean, that can be something that is wiped away pretty quickly, depending on what kind of legal challenge it's facing. Awesome. So, Hayden, what was the basis when you're talking to these abortion clinics for stopping these abortions immediately? going to be laws on the books that prohibit abortion and there will be steps taken legally that could result in people being prosecuted and prosecutors can probably be creative now with some of the attacks that they'll take because there were

laws on the book before on the books before the Roe decision that now come back. A lot of people have been calling those zombie laws. I know that there was, I say people, primarily opponents of pro-life laws calling them zombie laws. There was one statute in Michigan from the early 30s that suddenly took effect the other day because of the Roe reversal. But of course, these clinics don't want their staff to be prosecuted and potentially face criminal penalties for performing abortions. But the people I spoke to did not go into a lot of detail. Some of them directed me to their media departments. But the Planned Parenthood clinic that I spoke with was a little bit more articulate. She seemed to be reading from a statement that she was given. And that's an

assumption on my part, but it seemed to be prepared remarks that were given to employees in case someone asked. And the emphasis was on protecting patients and staff. But legally, things are uncertain right now. I'm sure as the days pass with this post-Roe legal atmosphere, things will be a little bit more well-defined. But for the time being, it seems abortion clinics are playing it safe. Got it. Hayden, thank you for that. Isaiah, we're going to come back to you. We just talked a little bit about this TRO, this temporary restraining order, protecting abortions in certain counties. What were the general arguments on both sides in this case? repealed and uh and so on one side you've got the plaintiffs who are several abortion facilities that say um despite the texas legislature never expressly repealing this 1925 abortion ban it was impliedly repealed because it was put in a different spot it wasn't the penal code they put

it over in the civil code it wasn't on even on the texas statutes website until june 24th the dobs opinion got released um it was just it was hard to find and it had gone under forest and uh probably the strongest point is that um there was another court case that went to the fifth circuit in 2005 by norma mccorvey whom history students recognize as Jane Roe from the original Jane Roe case. Oh, wow. At that point in her life, she was joining pro-life efforts. And this was a lawsuit that was seeking to get the Supreme Court to reconsider Roe v. Wade.

Didn't work. At the Fifth Circuit, that court ruled or found that Texas had impliedly repealed the pre-Rrow bans. So that's probably their strongest point on the side of the abortion facilities. On the other side, we've got the state of Texas and all these DAs that I mentioned. And the state's general argument is that that Fifth Circuit finding that the law was impliedly repealed that they found in 2005 is superseded by the fact that in the Harbeat Act and the trigger ban, the text of both of those bills expressly say that the legislature has never repealed the pre-rural ban. So those are

kind of the arguments of both sides. It's all concerning whether or not this law was on the books. You can find it on the website now. I actually learned that from this case because previously when I've referenced it in these articles, I've just had to go to this one huge document that has all of Vernon's civil statutes from 1973. And you've got to scroll way down to chapter six and a half section or article like 45 something. Anyway, so now it's on the website with one handy link. But if you go there, you will see that this like little proviso note on the website that says this was found to have been impliedly repealed by a 2005 court ruling. So a little tricky. It's in dispute. But like I said, Paxton's appealing, so it's in dispute but like i said paxton's

appealing so it's not final yet yeah absolutely well thank you isaiah bradley we're going to come to you shortly after this ruling came down and appeal went out um to local democratic officials from the state party itself tell us about that yeah so the the state party leadership, including Gilberto Hinojosa, the state party chair, appealed to local officials and basically asked them not to enforce the state law on abortion, any of them specifically mentions the i think the pre-row statutes um but also the trigger ban and sp8 which sp8 i don't believe is the da's are tasked with enforcing that anyway that's the civil action they can't enforce civil cause of action yeah so they would have nothing to do with that anyway but um he appealed to the local officials basically to not prosecute people for these. And he said, no matter what the United States Supreme Court says, abortion is a valid, safe, and important health care procedure

that should never be restricted by any power or authority. And as Isaiah mentioned before, Overturning Roe gave the question back to the states. So you're going to see a patchwork of policies among which texas has more restrictive than say california or new york and this is the democrats play in response to the ruling and what texas republicans have passed how did some of these officials respond so five democratic district attorneys had already committed to not enforcing any of these laws they are jose garza of travis county john cruzo of dallas county joe gonzalez of bear mark gonzalez of nueces and brian middleton of fort bend and so they they had signed i think i say i wrote a piece on this months ago or however

long yeah uh sometime this year say uh of them along with many other da's across the country saying we're not going to do this so they just after row after the the dobs decision came out they kind of uh put their re-emphasize this position of their own again. Harris County DA Kim Ogg did not jump to that kind of conclusion, though she did disagree with the decision of Dobbs and said that her office will be evaluating their options. And then markedly different from all of those was Tarrant County DA Sharon Wilson, a Republican, who said, we do not choose which laws we follow. My oath and that of everyone in my office is to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States and Texas. Prosecutors do not make the law. We follow it. We followed Roe v. Wade when it was the law, we will follow texas state law now that's a different outlook from these democrat da's who have in their justification pointed to broad appeals to justice which they see abortion restrictions violating so that's the dynamic we have we'll probably see many a court

case have to do with with this specifically absolutely well brad thank you and gentlemen thank you all for covering this um as there's just so much on this story particularly that it took a team effort so thank you guys for this isaiah we're going to talk about one more row story before we move on to other topics tell us about this proposal from lawmakers here in texas to ban abortion inducing drugs by these specific lawmakers. Yeah. Brian Harrison and Tom Ollerson in the state house have both, they issued a joint press release promising to file a bill that would explicitly ban abortifaction drugs in Texas. Like we mentioned, these are already currently criminalized under Texas law under the pre-release ban and under the ban, that that hasn't taken effect yet.

But they say that that's their general proposal, is that they want to have legislation that particularly targets those drugs. Got it. So if these are already banned, what would be the point of the new law. In their words, the Biden administration's efforts to, or signaling of efforts to increase abortion access, regardless of state law, is what prompted this idea on their part. And they both got kind of particular backgrounds that kind of color this idea. So Brian Harrison was the chief of staff for the Health and Human Services Department under former President Donald Trump. And Tom Oliverson is a medical doctor who has some kind of a leading position on a nationwide association of Christian lawmakers.

So those kind of inform this idea. I asked them if they had any particulars on enforcement methods for now. And Harrison said that they don't really have the text of the bill finalized at this point. The legislature is not going to convene for a little while longer. But he says that they're probably going to go at it by the licensing route. So pharmacology, pharmacy, and doctors, you know, the state licenses all those jobs and those medical fields and harrison thinks that that'd be a very simple they'd be very simple legislation just have that be the enforcement method so once again um they're applying the same exceptions

that already exist in other texas abortion, they emphasize that there would be an exception to, for any procedure meant to save the life of the mother, um, or any procedure that would not result in fetal demise and no penalty would be levied against the mother. So. Got it. Well, Isaiah, thank you. And again, thank you for all your coverage of this issue. Let's move on to some other stories. Hayden, talk to us about this is very spicy. I will not lie. This was a very spicy story. Talk to us about who is Frederick Frazier and why are these charges against him that we found out about significant? Anytime you see a candidate in a booking photo, it's definitely a spicy story. But this is a North Texas story in Collin County.

The Republican nominee for Texas House District 61 was indicted by a Collin County grand jury on two charges of impersonating a public servant. He won in HD 61 in a runoff. He defeated Paul Shabbat with 64% of the vote. And this is a heavily Republican district. It is a, I believe, a 58% lean Republican on the Texas partisan index. So the Republican nominee in a GOP district is now facing criminal charges. So what charges are he facing? What is he facing? And how much prison time are we talking about here? You know, I have this bad habit of answering the question that I wrote down for, for you to ask second. So I already jumped the gun on myself, but yeah, it's two, um, two charges of impersonating a public servant. Um, he was booked in the Richardson

jail on Friday afternoon and bonded out. When I say Friday, that would be the, the one week prior to this episode being produced. We spoke to the Richardson Police Department and they indicated that he was booked on two Collin County warrants, both for impersonating public servants. But he turned himself in and then bonded out. these charges are interesting is they arise from an allegation by Chabot that he went to a Walmart and manipulated an employee there into believing that they had placed Chabot's campaign signs illegally. And Chabot also accused Frazier reportedly of stealing his campaign materials, which Shabbat has done in previous campaigns in the past. He's made allegations similar to that. And what's important to highlight though, for this is a comment was made by Shabbat's team that a grand jury had found Frazier committed felonies,

which is not true. They decided that there was enough evidence in this case to proceed to trial, which is the nature of grand jury proceedings. I don't know this for sure. I'm not an attorney, but I believe in some states they even skip this step and they have probable cause hearings where a judge determines there's probable cause to proceed to trial and defendants are bound over for further proceedings. So this is an initial phase in the process. This is not a final vindication of the evidence for Frazier to be put on trial or for there to be further proceedings on this indictment. The case was investigated by the Texas connected in the law enforcement community in North Texas. He was a Dallas police officer. He was on the Marshall Fugitive Task Force, but is currently on administrative leave because of the indictment against him. I was able to reach the voicemail of Bill Worski,

who is Collin County's first assistant DA. He is a high profile prosecutor in the Dallas area. He has prosecuted some serious criminals. He has secured death sentences against a lot of people. He did not get back to us by the time of publication, but he's involved in this, which is an interesting nexus for a law enforcement officer and a political candidate charged with a crime. Impersonating a public servant is an F3, so he could face up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000 if he is convicted. But he'll still be on the ballot. And his Democratic opponent is Sheena King, no doubt she will make an issue of these allegations. She still has an uphill battle, though, in a district that leans Republican.

Certainly. Do we know what kind of, you know, official this person or basically what position that frazier was impersonating he is accused of impersonating a code compliance officer and that is interesting because a code compliance officer is subordinate to frazier's position. I may not have stated that correctly, but Frazier's position in Dallas PD is a much higher, more important position than a code enforcement employee for the city of McKinney or Collin County. I'm not sure which jurisdiction the alleged signed stealing took place in, but that's one of the arguments that frazier's team is making is it's it's absurd to say that someone would impersonate an officer with less authority that an officer would impersonate an officer with less authority

yeah of course that's just an argument they're making it could be that Frazier did steal signs and he did deface all this property and he did try to illegitimately get somebody's campaign materials taken down. Or Chabot, who was trounced in the Republican runoff, could be contriving this out of resentment for having lost a primary. Either one of those are real possibilities, but that will be for a jury to decide. And like you said, any sort of grand jury involvement, yes, I think folks get a little ahead of themselves in terms of what it means. So we'll see what happens here and we'll keep an eye out. Hayden, thank you for distilling that down to understandable terms for us.

Bradley, after a couple of weeks of back and forth, state officials announced their slate of school safety expenditures. Talk to us about that announcement so they've identified over 100 million dollars in expenditures to be immediately approved through the budget execution process the way that works is the legislative budget board uh in supposed to be for emergency circumstances can take appropriations from somewhere in the budget and move it elsewhere that way the legislature doesn't have to convene to pass an appropriation so it's not new money that they're putting there now this specific money is coming from a surplus in it's uh in the recap the school recapture fund known as robin hood where they take uh they take property tax money from wealthier districts and distribute it to poorer districts.

So that's where this money is coming from, according to the state officials. But it's not a new appropriation. So among these is $50 dollars for bulletproof shields for school law enforcement now this was something that lieutenant governor dan patrick came out hard for and he um at first had a little bit of pushback from dade phelan only push back on the call for immediate approval um now pretty quickly phelan issued his support for that, along with a litany of other items, some of which are included in this final list. Also included in this is $17.5 million for schools to install silent panic alert systems. And then another notable one is $10 million for

law enforcement rapid response trainings and associated travel expenses. Both of those were in Phelan's kind of list of items. They approved $5 million for mental health services, specifically for Uvalde after the tragedy that occurred there last month. Which is what all of this is in response to, basically. Yes, absolutely. An official said that more will be done when the legislature reconvenes next year. I think we talked about that last week. Especially, we will undoubtedly see something on the governor's list of emergency items that the legislature will likely take up as soon as it possibly can. But these are just kind of an initial response and we'll see where they go from there.

Absolutely. Thank you, Bradley. Hayden, another absolutely crazy and tragic story. Talk to us about the human smuggling tragedy that happened in San Antonio this week. Yes. Fortunately, we've had a lot of stories with high body counts lately. In San Antonio, a an 18 wheeler or a tractor trailer, depending on which part of the country you come from. There are a lot of different terms for an 18 wheeler. But there were more than 50 individuals found dead in a tractor trailer. And immediately it was reported that 16 survivors had been taken to hospitals, but several of them died at the hospital. The fire chief Charles Hood reported on scene that the survivors were hot

to the touch and suffering from heat exhaustion and dehydration. The truck was a refrigerated truck, but it did not have a working refrigeration unit attached to it. So they had no AC, no water, which is a death sentence in Texas in thexas in the summer the the truck was full of corpses and they came about this vehicle because someone had heard cries for help and in the office complex near where the rig was found and this witness went over to the vehicle, opened the back or, and peeked in the back and made the grim discovery of all of those deceased people. This was a human smuggling occurrence as far as authorities know at this time. And it was turned over to Homeland Security investigation, obviously, because this has a federal connection related to immigration laws.

But the city of San Antonio primarily provided medical support and the fire department. There were images of a mobile morgue going to the scene. And that was the city of San Antonio's role. I'll close out this subject by pointing out a really an interesting question asked by a reporter that was seemingly putting it on the city of San Antonio to stop human smuggling. And the mayor pointed out that this is a problem that goes well beyond San Antonio, even Texas. The mayor replied, words to the effect of, that's asking us to solve the migration crisis in North America. A lot of people would call it an illegal immigration crisis and a human smuggling crisis. But Mayor Nuremberg said, all we can do is what we can do to help in tragedies like this. And it's not for the city to be able to provide the answer to solve the human smuggling crisis. And San Antonio being a city in proximity to the border is

unfortunately going to see potentially more of these instances of tragic human smuggling deaths than other parts of the country. But the feds are investigating this and there will likely be more details down the road. Well, and that's the hard part is there is initially when the story broke, there was just so little information out from law enforcement and reporters trying to make sure that they were the first out with the news and had, you know, were the first to the punch. And there's still so much we don't know about this. And of course, the implications just based on the information we had were that this had to do with human smuggling. Turns out that was the case.

But we'll continue to watch. And even just the thought of 60 some odd people in the back of an 18 wheeler is just a shocking reality for these human smuggling operations. So Hayden, thank you for, again, dealing with and explaining very tragic stories here in Texas. Let's talk again about the border. Where does the lawsuit against Title 42 stand? Anyone who has listened to this podcast has heard me talk about Title 42 a lot because it is the basis for many of the expulsions of illegal aliens. In May, it was the basis for 42% of them. The lawsuit is pending in Louisiana and lawyers are still quibbling back and forth over the scope of the lawsuit. There were motions to limit the scope of Judge Robert Summerhays' decision

so that it was not nationwide. That motion, I believe, was denied. And Judge Summerhays is also admitting lawyers from other jurisdictions because there are many parties other than the plaintiffs that originally sued and the defendants, which primarily are Biden and his immigration subordinates. So the lawsuit is still pending, but Title 42 deportations continue because of the preliminary injunction that Judge Summerhays instituted requiring the feds to continue the policy while litigation proceeds and while the appeal to the fifth circuit court of appeals of his preliminary injunction is considered yeah absolutely very fascinating to watch this go back and forth and um i mean this was a trump era uh health code

policy that basically was enacted by the president at that time in order to stop some of this illegal immigration at the border, specifically due to concerns over contracting disease, contracting COVID-19. And even after the pandemic has largely subsided, Republicans very much wanted to have this remain in place. And Democrats were very anxious to rescind that instance. So, Hayden, you've covered this from the get go. Thank you for continuing to follow that for us. Bradley, you know, Biden and Abbott have really sparred on many issues, the border being one of them. But another front would be energy.

This has been a big conversation particularly this summer is um well a lot has happened let's let's talk about what happened this week on that front yeah certainly as as gas prices the uh gas prices jump and which are the most easily recognizable example of energy problems for the average consumer um this is this issue is becoming even more important but uh i think it was late last week an epa rule was announced that would reclassify certain portions of the permian basin under the clean air act a move that would apply stricter regulations specifically on emissions type stuff. It's all very complicated and hard to understand how, but this is something that Abbott, the oil and gas industry themselves

are opposing because any regulations require additional costs to comply with them. And that makes it harder to produce the energy they want to so abbott said in the letter this action alone might serve as a catalyst for economic harm leading to an even deeper reliance on imported foreign energy and a faster economic decline into the pending recession by forcing even more pain for american consumers to pay at the pump there's it is the pump theme um i wrote a piece about a week or two ago about how that is going to be that and inflation are going to be central issues for especially democrats as they try and avoid an economic or an electoral wave by republicans um and it's going

to continue to be so democrats meanwhile they say that these kinds of things are important to cut down on emissions, specifically citing combating climate change and whatnot. So you have two different competing interests at loggerheads there. But this specific example is part of a broader trend of uncertainty within the oil and gas industry, due largely to either direct or indirect consequences of federal policy. I spell this all out in a lot more detail in a piece. I recommend you go read it. But those direct or indirect consequences are both the White House's policy positions on thermal energy, specifically oil and gas. This EPA regulation would be an example of that. Or indirect examples such as the government's reaction to COVID, which they printed a lot of money that caused inflation.

Or at least sped it up quite a bit. But also the supply chain woes that we've seen come from that, both the pandemic itself, from everyone's just natural reaction to it, or the government reactions, whether it was the shutdowns, they have caused a lot of problems. And I provide some statements from oil and gas executives in uh from a dallas fed survey that they took um but a lot of it there's the constant theme and it's um that's the federal the white House specialty policy position on oil and gas is dissuading them from investing

thoroughly in future operations. And we'll see how this affects it down the road. And one thing that the Dallas Fed survey mentioned was how they expect the supply chain woes to last more than a year. Many of them did. So that would suggest that we're going to see these high gas prices for quite a while, especially if we slip into a recession. Absolutely. So real fast, the Supreme Court issued its final opinions of the term on Thursday. You're kind of parsing through them all right now as we're going and podcasting your tweet

about all sorts of information, particularly about one that has to do with energy. Give us a brief overview of that decision. So in short, the court struck down a previous EPA regulation that has since been rescinded that essentially targeted coal power plant generation to try and transition the nation towards more renewable energy sources. And they struck it down because the Clean Air Act, which the EPA used to justify its broad regulation on this. They said that Congress did not grant them that authority in the Clean Air Act, which was passed in 1970 and amended in 1990. Nothing in that, the court ruled, nothing Congress has done gave the EPA the authority to regulate carbon emissions for power plants. And so it has a lot of implication for the EPA regulation going forward broadly, how much the EPA can direct what energy companies do.

On the left, they're very worried about that because they want this broad authority with the EPA because Congress moves so slowly. And on the right, among the oil and gas industry, especially for coal, which is kind of on a lifeline here, they think that they see this as a good step in the right direction, although they probably would have preferred even more robust striking down of the EPA's authority. But regardless, right now, the Democrats could absolve the court's issues with this if they pass a directive to the EPA to do this. And they control both houses of Congress and the White House at the moment. That's all that would be needed. Now, there's a reason it hasn't been done.

It's unpopular, especially in a state like West Virginia, in which joe mansion is basically the swing vote in the u.s senate right now so that would be more difficult than at first glance but um all the peace about it and more at how it may affect the texas power grid um on on friday when this goes up um or even today if thursday but regardless uh give it a read there uh to hear more to see more of the reasoning behind this and how it'll affect texas very good well bradley thank you let's jump into um some tweetery this week gentlemen isaiah we're going to come right to you since it's been a while since you you you headed off our podcast with a bunch of things and then we just didn't hear from you for a while so i figured we'd go to you first what did you find this week on tweet or uh i i picked this knowing full well that

it's not really that ripe for discussion since it's just me that uh just being in awe of this young picture of malcolm young from acdc oh my is this the one you replied to? This is the one I replied to, but I also looked, I looked around a little bit more. I like ACDC. Malcolm Young is one of the greatest rhythm guitarists ever. And another great one is Dave Mustaine from Megadeth. And I looked up like just for this podcast and I thought like,

Oh, it'd be cool if they like ever played together. And it turns out that Megadeth opened for them at one show and they've got like one picture where they're both together. And I thought, oh, that's pretty cool. But that's that's literally it. My other alternative was I would like to read your reply to this tweet. OK, so there's this picture.

Malcolm Young. It's awesome. Isaiah Mitchell. And I have tweet alerts on for all the reporters. So I get a tweet alert for Isaiah. Your replies. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Isn't that crazy um and this is what his his reply unquestionably one of the best rhythm guitarists in rock i believe that's a gretch g6131 is that how you say that you just read the numbers yeah i guess which would mean the only knob he hasn't cracked off is the standby kill switch pickup selector hanging by a thread i like to imagine the two volume knobs got snapped getting turned to 11 i don't understand anything the only thing i understand in that is the spinal tap reference which was stellar thank you i thought you'd like that yeah but he's got um if you look at his guitar there's a bunch of knobs that are not there anymore and so the one that remains is just

one that turns the sound on or off on the bottom there and the one appears to be like dangling on the top corner um but like the actual volume knobs themselves or those are just gone so he's also famous for like standing right in front of their huge the great wall of china martial lamp stack um so he probably can't hear very well right now bolstering my theory that he twisted them off turning them up to 11. very good okay well i interrupted you before you're about to go on to your next tweet what do you got oh i mean we already i i eliminated this we already discussed it um just uh the thread that i mentioned earlier includes screenshots and direct links to all

the laws oh yeah states that have total abortion bans so um just just reiterating i mean miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies and the treatments for those conditions are not criminalized anywhere in this country unless I mean, I only looked at the laws of states that ban abortion. I guess it's possible that California under our noses all along criminalized ectopic pregnancies, but I doubt that's the case. So the threat just includes all the states based on CNN and elsewhere that say these states have banned abortion one way or another. And I just went to the sections of their bans. I'm going to let you do a whole rant about media explainers saying, like, here's what's, you know, anyway. Just look at the laws. Yeah. Are you saying that famous actress Halle Berry is spreading misinformation about ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages? I've never I never want to accuse people of spreading misinformation, but I don't know.

I don't know what else to say. Like, it's just it's just a straight up lie. But she got all those retweets. Yeah. So that's the important thing yeah farming for retweets we get it

we totally get it Isaiah knows that full well I do Isaiah will go into our slack and paste a link to a tweet of his and just say groveling

because one time Brad accused me I did that the first time I did that Brad commented like oh Isaiah groveling for retweets like a true

like a true journo and I was hurt by that. And so this is kind of a memento mori to myself. Clearly stuck with you. Yeah. Yes, I'm groveling. Brad, you were talking about, you know, the control Democrats have on the national level right now. If they wanted to, there is certainly an opening for some sort of federal abortion um law that

could be done i mean even i think it was pew came out and with a with a poll that said 60 percent of 61 62 percent of americans um were against the overturning of roe or okay with abortion i i let me let me look this up uh Or say abortion should be legal. Yes, abortion should. 61, a majority of U.S. adults say abortion should be legal in all or most cases. And then 37% think abortion should be illegal in all or most cases. I mean, so this is an incredible opinion even from that perspective, right? And just shows the isolation of the court in so many ways

from public opinion right i mean this is the interpretation of law there is a reason that the three branches of government are in that way set up and um but now at the federal level both houses of congress could foreseeably do something right i think the hurdle they'd have to jump is the uh filib, though, in the Senate. And Joe Biden came out today or maybe it was yesterday and said that he would support eliminating the filibuster to cut off, quote, codify Roe v. Wade. But let's be clear about what the court did here.

They left the question of abortion to the states. That's democratic. That's giving the question to abortion to the states. That's democratic. That's giving the question to the process of democracy. You know? Right. Well, even codifying Roe v. Wade, that phrase is being thrown around a lot. Right. I'm not sure really what that means.

No one does. You don't. That's the hard part. Yeah. I mean, it's Roe v. Wade, like a lot of other vague top it's i mean roe v wade itself as a decision is concrete but i mean it's something you hear about and it just becomes a vague symbol to people of like you know it's a mold that you you fill with whatever you like for the most part i feel like the most specific they could get is saying that you know

you states can't regulate abortion before viability since that's what roe said but um anyway a lot of people just see roe as having conferred this uh as like supporting um a right to abortion up to the point of birth which is not at all the case in Roe. And all of this is irrelevant now that Roe's over. I mean, the only the only argument that abortion was a right was from Roe. And the Supreme Court just said that that was a legitimate decision. So, yeah, if the Supreme Court was the one that said it's a right and the Supreme Court stops having that position, what makes it a right? I mean, it's it's not in the Constitution.

Well, that's the that's the crazy part is you see a lot of this argument and this is just being talked about at large, both by lawmakers and Twitter talking heads is the constitutionality of something along these lines is like, OK, we're talking a lot about guns and women and who has more rights and the right to keep and bear arms is in the constitution plainly plainly in its own like it's its own amendment it's dedicated just to that whereas abortion is not mentioned in the constitution and that is again that is what the left hates is that it is not in the Constitution and not held as a right. But hey, there's a process for that. But there is a process for that. And the court is going based on what is written, what is precedent. And anyway.

Y'all should read the Dobbs opinion. Because a lot of it concerns like the court allows for, I mean, the Constitution says, oh, there are rights that the constitution isn't listing. And so the way that the court's governing test to determine whether or not something is a right that's not enumerated is generally, you know, has this appeared, does this like jive the legal tradition of American history? And so they go through the common law going back to like 13th century England and find that, you know, in, in most cases, well, in no case was abortion ever considered a legal right or a natural right. And in many cases, sometimes most, depending on which century you're looking at, it was criminalized. So it's not,

if it's not in the common law and it's not the constitution, it's not in the history of America's law, what makes it a legal right? Yeah. It was the Supreme Court, and now that's not the case. So what's left? And if the argument is that it should be, if that's the left's argument, whereas the right says absolutely not, it's the life of an unborn child, then let's go through the channels that are in place to make that happen. I mean, there are methods by which you can get that in the constitution. Is it difficult?

Absolutely. That was, and that was intentional on the founder's part, but there is a method by which you can make this codified. Well, kind of like actual way, kind of like the EPA stuff. Absolutely.

It's difficult. And so people don't want to do the work to go through the difficult channel. They want to find an end around to get what they want. And this happens in every political circle, you know? So it's just another dot along a trend line that we've seen. Well, maybe that convention of states group will show up at the Democratic convention now. They might find some new support there. Exactly.

COS, Democrats Take a Mention. convention now i mean they might find some new support exactly cos at democrats convention okay well we have literally only been on one of these uh these twitter uh these twittery sections so hayden we're gonna go to you what did you find on twitter this week that uh caught your eye well mine is about the same thing so sorry to burst everyone's bubble. Well, hey, it's the biggest news in a very long time. So it's kind of going to be an expectation that the podcast is saturated with this, I feel like. Well, mine is not very sophisticated. It's just the Onion headlines. But some of these cracked me up because it really captures how uncomfortable the left is with this ruling.

But there was one. There were several here. I'll read some of the less inappropriate ones. But it said Supreme Court votes five to four to baptize the Constitution. Supreme Court votes five to four to drive slowly alongside woman walking home alone at night. Supreme Court rules five to four to add Jesus into all paintings. So some of those crack me up because it captures how upset a lot of people are with this and that it was a five to four decision so not necessarily unanimous yeah or not not unanimous but not resounding in terms of leaving yeah it's a

little different that's the young in the young in the babylon b always providing some entertainment with some satire thank you hayden bradley what do you got i have um something relating to the texas gop convention that we covered old news now i know after row oh my gosh but it's interesting because um someone said the quiet part out loud uh a really good example of honesty uh congressman dan crenshaw was asked by the dispatch in a piece about the texas gop platform specifically asked to comment on the platform and he said i literally don't pay attention to it and that is something that is a position that a lot of republican elected officials hold you know whether it's writ large or to certain parts of it um you know there's almost 300 actually no now they're more than 300 i believe

uh one of the two a lot at least a couple hundred planks in this that's a lot of policy items and so uh not every elected official is going to care to the hilt about every platform plank but um you know you see varying degrees of of commitment to the texas gop platform from their elected officials, and some of them are really, really committed to everything. Some are lukewarm. Some are opposed basically everything. So it's just interesting to see an elected, especially of such prominence of Crenshaw. He's a very large national profile.

Come out and say that. Oh, my gosh. It's huge. Yeah. Well, he's faced so much criticism even in terms of vaccine mandates red flag laws like there have been a litany of conservative issues that are very important to republican primary voters that he has been i don't even know how to say it like open to talking about whereas other republicans are not at all and

even open to entertaining some proposals from folks who are far more moderate or even liberal or on the Democrat side than a lot of Republican primary voters would appreciate. Because there's a lot of dissension. And he's faced incredible criticism. His primary challenge was very unsuccessful. And he still has a lot of support even from these primary voters. But in terms of the delegates themselves, it's not like he hasn't faced criticism. And he's openly almost throwing this back in their face here. Yeah. Yeah. So bold strategy, Cotton.

Yeah. We'll see what works out for him. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, for mine this week, I want to kind of harken back to a tweet that kind of went viral for us. So Elon Musk, a couple of weeks ago, replied to a tweet of ours saying that he would support Ron DeSantis for president, which was big news. A lot of folks are talking about it. Interestingly enough, this week on Joe Rogan's podcast, another new Austinite, Ginaina carano who we've written about before because of

some crazy stuff that happened uh with her and uh just the filmmaking industry um in a podcast with with her rogan basically said that he would support desantis after carano asked him well didn't elon come out in support of um uh des And Rogan said, yeah, I would support him too. He said enough for him being very pro-freedom, something along those lines. So that's fascinating to watch. And I wanted to, at the same time, talk about your back mic, Brad,

which comes out on Friday morning. It'll be out when this podcast is out. But the, and going back to the GOP delegates here at convention, there was a straw poll taken at the convention, which show that DeSantis has incredible support from the thousands of delegates, the most involved Republicans in the state. So there were kind of two versions of this poll. And Brad, jump in and help me out here if I'm misconstrued anything. But there one version included uh former president donald trump and the other did not and without trump desantis got 71 support in a field of like

nine yeah ten something along those lines governor abbott got one percent yeah support from the delegates now keep in mind these are the delegates this is not primary voters but there was polling done i think in the runoff time that pulled actual likely primary voters republicans uh not just this tiny subset of them of the delegates and while the percentages changed some like abbott got nearly double digits i think or he may have gotten like 10 percent uh desantis was still far and away the biggest vote getter or support getter um in texas and i think if i remember correctly desantis was at like 56 which is a larger percentage over 51 that's crazy a larger percentage than donald trump got if he was included in the field split trump support in that regard trump still gets number one if he's in i mean if he if he's

in he's the number one vote getter or support getter whatever um but texas's two officials that are kind of linked to this senator ted cruz and governor greg abb Abbott are both not even close to DeSantis in either of these, either the delegates or the polling we saw. So it's odd. Absolutely. Well, and to your point, to kind of clarify what you mentioned earlier, just talking about this being the delegates and not the primary voters, primary voters are already going to be the more conservative portion of the party right republicans may go to the ballot in november who did not vote in the primary and typically politically they're a little bit less uh conservative or for more to the middle and less

to the right is how i would probably qualify that so they're already the conservative base of the party these republican primary voters the delegates themselves are going to be even more so. I mean, these are these are the conservative of the conservative, the most involved in the party. Yeah. In the party. They're going to be the most anti establishment, most likely in terms of a broad group of folks in Texas and the Republican Party. These are going to be those folks. So unsurprising in some ways that governor abbott would have so little support but one percent is yeah i mean and uh an example of this dichotomy is uh we saw senator cornyn get booed pretty badly on stage by the delegates oh it was crazy gun reform the gun but yeah uh same group of people yeah but cornyn won his primary in 2020

albeit before this gun bill occurred easily and the challenge he faced was entirely different from the challenge uh other folks have faced in their primaries even governor abbott right but um but the fact they didn't even draw one a serious opponent now he probably would draw one now if he were to be on the ballot this year after this gun bill stuff uh he's not until 2026 on twitter there's been a lot of notable folks on twitter who said that even elected officials in texas who said that um so he probably the the margin of victory he had in 20 would be cut into some yeah but that's you would have to that would be a drastic drastic change to knock him off in a

primary um because he does every poll that shows like approval ratings among texas voters um even among republicans for cornyn is uh at least to date is pretty good for him now that may change substantially after this gun bill stuff but um it's that just shows the divide between these delegates that you have yeah uh who do run the party you know they're the ones that set up these planks yeah and one of the top elected officials and that kind of you see that and the primary voters that support him yeah so absolutely absolutely. And it is different in Texas is that, you know, Ted Cruz, our other senator here in Texas, far more name ID than John Cornyn, even though Cornyn's been around a lot longer. And, of course, that comes with the presidential bid and certain, you know, positions that Cruz has taken over the years. And the high profile Beto challenge, you know. But folks don't realize the influence cornyn has on the hill i mean he is in

the biggest uh or the worst kept secret in dc is that he there's some majority leader talk going on there in terms of cornyn right i mean that's been rumored for a long time i mean he's the he's mcconnell's second in command right heir apparent yeah so there's a lot going on there and when when uh trump has a big big bill or big bill or when McConnell needs something kind of pushed through, I mean, he was at the forefront of a lot of those discussions. And even if his name is not as recognizable to Texas Republicans or even just Texans, he's very prominent and influential in D.C. And that's why he was the leading Republican negotiating this gun bill in the Senate. Exactly. So very notable. Well, we'll continue to watch. And that's why he was the leading Republican negotiating this gun bill in the Senate. Exactly. So.

Very notable. Well, we'll continue to watch. But that was interesting to me is that you have all this DeSantis talk stemming from a response to our tweet. And right as that all kind of comes to fruition and is talked about on the national level, the straw poll drops. And DeSantis has a lot of support among Texan Republicans here. Fascinating stuff. Well, gentlemen, thank you for diving into all of that. We had a lot to talk about today. Folks, thank you so much for listening and we will catch you next week. Thank you to everyone for listening. If you enjoy our show, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts,

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