The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - July 10, 2026

Episode Date: July 10, 2026

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 check out our articles at https://thetexan.news/ and leave us a review!Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast.

I feel like the era of British envy is on the wayne, and now the rest of the world, and England included, is coming here and, you know, just getting impressed by how cool America is. People are thinking, wait, it's really cool that you can just go into a bass pro shop and play with a gun. Well, howdy, folks. Welcome back to another episode of the Texans' Weekly Roundup podcast. I'm your host, Senior Editor Rob Lauchess, and joining me. me today are, let me take a deep breath before I get all through this, reporter Mary Elisa O'Barr, reporter Meredith Dyer, reporter, senior reporter Polly Hanson, and reporter Isaiah Mitchell.

How's everybody doing this morning? Awesome. Ready to roll? Great. Fantastic. I hope everybody's, did anybody catch that World Cup game on Monday? No. We're the worst.

It was bad. It was not fun to watch. I'm not going to be able to eat waffles for like a year. year after seeing how bad Belgium beat us. So I didn't want to get emotionally invested. So I skipped it. That's fair. I won't watch soccer.

That's fair. Not at all. Yeah, I won't do it. I thought what Kin said was pretty funny in the office chat about it. It's like, it's already a low scoring game. And they take away some of your goals for no reason, like with the offside rule. You know, it was, yeah, I don't understand the off sides rule. I don't think anybody does.

I think everybody's just pretend. I just have an intellectual bandwidth either to learn a whole new set of roles for yet another sport Right No, I think that's fair I think that's fair I'm just I'm emotionally

I hope I'm not emotionally preparing for how the Longhorns are going to do this year Given the fact that we just got knocked out of the World Cup But I think that they'll do I think they'll do a good job But it's kind of getting my you know I'm getting back into that mentality for the fall.

You've got to write your emotions when you encounter disappointment. So it's a great life exercise. Right. No, it's true. It's really a test. You know, it's an opportunity to practice patients. I should say that's why I don't like sports. There's already too many things in life to get emotional about it.

No, it's true. It's absolutely true. But hopefully, well, we can all, you know, even if we can't root for Team USA anymore, in this tournament, we can, of course, root against Belgium. And that's going to be the important thing going forward. Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Well, we do have quite a bit of news to cover this week. So I say we get right on into it. Holly, turning first to you, there was a fatal shooting of a Mexican illegal immigrant in Houston this week. It's currently under federal investigation. but if I understand correctly, not local investigation. So tell us what's going on there. Yeah, that's right. So there was a shooting early Tuesday morning where you had an ICE enforcement operation.

And according to ICE, this individual resisted arrest may have attempted to evade and may have attempted to ram the ICE officer's vehicle. And so the officer opened fire. The person is deceased. So as you can imagine, there's been quite an outcry. Of course, we saw those shootings earlier this year in Minnesota, but as up until now, we really haven't seen that kind of tragic shooting occur in the state of Texas. Houston's been really good about kind of being low-key about this. The mayor John Whitmire, who's a moderate Democrat, has really avoided those kinds of conflicts with federal authorities. But we're With these enforcement operations, you know, there's always a danger and something did occur. We don't yet have all the facts, but as you can imagine, we've had a lot of local activists and especially local elected Democrats calling for an independent investigation. So now there's this question about whether or not those local authorities can do that.

The Houston Police Department has said they don't have the jurisdiction and even Harris County District Attorney Shantir, also. a progressive Democrat has said he really doesn't see where he has access to that information. And there is this kind of gray area about whether or not local authorities can investigate these things. Well, I guess you could say they can investigate, but then, you know, any kind of access to what the federal agents have. And prosecution becomes a little bit more complicated. So earlier this year when we saw those shootings up in Minneapolis, you saw state and local officials trying to investigate. They've pretty much been thwarted because they haven't been able to get access to all of the evidence that the federal agents hold. They have sued the Department of Justice over that issue.

But there really doesn't seem to be a definitive court case or statute saying that they can't look at those things. So, you know, there is this Supreme Court decision from the 19th century, in fact, that holds up a supremacy clause immunity, which it kind of protects these federal agents from prosecution at the state and local level. But if they are found to have committed a crime in the state, there is some, you know, legal room for them to investigate and prosecute. But I think what we're mostly going to see here is, you know, is, you know, is, you know, tragic as this is. And I just want to clarify, I watch the press conference that occurred this week with the family members. And it is truly heartbreaking to hear their testimony. And we really don't have all the facts at this point. But at the end of the day, you know, you do have someone who is dead and a family that's mourning. But I also think we're going to see a lot of politicians try to gin up the angst over this event. And, you know, and, you're going to see a lot of politicians try to gin up the angst over this event and try to use it in their campaigns going forward at a press conference

with the family and all these elected officials. It seemed like every Democratic elected official in the area from the federal level on down was on hand to make a statement. It seemed like they were kind of creating these clips for their advertising campaigns going into the midterm elections, but certainly this is going to be something that, you know, a lot of people are interested to know what actually happened and would like to see some transparency from that federal agency. We don't yet know if the officer was wearing body camera equipment. We do know Houston was one of the cities that was targeted for a pilot program, making sure the agents were wearing them. But if there is footage, it hasn't been released yet. And it may be quite some time before we know what actually happened Tuesday morning with this individual.

Well, thank you very much for your coverage, Holly. As you said, it's a very tragic situation and we're still waiting on a lot of information to come out. But thank you very much for doing everything you can to keep us informed on the matter. Mary Elise, turning next to you on a sort of related sort of immigration border concern issue. surrogacy and birth tourism have been at the center of the Texas news cycle recently after a major Supreme Court decision that dropped very recently. Tell us what's going on there. Right. We discussed the Supreme Court decision last week on our podcast, but the Supreme Court ruled in favor of maintaining birthright citizenship for children of illegal aliens and visiting foreign nationals under the 14th Amendment. And after that, we saw some reports circulating of photos of billboards that individuals were seeing in places that were out of. There were specifically two billboards that were being circulated that were in Mexico that were advertising so-called birth packages for those looking to deliver a child in the United States.

Now, this became pretty viral. A lot of eyeballs were on this, although it was. It is worth noting that the website that's on this billboard, which is called Have My Baby in Texas.com, has been active for over three years. But it became, it drew a lot of attention to it right after the Supreme Court decision just because of implications here. Well, Governor Greg Abbott directed this week the Texas Health and Human Services Commission to launch an investigation into this Rio Grande Valley-based medical center for allegedly promoting birth tourism. through selling these South Texas birth packages to foreigners. The packages that were being displayed on the advertisement, they were offering natural births for 3,950, and 3,950,

and then you had C-sections being offered for 5,525. So Ato is specifically addressing these reports to these billboards. He wrote in a letter to the commissioner of the HHSC, Stephanie Muth, and he said, unfortunately, thousands of foreign travelers come to the U.S. under false pretenses to give birth and secure citizenship for their children. He said as governor of Texas, he'll do everything in his power to assist federal officials to stop this fraudulent practice. We've seen kind of recent news cycles having to do with this issue. Texas Attorney General Ken Pakistan sued this postpartum care center that's in the Houston area. That was in April.

And he was alleging similarly, that it was engaging in birth tourism. He was arguing that they were specifically, though, facilitating the, quote, invasion of Chinese nationals into Texas. He was saying that they were doing this for the purpose of having children here and then obtaining birthright citizenship. So Aba, you know, he said he had some strong wording in this letter. He said, American citizenship is not for sale.

Texas will not permit our health care system to be used as a magnet for birth tourism. This was something that was discussed at length in a hearing on Wednesday. So one of the Senate's interim charges is addressing the surrogacy industry, but specifically addressing if it's being exploited by foreign interests. And so they did discuss this letter that had been sent by Abbott and specifically these billboards that had been circulating. It even captured the attention of President Donald Trump. He had a true social post about that. course, tying in his opinions on birthright citizenship and saying, you know, there's these billboards that are advertising these birthing packages and saying essentially this is a scourge

upon our country. Abbott did say in his letter, he confirmed that he's kind of laid the groundwork for the 90th legislative session, but he said that he does plan to collaborate with the Texas legislature to, quote, eliminate the practice. In the Lone Star State, he's specifically referring to birth tourism and selling of these birth packages by passing new laws. And then he's hoping to pass some legislation that will clarify our existing laws that are on the books related to this. We included in here that state representative Brian Harrison has really been on the ball about this, requesting Governor Abbott call a special session in order to criminalize birth tourism. So this is something he's been asking for for several months before this all kind of

was re-upped in the news cycle again. But Harrison, you know, has written to Mooth, the commissioner, and asked that they provide some information, that the agency provides some information on how they're making sure that birth tourism is not happening, you know, that these birthing packages are not being sold. So asking specifically what actions is this agency taking? He said if there's not any such actions that are happening, that the agency is, agencies facilitating, he said, then please consider this my formal request to immediately take all necessary action to stop issuing birth certificates to non-citizens. And Harrison said, after

Abbott sent this letter on Tuesday, Harrison said, he's glad that they forced something. So he's saying, you know, glad that we were able to bring attention to this. And the Abbott wrote a letter on it, but he thinks this action is not good enough. He's still hoping to see a special session called here. So we will be keeping an eye on this issue. It's just particularly interesting with the Supreme Court's ruling and then also just this kind of up-and-coming conversation about surrogacy and the intersection here. Well, thank you very much, Mary Elise. Meredith, I believe we have another story as well this week, mentioning, of course, the legislature, the possibility of a special session. But there was a Texas Senate committee that had an interim hearing on THC. Give us the rundown of what happened with that issue last session and tell us what the committee discussed this week.

So last session, there was a bill called SB3, which got to be known as banning THC in Texas, which was made a Senate priority bill by Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and was very important to him. It passed both the House and the Senate, landed on Abbott's desk and in a last minute, literal last minute decision right before the deadline, he vetoes it. Patrick then holds a, I could say, fiery press conference. He was very worked up about it, very emotional and upset. Even though he said, I think it was funny, he said multiple times that he was not mad, but he made some very strong statements and definitely like pulled away from the governor and an uncharacteristic stance where it was really like, this is my stance. Fun fact, that was actually the, that was the first day I started working at the Texans.

So that was my introduction to, I was like getting onto Twitter and figuring out who everybody was. And so I had to kind of catch up that Dan Patrick and Abbott aren't always like that because he was not happy. He'd also bought a lot of like THC products that he laid out, which I always think that's funny imagining some staff member having to go buy those and be like, um, it's for work. It's for the lieutenant governor. But so he has this press conference. And then two special sessions later, they're not able to come to some kind of agreement. and THC kind of ends up backward is where there is not a ban, like it had passed in both bodies. So they have a Senate interim charge that is related to THC, and the Health and Human Services Senate Committee met this week to hear about this.

And it was a pretty straightforward and a little bit of a shorter hearing was only a few hours. They had one panel, quite a few doctors, someone from law enforcement from the activism group, someone from a government department. And they were really looking at health care costs and emergency room visits and like the effect of psychosis and schizophrenia tripping up that with cannabis consumption. They were also really focusing on its effect on children, which is an ongoing theme that is bipartisan, has bipartisan approval or an agreement on that. So chair, Lois Colchorst and vice chair Charles Perry gave opening remarks and kind of opened up this topic again. And they were both pretty passionate about it. Also openly like sharing some like emotions about it as well. Like I think that Cole course said something long lines of she's very kind of like nervous going into this hearing because it's such a big issue.

And I know that Perry had a lot of strong statements. point blank said that he will be filing a ban in the next session refiling that. They talked about the cost. They heard from different doctors. And so one of the things that did stand out was some really sad statistics about kids under five, like quite a few, like a huge uptick in poison control calls related to young children and emergency room visits related to young children, the kids who are eating gummies and cookies and different things like that. And so that is, those were really sad and not fun to hear. So they had shared some numbers, things like a doctor saying that cannabis overdose visits had quadrupled in his hospital.

He shared about a four-year-old that had come in and had to stay for two days because they had taken two gummies off of a nightstand of an older sibling. So those are the kind of the things that they were discussing. One of the standout moments was when Cole Course talked about a Wall Street Journal article that listed cannabis as the number one leading drug that would is connected with schizophrenia. And she just was like very like, I don't know, just had a lot of, what's the right word? She was just like very, I don't want to say emotional again, but just like really strong statements of like, don't we see this as like, a war on us, I think she said, and don't we see this as like a scourge on our society? So she was just talking to the doctors and overall, the whole, the most sentiment of the hearing was in a negative way towards THC. There was some reaction or senator who's a Democratic senator,

Molly Cook, comment about it. She just wanted to make sure she stated for the record that her district is very pro-cannibus. She said they've spoken to her loudly about that repeatedly. She just wanted to say on the record as well that she believed. that there are therapeutic values for THC. And she just, well, she agreed with obviously keeping, she said, young minds away from it she wanted to. Also talk about advocating to end prosecution for a low level THC possessions, which could she also wanted to save money as well.

So a few hours after that, there was at the end, there's a group called hometown Hero ATX, which is a Austin-based Cannabis group. Lucas Gilke is the founder, CEO, and he's been involved in a lot of ongoing legal issues with the state in lawsuits and things like that, coming at it from the side of helping veterans. And so he just, his feeling and sentiment at the end was this was what he called the usual Senate knocking on hemp. He talked about that they, he's excited to or interested to see what the House is going to say about this issue, just because in his words, the Senate is linked to Pat. who is very anti-THC, which the next day, Patrick was on the Mark Davis show talking about that. He briefly mentioned it. And he focused more on the idea of them being close to schools, these dispensaries, some of these independent convenience stores calling what he said, selling what he's called liquid heroin. And just he said, we're going to visit this. It's still an issue.

So we'll hear more about THC in the 90th and see if we'll get any interesting press conferences with Patrick. I'm sure we will in general, about this. No, absolutely, Meredith. If you'll be covering it this time, you might get free THC snacks from the lieutenant governor of Texas. So we'll find out. That's all I want, right? Definitely to see if they can make legislation that will survive Abbott's veto this time around. We'll be very interesting to see.

But speaking of Abbott, speaking of the governor's race for this year, Isaiah, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa has proposed a policy of paying Texas households $1,500 each. What's going on there? Yeah, so Gina Hinojosa, who's also an outgoing state rep representing a chunk of Austin, proposed this idea during a campaign stop in front of a Houston grocery store earlier this week, or I guess it would be last week for listeners. And the money would come from the rainy day. Fund. And that's officially called the economic stabilization fund. According to her campaign's math,

her rebate plan would siphon about 17 billion from the ESF or the Rainy Day Fund. And it's set to spill over its 26.5 billion limit this year. I think specifically it's going to end up at 27.4 billion, according to the comptroller's most recent estimate. And the limit, it's officially called the cap. The rainy day fund can't exceed more than 10% of the amount of certain revenue that's deposited into the state's general revenue fund during the previous biennium. And this year, I believe this year is the first year in which the rainy day fund is set to exceed its cap, according to the comptroller. So we've got just an ample rainy day fund, and Hinojosa presented this idea. one, as sort of a barb at Governor Abbott, in her statement, she says, Texans have lost trust in our government, and for good reason,

Greg Abbott has hoarded our money while we've struggled with the cost of health care, groceries, gas, and housing. And her twin critiques that she goes on to describe in her campaign's press release are that Abbott isn't making good use of the rainy day fund in her view, and that Abbott is accepting donor money in some unsavory way. And so her proposal, the $1,500 rebate plan, her campaign is dubbed it corruption tax refund checks. And so because this would be from a fund that's overseen by the comptroller,

I reached out to the Democratic and Republican nominees for Comptroller, who are Sarah Eckhart, an outgoing state senator representing a Chuck of Austin, and Don Huffein is a foreign state senator who won the Republican primary for Comptroller in March. And Huffins campaign didn't have time to get back to me. Eckhart backed the plan, but also suggested using the rainy day fund to clear the debt of every single school district around the state. And according to her math, she said that after carrying out that plan, we'd still have about $24 billion in the rainy day fund. And just to quote directly, she said, what I suggest along with Gina is that we have $28 billion in a fund that is growing. We need to find a way to serve the people of Texas.

And if we refuse to serve the people of Texas, we need to give the money back. So Hinojosa has support as to be expected from her fellow Democratic candidate for Comptroller for this plan. So I'm curious because, you know, you had this situation in Harris County where they tried to enact. to this guaranteed basic income program. And it's structured a little bit differently, but it was providing stipends to individuals. And it got halted by the courts, including the Supreme Court of Texas, although they never conclusively ruled on it. But there was a lawsuit over it. And the argument was that it violated a provision of the Texas Constitution against what they call a gift. And let's see, I just want to make sure I get the wording right here. It's an impermissible

gift of public funds to private individuals. And somehow that's stipulated in the state constitution. So I think, I don't know, I'm just wondering if it's even legal, although it's a great soundbite for campaign season, right? I'm not sure. I'd have to look at the details of that ruling. in general, the ESF, the legislature can do what it wants with the rainy day fund with a super maturity vote. So specifically if the legislature wants to plug a hole in the state budget or make up a revenue shortfall with three-fifths approval of both chambers, they can do that. And for any other purpose that they want, they need two-thirds approval. And so with that threshold, it looks like that the legislature would be able to do this just because it's, I don't see it expressly forbidden by, you know, the guides that the comptroller was already put out. I don't know that, yeah, I'd have to look more at that ruling to see if this is an issue of county authority versus state authority or something like that.

Right, right. So that'd be an interesting legal question there is, you know, is it even allowed? But, yeah, it seems like it's, it is kind of just giving everybody a gift. I mean, I'd love to have an extra $1,500 myself, but yeah, can you do that? I don't know. It's definitely giving some COVID nostalgia. I remember as a college student getting one of the Stimmy checks and being like, whoa, look at that. But I do wonder if it would survive a challenge under the gift clause because instead of it going to a specific limited group of people, as with Harris County, would be going to every household in Texas.

So I wonder if that, because it's actually given to every household, if that would make it survive the gift clause. That's interesting. Yeah, the fact that Harris County system was based on a kind of lottery, so they had a pool, a selective pool, and then a lottery. They said that violated. It wasn't the gift clause. It was another equal protection clause of the Texas Constitution. But that gift clause seems like it could be a little sticky there. but I just don't know if it applies to a statewide program.

This is not important at all. I just remember talking about those checks with you. I never did get one. And I think it's because the government simply deemed me too productive to receive these checks. Is that the first time you've ever had that problem? But I want to say also that it's very interesting, just something to note, how veterans of the Texas Senate

are so dominant in the statewide election cycle this year. We have state senator, Mays Middleton and state senator Nathan Johnson running for running both as the Democratic and Republican nominees for Attorney General. And then in the Comptroller's race, you have state senator Sarah Eckhart with former state senator Don Huffines running. So I think it's interesting that state senators, of course, you have a state representatives in both Gina Hinojosa for governor and Vicki Goodwin for lieutenant governor for lieutenant governor. but I think it's interesting how state senators have claimed sort of two of these races that in two of these races, both the Republican and the Democrat are veterans of the upper chamber. And I think that that's interesting. But Holly, turning next to you, we're talking about elections and all these different people running for office.

But there is a, from what I understand, a local government office where we don't technically know who's in charge of Fort Bend County. What's going on? Oh, that's right. Well, Florpin County has a huge legal mess on their hands. So, you know, just for the backstory, for those who are not familiar with what happened, the elected county judge, a man by the name of K.P. George, was convicted earlier this year on felony counts of money laundering and misusing his campaign funds. I was convicted in March and sentenced in June. And in June, the criminal court judge, and that, case suspended him from office without pay, but of course he is appealing his convictions. So, you know, his sentence has been suspended and so on. At the same time, he also faced a civil lawsuit for removal from office. And this civil court judge suspended him without pay, or suspended him with pay, I believe, in April, but also appointed a man by the name of Daniel

Wang to fill the position while he was suspended. So Daniel Wong is also the Republican nominee for the county judge's race in 2026. Well, after K.P. George was sentenced in the criminal case, the woman who brought the civil lawsuit to remove K.P. George non-suited. So the county attorney, who is a Democrat, says that that means that Daniel Wong is no longer the appointed, appropriately appointed county judge. And just before the last commissioner's court meeting, she ordered different departments to remove his access, said he's no longer an employee. They started limiting his ability to access his email and computer systems and so forth. But the Republicans, including Daniel Wong, say, no, they're still. They're still. You know, they're still. You know, they're still. no court order rescinding his appointment. And so he gets to stay there. And they also argued that in the Texas Constitution, you have something called a holdover

provision that says that someone who's been appointed or elected stays there until their successor can be vetted and appointed. So there's this big legal conflict going on right now. So it's been a little bit of just whiplash this way. week with legal actions. On Monday, you had Daniel Wong file a lawsuit. Monday afternoon, the county attorney, Bridget Lawson Smith, also filed a court action seeking to actually remove Daniel Wong from this, from this county judge's position. At the last commissioner's court meeting, you had two Democrats walk out. And as we are recording now on Thursday morning, there is another

Fort Bend County Commissioner's Court meeting on Thursday afternoon, and no one's quite sure what's going to happen. I believe one of the Republican commissioners is out of town on vacation this week, so you've only got two Republicans that could show up, Daniel Wong and the other Republican commissioner, and then you've got the two Democratic commissioners who walked out of the last meeting. So, you know, this battle is ongoing by the time this podcast is. published. We could have a new development in the story with all the legal actions flying back and forth. But basically what you have in Fort Bend County right now is a very chaotic situation. No one's really quite sure who's supposed to be in that role. And I think we're just going to

continue to see a lot of legal wrangling at the same time. You've got the candidates campaigning to try to win that November election for the county judge's seat. So lots of fodder for journalists, but not a lot of comfort for the citizens of Fort Bend County at this point. Well, thank you very much for your coverage on the story, Holly. I think local politics is always the most interesting for just how zany things can really get. You know, I mean, state politics and federal, it feels like it gets more polished the higher up you get. But at the local level, kind of anything flies, you know, and I think, or doesn't fly in this case, depending on who wins the court battle.

But I think there's always something interesting to see. I agree. I agree. I cut my journalist's teeth on covering school board meetings. And those are some of the nastiest, most aggressive meetings you'll ever see sometimes. But, yeah, local politics. Very interesting. And a lot of immediate implication for the citizens.

So important to watch. Absolutely. Well, thank you very much for your coverage. Isaiah, turning to you next. A group of professors have sued the Texas Tech University system over the Chancellor's new directives on race and gender. And this Chancellor is also a veteran of the Texas Senate to tie back to point C. I was planning the seed right there. Of what we were talking about earlier.

So tell us about what former state senator and current chancellor of TTU system, Brandon Creighton, did and why is it getting a flag? Absolutely. So the plaintiffs are the American Association of University Professors. It's Texas chapter. And that chapter is an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, which is a nationwide union and association. And these groups sued the TTIU System Board of Regents and Chancellor Creighton

for these two memos that Creighton put out that the plaintiffs claim violate the first and 14th amendments. And both of these have to, both of these pertain to issues of race and gender and how they're discussed in college classrooms in the TTIU system. Specifically, they forbid faculty from promoting or inculcating certain racial beliefs. And they require faculty to recognize only male and female sexes. And so Creighton, who left the Texas Senate last year to head the TTAU, system put out the first what they called Create Memorandum one on December 1st last year and the second

one followed and they're related. I'd like to go into the details of both because I think they're important and I haven't seen them really parsed that specifically in some coverage. But the first section of the first memo bars faculty members from promoting or inculcating the beliefs of a few things. And so the big list is one, that one race or six. is inherently superior to another, that some classes of people are inherently racist or sexist, that some people should undergo racial discrimination, that race or sex determine moral worth,

that individuals bear responsibility for the actions of others who share their race or sex, and that meritocracy or strong work ethic are racist, sexist, or oppressive ideas. And the second section says that state law and federal policy dictate only two sexes male and female, and that faculty are expected to comply with this standard. And if this sounds familiar, earlier, it's something, this is a topic that the legislature has been approaching for a few years now, tackling for a few years now. Creton sponsored a bill that became law after the 87th session in 2021 that has almost identical language that imposes similar requirements, but in Texas public primary or secondary schools, so not universities. And the second memo instituted a review process to determine

whether course content violates these mandates. And so specifically the plaintiffs claim that these memos violate their rights to free expression, discriminated against black people, and fail to provide due process because the process established by the second memo, in their view, is unconstitutionally vague. And so a lot of these plaintiffs, well, the faculty members who were joining this, claimed that the content review process was unclear. They weren't sure what they could or couldn't teach. There were some materials that I don't think anyone would dispute were expressly targeted by the memo that were booted out of course content, but there are others like Plato's

Republic that faculty members self-censored because they didn't want to run afoul of Creighton's directives. And so that's their side of the story. TTI responded by saying that the Texas Tech University system is confident its policies are lawful, constitutionally sound, and fully compliant with state and federal law. Our commitment to academic integrity and the First Amendment rights of our students and faculty will not be distracted by lawsuits as we continue our mission to deliver rigorous academic programs, relevant coursework, and groundbreaking research.

So I'll have to wait and see what they claim in a longer court filing that should be more detailed. All right. Well, thank you for covering that issue for us, Isaiah. Definitely interesting to see how certain political figures keep popping up. again and again, you know, even outside of politics, Chancellor Creighton is still getting media attention for sort of these political happenings. Mary Elise, turning next to you. SCOTUS had, of course, a busy week last week,

but there's still new interesting cases dropping, and they briefly ruled on a Texas law that has been embroiled in litigation. Tell us about the decision and the statute. Yeah, this is more so. of a kind of quick update on this story that we covered last week. This is having to do with Texas's App Store Accountability Act. And the Supreme Court ordered on Monday of this week that it's not going to block this law for being implemented while all of this litigation is ongoing about whether the law is constitutional or not. And this is a law, of course, we discussed a bit that will,

was passed by the Texas legislature last year. And it essentially requires operators to verify the age of their consumers and then mandates this parental consent for app store purchases and downloads for anybody that's under the age 18. So for minors. This bill was Senate bill 2420 as we covered it. I was filed by state Senator Angela Paxton and then sponsored by State Representative Caroline Fairley in the Texas House. And so a little bit of background on the litigation that it's just involved in, the bill was about three months from going into effects, so from its enforcement date, when two different groups filed separate lawsuits against the state over the law. They argued that this law was violating freedom of speech under the First Amendment.

And then after those two groups sued Texas, and this was two months afterwards, a district judge temporarily blocked. Texas from being able to enforce the law. And he said that when considered on the merits, this bill does violate the First Amendment. Then a stay was granted by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. That was at the beginning of June of this year. So that halted that judges ruling on this law. And then, which we covered very recently, both of these groups issued an emergency application to the Supreme Court, said we would like to see it vacate the Fifth Circuit's stay of the preliminary injunction. So that was their emergency request to the Supreme Court. We also saw that 27 state attorneys general filed an amicus brief in support of Texas,

and they specifically asked that the Supreme Court would let this law remain in effect while all of these court proceedings continue, move forward. And then Supreme Court Justice Alito determined on Monday that the requested vacation of this day, which would essentially block this law in Texas again. It would block the App Store Accountability Act from growing in enforcement. He determined that that would not be granted. So this law can remain in effect while this is ongoing. So we'll keep following this case. This is one of those laws that we followed as it was being crafted during the 89th legislative session. And then now, of course, we're seeing all the lawsuits that are being filed against it. But this is just the latest update that

Supreme Court's going to let it remain in effect while all this litigation is ongoing. Thank you very much for your coverage, Mary Elise. Certainly exciting to see what's going to happen with this as digital privacy and children's safety and everything continues to be such a dominating issue in this technological age. Holly, turning next to you, there was a new report on so-called rogue district attorneys in Texas calling for new reforms on a state level. echoing some calls that have been made over the past few months about how to address the issue. So give us the details on that. Yeah, that's right. So this new report came out from the Texas Public Policy Foundation's right on crime division.

And they did some research on some of the things that have been going on with these so-called rogue district attorneys, as we often call it. But these are district attorneys who are probably not enforcing state law as their, supposed to, sometimes in an official way, and sometimes in kind of an unofficial way. And one of those in the state of Texas that's gotten the most focus is, of course, Travis County's district attorney, Jose Garza. He's faced calls for resignation. There have been attempts to remove him from office. But what this report also found is that Austin, where Travis County is the county Austin is located in, has seen a rise in crime, and some of it started before Jose Garza took office, but they've seen a significant rise in crime under these policies that appear to be a little more lenient in

prosecuting certain kinds of crime. One thing they found is that the city's homicide rate increased by 60% between 2016 and 2024. So that's a pretty significant increase. But we've seen these calls for, you know, some kind of reform at the state level. The bill that was passed in 23 that provides a civil action for removing a district attorney only applies if that district attorney has put some kind of official policy in place. But it doesn't apply, and this is where people have not been able to do anything about Garza, if there's a kind of unofficial policy or internal guidance that tells the prosecutors, in the office to go be lenient on certain crimes. So what we've heard from Governor, Governor Abbott is

called for this and some of the other candidates and those concerned about the issues are a couple of different ways to address things. And they kind of fall into two categories. So the first category is, what do you do about a rogue district attorney and how do you discipline or remove that person from office. And then the second category is what do you do about crimes that aren't being prosecuted by these individuals? So one of the possibilities for addressing the district attorney directly is reviving a council or a commission that the state used to have that would oversee district attorneys. And that commission would have the power to discipline. And this analysis from the Policy Institute says that you could probably create that through statute,

but if you want to give that commission the power to actually remove the district attorney, you're probably going to need a constitutional amendment. And the problem with the constitutional amendment is that you do have to get two-thirds of each chamber to enact that, and then it goes to a vote statewide, and it's sometimes very difficult to get both chambers to agree to something. To that extent, it does require some bipartisan support. So you'd have to really get some Democrats, even if you have a majority Republican, you still need some of those Democrats to cross over and support that. The other option for removing the district attorney, again, you could give it to the already existing State Commission on judicial conduct,

which kind of disciplines and oversees judges. But again, you could give them maybe the power to discipline, but not actually remove a DA unless you had a constitutional amendment. So there's some hurdles there. As far as prosecuting crimes that are dropped by the local district attorney, there's a couple of different proposals that have been out there. One is to give the Texas Attorney General that power, But there was a Texas Supreme Court case a couple of years ago, and it more directly applied to election prosecutions.

But basically under that decision, the attorney general doesn't have the authority to just pick up a case unless it's been referred by the local district attorney. So you have a problem there. And unless the court, I'm sorry, it wasn't the Supreme Court. It was the Court of Criminal Appeals in that decision, unless they change court. course on that, again, you need a constitutional amendment to give the Attorney General that authority. The other possibilities for prosecuting those crimes include creating a state prosecutor. And Governor Greg Abbott has advocated for that, along with the Republican nominee for Attorney General, Mays Middleton, has also expressed support for that.

And so that could be an option. And then you could also look at creating these five rules. regional district attorneys that would oversee the entire state but divided into those regions and they would have the power to grab those cases and prosecute them. One of the concerns about that approach identified in this report is that you probably have to create a court to accompany each of those and that would be a lot more costly for taxpayers. And there is a little bit of a gray area there. it looks like it could be done through statute, but could also maybe require a constitutional amendment.

So then again, you're back to trying to persuade enough Democrats to support the measure, considering the current makeup of the legislature, which of course can always change. But both of those offer some hurdles for addressing this problem. In the meantime, you know, a lot of people are worried about what's happening, particularly in Travis County, where more and more we're seeing these cases. You see them on X almost every day, where Garza has dropped charges or you've got someone arrested, now charged with murder or some such violent crime,

who has been in and out of the system and been given diversion or some of these other more lenient remedies for what they've been brought in for previously. So it's an ongoing conclusion. I thought it was really interesting when I talked to the policy analyst over there, Ross Jackson. He said, you know, really the biggest issue you have here is that you've got a lot of victims who aren't seeing justice served. And they're very frustrated and worried about crimes that don't get punished. And that seems to just have a rippling effect that can lead to more rises in crime.

Well, thank you very much for your coverage on that. Story, Holly, definitely always good to see this kind of research. You know, Jose Garza's had some stories coming out over the past several months, if not, frankly, years. So always interesting to see, once again, local politics, always very interesting. Meredith, turning next to you, sort of continuing on this trend with Isaiah of government payments, if you will. on the 4th of July, federal Trump accounts went live. Meredith, fill us in on how this program has multiple Texas connections. Yeah, this federal program, which it's just the official launch happened last week,

has not one, not two, but three Texas tie-ins. So we're going to walk you through those. Just as a reminder, these Trump accounts are these private. The description is tax-advantaged investment accounts that have. They have a $1,000 seed investment. for every American child born between January 1st of 2025 and December 31st of 2008. Almost said 2008. Whoa, going back in time a little there.

So it was initiative of President Trump during his second administration, part of the one big beautiful bill act that was signed last summer. And they also launched an app on July 4th that they were letting people know. Like, if you want to go and track your child's money, you can see all of that in real time. they have these interactive financial education modules that they are really promoting as a part of the financial literacy aspect of this initiative. And there's no cost to open account. They want to make that very clear.

And they're encouraging employers to contribute on behalf of their employees to give them this, you know, to allow them to access this free money, they say. some of the tie-ins are that Senator Ted Cruz authored the legislation that was part of the one big beautiful bill that got this through. So he was at a press conference in the Oval Office with Trump and was just saying, comparing this to he called it Donald Trump's New Deal. He said, but instead of having government take care of everyone, Trump accounts are about making every child and every American a capitalist. And he also said that every one of our kids is now going to be an owner of the biggest producers in our country. There's also the Dallas couple, Michael and Susan Dell of Dell Technologies. They had pledged to give $6.25 billion from their charity fund to 25 million Trump accounts.

And it would cover, they were there saying they want to make sure that kids that were born just before the program wouldn't miss out. and they also had some eligibility with low-income requirements for their money. It would be $250 per child. And they just said, you know, we wanted to make sure these kids were born before we weren't left out, and that they were invested in America's greatest companies for their future, for their tuition, their down payments, startup capital for a business. And so they were praised by the White House for this historic act of generosity specifically towards these low. middle income children. So that's our second. The third tie-in is that Dan Patrick announced in December that he would like to do something similar to this in Texas with a state level, very similar

type of program. And he wanted to call it the New Little Texan Savings account. And it would give newborn Texans an additional $1,000 invested in the SMP 500. It would cost about $400 million a year. and Patrick said that that would be 1% or less of our total state appropriations, and he would want to amend the state constitution to make it a permanent program. And so part of his rationale is that this is a great way to return money back to families and to teach the value of savings and compound interest to young Texans. A couple of comments on that are at that time, Democratic Texas Democratic Democratic state chair, state party chair. I need to look up the order of that.

He called this a unique opportunity, and he said that it's something that, I think he said, as long as the Republicans keep their head on straight, it's something that they could work bipartisan with them, saying that he even believed it could help maybe to encourage people to have more children because he believes we're in something similar to, and, well, I think he said a low-key population decline or something like that. And there was conservative pushback from the Texas policy research opposing the plan and arguing that, you know, you don't want to make the government the center of your personal financial life, that you could risk dependency, market distortion, just the idea that they said at TPR that Texans are better served by lower taxes, reduced regulation, and a renewed focus on liberty. So once again, we keep saying this as we head into session. We'll see, you know, what happens in session with all of these ideas.

but this is another one that Patrick is very excited about and aligning with the president, which is something of the theme that we've seen with him as well and wanting to do similar things in Texas. I just want to say that of everything I tweeted this week, and I put a lot of things on X, I quoted Dan Patrick and what he said in your article, and that probably got the most attention and the most blowback from both Republicans and Democrats. And a lot of people saying, you know, how is this different from, you know, a guaranteed basic income program or redistribution of income?

So, you know, I don't know how many Republicans you're going to see just really get excited about this. I think that's going to be really interesting to watch. I saw some other things, too, where people were posting, comparing it to different programs. And it'll be interesting to see how much he prioritizes it. And if he really does, like, go gung ho or if it kind of maybe falls to the side a little bit

with the other things that he wants to do. Twitter does, it informs us a little bit, right? It gives us a little peek into what everybody's thinking. No, it's true. And it looks like, you know, if indeed Ginojosa wins in November, it's not likely, but if she does, then obviously families can take their Hina Hosephosa.

and put it into their Trump accounts for their kids. So very exciting stuff there. You mentioned Holly something quick that I saw interesting on Twitter this week, talking about, you know, how Republicans are responding to this was when Vice President J.D. Vance was, I believe it was on the Michael Knowles show when he was speaking about how he's not a fan of Milton Friedman and the more sort of laissez-faire economic policies that he promoted in the 1980s. talking about how I think the word he used was that the GOP has a more developmentalist mentality now in terms of government assistance to help build up the economy.

So definitely will be an issue going forward for the sort of more old guard Republicans versus the young guns who have a lot more. He also called it a more Hamiltonian approach to economics. So definitely interesting stuff there. But speaking of economics, Isaiah, to wrap up our. podcast this week. The city of Dallas has announced mandatory furlough days amid an ongoing budget shortfall and lagging sales tax growth compared to some of its suburbs. What's going on in Dallas?

Yeah, just to give you some background to what you described, earlier this year, in the same short span of time, Dallas lost the Dallas Stars, the flagship store of even Marcus. And it didn't quite lose the Mavericks, but the Mavericks are moving out of a city-owned arena. And so it was a big blow. And after all that took place, Mayor Eric Johnson said, make no mistake about it, we're in competition with our neighboring cities for residents, for businesses, and for attractions. And so then, you know, a little while later, the city announced mandatory furlough days for non-uniform city workers to mitigate the shortfall. And this is attributed in large part to a decline, not a decline in sales tax overall, but less than expected sales tax revenue.

Property tax revenue is also playing a part here. But if you look at the city of Dallas's charts that it's put out, which I've linked in the piece, then you can see that the city expected a less, less growth in 2026, fiscal year 2026. But even with those reduced expectations, sales tax revenue is still not up to snuff. And so I was curious if, this is an economic trend that's affecting North Texas in general, or if this is something limited to Dallas. And so I just ran a quick analysis based on state data on how Plano, Frisco, and Irving, which are really Dallas's main competitors for big businesses,

how sales tax revenue in those cities has compared in terms of absolute volume and growth compared to Dallas. And what I found is that since 2020, which is the last year, but we really had a major market disruption. Dallas, the growth rate since then from 2020 to 2026 in terms of annual sales tax revenue, Dallas has had a growth rate of about 47%. And Plano has seen, Plano Frisco and Irving have all seen much higher growth rates. In Friscoe, it's 57%. Irving is also 57 at Plano is 55.

And, you know, this data is for January through June. And so I also looked at sales tax revenue limited to that period each year since 2020, up through 2026. We can really get a good apples to apples comparison. And for that calculation, I ran a growth rate calculation from 2025 to 2026 and found that, again, a similar trend. Since last year for this period of time, sales tax revenue has grown in Dallas by about 1.7%. And in Friscoe, it's grown by 9%. And Irving, it's grown by 9.8. And in Plano, it's grown by 5%.

And so all of that betokens more sales activity, more business activity in the northern suburbs that Dallas is competing with. And if you're curious about the specific mandatory furlough days, this is for non-uniformed workers and any department that doesn't depend on fees, at least partially for its revenue. So like trash pickup, for example, residents pay a fee for that, and so they don't have a mandatory furlough day.

But for other more general city jobs, July 10th, September 4th, and September 28th are going to be mandatory unpaid days for those workers in the city of Dallas. Well, thank you very much for your coverage on that, Isaiah. Once again, local politics, just always interesting to watch. So moving on to our tweetery section, Holly, should we start with you on Tweeterie? Do you have anything interesting to share, share with class? Well, I've seen a lot of posts this week about something we've covered at the Texan News, and that is those cameras that are all over the roadways, they're automatic license plate readers. Mostly they're provided by a company by the name of flock.

So a lot of people call them flock cameras, but there are actually other cameras that do this. And, you know, there's a lot of debate, a big. whether or not they are appropriate and meet constitutional muster. So you have a lot of people saying, well, they help us solve crimes, and other people saying it's an invasion of privacy. And we really haven't had a Supreme Court decision weigh in definitively on this issue. We did see a Supreme Court decision on geofence warrants saying, yes, they're subject to the Fourth Amendment requirement that you get a search warrant. But flock cameras or these ALPRs, as we call them, seem to be a little bit different since many of them are on public roadways. Some of them are on private installations. So there's a lot of question about, you know, whether or not police can use these. But what we've seen is kind of an act of rebellion going on across the whole country where people are actually cutting them down. We saw someone in the military was, I can't remember he was convicted or just charged.

in cutting down cameras in Virginia in that area. And we just saw a report this morning that there are people cutting them down in the Houston area, too. Commissioner's Court in Harris County is taking place as we record this podcast. I've been kind of looking to see what's going on there in between my segments. And we just had someone testify, and this is interesting. They're asking the county to take down the cameras. They don't like them. But they also want the county to review the footage to see if they can find out what happened in the ICE fatal shooting that occurred on Tuesday.

So, you know, there's this conflict out there as to whether or not, you know, we want this kind of thing or we don't want this kind of thing. So people, even in their own minds, seem a little confused about what to do about these. But I think we're going to continue to see legal challenges and probably these acts vandalism. Absolutely. And I think, Holly, everybody should follow you on Twitter if they want to see all the updates about these flop cameras because, as you said, it's an issue that is not going away anytime soon. So anybody else have any good tweeterie for the week? I'll let you all just jump in. Whoever wants it the most. I don't know if mine is technically good because it's kind of a bummer, but it's a very beautifully written piece. It's in, I think, the Atlanta. called The End of Reading is here, which is right at my alley. It is a long read, I will say. And it was funny. As I'm reading it, I'm like, oh, this is a long article. And then I'm reading about how we

cannot focus and we can't read and we're like post-literate. And I'm like, no, I will read this entire article. And I'd like reread stuff. I'm like, no, no, no, I'm going to get this. And I literally, it made me, I do this all the time, made me go delete some like social media stuff off my phone. I'm like, no, I want to read. I do. I'm like looking at the books I've like bought by my bed. You know, I'm like, I'm not picking them up as much. So it was a very well written. It covers a lot of different things because it's long, but it covers kind of everything that's talked about in the educational world about reading. She does a great job of combining a lot of them, adding in some historical stuff, some political stuff. And I don't know, it was just,

and some personal things at the end that I really related to about, you know, you were a reader when you were a little, you loved it, you kind of get away from it, your phone gets in the way, you realize that it's harder to read because you're not doing it. I started reading with my mom A Tale of Two Cities because it's her favorite book and I never read it. And I'm like your brain, it's like when you try to go work out and do something hard, you haven't done in a while, it's like, okay, like I need to refocus myself into that. So it's a great article and it has some very depressing statistics. I think the worst one was fewer than it was like fewer than half of adults reported having read a book of any kind in 2022.

And only 30% read like a novel or a short story. So there's just like a lot of those little things dropped in there that you're like, oh my gosh. And just the idea of what the top selling books are. I'll end with this. It was, I never heard of it. Some Hunger Games type of series book. Other titles in the top 10 books were bestsellers were something called party pooper

and Diary of a Wimpy Kid, some installment, Dogman. which is not an actual, it's like more of a graphic novel and then some kind of romance mystery or whatever. Yeah, that makes me sad. I just like to be really sad. So anyway, if you want to be depressed, but read something, go read this. Meredith, this is why you need to make the flip and get a flip phone. I was going to get a light phone, which is a smart, dumb phone that has directions because I cannot find my way out of a paper bag. Literally, I have gotten lost I got lost a couple. I don't know if I want to say this.

This makes sounds so dumb. You know, the river, or it's the lake in Austin where it's like two parallel lines with bridges that go across. I like couldn't remember what bridge I had gone across. Truly, I have a thing in my mind that doesn't remember any kind of spatial things. I can do a lot of other stuff. But yeah, my sister, who's an engineer, was mortified at that. But I actually like need my phone to navigate in the world.

But we'll talk, Isaiah. I love, we'll, we'll, believe. Meredith, I've gotten lost in that same area. I know exactly what you're talking about. I'm like, wait, which bridge do I need to cross to come back and forth? I asked, I mean, I got, I talked to some people and I can make fun of myself. But my sister's like, so there's two parallel lines and then you were like lost. How does that happen?

Like, how does that work? I get you. I just told you, you know when you walk into a goodwill and you don't know what to do? Like, that's how I feel. So we have different skill sets. Well, speaking of I want to jump in with my tweeterie here because it's kind of related. but talking about books. Who here saw the trailer for Doom Part 3 that's coming out this year in December?

So Dune Messiah, which is the second book in the Dune series, has never been adapted before. So this is the first time that is being adapted into a movie. So Dune Part 3 is going to be coming out. The trailer looks awesome. I'm very excited about it. And I hope everybody else is too. I have not seen even the first Dune movie yet and I really want to, but I want to read the book first.

I know. It's a really good movie. It's a really good movie. I've heard. I'll tell you, Rob, I might not be super excited about it, but my husband is absolutely thrilled. So we probably will be watching it. It's going to be good.

It's going to be, I mean, it already looks. All the movies look really, really good. But I think probably that's one where I will actually try to make the trip to see it in iMacs you know so i'm not going to make that trip for the odyssey but i will try to make that trip for doom part three well not to be a downer um but i was pretty sad to see this news on x but governor abbott announced that his golden retriever i believe golden retriever pancake has passed away i thought it was really sweet to see both Republicans and Democrats just filling his comments saying how much they love that dog and,

you know, they have some good memories visiting the mansion and seeing the dog as puppy, et cetera. Yeah, I'm sorry that is, it's a depressing thing, but I definitely thought it was sweet to see their response and definitely pancake held a special place at a lot of people's hearts. So I personally really enjoyed the birthday posts that would be made from the governor's account for pancake. Always very cute. But that's my depressing tweeterie for today. Sorry, y'all. Should people bring their dogs more to session and maybe they would like get along better? Like maybe we should advocate for that. Not a bad idea. It's, yeah, it's Austin. You can bring your dog anywhere. So why not the floor of the legislature? Right. But I also wanted to point out that

our, our founder, Connie Burton, posted some really nice photos that she had when, uh, when from one pancake was a puppy. So I remember every time whenever the pictures of peaches and pancake, Peaches being their other dog, in addition to the third dog, honey butter chicken biscuit, who can later, whenever pictures of pancake showed up, McKenzie would always say, oh my gosh, I remember when they got that dog. That was always fun.

But, yeah. Well, something, a good turn in the news. I saw a video of this British guy visiting Yellowstone National Park and people have been talking about this kind of thing for a while now, but I love all the footage of people from other countries

coming to America and just falling in love with the greatest country in the world. It's the best. And this guy is just walking around the park, filming buffalo, other animals, that kind of thing. And it's just awed by the majesty of the landscape and the whole scenery and everything.

and I love it. I love the footage of the Japanese guys going to the Bass Pro Shop and hefting all the guns and stuff like that. I just think it's the coolest thing. And I don't know, I could talk forever about this because I think it's an interesting

kind of cultural moment because I grew up during the period of Green Day with American Idiot and like one direction after that and Harry Potter was obviously really big and it still is, but I feel like,

like the era of British envy is on the wayne. And now the rest of the world, in England included, is coming here and, you know, just getting impressed by how cool America is. People are thinking, wait, it's really cool that you can just go into a Bass Pro Shop and play with a gun. It's cool that you can go to Yellowstone and just walk around all these Buffalo.

America's a cool place. So that's always encouraging to see. I've loved watching that. It's so awesome, especially really great timing right before the 250th birthday. I think it made a lot of people feel really patriotic to see all these folks coming in and just being blown away. Like, wow, America is actually really awesome. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think there was some guy online who said it was some quote, maybe it was a quote from a more famous person, but he said, as a European, he said, if you want to hate America, watch the news.

if you want to love America, then visit and drive through. I was going to say because they had to drive and some of them did like road trips to get to different places, I think that because of the World Cup, I thought that was really unique that they, it is very different when you take a road trip versus just flying into an airport and going to some hotels. So I really am glad they got to see the pretty parts. Some people have commented, oh, I get why like maybe Americans don't travel as much because you can just go like and see all kinds of different scenery and landscapes hours away. I'm really with. The road trip is just such a quintessentially American thing.

And I've never been to Europe, but I imagine that riding a train through Europe feels really European. You know, it feels like a European experience. And that just could not be the case here in America. I've done it before, and I thought it was kind of fun. But if you think about like on the road or, I don't know, we've got a lot of great road trip stories that are kind of part of the American consciousness and our vastness and the highway system.

I don't know. It's just, I feel like that's the way to do it. I agree. Well, and I think everybody's got that story of like that one time you pulled off into some random small little restaurant in the middle of nowhere and it was like the best burger you've ever had. I still remember it was some, I cannot remember the name of the sports bar for the life with me, but my family had been coming back from a trip and we just pulled into the sports

bar and I must have had like the best burger I've ever eaten in my life. So, or like we pulled off onto this little, it was some rest stop overlooking a cliff. I think it was in the middle of Georgia. And we had this great peach pie and sweet tea and it was really good. But, you know, everybody's got that particular memory of that, that one time you stopped in that great place on a road trip. So. Yeah.

And, of course, you can always stop at a Buckees in Texas because you're never that far from one. It is always right behind you or right in front of you and closer than you think. and those billboards, of course, are there to remind you every mile you get closer. But well, thank you to everybody for joining us on this week's episode of the weekly rundown. You can catch us every Friday morning at the Texan on YouTube or wherever you get podcasts. So thank you to all of our reporters for joining us today and we'll catch you all 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. And if you want more of our stories, visit us at the texan.news. Follow us on social media for the latest in Texas politics and send any questions for our team to our mailbag by DMing us on Twitter or shooting us an email to editor at the texan. News. Tune in next week for another episode of our weekly roundup.

God bless you and God bless Texas.