The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - July 23, 2021

Episode Date: July 23, 2021

This week on The Texan’s “Weekly Roundup,” the reporting team discusses the looming special election in Texas’ 6th congressional district, Texas Democrats contracting coronavirus while in D.C. in an attempt to kill GOP-backed election reform, a new candidate entering the race in Texas 24th congressional district, the GOP debating whether absent Democrats can be stripped of their committee chairmanships, Abbott teasing an announcement on a sex-change procedure ban for minors, a Texas judge making moves on DACA, a ransomware attack in one Texas school district, the application for over $1 billion in property tax abatements promising a total of 19 jobs, and how police funding is faring in two of Texas’ biggest cities.

Howdy, folks. Mackenzie Taylor here bringing you another episode of the Texans Weekly Roundup Podcast. This week, our team takes a look at the looming special election in the 6th congressional district, Texas Democrats contracting coronavirus while in D.C., a new candidate entering the race in Texas's 24th congressional district, the debate in the GOP over whether absent Democrats can be stripped of their committee chairmanships, Abbott teasing an announcement on a sex change procedure ban for minors, a Texas judge making moves on DACA, a ransomware attack in one Texas school district, the application for over $1 billion in property tax abatements promising a total of 19 jobs,

and how police funding is faring in two of Texas' biggest cities. Also, we unveiled this year's War Room, a comprehensive look at the biggest campaigns in the state heading into 2022. Make sure to go to the texan.news and take a look to stay up to date on all the latest. Thanks for listening in and we hope you enjoy this week's edition. Howdy folks, Mackenzie Taylor here with Daniel Friend, Hayden Sparks, Isaiah Mitchell, and Brad Johnson. We've already been sparring verbally for the last half hour in preparation for actually pressing record on this podcast. So I think we're ready to get right down to the news.

Wait, hold on. Can you give me like another 30 minutes? Oh my gosh. I will say y'all told me to eat my salad. You told me to have my lunch. Yeah, and you did. Thank you. Just stop eating salads. That's what I do. Yes. Or have, instead of having like all that cabbage mixed in there with it, just have the chicken.

Sometimes I do that, though. Sometimes I just, because protein. Is good. Yeah, well, also it makes me happier. Like my mood is noticeably better if i've had enough protein i thought you were gonna say if you had enough cabbage no i don't think anybody's the food of the irish the world's happiest people oh my gosh my mom's maiden name is o'reilly i will say but that doesn't track does she own an auto parts store she spelled it differently or she did

spell it differently she's now a taylor um but yeah o'reilly without the extra e and i think an extra l i don't remember how the auto parts place spells it well with that jingle firmly in our heads no it's in my head i'm glad you said that because i was about to sing it and that would have been to the detriment of all of our listeners bradley you're just looking at us as if we're zoo animals that's how i feel right now you guys are monkeys flinging poop at each other at the moment oh my gosh his head is pivoting as though um yeah there's a lot to see here which i guess there is regardless we are actually going to get into the news now false advertising i'm sorry but we're starting right now daniel this week we launched a brand new feature at the Texan.

By brand new, I mean brand new for this election cycle. We did it during 2020. Man, it's crazy. 2020 is in the rearview mirror now. But the War Room. Tell us about the War Room and what the content of the War Room will be. Yes, the 2022 elections are underway. Everyone, and by everyone I mean myself and maybe a few other nerds out there is realizing that redistricting still has to happen but elections are going to continue regardless

they obviously they gerrymandered the state of texas so that is already done so the statewide races are set oh my god gerrymandered fully gerrymandered it's in this weird shape but you see the shape everywhere so people people know what it is right now usually would elbridge gary be uh proud of the way the state was gerrymandered i mean maybe i say i brought up a good point about this like we don't know how his name was pronounced like really can we there's we don't have any audio files of whatever that dude is bumping around. This is way too in the weeds. Let's get back on track. Anyway, sorry.

So elections are coming up. How are we going to follow all this stuff? You have campaign finance reports. You've got polling data. You've got who's running in this race, who's actually filed with the FEC, who's filed with the TEC, who filed uh to be on the ballot when that actually happens which that could be out in a long ways depending on how long redistricting happens but you have all this information where can you go to get a single source of that most important

stuff a one-stop shop would you say a one-stop shop could be said. I like it. By some people. And so we put that one-stop shop together. It is the war room on our website. If you go to thetexan.news and you look at the upper tabs right there, there is one that is the war room. Click on that. You'll find some information on the races. Right now, there's not a lot of state races available yet because we really don't know what redistricting is going to be like. Once we do, we'll definitely start adding a lot more information on there. But in the meantime, we do have those big state races that everyone is

talking about. The governor's race, lieutenant governor, attorney general's race is really big. And then some others, land commissioner, agriculture commissioner. Got it. Now, one of the new features on the War Room is quite exciting. I'm excited about this, even from my perspective of being able to go look in one place and find this information. Tell us about this new feature. Yes. So are you looking for a list of what seats are actually going to be open?

Yes. Especially this year, this election cycle, since it is a redistricting year, there's going to be a lot of shuffling you have lawmakers who are like maybe uh democrats who see that their district might be turned a little bit more towards republicans and they're like well should we really risk it and running for re-election run for a different office uh so we're going to keep track of you know who's running for different offices who's going to be retiring who says you know what i've been at this for a long time redistricting is a good time to let it go and um so we's going to be retiring, who says, you know what, I've been at this for a long time. Redistricting is a good time to let it go. And so we're going to have a list compiled there

of all the seats that will be open. And by open seats, I mean the incumbent is not running for reelection. Nice. Well, Daniel, we're excited that you put all that work in to make that happen. Folks, go check out the texan.news. We have a tab at the very top of our website. It makes it easy to find the 2022 war room, all the information is at our website. And as campaign season continues, more and more races will be added to this page. Right now, we have statewide. And as redistricting becomes more clear and more candidates enter each race, we'll have more information up. And if you're a political nerd and you're like, hey, there should be this

information on there too, email me your ideas, dfrandofthetexan.news. And, you know, we'll talk about it and see if we can add more information on there. We'll discuss. We discuss all day long. Yes. Wonderful. Well, Daniel, we're going to stick with you for this next segment. We're going to go to Texas's 6th Congressional District. We're very close to nearing a final verdict on who will replace Ron Wright after he passed away earlier this year. We have a very contentious field, and it's finaled to two candidates here. So tell us who's running in the race. Yes. So back in May 1st was when the first special election was. This was referred to as like a jungle primary where Democrats and Republicans were running together on the same ballot, all competing for that. They needed 50 percent to win outright or the top two candidates would move on to a runoff.

There were 23 candidates, so it was pretty likely that a runoff would happen, and that's exactly what happened. The top person in the first race was Susan Wright, who is the widow of Congressman Ron Wright. She's also a member of the SREC. Actually, I think she might have just stepped down from that. I don't remember. I know that there was some new laws about that. And then there's also she was also a district director for some Tarrant County state representatives, Bill Zedler and then his successor, David Cook. So she has been in the world of politics, but she's the congressman's widow. And then you also have Jake Elsey, who is currently a state representative. He previously ran for the seat

in 2018 in the primary election and lost against Ron Wright when that seat was open. But then in 2020, he was elected to the state legislature. I don't remember what the primary in that race looked like, but I know that there was no opposition in the general election. Even if there was, it's kind of a red district, so he probably would have won anyways. But his current representative, those were the top two contenders. Democrats were locked out of the race because none of them got enough votes to be in second or first place. And this is an interesting, in the special election game in Texas, the top two, regardless of party, you can have two Republicans go forward, you can have two Democrats go forward. It really

just depends. And in this race, we had two Republicans be the top two vote getters. Now, what are some of the big factors that could determine the outcome of this race? So there's a bunch of different factors that you look like. I don't know that there's drastic policy differences between the two candidates, even when they were having some interviews with a radio host, Mark Davis, on his show. He asked them these questions of like, what's the what's the big policy differences between you two? There's not noticeable differences of both Republicans.

They're both more in the conservative vein now they are going to be you know pointing out different differences of opinion and some of that happened in like some campaign mailers i know some people have been very critical of jake elsey and his record especially coming from another influential factor outside groups kind of influencing the race and spending money on advertisements and whatnot. There's been a lot of pushback on LZ from the Club for Growth PAC, which is kind of a fiscal conservative group. They tend to spend a lot of money trying to back their conservative candidates in different races. And so they have backed Susan Wright and they've really gone against Jake Elsey. Whereas Elsey, who is a former Navy pilot, he has had the support of

several pro-veteran PACs who have kind of backed him, the American Patriots PAC and the Elect Principled Veterans Fund. He's also had a lot of support from Representative Dan Crenshaw, who also, you half a million for that period from May through June, I believe. You can go check the article that we have on that for more specific information. Some other important factors are going to be endorsements. I already mentioned Dan Crenshaw endorsed Jake Elsey. Another big endorsement for Elsey was former Governor Rick Perry. Those are the two big names that have kind of waited in the race for him. But then on Susan Wright's side, when she first launched her campaign, she released a long list of Republican people in the district, especially in Tarrant County, where you have T uh tarrant county sheriff bill wayborne you had

betsy price you had kate granger you had like lots of republicans from different circles even local activists yeah precinct chairs etc yes uh so that was kind of big and helped push her ahead and then another endorsement that came in that definitely has played a significant role in this race and will probably be what people are watching, especially from a national level, is the endorsement of Donald Trump, who waited in the race after early voting, but before election day in the first election, and he endorsed Susan Wright. So the question there is if his endorsement will help kind of bumper ahead across the finish line. Very good. Well, thank you, Daniel, for covering that for us. Bradley, we're going to come to you.

We've talked at length about the Democrats fleeing to D.C. in order to prevent a GOP-backed election reform bill from passing during the special session here in Austin. Now, on Friday, the House Democrats in D.C. made an announcement. What was that announcement? Well, in an odd twist of things, something that really was not expected to occur, the House Democratic Caucus announced that there was somewhat of a coronavirus outbreak within their ranks. I believe it was initially, this was put out on Saturday, and they said that four members had tested positive. There was one member on Friday night who tested positive immediately, isolated themselves, and everyone else in the group tested negative. And they tested again the following day, and then a few more tested positive. Since then, two more members have come out and said, in addition to the ones that the initial batch that tested positive, that they had also tested positive. The only ones that we know of at the moment, in terms of by name of members that have contracted

this, are Representative Celia Israel, Donna Howard, and Trey Martinez-Fisher. Those are the only ones that I've seen that have come out and said that they are part of that group. So it's just kind of a, you know, they obviously made a big spectacle going to D.C., and they've lasted nine days so far, at least as of this recording. And then this happens, and that really is a shot to their um their efforts to really get a pr victory uh out of this and the distraction a very big distraction from what they're trying to do

yes so uh that is obviously not something that anybody wants to see um but it's something they have to contend with now now this preceded some dissension within the caucus this week tell us about that yeah so as we mentioned as everybody knows at this point because it has been such a national story uh these democrats are in dc trying to prevent quorum that way no uh legislation that the republicans are trying to to uh pass can get passed so we've seen some members trickle back into town into austin um and we saw a couple earlier this week uh terry canalis and abel herrero came back now they were not part of the group that went to dc harold dutton too right well harold dutton came back. Now, they were not part of the group that went to D.C. Harold Dutton, too, right?

Well, Harold Dutton came back later this week. Yeah, I think it was Wednesday or Tuesday. But Canales and Herrero were earlier than that. And we've seen a couple others come back since. A big one is Philip Cortez. And this is where the dissension comes in he came back and he uh and he put out a statement that said the reason he came back to austin was so that he could you know have a seat at the table in the election bill discussions now there are some democrats that did not like that

because they want to oppose this wholesale they don't want to tweak it they want to kill it one of them was gina hinojosa she commented on twitter that he cortez is not acting on behalf of the whole caucus which he said in a press statement right he said i came back as almost a surrogate on behalf of the democrats in dc yes yes and so they're you know they're like i said they're nine nine days into this and they're already um you know fighting they intended they stated that they intend to stay there until um you know early august to run out the clock on this special session and um you know already they're they're starting to quarrel amongst themselves so it's uh they're already divided and we'll see where it

goes where are we at on the quorum break um Well, Representative Jim Murphy gave an update yesterday, being Wednesday, and said that Republicans were nine members away from securing a quorum. So, as I mentioned, we've already seen various Democrats trickle back in. You know, nine is not many. It's not even that sizable of a portion of the democratic caucus so if they can pull nine members back and secure a quorum then they can start you know passing things through committee and then through the body itself the senate has already passed quite a bit of legislation especially legislation that was on the prior on the big on the priority list for the governor for the special session so things are just kind of in a wait and see moment um but they're uh the the ranks are breaking of

the democrats and we'll see uh how long it takes to secure quorum if they're able to at all well and you can speak more to this than i can but we've had photos come out from different members of the press that they get sent that show you you know, X member returning to Austin and they're at the airport, but they maybe haven't made it back to the House floor. Or you have Democrats like the, you know, the few we've mentioned who have decided to go back to the floor and they're, you know, treading that line and ensuring there is no quorum. But it's interesting that there's kind of these different groups and even you know if democrats do fly back to austin again i mentioned this last week either for job family whatever if they can't be in dc for almost a month and that's just not feasible for them they have to come back at some point yeah and we're starting to see some photos come out of them returning to texas even if it's not in austin and they

you know they live in another part of the state it'll be very interesting to see how that all plays out i mean it's important to remember that these are people too. They have families. They don't, it is not an ideal situation for them to be living in DC away from their lives, basically. Now that's the choice that a lot of them have made, but you can easily understand why members would want to come back and, you know, throw in the towel, basically. And also another thing to keep in mind this you know this fits for uh chairman dutton he is a chairman and we'll talk about this topic in a little bit but um you know did that play into his decision to come back does he want to preserve his chairmanship does he

not want to rock the boat too much with house leadership um, you know, there's a lot up in the air still, and the Democrats are still at the moment, um, preventing quorum in the house and that's where it's at for the time being. Thank you, Bradley. Daniel, we're coming back to you to talk about some campaign news. Now, Michelle Beckley, a Republican from, or excuse me, a Democrat from North Texas, uh, has been in the news for, you know, ever since the Democrats went to D.C., different television spots, etc., very vocal about the issues that, you know, they're debating and talking about in D.C. and trying to bring attention to. But she made another big announcement unrelated to what they're doing in D.C. is the Democrat caucus. Tell us about her announcement. Yes. While she's in D.C., I believe this announcement video was actually recorded in a D.C. hotel room where she was talking about how she wants to run for Congress specifically against Congresswoman Beth Van Dyne in Texas's 24th congressional district, which is kind of in that north DFW area.

So Beckley will be not seeking ree-election but will be running for congress instead now what will this race even begin to look like we're far out from this election also we are far out from the election um the primaries could be in march they could be pushed back we really don't know because of that now what's the probability they're actually in March, though? The probability that they're actually in March. Very slim. It's possible. It's possible. But not plausible.

Yeah, I could go on to a whole rant about redistricting. I can tell in your head you're calculating how much time you're going to spend on this. I've gone down a whole rabbit trail this week, and Isaiah and Hayden and Brad can all attest to my rabbit hole that I've gone on with redistricting. It seems to touch every other topic. Yeah, and it's touching this one. Like what do you ask for lunch? It relates to all of the above.

Especially this topic because what will this race in Texas' 24th congressional district look like? We really don't know because we don't know where Texas' 24th congressional district will be. We presume that it won't change too drastically. It'll still be in the DFW area. Now, Texas is gaining two congressional district seats. Now, where those are going to go, I wouldn't be surprised if one of them gets added in the DFW area. You also have growth in Austin and Harris County. So we don't know what the lines are going to look like. We don't know if it's still going to

be up in Denton County where Michelle Beckley lives. Now you don't have to be in the same, within the district for congressional seats as you do in state legislative districts. But there's a question of what it will look like. And we don't know politically what the race will look like, you know, what are the likelihoods of this district still being very competitive. It was one of the most competitive seats in the previous election in 2020. Van Dyne actually won with less than 50% of the vote. It was one of the few elections where it was that close. So it might not be that close after redistricting. We don't know. And the other thing to consider is that Beckley is also going to have a primary opponent at this

point. She's not the first Democrat to announce for this race. Derek Gay, who is a Marine veteran and tax attorney, is also going to be running. So that's the Democratic primary right now. So she'll have to do that first. How will this affect Beckley's state seat? So Beckley's state seat is another one of those purple districts. It is in the southeastern portion of Denton County. And so there's actually four House seats in Denton County. I imagine that considering the other three seats are more red, it will not be hard for Republicans to shift Beckley's seat more towards the right and get it over that threshold so that a Republican can win. There's already been one Republican to

announce who was also Beckley's opponent in 2020. So it's very possible that that seat goes back to Republicans. In fact, if there's like a list of top 10 seats to be watching, this would definitely be one on there. And I think Beckley's running for Congress is another sign that this could very easily go back to Republicans. And this is one of the 12 that flipped in 2018, right? So there's that history as well. And it is worth noting congressional seats, you can live outside of the district and run for the district. In state seats, you cannot. So that's also a factor to consider in this. Thank you, Daniel. Bradley, coming back to you. Now, Republicans don't have much to do in the statehouse right now. There's really not much that they can do with Democrats in D.C. and no quorum but there has been a scuttlebutt in the house about what can be done to punish those democrats if the desire is there among members for fleeing austin and going to dc talk to us about that inter-caucus debate yeah so um you know there's a lot of discussion about how

to punish democrats for breaking quorum whether to punish them at all. But first of all, we've seen state leaders like Governor Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Patrick both come out in favor of stripping the truant Democrats from the committee chairmanships if they have them. So that has kind of turned into this debate within the House GOP caucus on whether it can be done at the moment. And Representative Morgan Meyer asked from the back mic earlier, house uh gop caucus on whether it can be done at the moment and um representative morgan meyer asked from the back mic earlier uh it was either last week or early this week um asked feeling speaker feeling on the dais whether they could strip democrats from committee chairmanships and he replied no at the advice of um parliamentarians in the. And so this has kind of spawned a fight within the caucus itself. You have those that say that it absolutely can and should be done.

Then you have those who say that it can't be done, but we wish it could be done. And this is a punishment that should be levied and so um various it's it's very in the weeds debate but it kind of boils down to different provisions of the house rules in the texas constitution and what and various supporting precedents for each case um i i don't know i'm not a lawyer i'm not a parliamentarian you are sons of lawyers you are the son of lawyers yes that is accurate i like to bring that up every time brad talks about how he's not a lawyer but you grew up with lawyers i think it's basically the same thing yeah tell my mom that um and so i i am not entirely sure which weighs more than which case weighs more than the

other but both of them have cases both of them have actually made uh strong cases and i kind I am not entirely sure which case weighs more than the other. But both of them have cases. Both of them have actually made strong cases. And I kind of lay it all out in the piece. Ultimately, though, the House rules are silent on what can be done to classify an incidental motion to a call of the House, which is trying to bring a secure quorum. And that's where the precedent comes in. I spoke with Representative Tony Tenderholt. He is of the belief that this can be done and that a motion to strip committee chairmanships from Democrats is incidental to a call of the house. And then I also spoke with Representative Cody Vasut. They're both of the

conservative wing of the house GOP. And so to see them fall on different sides of the issue shows that they're both really looking and the precedent that he has found seems to indicate to him that this wouldn't fit. And both are in agreement that the Speaker himself is not able to levy the punishment. Back in the 73rd Legislature, they stripped this provision called the, that the committee chairs serve at the pleasure of the speaker. Now that was interestingly enough left in, that is still in the provision for the speaker pro tempore, which is why we saw Phelan revoke that from Joe Moody, one of the Democrats that is in DC. And so it's a very in the weeds of debate. If you want, if this is something that interests you, I recommend reading the article. Both representatives lay their cases out very well.

But ultimately, you know, leadership is going to do what they're going to do. And right now they have not budged from the position that they cannot levy this punishment. But we'll see if added pressure changes things. And I think it's worth noting too that there are you know different opinions within the house republican caucus of what leadership is willing to do right we're hearing from different members of the caucus that say you know if we had the power to if the speaker had the power to he absolutely would remove democrats from this position and others are saying well he hasn't issued a arrest for a warrant for arrest yeah after the house you know

made that call we're so we're hearing two different things and that's just part of how this works is you're going to hear different parts of the party say different things and you know it all comes down to what the speaker what leadership is willing to do um what the parliamentarian says there's a lot at stake here and another another factor in this is in one of the Democrat statements last week, they said that, you know, that it was kind of a veiled threat. The speaker requires 76 members to seat them. And they said right now there are not more than 60. 51 percent.

And so, you know, Phelan secured a sizable portion of the Democratic caucus's support in order to become speaker. And, you know, that's a line you got to you got to toe. Right. I mean, if he comes down hard on the Democrats, that could risk his speakership. And so that is undoubtedly something that he's considering, whether that weighs more than other things. I don't know. But, you know, the Democrats are issuing not very thinly veiled threats. And so this is something that will continue to play an impact on us. Thank you, Bradley. Isaiah, we're now coming to you.

Now, one of the big topics of the 87th legislative session was a ban on procedures that would change the sex of minors. Now, the governor has largely been silent on this topic until very recently. Give us a little bit of an update as to where he's at on the issue and why this is important. Yes, and to be clear, what we mean on procedures are hormone blockers, drugs, and surgeries. So Abbott has remained very silent on this issue. There were several proposals that would work broadly in kind of two different ways, one going after doctors, one going after parents, to ban these procedures during the regular session, and all of them failed.

It's important that Abbott recently on the Mark Davis radio show that we mentioned earlier, it's important that he gave explicit support to these proposals because he's never done that before. It was for the first time ever that in public, even as a Republican, he expressed support for these proposals. So, I mean, what we're seeing here is primary pressure. Yeah. Don Huffines has called for this like a broken record. Yeah um that's i think we can see yeah even with the border right there's been a lot of these same kinds of things where we i mean a primary is going to bring a lot of issues forward no matter who the candidate is right and any sort of primary pressure from opponents tends to change talking points um but no you're you're right and it is interesting this

is the first time we're hearing from the governor on this issue. And we're still waiting for an announcement, right? We were told and promised that an announcement would be coming soon. I don't remember the timeline he said on the interview. Well, what he said was, in his words, we have another solution that will address the problem within the next week. And something else interesting that he mentioned, he said that, and you know, again, in his words, that the chances of these proposals passing the House was nil. And Davis asked him why that would be the case in a Republican dominated legislature. And he said, I'll be candid with you. I'll tell you what everybody knows.

And he says, I can't answer for that other than I can game the odds. And so it was a very vague, nonspecific answer. But it was interesting for him to speak so candidly about what you might call an open secret in legislative circles that this ban, despite its popularity among the party itself and the delegates, was not going to go anywhere with the politicians who would be voting it into law. And I think that there has been some pushback on that comment of saying, okay, well, if we have, you know, X amount of Republicans in the legislature, we have the number necessary, how many of them would be willing to not vote for something along these lines and then go back to their districts and face voters, right? With the

Republican circles, it's like, that's a very difficult vote to take. So interesting to see that, you know, be said by the governor and regardless of whether, you know, how much water that holds at the end of the day, certainly provides some, at the very least, kind of a political umbrella for those who would not be willing to vote for that in the long run. Now, remind us, where did these proposals end up during the legislative session? Well, you mentioned how it'd be a difficult vote. In the Texas House, that vote never actually happened. In the Senate, they passed a couple of bills that were born there in the Senate, a couple of Senate bills by Bob Hall and Charles Perry. And they also – anyway, so they passed a couple of Senate bills there meant to ban these gender reassignment procedures. In the House, those Senate bills and bills that also were meant to do the same thing that were born in the House, all gathered in the House Public Health Committee chaired by Stephanie Click. One of them made it out.

That was House Bill 1399 by Matt Krause. But it got a low calendar placement under the Calendars Committee run by Representative Justin Burroughs. And so that one actually never received a vote, though it made the most progress out of the five or six, depending how you want to count companions, five or six proposals to ban these procedures. But that one never actually made it to the floor for a vote. Yeah, we certainly saw that be one of the big casualties at the end of the legislative session, for sure. Yeah. And one more thing that's interesting, after that happened, there were a lot of eyes on this bill and the other bills like it, 1399. And so there was a lot of punditry about assigning blame.

It was Burr's fault. It's Click's fault. And I had been working on a piece that didn't materialize, but I got a chance to interview Brian Slayton, who has been very passionate, to say the least, on the transgender topic. And I asked him who he would blame for the death of these bills. And without being secretive, he couldn't give an answer. So inside the Capitol itself, it's a lot less direct, it seems, about the string pulling that's being alleged from outside corners. Burroughs is doing this, Click is doing click is doing that yeah allegations about motive here right yeah yeah slayton himself who is opinionated um very vocal has no problem about like letting these kind of accusations i think

for the most part um said i don't know what to tell you well thank you isaiah we appreciate your coverage on that hayden we're going to come to you you covered a very big story this week on daca and where that program ended up. But first, remind us, what was the DACA program? The DACA program was the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. It was instituted by U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano back in 2012 during the Obama administration, which politically is ancient, ancient history. And well, maybe that's overstating it a little bit, but it was a long time ago, politically speaking. It gave the opportunity for individuals who came to the

United States as minors, specifically under the age of 16, to apply for work permits two years at a time that would protect them from deportation, repatriation to their home countries, in view of the fact that the U.S. is the place where they've lived since childhood. That was the intent of the program, was to make sure that, for example, a Guatemalan adult who is in the U.S. illegally, but who came here when she was 12, 13 years old with her parents, isn't sent back to a country that she has only childhood memories of. That was the essence of the support for the program. Of course, on the other side are the arguments that when you grant sweeping exceptions to immigration statutes and enforcement, that creates an incentive for people to immigrate

irregularly and illegally into the country, which of course is happening right now. We have almost 200,000 enforcement encounters with illegal aliens, tens of thousands of which are family units and unaccompanied children. So that is a 10,000 foot view of the debate for and against DACA. And that program has been in place for nine or about nine years now. And the basis for the program was prosecutorial discretion. That's the catchphrase. It's the part of the title of the program. And that's how the federal government justified and justifies it. And that is it's the executive branch using what they call prosecutorial discretion. Although my understanding of that, and I think what most people would think

of is if someone just a really basic example of someone stole something from a store, and it was later found that they were starving or something, an extraordinary exception, a prosecutor might say, we're not going to prosecute that, but we're going to, you knowutes related to repatriation or deportation for this particular group of people. And as the federal judge noted in the lawsuit, which we'll talk about in a sec, there was even a program that would have granted more or less what would have amounted to amnesty for a majority of the illegal immigrant population in the United States with another program called DAPA, which I know less about, but that would have, I think, given the same type of amnesty to

individuals who are the parents of DACA-eligible individuals. So, that is the specific program that was the target of this lawsuit. Now, you've alluded to it, but let's get into it. What did the federal judge's decision entail? The plaintiffs in the lawsuit included, they were really led by the state of Texas, and it was a Texas federal, say Texas federal judge, it was a federal judge in the federal district court system designated for Texas. Led by the state of Texas, there were a number of states that were a party to this lawsuit. And what the judge ultimately decided is because of the Administrative Procedures Act, which governs bureaucratic rulemaking, etc. And the Take Care Clause of the US Constitution, the program is not legal, and new applications for protection under DACA are now improper.

The federal government is barred via this ruling from granting any new applications. They're allowed to accept them. What they're also allowed to do is they can renew the statuses of those who are already protected under DACA. What they can't do is create new DACA files. They can't grant new applications to the program. And in the ruling, the order of permanent injunction, the judge is clear that while this program, in his opinion, is illegal, it is also in the interest of justice and equity is the term that's used in the lawsuit, not to cold turkey, cut off the DACA applications for everyone who is currently on the program. So he is instituting a phased exit of this program.

Of course, he's a federal judge. He's not a lawmaker. And some of the arguments that we hear from conservatives about unilateral decisions by federal judges, we're hearing this time from the left. They're upset that this judge single-handedly has shut down this program that's very important to Democrats in particular. And some Democratic members of Congress, including Joaquin Castro of the 20th Congressional District of Texas and President Biden have called for a permanent federal solution to this problem of illegal aliens who are here, but who did not breach the border on their own free will. Because of course, in the United States, you can't be held, necessarily be held criminally

liable for something that your parent caused you to do, which in this case would be crossing the border illegally. So the ruling included a discussion of the fact that this is ultimately a congressional responsibility to resolve this policy question of how should the country respond to people how should the country help individuals and process the applications of people who are in the US and who do not want to be deported to a country that they have not lived in since childhood. So the judge is really prompting Congress to take action. And he's also pointing back to past congressional acts where they've had the opportunity to act on this and chose not to do that and specifically enacted laws that do not allow for something like this. So the ball is really in Congress's court to decide what they want to do with this ruling.

Thank you, Hayden. Appreciate that. Isaiah, we're going to come back to you. Let's talk about some public news. What happened with Judson ISD? Yeah, so Judson ISD is a district on the northeast side of San Antonio. And on June 17, they got hit with a ransomware attack that shut down their phones and their emails, and a lot of the school infrastructure. So they're having to use Wi Fi hotspots and make these new emails on the fly for the whole staff and everything. And just a couple days ago, they announced that they decided to pay the ransom,

but they would not say how much they paid to have the hackers lift the ransomware from their system. Now, what is ransomware? So ransomware is just this hacking tool or weapon, I guess, that involves infecting a system to where you hobble it in some way and hamper it. And then the victim pays the hacker a ransom, and the hacker lifts it out of the system so that it can be usable again. This is what happened with the Colonial Pipeline earlier this year.

Yes, exactly. There was the massive gas shortage. Famously. East Coast, yeah. And I was digging into it, and I haven't had my interview yet at the time of this recording with the chief information security officer of Texas that is an office that exists in Texas, and she's going to talk to me. But what I did learn from government data was that the FBI collects complaints on cybercrimes

and tries to do their thing to solve them. I don't know how many of these they resolve since they just hit the six million mark. This is some good true crime content right here. Exactly. And ransomware is actually kind of low on the list of most complaints because it tends to be inflicted against systems like agencies, like a school district or even municipal district. That's happened in Texas, too, I think. The most common cybercrime is actually phishing with a P.

And if you want that defined, you should ask somebody with a different degree. Texas does have data on estimated ransomware costs, like how much ransomware attacks have cost state agencies or local agencies in Texas. And the most recent estimate is from 2019, but it cost cities over 2 million, counties over 3 million, and school districts over a million. And a lot of them were unreported, but that tally is at about 5 million. And so that's where I assume Judson ISD is going to go. But these have reached above a million dollars per attack before on government agencies in Texas on their own for like an individual attack. Wow.

Well, thank you, Isaiah. Definitely a very interesting story, and we'll keep an eye on what's going on there bradley we're coming back to you one of your favorite topics uh chapter 313 which to the average listener who has not heard you talk about this before sounds like i don't know tax code yeah and guess what it is tax code yeah um but you've looked into the applications uh different corporations, you know, in accordance to Chapter 313, which was during the legislative session, not renewed. A very big kind of, well, it was a big deal after people found out it was happening. It was not even really a big deal during the process of it happening. But regardless.

Basically, until it looks, once it looked like it might not get renewed, then everyone started. Oh, my gosh. What's happening? So now, what did you find when you went and observed and checked out these applications? So it is an obscure issue. To quickly define it, it's a provision in the tax code that allows school districts to give abatements, property tax abatements, to businesses in exchange for those businesses building operations in their district. So economic development type of thing. And so that did not get renewed.

So I went and looked at the Texas Comptroller. They keep track of all of the applications for this program. And so I went to their tool they have and looked at all the ones that had been registered since sine die. So since the program was not renewed. Sine die being the last day of the session. And found some very interesting things. The top line of it is that across these eight applicants that I looked at, they're in total going to get if all approved going to get over 1 billion dollars in

property tax abatements now that's um that's a valuation knocked off of their appraisal that they have to then pay taxes on so um they would if this valuation was um was kept normal they would not pay the whole amount that they're valued for. They would pay a fraction of it based on tax rate from place to place. But they'd be saving a lot of money, basically. And in exchange for that, they collectively promised to create 19 jobs. Yeah. So huge return on investment there for the state and the locality.

We should do the math real fast on how much money per job that actually is at some point. But very fascinating. Now, we've talked a little bit about, we already talked about the legislature not renewing this program. But if these agreements are approved and the legislature does end up saying we're not going to renew chapter 313 what happens then are these agreements expired or are they still good to go no they will they'll be grandfathered in basically uh by the way i just did the the math and it's wow is that right 52 million per job um wow we'll double check that before the end of the podcast and make sure that's correct math major but that's pretty sure I plugged that in correctly.

It's a fairly simple equation. But yeah, I talked to the comptroller and they said that if this does indeed expire at the end of 2022, then every Chapter 313 abatement in existence would be grandfathered in. They would be allowed to run their course. And these normally last for 10 years. Some of them have options to extend further, but usually it's a 10-year abatement that then the appraisals start to revert back toward the mean of what they would be appraised at normally. So, um, you know, that's alarming that, uh, the legislature will have basically eliminated this program and, um, you know, they would still, these companies would

still be benefiting from the, uh, the abatement itself. But, um, a lot of these companies are solar. I believe it's six or seven of the eight um that that i calculated that i totaled up here were all solar companies one solar company applied for two applications one in in uh in two different school districts so one application in each and so um you know that's it's something that a lot a lot of renewable energy companies have really utilized. It allows them to break even a lot sooner on their investment. And so, because they're not having to pay all these property taxes. But renewable energy companies are not the only ones that are taking advantage of this, you know, traditional thermal generation.

Or just like manufacturers, things like that. So this is kind of an across the board issue for Texas and their businesses. Texas has a lot of economic development incentive type things. And this is one of the biggest. And, you know, it was during the legislative session, there was a push among conservatives and progressives to let this expire. And they were successful so far. And we'll see if that changes.

Now, what is the likelihood of that changing at the last minute? Well, when I spoke to Senator Lois Kulkhorst, who kind of led the effort to let it expire, to not renew the provision in the Texas Senate. She said that it kind of just fell on the weight of itself. Members could not agree on what to reform the program to look like, how to constitute it. So I assume there's going to be a push at some point if there isn't already one happening behind the scenes for renewal to be added to a special session call. But I also fully expect once this does expire and legislators come back in 2023 for the next regular session, that this will be a topic taken up by both the House and the Senate on what to replace the vacuum with. Obviously, if anything, but it seemed like there was not a lot of interest among the legislators, outside of certain ones, to just keep it out entirely, just kill it and let it die.

So I expect some effort of reforming and restructuring from the ground up next time. Thank you, Bradley. Hayden, we're going to chat with you about some local Dallas news. Now, the Dallas budget has been in the works for quite a while. Tell us about the process for the budget and what those talks were like last year. The fiscal year for the city of Dallas begins on October 1st. The city council is responsible for debating the budget and forming a plan before that time. Last year, if I recall correctly, they passed it in the last couple weeks of September. So that process leading up to October 1st involves them working out the details and the what is known as the government performance and financial management committee. And moments before we started recording this podcast, I got off the phone with Councilwoman Kara Mendelson, who is the chair of that committee. So her domain

is the budget, and they are hard at work hammering out the next fiscal year's budget priorities, which will hopefully be passed and they will agree to a budget by the end of September. Last year, the budget was not passed without controversy. The final vote was nine to six, and there were a lot of disagreements over police funding, as well as infrastructure funding. Councilwoman Mendelson and others believed that there were gaps that needed to be filled in infrastructure funding for the city and street repairs, things of that nature, as well as the 25% cut for the police overtime budget. That was highly controversial. They made that amendment in the budget early on in the process. In fact, in August was the first time they floated that idea and added that to the document. Ultimately, they did not restore the overtime cut, and that resulted in several council members objecting to the final passage of the budget.

Of course, there were other things that had occurred that year. They were still grappling with the city's fiscal needs after the COVID-19 or during the COVID-19 pandemic. And the tornadoes that were caused in 2019, right? The 2019 tornadoes that cost, I think, I can't remember the exact estimate of the final dollar amount of the damage, but it was substantial and they had to grapple with that. So last year's budget talks were pretty heated and ultimately the budget passed, but it did not have widespread support on the council. And it is time for them to go through that whole process again. Very good. Now, one of the most notable portions of that whole debate had to do with a request made by the mayor. Tell us a little bit about that request. As I mentioned a little bit ago, the budget is drafted before the city council votes on it and debates it. And it's, it's drafted by the city manager who's TC Broadnax in Dallas.

Actually, I'm not quite sure how you pronounce his name. It's Broadnar. Is it Broadnar or Broadnax? I was just fixing to say, now i know how to pronounce broadnax and then you said that anyway yeah so sorry didn't mean to burst your bubble there but uh some people say it uh different ways anyway he has been asked by the mayor eric johnson who was of course a democratic state representative here in austin for a time before he was mayor of Dallas. He has requested that in the budget, the draft budget, that there be allocated enough funds for 275 additional police

officer hires in the coming fiscal year. And that figure is beyond what the planned budget allows. And when I say planned budget, when the city manager prepares a draft budget for the coming fiscal year, that includes that year as well as a projected budget for the next year. So he more or less plans two years in advance, much like what the legislature does, except they don't pass the budget two years at a time like the legislature does. They just, they plan it and they have a working document. And that document only provides for 150 new officers. So far this year, we have a total loss of, a net loss of 67 police officers because they've hired and trained 77, but 144 have resigned, retired,

or have otherwise lost their jobs. So Johnson is returning to his position last year of being the go-to person for fighting for police funding and police staffing. And he is joined in that effort by Councilwoman Mendelson, who I mentioned a little bit ago is the point person for the budget committee for the city. And they will be they've already been discussing this. And that process will be complete in the next couple of months. Thank you, Hayden, for covering that for us. We're going to stay on that topic. Local police funding.

Bradley, we're coming to you. This week, an activist group here in Austin made a big announcement related to their police funding ballot initiative. Tell us what happened. So Save Austin Now, whom most people would recognize from the homeless camping policy reinstatement, they announced shortly after they won that election another petition effort to restore police funding and require a minimum level of staffing in Austin Police Department. And they announced this week that they secured over 25,000 signatures to get that ballot initiative placed on the November local election ballot. And so, according to them, they verified almost every one of their petitions. And so,

you know, I think it's safe to say this will be, barring some crazy change, this will be on the ballot. You know, this will be the second in six-ish months successful petition effort to put something on the ballot in the city of Austin. It really shows that the city council has ruffled a lot of feathers and they're facing a lot of pushback. So, the petition effort, like I said, would require a minimum staffing level of 2.0 officers per 1,000 residents. There's various other things that the effort will do in the piece that I put in there. But really, it stems from an alarming reaction to what the city council did cutting a quarter of the police budget last year. Now, really fast, give us a 30,000 foot view perspective of the status the department is in currently and why this would be

why the group thinks this would be necessary. So according to APD numbers, they have over 160 patrol vacancies and they are 390 officers short of that adequate staffing level that 2.0 officers per thousand residents uh the city um they announced their planned budget for the next fiscal year and it restores a lot of the like 130 million of the 150 million cut but that's kind of a restoration name only because they basically just moved back some non-patrol departments back under apd and the the funding for patrol officers is three million dollars below what it was in 2019 so um the the the department is kind of in disarray at the moment they're looking for a new police chief and trying

to find the city's trying to find someone that will be friendly to their reimagined policing strategy. But all the while, you know, we see violent crime going up and we see the police department still suffering from huge staff shortages, which has caused their response time to increase. So it's a state of disarray in Austin. Thank you, Bradley. Now, folks, if you did not hear our podcast from last week, we are going to stay on the fun topic that we introduced, well, last week and talk about the grievances we here at the Texan have with one another in the office.

Now, Bradley, you were preoccupied last week, but do you quickly want to give a rundown for folks who had not heard about our spreadsheet of grievances as to what it is? Do I want to do this? Yes. Okay. It seems like he doesn't. It seems like he doesn't. I mean, it's like an intra-office festivus only written down and we have a lot of problems with each other and we all are going to hear about them so and you all are going to hear about them we're bringing this to the people that's true yeah that's a good point so it's year-round it's just permanent best of this is kind of like they're letting off steam yeah one day a year and this is actually

just cutting the turkey yeah yeah constant grief but essentially we have a new staff member joining our team and as a fun joke we thought we'd you know air our quote-unquote hr grievances with each other compile it put it on his desk on his first day uh here in the texan oh yes and if he listens to our podcast he'll know but hopefully he's not listening and we'll be surprised regardless we have had way too much fun with this and by fun i, we've been grieved. It's been therapeutic. It has been therapeutic. Has it, though, been therapeutic?

Well, I think it's been therapeutic in that it was amazing how quickly these grievances were written down on paper. They came out very quickly. They did. We had about 50 of them in the half hour that we spent on this sheet. There was a good period, like a half hour period of silence after this was first you know suggested where everybody's just sitting around a furious that's all you could hear it's like the old another one as we speak oh gosh mckenzie why are they always about me they're not always about you though i'm holding you to a higher standard

on this my last four have been about you because they've been language related you are supposed to be like you know a guardian of the english language as an editor what did i just do consistent that's not just like one punctuality consistently you say tweeted instead of quote which is the popular or proper conjugation you have filed an excessive amount of grievances against her in the last few minutes. Okay. In all fairness. Why don't you take a wild guess at who is going to be the next subject of my grievances? I believe I will be grievance number 70. Yes.

Well, I will say that one of my or several of my grievances or no, several of the grievances Isaiah has with my word choice, diction, grammar, etc. are valid and they're me typing fast in Slack or I mispronounced a word, which I'm always nervous to say going forward. The others are Isaiah's interpretations of the English language. Like dabbed should not be dope. That's not how it should be. People don't, it's not like hey isaiah dope you know isaiah dabbed first of all and you say tweeted colloquially in the english language that's what you say and that's you don't say quote you say quote isaiah nobody else says quote nobody i don't want to take up all the air time debating an obvious fact. Oh, my gosh.

Bradley. I do have one. Yes. I have not added this to the document yet. Oh, man. This is fresh. You know, in the course of human history, there are multiple conflicts that are endless. You know, Israel-Palestine, that's an endless fight. Cats versus dogs.

Kim Kardashian versus marriage. marriage oh my gosh but one of the the most under discussed is the battle over the thermostat and i every time i walk into mac's office it is like i just stepped into hell it is so hot for more than one reason no because you have a heater blasting now luckily that solves some of the issue but before you got a space heater we were constantly fighting back and forth over no i have never touched the space heater or not excuse me the thermostat no i don't i never touched the space heater or not. Excuse me. The thermostat. No, I don't. I never touched it. I just wore a blanket. Some phantom has kept, you know, adjusting the thermostat to something where. Well, I think we know who the phantom was.

It was another female in the office, but it was not me. Well, anyway. I don't know how it works. It is incredibly annoying to just be sitting and typing and and then all of a sudden you feel yourself sweating. Yes. Brett, we have small fans in our desks. Do you have your fan? We bought you fans.

I didn't get a fan. That's why they— Well, Brett, you requested them. I didn't get a fan. This is hate speech. Well, when our new HR guy, when he comes aboard, that can be your first request for him is that you have a small fan. If we were to just keep the thermostat at a decent level, it doesn't even have to be.

Okay. Here's the thing. It is y'all boys who are changing the thermostat. I have never, I'm not kidding you. I haven't touched it either. So it must be. Well,

then I will amend it and exempt you from the thermostat side, but not from the space heater. Well, that's my private space. Hellfire office side. That's my private space. So if you want to not meet, if you don't need anything from me, then don't come in. And if you need something, you need to resign yourself to the fact that you are entering my space. I thought Michelle was responsible for the thermostat.

Yeah. Maybe she is. Michelle and Sarah, I believe, touched it more often than I did. Well, still. Regardless, this is getting, okay okay let's continue what else i keep trying to yield the microphone to daniel but i don't think he has any grievances do you not daniel we must be good wow that's a vague gesture that we got from daniel his hands are behind his head he's leaning back in a lawn chair it's on the lawn chair it's an office chair yeah i'm describing it oh here it goes wow that was slothful so i have one grievance that i'd like to air on the air

all right we're ready please please start sooner rather than later before this podcast began we were sitting around in this at this what our, quote, fun topic should be. Oh, my gosh. And I had a brilliant idea. Brilliant. Narrator. It was not brilliant. I said, have you guys ever played putt-putt in the rain?

And I suggested we should talk about the most fun things that we've done in the rain because I played putt- putt in the rain and i suggested we should we should talk about the most fun things that we've done in the rain because i played puppet in the rain last night so that'd be your answer putt putt yeah okay in the rain i mean it was fun i don't know if i'd i'd have to go back and think but since my request for that fun topic was quickly shot down as everybody mocked the weather specifically hayden and, just saying that the weather is a boring topic. It's only boring if you make it boring. The weather in Texas this year has been very exciting. That's true. I don't know about, maybe compared to other weathers. Compared to

Texas weather in the previous years that I've lived here, the previous years that I've heard people talk about the Texas weather in the previous years that I've lived here, the previous years that I've heard people talk about the Texas weather, it is very unusual to have this much rain in Texas. We had the whole freeze at the beginning of the year. That was weird. So it's been weird. I'm sorry. Personally, I side against that suggestion as a fun topic. Daniel, you're on an island all by yourself, and nobody here has any remorse whatsoever of their position. I know, and so

I filed a grievance. That was my grievance. And I just talked about the topic I wanted to do. That's your retribution. I will say that to piggyback off of what Isaiah said about dabbing, Isaiah sneezed. One of my grievances is this. Isaiah sneezed and to cover his mouth, he dabbed.

Like without even, he was just like a choop and the dab went up he was just like a chew and the dab it's like a reflex it was like a reflex is this normal does this happen in the office all day every day and he does this all the time are you seriously gonna impugn me like this on the podcast you said that i should say dope so yes we're going to talk i have never a dope literally every time you sneeze okay lie after lie and maybe spout it into these microphones oh my gosh i would never i would never do that lie just like you weren't the one responsible for the disc of bacteria in the coffee pot who knows who's responsible for that? Everyone, Isaiah. Everyone knows. Well, Winston has a grievance he wants to air,

and it will be against outside because allergies are driving him up the wall. Brad, that's not even that. Whoa. So you're talking about a weather-related thing? Weather, yeah. Cool, thank you. Oh, my gosh. There's that.

He's vindicated. Oh, interesting. Thank you, Winston. Don't worry about the allergies. You're a sunk. There is a grievance I really want to air because it is the one that offends me most. Gosh, you looked right at me. I don't have a way to say it on a podcast that I think would be acceptable.

And so, therefore, I will just hint at this and say Brad really sucks. And you know what else? A light touch. I will just hint at this and say, Brad really sucks. And, um, you know what else? I like touch. I just thought I'd be subtle. It is a vacuum. I don't want to hear those jokes anymore.

Dude, that's definitely on that spreadsheet somewhere. It is Daniel's constant predictable puns. Okay. Well, any, any last grievances to air boys before I cut you off? This has been much calmer than our segment of this last week.

Yeah. I'm surprised you were paying attention. You added a lot of things you were doing. That's not a slight. It's not a slight at all. I'm just saying I'm proud of you for your skilled multitasking. Okay. Well, gentlemen, thank for uh all your unbelievably insightful

reporting thank you wow daniel wow this is the weirdest fun topic segment of ever because we're being nice to each other anyway okay folks thanks for listening we will catch you next week thank you all so much for listening. We will catch for exclusively by readers like you, so it's important we all do our part to support the Texan by subscribing and telling your friends about us. God bless you, and God bless Texas. you