The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - July 29, 2022

Episode Date: July 29, 2022

This week on The Texan's "Weekly Roundup," the team discusses the countdown to Texas’ abortion trigger ban, fundraising data from Greg Abbott and Beto O’ Rourke in the governor’s race, Parker County Commissioners Court declaring an invasion, the Fifth Circuit upholding Texas’ ban on mask mandates, Abbott promoting the federal CHIPS Act, a border agent sentenced for smuggling cocaine, how lagging development in petroleum refineries contributes to high gas prices, the amount of cash neighboring states and tribes pull in with legal gambling, Abbott renewing a disaster drought declaration, the support for school choice within a Texas House committee, lieutenant governor candidate Mike Collier’s strong words against school choice, and a $300 million subsidy proposal from the City of Austin. Plus — we say goodbye to and celebrate one of our reporters and his last week with our team before he leaves to pursue a PhD.  As always, if you have questions for our team, DM us on Twitter or email us at [e-mail] — we’d love to answer your questions on a future podcast. 

Happy Friday, folks. Senior Editor Mackenzie Taylor here on the Texans Weekly Roundup Podcast. This week, the team discusses the countdown to Texas's abortion trigger ban. Fundraising data from Greg Abbott and Beto O'Rourke in the governor's race. Parker County Commissioner's Court declaring an invasion. The Fifth Circuit upholding Texas's ban on mask mandates. Abbott promoting the Federal Chips Act. A border agent sentenced for smuggling cocaine. How lagging development in petroleum refineries contributes to high gas prices.

The amount of cash neighboring states and tribes pull in with legal gambling. Abbott renewing a disaster drought declaration. The support for school choice within a Texas House committee. Lieutenant Governor candidate Mike Collier's strong words against school choice. And a $300 million subsidy proposal from the city of Austin. Plus, we say goodbye to and celebrate one of our reporters in his last week with our team before he leaves to pursue a PhD. As always, if you have questions for our team, DM us on Twitter or email us at editor at the texan.news. We'd love to answer your questions on a future podcast.

Thanks for listening and enjoy this episode. Howdy folks, Mackenzie Taylor here with the whole team. We got Hayden, we got Brad, we got Isaiah, we got Rob, all here in the office this week. Brad, welcome back. I am back from my journey. 30 hours in the car. You rode trips. It actually was a heck of a journey.

I am sick of sitting in the car. Still? A week later? Brad ran to work today. Or like four days later? Yeah, it took me like four hours. You ran to work today, like I said.

Forrest gumped it. Yep, I did. And just the short, really though, the short 20-minute drive into the office was torturous. It was terrible. Are you actually being serious? You're being totally facetious. I'm exaggerating a little bit. But are you still tired?

I am sick of sitting in the car. Still? That's for sure. Okay. So, yes. That makes sense. Each time you go back to Ohio, for the most part, you do drive. I was only in

ohio for like two days so yes i just qualify you going back to the midwest as ohio because that's where you kind of start and end usually it's where your family is true the majority of your family yes the finleyites the finleyites yeah the bachelor party in kentucky was just a lot. Yeah. That's it. I was too old for all those guys. And I'm only 27. Brad, you're too old for most people. This is true. You're too old for yourself.

Yeah. That's true. Yes. But I hear you do have some, uh, something to add from our little bit of a, uh, I don't know,

a diatribe last week about our business model. So on my 14 hour drive on saturday back to texas i had a lot of listening to do and so i decided why not listen to the podcast and so i heard myself being impugned and and uh briefly praised so i appreciate that yep but i wanted to have my take on the texan uh our model thing um we are we recognize what the news we provide is it's a product to the consumer it is not we are not doing you a civic duty by writing stuff and having you read it and give us money that is flatly absurd and i've seen many many outlets market their stuff like that and i just want to throw my laptop through the window when I see it.

Remember how we talked last week, Isaiah, about Brad and not flying off the hand? What did we say? He never... Oh, gosh, I'm forgetting. We claimed that he, in his reporting, does not gripe. Was that what it was? Yeah. The contradiction was that... Professionally, I don't gripe. But personally, I do. Personally, you're on the gripe was that what it was yeah the contradiction was that um professionally i don't

gripe personally i do personally i just wanted to note that in the first three minutes of this podcast he has begun to gripe to be fair um brad only figuratively threatened to throw his laptop one person at this workplace has literally thrown his laptop before. And it was Daniel in this very room with the tea on his laptop. You remember that? Oh, my gosh. You're right. He tossed it over his shoulder like socks in the laundry. That's right.

You might have forgotten about him because you said, you know, the whole entire full team is here. The beginning of this podcast. The reporting team. Let me edit myself. I'm glad Daniel is not going to be listening to this one. the reporting team yeah let me be glad daniel's not gonna be listening to this one the reporting team anyways so yes i just wanted to add my input on that we are not doing you as we're not you are not completing your civic quote civic duty by subscribing to us you are doing that because you find our product worthwhile and we appreciate that um

but yes it is very it's quite a contrast i think in the way we view our stuff versus the way other outlets view theirs i think a lot of people subscribe to us specifically because they want to support an alternative as well right as we are a growing company we've been around for a few years now. It really is a way for us or for folks to show that they do appreciate an alternative to a lot of what's being peddled out there by mainstream media. But that plays into why we chose the subscription model. A hundred percent. Because this is a product and you get what you pay for. We appreciate like capitalistic competition in that way right of like hold us accountable if we aren't providing you a service the whole model is competition yes

and you can't do that if you are wagging your finger at your prospective consumers saying you should you should give us money because it's your duty and like that's just like the job is on us right 100 so there's my there's my take well bradley thank you for doing that folks we're going to jump into the news now isaiah we're going to start with you some more big news came out this week on your abortion beads what's happening so y'all remember shirley uh when the supreme court issued its opinion in dobbs v jackson recently the court issued its judgment in that case, which is distinct from the opinion. That gap in time, which has lasted about a month, I want to say almost a

month to the day, that is so, there's more deliberation that goes on in that point. But the judgment is where the court actually says that they will, you know, in this case, reverse and remand. In this case, you know, this came out of Mississippi. And so the appellate court was the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, same as for Texas, and the Fifth Circuit cited against the state of Mississippi on that law. And so the judgment in this case was the Supreme Court saying, but telling the Fifth Circuit to not do that, to remand the case, you know, in layman's terms. Got it. Why is it significant?

Well, there are a number of states around the country that passed what are colloquially called trigger laws. And a lot of those went into effect upon the issuance of the opinion. The Texas trigger law called the Human Life Protection Act was passed last year. So it's brand new and it takes effect, or 30 days after the issuance of the judgment in the case. So, this was actually, it took me a little while to learn this, I'll just confess that personally, even though I had covered the trigger law during the legislature and everything, it wasn't until months afterward that I realized the distinction in the text with that one word between judgment and opinion in the text of the Human Life Protection Act. So it's an important one.

But 30 days from July 26 is when that new law will kick in. Got it. So how is this different from the current abortion ban? You've talked about there being kind of two in place. Walk us through what's different with this new one being effective. Yeah. So the one that's in place right now is the old state law that just never got repealed. It was the one that was held unconstitutional in Roe v. Wade.

And now that Roe v. Wade is gone, um, it's constitutionality and its legal effect are back in force. So it just simply makes abortion a prosecutable crime punishable by two to five years in jail or 10 years if it's done without the woman's consent. That's kind of an exceptional circumstance. So I've been saying just two to five to cover voluntary elective abortions. Similarly, the Human Life Protection Act also bans elective abortions. It has a slightly broader exception. Both of these bans allow procedures meant to save the mother's life and to evacuate miscarriages because they only apply to the termination of fetal life. And so evacuating a miscarriage has always been legal. That's legal everywhere. And similarly, they both allow procedures to remove an ectopic

pregnancy or other life-threatening condition. However, the Human Life Protection Act also allows procedures meant to save the mother from death and substantial impairment of a major bodily function. So it's slim, but it is another exception that was not there before. So there is that. Additionally, it makes it a state jail felony. So that can be up to life in prison, I believe, first degree felony for a voluntary elective abortion. Both bans do not impose any kind of penalty or punishment on the mother herself. It's only on whoever performed or, in the case of the Human Life Protection Act, attempted the abortion. It's also a felony to attempt it, though it's a second degree, if it was not, you know, successfully

carried through under the new law. And the biggest difference is the enforcement. The Human Life Protection Act also allows local prosecutorial enforcement, the same as any other crime, you know, it goes through your DA. But anticipating the reluctance of more liberal DAs in urban places in Texas to enforce abortion or prosecute abortion crimes, Human Life Protection Act also charges the Attorney General with seeking civil penalties against violators of the law of at least $100,000. So it has that statewide enforcement as well. And additionally, if the abortion is performed by a medical professional, they'll lose their license. Got it. Well, Isaiah, at the risk of getting

sappy right off the bat, we'll save it primarily for the end of the podcast. But folks, this is Isaiah's last podcast with us before he goes off to go back to school. And it's exciting. We'll have him talk a little bit about that later on. But I did want folks to know that right off the bat and be able to stick around to the end as we kind of say farewell to our guy. So, Isaiah, thank you for your coverage. We appreciate you so much. Brad, you dove into the numbers of the governor candidate's finance reports and found some very interesting trends.

Talk to us. So as we talked about before, both candidates raised a massive amount of money and I went through and consolidated their reports by day and how much they brought in each day. Some interesting trends top line include that both candidates received a fundraising bump on the last day of the period, which not surprising that usually happens because they barrage their donor lists with appeals to try to bolster their their report as much as possible but they also received a boost the fall in the days following scotus's ruling overturning roe v wade and that happened on both sides both democrat and republican greg abbott and beto o'rourke so that was interesting another interesting one waso O'Rourke. So that was interesting. Another interesting one was O'Rourke received a boost

shortly after the Uvalde shooting, bringing in nearly $4 million roughly in the six days after the shooting. And after looking at emails that were sent out from the campaign, it came after a concerted effort by the campaign appealing to donors with messaging hitting Abbott about the shooting.

Now, to be fair, that started a couple days after the Uvalde shooting. The O'Rourke campaign first sent out a letter of condolence and then sent out a letter asking folks to contribute to the Uvalde GoFundMe relief fund. So there was a slight break, but it's pretty clear. You can see the chart in the article. There was a very, very large bump for O'Rourke after the Uvalde shooting. Yeah. So you talked to us about in-state versus out-of-state. Yeah.

So last week I broke down how much they brought in from in-state versus out-of-state over 59 percent of aurorix money uh came from outside the state of texas so not just a slim majority but a substantial majority um while abbott's abbott only brought in 14 of his total money from out of state. And some, I, I have the chart in here as well in the article, but the lion share of a Rick's funds raised after the Evaldi shooting that I just talked about came from outside of Texas. There was from inside Texas. There was not much change at all.

There was very little compared to what he'd been bringing in the days surrounding that. But there's a massive jump from out of state that you can see on the chart that i put up there yeah so and it is worth noting as well he has run for president he's been on the national stage he's a prolific fundraiser absolutely and so but he does have a national audience as he's run a national campaign previously um so you also listed each candidate's top five donations from this report in the back mic. Can you run through those very quickly? Yeah, so Abbott's were in order.

$500,000 from Edward Rosicki, who is an executive in the city of Industry, California. $500,000 from James Pitcock, a construction executive from houston 450 000 from kenny trout a dallas investment fund manager 300 000 from william harris another developer of this one from huntsville texas and then 300 000 from stewartedman, an executive at an investment company in Houston. Compare that to O'Rourke's, and his number one contribution was a million dollars from George Soros. Most people probably know who that is, but he's the owner and operator of Soros Fund Management,

a frequent progressive donor. A million dollars from, two million dollars between the two between this couple tench and simone cox uh tench is a former venture capitalist um and simone is ceo former ceo of uh frankly i don't know what they do but blanc and otis uh a company in california and she also is the co-founder of calMatters, which is still operating, a California nonprofit news organization. They both live in Westlake Hills, but I found that they moved to Texas last year.

So they're recent transplants. Then the next two on his list are two packs. One is half a million dollars from our Texas pack run by Alan Metney, the guy who founded the ifly indoor skydiving business um the he is from texas but the pack is based in greenwood colorado so that's odd he must live there now um but that's just something that stuck out and then his final one was three hundred thousand dollars from the American Federation of Teachers PAC based in Washington, D.C. Got it. Well, Bradley, thank you for that breakdown.

Hayden, local officials in North Texas recently took action on illegal immigration. What is the nature of the disaster declaration issued in Parker County this week? Well, you're exactly right about that. It was action on illegal immigration. But the limited scope of this proclamation is the public health aspect of it, and particularly as it relates to drug trafficking. What Parker County did is their commissioner's court unanimously passed a proclamation of a local state of disaster. So they invoked the portions of state code that allow the county to control ingress and egress from a disaster area, and which authorizes spending to address an emergency. We are familiar with this from the

COVID-19 pandemic, from floods that have happened, tornadoes, anything that is an emergency or disaster, these are the parts of state law that are put into place to control a disaster area. And that's what Parker County did in this instance on Monday, unanimously by its commissioner's court. But there's a difference between what Parker County is asking for and what Governor Abbott declared recently when he declared illegal immigration to be an invasion. Governor Abbott directed state police and guardsmen to take illegal immigrants to a port of entry, whereas what Parker County is calling on the governor to do is prevent illegal immigrants from entering in the first place or remove them if they do make it across

the southern border. So they're just requesting basically the conservative criticism that has been levied to the governor, right? Is that one further step that folks criticize the governor for not taking? Right. They are wanting more assertive action. And Governor Abbott has explained why he does not want to do that, because he believes that state police or local sheriff's deputies could be prosecuted by the federal government if they do that. And at the end of the day, someone may believe fervently that the state should do its own deportations, but ultimately someone is going to have to risk going to federal prison to prove that point if that is really the position that needs to be taken.

And the state and federal constitutions have provisions concerning invasion. And that's U.S. government has abandoned Texas and Abbott should use the provision in the Texas Constitution to activate the militia and repel invasion. So Parker County is way up in North Texas. What reasoning did the commissioner's court outline for the disaster order? The fentanyl overdoses in Texas have skyrocketed and the sheriff in Parker County pointed to that fact when he presented his evidence to the commissioner's court. There are drug overdose problems all across this country. And it's been said before that every county is a border county.

And that is usually a reference to drug overdose deaths. Fentanyl is a relatively new problem in Texas. It came to the forefront about a year ago when the director of DPS called attention to the spike in fentanyl overdose deaths in Texas because Texas used to be traditionally a travel-through state when it came to this synthetic opioid. But now there were 58,000 fentanyl overdose deaths in the United States in 2020 and 71,000 overdose deaths in 2021. So a sharp increase that has affected North Texas especially. In addition, illegal immigration hit an all-time high in May. There were 240,000 encounters reported. There was a slight drop from May to June. There were 207,000 encounters in June and commissioner cited a figure of an 800,000

estimated gotaways. That figure is probably murky. There are probably varying estimates, but that's the number they used. And that is the number they're focusing on because while CBP is making arrests, the trouble that Parker County and the state has is the number of people that are getting away and the lack of the deterrent effect that the federal government is not putting forward got it well uh hayden thank you so much for covering that for us isaiah we're going to come to you we just got a major development and kind of a throwback here in a lawsuit against governor abbott's ban on school mask mandates

the absolute yes hottest of the hot issues in the news right now to quote you directly what was the court decision yes um you remember mask mandates litigation is still ongoing and uh there was a pretty final decision regarding one case between a group called disability rights texas that was suing on behalf of several disabled children at higher risk of harm from COVID against the state of Texas. And the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the state, which is to say, sided with Governor Abbott's ban on mask mandates in a decision yesterday and remanded it back to district court. Or not yesterday, earlier this week. Earlier this week. Yeah.

Exactly. This is podcast recording magic remind us how this case began in the first place um well to throw throwback to really throw back farther in a farther throw governor abbott originally required masks if y'all remember that um and there was a threatened penalty of fines that came with that executive order. He eventually did ban mask mandates, but that initially only applied to local May, when Abbott issued his executive order prohibiting school districts from requiring masks. He consolidated it with his executive order GA-38, which combined a lot of his executive orders around that time. And so that's the one that's cited in the case and another litigation involving similar COVID executive orders. But the group I mentioned, Disability Rights Texas, sued on behalf of the children, the plaintiffs in the case, these disabled children, claiming that because they were at higher it. And they mentioned, a lot of this comes down to Article 3, right? And for those of y'all don't remember, in the Constitution, that requires

plaintiffs in any case to have a real and particular injury to them that would be redressable by a favorable decision. And since they're suing the state, that favorable decision would involve upholding an injunction against Ken Paxton, who was really the only state official enforcing Abbott's ban on mask mandates. When this was happening, if you remember, schools, you know, Abbott put out this order, schools would keep their mask mandates anyway, and Ken Paxton would sue them about it. He didn't sue any charter schools about this, but that's a whole other story. But one thing that the court pointed out is that despite Paxton's constant litigation against schools with mask mandates, he wasn't everywhere

at once. And there are plenty of schools, including several in this case, that kept their mask mandates despite Paxton's litigation and scary letters and everything so a favorable decision for those plaintiffs wouldn't really change anything about that more interesting and less legalese uh a really more digestible part of the opinion is the fact that the judges observe that there are schools in this case at the time of trial, some had mask requirements, some didn't. They all had different COVID mitigation measures that they had in place, and they had vastly different infection rates. So the two mask optional schools had positivity rates of 1.9 and 3%, respectively. And then the five schools that required masks had positivity rates that were higher, lower, and in between those rates compared to mask optional schools.

So to sum that all up, at least within the schools in this case, mask mandates did not really have a noticeable effect on positivity rates that could be correlated. And that was a big part of the plaintiff's argument, was that if you don't have a mask mandate, that puts these students at higher risk of COVID harm. There's other legalese in there that's explained more in depth in the article, but the general gist is that there was not a clear injury that plaintiffs would suffer due to a lack of mask mandates. And even if there were, that they could demonstrate a decision upholding an injunction against Paxton wouldn't change anything about that since even at the time schools were not listening to ga 38 and now none of the schools have mass mandates because a lot of science and study has come out regarding the efficacy of mask mandates in schools and the actual risk of harm of coveted children based on federal and state data it's been shown to be very low. So, but there's more of that in the article. Yeah, definitely go to the texan.news to read all about

it. Isaiah, we're going to stick with you here. Governor Abbott recently came out in favor of the CHIPS Plus Act. Tell us about it. So this is, this would follow legislation that Congress passed in 2020 called the CHIPS Act. They're sticking with that title in 2022. The idea is to, well, that stands for Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors for America. So the CHIPS Act of 2022. And it's a subsidy bill. It has divided DC Republicans. It's part of this thousand page appropriations bill that is linked in the article. But it would devote a little over $50 billion to develop onshore domestic manufacturing of semiconductors.

And the general argument for this bill has been a national security argument, that a lot of these semiconductors are made in China, and there's really not a lot of production in America. And so depending on China for this technology, that's crucial from everything like from smartphones to fighter jets, as Cornyn argued, that makes this a worthwhile investment. So at the time we wrote this article, we did not have the Senate votes that we now have just today as we're recording. They just voted on it yesterday. Cornyn and Cruz put out statements today. Cornyn voted for it, and he's been pretty central in introducing and supporting it in the Senate. Cruz voted against it, calling it corporate welfare, the same thing that we see all the time in Congress.

Oh, totally. Regarding spending bills on particular industries that Congress likes or doesn't like, depending on the day. Oh, totally. a little while ago, announced plans to build semiconductor manufacturing plants in Taylor and Austin, just in Williamson County. And Samsung also recently made a decision that Abbott implied was predicated on passage of the CHIPS Act to potentially expand those facilities to include 11 new plants. And the way Abbott phrased it was that the passage of the CHIPS Act is, in his words, a major factor for this potential investment by Samsung. So Abbott's general argument is that if you pass this bill, then Samsung will bring more jobs to Texas. Got it. Isaiah, thank you for covering that for us. Rob, we're going to come to you. Texas has been experiencing some major drought conditions.

What did Abbott say in his disaster declaration? So on July 8th, Abbott issued a disaster drought declaration for 164 counties claiming that the conditions were a threat to people and property. It was a threat to people's lives and that it could spark wildfires due to how dry it is. As of July 22nd, when the disaster declaration was renewed, that number rose to 189 counties. And Texas only has 254 counties. So that's nearly three fourths of the state that are currently under this disaster drought declaration. What does that mean for landowners? So the Texas Farm Bureau said that landowners will not be penalized for managing their agricultural lands. Farmers can maintain agricultural valuation until their normal

production can resume. Basically, what this means is, let's see, Billy Howe, the director, the Associate of Government Affairs for the Texas Farm Bureau said that the Texas Farm, the Texas tax code does not require ranchers and farmers to meet the degree of intensity to maintain agricultural valuation. And basically, what that means is, given the drought, they don't have to put the same exact level of work into their land in order to maintain their land's value. So talk to us about how big this problem is and how it's connected to the wildfires. Well, so the Texas A&M Forest Service said that 99% of the state is currently experiencing a drought. And that's a lot of Texas to be in drought right now.

When the drought disaster was first declared on July 8th, again, uh, the Texas A&M Forest Service said that 195 counties were under a burn ban, which is the highest since November, 2011. Uh, when the drought happened, then the barren band number is currently risen to 224, which is nearly 90% of all the land in Texas. Um, and in March Abbott issued a wildfire disaster declaration for 11 counties. Every month since March, that declaration has been renewed, and it's also been amended to now include 73 counties. There are nine wildfires active in Texas right now, three in Caldwell County, two in Williamson County, and one each in Clay, Hood, Somerville, and Uvalde counties.

Wow. Yeah, we're hearing a lot about that around the Austin area. Brad, do you have something to add? Yeah, so kind of a property tax tie-in to this. The loophole that I wrote on quite a bit during last session and that was kind of triggered by the coronavirus pandemic disaster declarations themselves, that would not apply here because it's specifically in code droughts are exempted from applying to that physical disaster requirement. So is that the same loophole where there was a ton of discussion about COVID and what constitutes a disaster? Yeah. So that was what.

Or an emergency. Yes. But in SB2, I believe it was, there was a loophole to allow counties in which a disaster was declared that same year to be able to implement a property tax increase above the new 3.5% limit, up to 8%. And a lot of cities and counties used that after the coronavirus declaration. And that caused a massive fight in the legislature to reform that and apply it only to physical disasters but throughout this whole thing drought has always been part of that exempted from that no it doesn't apply sorry yes that's specifically written out um so just to add that bit of context in there it will not this would not trigger that loophole gothole even after it was reformed by the legislature.

Well, thank you, Brad. And thank you, Rob. Appreciate it, gentlemen. Hayden, we're coming back to you. Other states have reported tax revenue gained from legal casinos in their states. So talk to us about how much Texas is losing to out-of-state casinos. Some states have reported tax revenue from their legal casino and sports betting markets recently. Arkansas reported $83.2 million over the past year from

its sports betting market and casinos, a handful of casinos there, and Pine Bluff and Hot Springs. But what I want to highlight is an estimate by dr clyde barrow who is a professor at the university of texas rio grande valley who yeah who um states that five billion annually is spent by texans in neighboring states and in las vegas casinos. And of course, we do not have any, or the operations that we have here are like casinos, but they are owned by Native American tribes and they are not full-fledged casinos with house banked card games and traditional slot machines. New Mexico reported 125 million million from its casinos, and there were estimates from the American Gaming Association that commercial casinos in Louisiana

had a $1.38 billion annual tax impact. And there's a difference between a commercial casino and a tribal casino. Commercial casinos are run by corporations. They put up an investment and they're licensed by the state's gaming control board or gaming commission to do business in that state. Louisiana has only a handful of tribal casinos. Overwhelmingly, Louisiana is commercial casinos. On the other side, or on the other hand, Oklahoma has over 100 tribal casinos, and I think they have two commercial casinos. So in Oklahoma, it's overwhelmingly Native American tribes owning and operating casinos. So it is unclear necessarily the dollar amount that Texas is losing from a tax standpoint with its prohibition on gambling. But the estimate that the state works with is $5 billion annually that Texans spend out of state.

And I actually talked to Dr. Barrow on the phone yesterday. And one of the things that we talked about is the research is old on this. So it would be useful for there to be more developed numbers and more up-to-date research on how much Texans are spending and what the tax impact could be, for instance, to local governments if it was legal and taxed like it is in other states. Now, Texas has a constitutional ban on casinos and other types of gambling. This has become one of your beats because of expensive efforts being made here in Texas. What are those efforts to bring casinos to the Lone Star State? Texas Sands PAC, which is funded by Dr. Miriam Adelson's Las Vegas Sands Corporation,

has spent more than a million dollars on candidates' campaigns, both Republicans and Democrats, to prime them for being open to the possibility of legalizing casinos. And when I say that we have, I refer to what we have in Texas as the casino ban. The casino ban is not one state law that says you cannot have casinos, but there is a constitutional provision that virtually prohibits gambling except for our 1300 licensed charitable bingo operations and raffles at church socials, things like that are allowed in the state constitution. And in order for the effort, the lobbying effort to be successful, they would have to overcome opponents such as the 138 tribal casinos in Oklahoma. Those Native American tribes would likely fight that tooth and nail. And one of the things that Dr. Barrow reminded me of yesterday is they also might, instead of opposing it, they might want in on the action and they might want a piece of the pie. The Kickapoo traditional tribe in South Texas would be damaged if there was a new casino open, for instance, in the San Antonio area or in other places in South Texas. And they

opposed efforts in the last session to expand the casino operations in Texas. They would want somehow to be included in that legislation. And even if it was legalized, it would not be a free for all. They would still have to go through a process and be licensed, and there would likely be a cap on the number of casinos. So we'll have to see what happens next session. If they are successful, we could have casinos in Dallas or Austin or Houston by 2024. Very good. Hayden.

Thank you, Bradley. One of the least discussed aspects of the ongoing energy crisis is the bottleneck at America's petroleum refineries. You wrote a piece on that. Tell us about it. Yeah. So America hasn't,

well, I'll preface it by saying before i dove into this i was totally unaware of this crazy fact but america hasn't built a new major refinery since 1976 and some of the nation's fleet is over a century old refineries take crude oil refine refine them into various different products, including gasoline, diesel, various plastics, things like that. So an incredibly important step along the fossil fuel supply chain in this and um last month what is this july in may or june um the uh the chevron ceo mike worth said that my personal view is there will never be another refinery built in the u.s and that's pretty stark prognostication there um that would be a problem for America's oil and gas industry and what we pay at the pump.

And so after looking into it more, talking with people, I found that a lot of this stems from federal regulations or the prospect of federal policy and regulations down the road. Back in June, President Joe Biden criticized America's refineries, and we saw gas prices really jump. He criticized them for pulling in record profits. Now, the reason they were pulling in record profits is because the price of oil is so high that they're then having to charge a lot to make up for what they're paying to get the product. And it's not a position they like to be in.

But every one of them that I spoke to pointed to these federal regulations that are kind of causing issues with expanding the ability, the refining capacity in the country. Yeah. And folks, this is a great piece to go and read. There's a lot of great information and we've received a lot of awesome feedback from readers. Just appreciative that you brought attention to this, Brad. So thank you so much. Hayden, real fast, we're going to come to you.

Tell us about a border agent convicted of aiding drug smuggling very spicy it's spicy but this story shockingly does not involve onions dang it that's dang it yeah we were talking before about max affinity for the onion story i loved it i added it to the headline and the social club i wanted everyone to know about the onion smuggler it was just the best. The onion emoji was used a lot in Slack last week. We'll put it that way. But a former Border Patrol agent pleaded guilty to accepting a $15,000 bribe to help Mexican

drug traffickers sneak cocaine across the U.S. border at the checkpoint in Laredo. He is scheduled to be sentenced to up to 120 months in prison which 120 months in prison sounds a lot like 10 years um just mathematically i don't know why federal prison sentences are in months i will never understand measuring a toddler's age i know exactly the only two things that you measure in months are a toddler's age or federal prison sentences um he is facing up to 10 years and another three years of supervised release after that. And he,

because he helped drug traffickers move 40 kilos of cocaine across, pardon me, the far port of entry, not the Laredo port of entry, but he remains free on bond until his sentencing in October. And CBP said there was a 62% increase nationwide in cocaine seizures from May to June. And border guards have taken 50,000 pounds of cocaine so far this fiscal year. Wow. That's no small number. Thank you so much, Hayden. Isaiah, we're coming

back to you. The House Public Education Committee has been having some hearings and the topics they're choosing to discuss are forecasting interesting possibilities in the upcoming legislature. Tell us about the last committee hearing they held this week. Yeah, what's really interesting are the topics that they chose and the witnesses that they invited. So in general, these hearings can have invited testifiers and citizen testifiers where anybody can come in and speak for two or three minutes. And those can be illuminating as well. But what I really looked at here is the fact that they chose as their topics

parental rights and education, which they titled parental empowerment, and the Texas curriculum, both topics that have garnered a lot of heightened political attention in recent months. And among the witnesses that they chose to speak on the parental empowerment topic were a couple of school choice advocates, Corey DeAngelis of the American Federation for Children and Rod Page of Liberty for the Kids, another group. Got it. What role do the committee chairmen specifically have in the legislative process? Why are they important? Yeah, the reason why this is important is that committee chairmen really have a lot of power in deciding which bills get passed.

This can be a big bottleneck for bills. Would you call it clout or sway or hoopla? Yes, especially the first two. I was looking for a third word to add on a little notes here and hoopla made me laugh it's not doesn't really fit in any event um yeah so the chairman of the house public education committee is harold dutton democrat and the i i reached him but we could not uh get our schedules aligned for a phone interview. So I couldn't get a comment from him on the invitation process for how they choose testifiers. But what is clear is that committee

leadership is amenable to school choice, at least in some form. And that's kind of a big milestone for the topic. Something else I'll admit I could have added to this article that might have been left out is that this isn't the first time we've heard school choice advocates speak to the committee. Just the first time I've noted it in an article personally and made that the center of it, because it is important to note that the pieces are kind of falling into place for some form of this legislative idea to get passed in 2023, right? Because we've got on the Senate, Dan Patrick has supported this for a long time. So really no question there.

The Senate has passed, according to his statement, at least two forms of school choice legislation during his tenure as lieutenant governor. Then on the gubernatorial side governor abbott has really committed an unprecedented amount of support to school choice in some form on the campaign trail so um the form is the big question right that's the big question now brad has noted in a back mic i believe it was that this rhetoric conflicts a little bit with his endorsements on this topic. You know, like Ted Cruz, for example, makes school choice a big deal breaker.

The biggest issue for him. Yeah, in deciding which candidates to endorse for state house or other offices. And Abbott endorsed eight candidates for state house, and there's a general pattern of them opposing school choice. Glenn Rogers comes to mind and others. But individually, he's been supporting it pretty openly. And now, in this case, the House, you know, is where a lot of legislation gets gummed up. It's bigger, a lot more factors to consider compared to the Senate. But it seems based on the topics and the witnesses that the Public

Education Committee is considering, that that committee leadership is amenable to school choice. So that's another, what could have been a hurdle for this idea that seems to have been lowered. Oh, absolutely. And the Public Education Committee has historically not been a body within the legislature that's very amenable to school choice. Very interesting to watch these hearings happen in the interim. We'll see how it ends up happening during session. Let's stick on that topic. Rob, the lieutenant governor had some or a candidate had some very harsh words for school choice in these proposals.

What did the candidate say and where did he say it? So at the Texas Democratic Convention on July 15th, Lieutenant Governor, Lieutenant Gubernatorial, I love that word, Gubernatorial candidate for the Democratic Party, Mike Collier, gave a speech. Am I allowed to say on here what phrase he said at the start of the speech? Yes, that word would be fine. He said, I'm going to, I said, I'm Mark Collier. I believe he said, I'm Mike Collier and I'm going to kick Dan Patrick's ass. That was what he said. He then talked about various issues, including the idea that Dan Patrick was corrupt on a variety of issues and said school choice vouchers. He said vouchers are for vultures. Strong words. What did the school choice activists think of that statement. So in a statement to the Texan, Corey DeAngelis, National Director of Research at the school choice advocate group American Federation for Children, condemned Collier's words. He said the vultures are the ones fighting to trap kids in failing government schools and also said parents are the new special interest group in town and that politicians better start paying attention to what they want.

Wow. Very, very spicy. We'll continue to watch that topic as we get closer to the legislative session and closer to November. Bradley, Austin is primed for another issue-focused fight at the ballot box this year. What's coming on the pike? So the Austin City Council will vote today, Thursday, on a proposal to place a $300 million bond on the ballot in November

to pay for various housing subsidies. I list them all out. There's a lot of different purposes in the article. The bond would increase property taxes on top of the current proposed budget's property tax increase if passed by the voters. And it appears to be Mayor Steve Adler's last big initiative before his term ends next year. He's really the main figure behind this push, at least the main public figure. However, setting up the fight is Save Austin Now, the community organization that was behind the camping ban and minimum police staffing level propositions, one of which passed, one of which failed, they announced they will oppose it. So they have quite the network here in Austin

of door knockers. Matt Makoviak and Cleo Petrasek run that organization. And they came out pretty... A bipartisan leadership. Yes, they came out pretty staunchly against this. The only other update i have so far is that earlier this week after we published our article adler said that it might require 350 million dollars got it wow um we'll see first if the council puts on the ballot and

then how it fares in november wow well br, Bradley, thank you. Another fight in Austin over some policies will be interesting. Okay, gentlemen, last week I said that we would try out some ice cream on this podcast, which we will do

and I will go grab as soon as I kind of get us started. Isaiah, this is 100% to celebrate you and not because I want to try ice cream. Just let the record reflect

that very true fact. Okay, great. But I wanted also to make this last bit, we're going to skip over the tweetery section this week on the pod and talk all about Isaiah. That's what the next 15-20 minutes are going to be dedicated to, which I'm sure he will just love. But why don't we start off talking through some favorite articles that he's written we'll start off with some of his work applaud him and the great job he's done here at the texan and then we'll get into some more um i don't know light-hearted fun some some poking at isaiah and his quirks that sounds kind of fun to me great glad it only sounds fun to me

uh brian why don't you start us off and i'll go grab the ice cream so my favorite article of isaiah's uh favorite string of articles is all the sanctuary city for the unborn coverage um my favorite piece was is the one titled attorneys and and Activists Inside the Push to Ban Abortion and Abilene. It's got a great lead, Zay, if I do say so myself. But I also like the, it's just very well written, but I also like the little factoid in there about how many phones Mark Lee Dixon has. He's got a lot of phones. That's the activist behind these Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn.

But it's, yeah, great piece. Recommend you go read it. Thanks. It's incredibly descriptive of everything that's happened and happening in Texas and in the Sanctuary City for the Unborn push. Yeah, absolutely. And I will say, too, that his first, I think your very first piece with us

zay now that i'm thinking about it was about deer season is that correct i don't that wasn't my first one okay but it was one it was like your first week maybe maybe i know before i wrote anything about deer i wrote one about bird season bird season oh it was dove season oh my gosh um yeah no 100 i think you're that's what i'm thinking of i'm i i sorely uh misrepresented what actually happened yes you're right it was it was it was dove dove season but i remember you writing that and you just painted the picture so beautifully of what actually uh what it actually looks like to go out and dove hunt in Texas. And it was awesome. And I remember folks had so much like good to say about it.

It was a beautifully written piece. Yes. I remember actually dove hunting with Isaiah up at Phil's ranch and he's cold in the more early in the morning. He's walking around and like, I think if it wasn't just a t-shirt, it was pretty close to it. I'm sitting there shivering my butt off and he's firing his gun with no headphones no ear protection he's like

it'll be fine but i don't know how did it like how would y'all describe just isaiah's personhood i think he's like person this like chaotic but he's like this gentle. I don't know. He's very gentle. He's very sincere. He's hilarious. And he is loving this spot being about him. I know. He literally is like looking down at his hands, twiddling his thumbs.

Absolutely hating it. What do you do during the birthday song? That's a very good point. I discovered a little while ago that if you actually sit there very smugly and, and sort of like you're lording over everybody when they sing you the birthday song, it doesn't feel as awkward. Okay. I'm going to do that. Okay. I'm going to raise my chair a little bit. Yeah. Work on it here. Yeah.

I just want to commend Isaiah's coverage on school sports and the whole issue with the transgender controversy in school sports. There's a lot of hysteria around that and a lot of virtue signaling. And Isaiah has stayed above all that and has recorded the facts and the details of legislation and included specifics. And the other day, Isaiah made this excellent thread, I think it was yesterday, that laid out all the primary sources that we use in our articles and that Isaiah uses on a regular basis. And that is so rare for, especially on a social issue that is so controversial, for a reporter to just lay out the facts and to let people make up their own minds.

And so I don't have a specific article, but I think from start to finish, Isaiah's reporting on the controversy of biological sex versus transgender identity competing in public schools, sports. I think Isaiah did a great job with that from start to finish well and isaiah's had some very tough beats to report on in that regard social issues are very hard they can be a very emotionally taxing beat to cover as there are people who care so deeply about the issues on both sides and care about your framing so much on these stories and isaiah has been able to kind of thread the needle on all of that and do just such an incredible job staying above all of that. So we couldn't have had a better reporter on those issues from the James Younger case

to Roe being overturned to Sanctuary City for the Unborn to all of it. I was actually going to chime in and say my favorite article that Isaiah wrote was the Roe being overturned one which was good because we had um prepared two articles one for a fro was overturned and one for a fro was kept and isaiah introduced me to scotus blog and following along the um supreme court trying to make their decision and every day we kept waiting every day they had a decision day or an opinion day i'm sorry we've just waited for it to come out and it didn't and it didn't and it didn't and the day that it came

out that friday i was out of town it was the one day so we had to publish that one without him but um that was probably the funnest if only because every day we'd show up and uh we'd we'd get to anticipate and see if if that was the. And then the one day it was there, Isaiah was not there. Yeah, absolutely. Well, it was really incredible to watch this beat that Isaiah had covered so well and so specifically and delve into the legality of abortion in Texas and all of a sudden have this day happen and all of his work kind of come to a head of him being able to report on these trigger bans and laws that are now in effect. It was just very awesome. And he did such a great

job of actually distilling the facts. And it was just awesome. I'm just I was super proud of him. My one of my favorites was this Liberty Institute piece that he wrote that talked really detailed this institute funded by the state set up specifically for kind of it was kind of a free speech beacon at UT was what it was aimed at being. It was a pet project of Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. And a lot happened internally at the university that kind of in a lot of ways gutted the project. It got renamed new leadership. Folks who initially had headed up the project were removed from leadership. Very intense stuff. And he broke the story there. new leadership folks who initially had headed up the project were removed from leadership very

intense stuff and he broke the story there and that was awesome to watch him work with sources and work through that process i just loved that story say it was awesome thanks um any other things that we want to push well i'm just going to go back to we can i just ask isaiah what his favorite article oh that's a great yes of course i wish you wouldn't i didn't uh well then tell us your least favorite tell us one you can't. I didn't. Well, then tell us your least favorite. Tell us the one you can't remember the most. Least favorite? I think those are equally hard questions. Because for least favorite, I want to say generally like day to day,

I don't like any articles of things that like should be written, but just aren't that substantial, but people do want to read about, but just aren't that, you know. Yeah. But you write things like that. And I can't remember concrete examples off the top of my head but every once in a while you just like crank out this 400 word deal and it becomes the most popular thing on the website for like eight days and you know um daniel does this all well not anymore you see this all the time where like

mac would give him some like throwaway articles like, oh, everybody's been covering this, we should cover it too. And then Daniel calls somebody and finds out something that nobody else has mentioned before, and it becomes this whole other story. That's not answering your question. Favorite thing I've written? The Dove season one was pretty fun, because it was very different from our normal format.

Yeah. In terms of one where uh that's a hard question you can do you want to move on and like think about it while we talk about you more great also we've all tried the ice cream now at this point this is dang good ice can we talk about how good this is this is really good this is so okay so folks for those who don't remember and i did a poor job of setting this up, Bluebell came out with a new ice cream flavor called Oatmeal Cream Pie, and we debated whether or not it was

going to be tasty and whether we wanted to try it. Daniel, I think, was the only one who thought it was gross. He's so wrong. This is so delicious. He's never been wrong. This is really good. Yeah. And it actually tastes like an Oatmeal Cream Pie, but not in a really good way. It's so good. Bluebell did it again.

Death, taxes, and Blueball. ball bluebell bluebell nailing it yeah that's so true exactly um so let's talk about favorite isaiah moments okay this is just office shenanigans funny things he does now isaiah as being he's a gentle giant and he's a quirky dude so So he has a lot of fun. A lot of fun happens when Isaiah's around and he brings a lot of joy. But just quirky things happen when Isaiah is around and part of the office. Brad, what do you remember? My favorite is how he's reacting to this. He literally is so uncomfortable.

I know. No. Uncomfortable. On the first day, we were told by one of his mutual friends to get him a can of beans. Some inside joke, which I still don't understand. To put on his desk. Yes. And they still sit on his desk. That can of beans has been there for two years.

Yes. Yeah. Over two years now. So that's just forever implanted in my mind until those beans leave my line of sight since he sits

right across from me. Brad's been staring at my beans all day. I think we're going to be mounting those beans on the wall if I'm not mistaken. Oh, that's it.

Yeah, we'll frame them. Put them in a shadow box. Or you can bring them your first day at BBE shadow box yeah take them to class a little totem yeah oh isaiah real fast tell people what you're doing next i am gonna try and get a phd in literature from university of dallas so so awesome and we'll miss you and we're trying not to be bitter about it but that is such an awesome awesome thing, Brad, you had something else? Oh, yeah. Day to day, Isaiah is the only one who gets my movie references. And so that is very much appreciated in an environment that is so lacking.

It's a cultural desert. It really is. Why are you looking at me? Because you especially don't know any movie references. Yes. I do know movie references. I know the ones that I... I know like two.

You know like two and they're both from Mean Girls. Actually, I had not watched Mean Girls until like two years ago. Two years, okay. Yeah. Yeah, so Monty Python, classic 80s, 70s, 80s, 90ss 90s movies like fletch he was just quoting fletch love fletch great movie it is the good newspaper movie yes that that's probably my favorite so i'm sorry stop trying to make fletch happen it's not gonna happen there we go that's a good reference yeah um isaiah says it's only the only good newspaper movie i take

direct offense to that because one time i had a movie night at my place with all the gentlemen here and we watched all the president's men yes and mac is like gripping the arms of the chair like it's a horror movie or something oh what's gonna happen next are they gonna write at the newspaper it's such a good movie oh that is a good movie thank you i i agree with that oh it's such a good movie and isaiah literally was thinking i was like the most boring human alive for thinking it was such a great film i was gentle at the time in my criticism but now that i'm on my way out say freely he can say how he really feels. That can't compare to Fletch. I'm sorry.

I've never seen Fletch, so I'm unable to make that determination. If y'all haven't seen the newspaper movie commercial. The parody. By Seth, what's his name? Yeah. It's very funny. We'll send it to us. I don't know what you're talking about.

Hayden, what do you have for memories of Zay? Well, I mean mean there are plenty but what comes to mind recently is when he changed his car oil in the parking lot here I mean right next I don't wait maybe it wasn't your car no I had to um I had been putting it off and then sometimes I mean this happens from time to time all of a sudden like I get to work without knowing beforehand that oh I've got to go to like Abilene or something. I think like, well, I'm not about to drive 400 miles having needed an oil change for several days. And so I like went to AutoZone really quickly and got oil and came back and changed it. So, yeah, I've done that.

I'm just impressed that you do it yourself. I don't know how to do that. I'm probably embarrassing myself right now, but I do, I don't know how to change my own oil. I always take it to somebody to do. And I was, I was just working at my desk and I turn around and Isaiah's like under the

car changing it. And I'm like, Oh wow. It's out of being really cheap. 70 bucks that you're going to save that. I'm not. Well, Isaiah's really kind and helping with car repairs.

I remember a few weeks ago, I saw some person on the ground next to rob's wheels and i was like okay who is stealing rob's rims right now but it was isaiah stealing his rooms stealing his rims exactly repairing something uh shot out the kindness of his heart it was really awesome you know what that might be what i'm thinking of i don't think i saw isaiah changing the oil on his car i think that's what i i was like that would have been a pretty big a pretty big uh job right before he heads out but regardless he's been very helpful in that regard um rob you have you have quite a fun anecdote i see here yeah so on my very first day um in the week prior actually on the podcast before i showed up um the guys here had made a pact to all wear suits on the very first day so that i would think that i was underdressed

because i would not be in a suit however classic hazing isaiah is the only one who wore a suit on my first day and everybody thought it was the funniest thing in the world because everybody said oh that's not how isaiah dresses usually isaiah how did you feel about that were you were you happy to be the only one in the suit we've got a grievance section planned after this and i'll save my remarks for them yeah it was a it was a funny day though we were we went and got lunch at chewy's and isaiah's just standing there in a suit which was also really funny because hayden was in a hawaiian shirt that day and hayden is normally the one who's actually like dressed nicely jacket on at least yeah

exactly it was and isaiah does have a few hawaiian shirts or just shirts with patterns that he rotates so it had it did feel like like freaky friday is what it felt like it was i may wear my hawaiian shirt in honor of isaiah on his last year oh that's gonna make me really sad you know that may be sad when i said it it's easier to talk about today because it's not his last day like we still have several days with and a week like a full weekend next week we have a little bit of hit also when he leaves i'm gonna say dang it bobby because that's that's he always says that isaiah can you say it in the hank hill voice dang it bobby bobby vegetarians can't be trusted i have a few i literally have like six things here that make isaiah just so fun one is one time he was just in casual conversation mentioned that he

had to replace his grappling hook. And he said it with total sincerity. And I just remember looking at Michelle at the time going, what did we just hear? But he had his grappling hook had broken or something and he needed to replace his grappling hook, which apparently he uses. Yes. Also a few weeks on the pod this is more recent he was thirsty

and so he brought out a jug of milk and just had it sitting on the table and we were just taking swigs from it whenever he was thirsty a few days later he took a swig from it and it was no longer good yeah it took a few tries but I determined that

milk had gone bad a bit chewy you know oh gosh but for the sake of the story speaking of storytelling isaiah is a master storyteller anything he says and any story he tells is often just funny he knows comedic timing he can put in a good word at any point during the podcast and has made me belly laugh more times than i can count it is he's very gifted at that as well as just general wordsmithing aside from just being an incredible writer and he has an ability just to be able to i don't know paint a picture with his words he does so verbally as well he's so good in terms of choosing funny words at good times that will make people laugh and i just love his

phraseology thanks you're so welcome um okay let's get down to business grievances what grievances isaiah actually no we're gonna let you end the pod and say your grievances last to kind of put nails and grievances are last your grievances last. As we say our grievances that we are holding against you, you have the final word. All right. Great. Hayden. I am still reeling from this one,

so forgive me if I stammer. But Isaiah has a talent for making memes and pictures and he just does things with graphics on his computer that i would not know at all how to do but one particularly egregious um one that he made is he put a certain texas lawmaker's face on my body. And just so y'all know which picture I'm talking about, it's my profile picture on Twitter. And he put this state representative's face on my picture. And what's scary about it is it looks like it could be a real photo.

And that's just what's so disturbing about this. His Photoshop skills are so good. Yeah yeah it looks like it could be real and um i just i will never recover from having laid my eyes on that so that's my grievance against you isaiah for not only creating it but showing it to me and showing the whole world i.e our slack he photoshops people all the time i have a folder on my computer of photoshops isaiah's made now it's not it's not comprehensive i forget often to save them but there are there is a batch of them i have saved on my computer they're so good like i at one point i was photoshopped as batman or no you were fighting yeah you're fighting bane it's because we snapped this picture of uh

well somebody took a video of somebody scaring Mac and she like reared back like four seconds afterward. It wasn't this gut reaction. She like wound up and just punched the door, hurting her wrist. But before we got the wrist hurting moment, which, you know, looks kind of weenie-ish, we got this great frame of like Mac gearing up for this epic punch. And so I photoshopped it into like her next to Chuck Norris and next to Bane from The Dark Knight in that one picture where he's got his arms. Anyway, but yeah. That's just one example. Lawmakers, Bane, nobody is safe in Isaiah's photoshopping. I'll jump in on that because you mentioned being scared. I'm easily terrified

by people just walking past me or walking around a corner or me not seeing them or hearing them, and they mean no ill will, and I just get scared. So, Isaiah very quickly realized this when he joined our team, and at this point, we did not have that much rapport, and Isaiah was like, I'm going to scare my boss. I'm just going to be the first couple weeks of being here. This is a good idea for me just to terrify Mackenzie, which he did. And he would hide in like the closet of my office. I have a great video that I forget.

I don't know who took it, but somebody took it. It was Daniel. I think it was Daniel. It was a sting. Daniel does always capitalize on these moments. But Isaiah was hiding in my closet and i knew he was but i was still scared totally unsure of exactly where in my office he was and he jumped out and scared me and i just collapsed in an absolute heap on the ground and that happened multiple times one time he tried which we talked about in the pod before he tried to climb through

the ceiling and scare me in my office by coming like through the ceiling tiles it was april fool's day oh it was justified okay this great effort this great there wasn't a lot going on i thought the ceiling's empty and thankfully he did not pop through the ceiling but the funny part was i could hear him i could hear him tumbling around and i was like isaiah i know you're there like i actually was not scared at all because i could hear him attempting but i i'm so glad he didn't because that would have been just bad i'm not nimble i also will voice this for kim kim and holly both have the same grievance with isaiah now kim specifically said gave me the exact date at which this grievance happened.

But Kim says, context. Isaiah brought Chili into the office on 12-15-21. She had the date. And wrote, quote, I'm telling you all in this channel to make the contract writers envious. Unquote. And Kim says, we did not have any names. And so then Kim and holly began calling themselves the unnamed contract writers there are regional reporters but they call themselves contract

writers and um regardless that joke went on for a long time and isaiah kept the joke going and holly and kim both wanted me to voice that grievance against you, Isaiah. It's fair grievance. Yeah, it is. It went on for months. Okay. Bradley. Mine is probably Isaiah's litany of King of the Hill stickers on his laptop that I have to stare at every minute of every day that are admittedly kind of distracting. I find myself drifting off into looking at the stickers. So it's less of the stickers and more of the fact that I can't keep myself from being distracted by them. There is one of Bobby smoking that constantly gets me. I find myself just zoning out at that.

But yes, it is. Captivating. It is, yes. It is covered from head to toe, as it were, in King of the Hill stickers. And that is my grievance. It's a good grievance. Rob, what grievance do you have? So my biggest grievance against Isaiah is the fact that a lot of his memes are funnier than mine when we're sharing them in the work slack.

When I send out something that I think is funny, he'll send out something that's twice as funny. And that kind of irritates me because I like being funny, but I might get a chance at being funnier now that Isaiah is gone. But while Isaiah is still here, I will never be the funniest person in the office. That's so not true. Oh my gosh.

Isaiah is hilarious, admittedly. It's very true. Well, I don't want to give you this opportunity necessarily, but I do feel it's appropriate. Air your grievances against us, say. I've waited a long time to say this. Every one of y'all, except for maybe Rob, will put food in the fridge

and it'll entice me for the next four weeks as you leave it there untouched. And then I look at it and I think, no, I'm going to be polite. I'm just going to take it even though it's been clearly abandoned and forgotten and neglected. And it's going to collect mold and like the next three hours if nobody

touches it, but I'm just going to leave it there, you know, because any day now its owner might come back and eat it. And that never happens. I cannot count how many times y'all have left food in the fridge to tantalize me. Are you the one that ate one of the applesauces? That's not important.

I saw one go missing. But that's fair. I mean, it's been in there for like a long time. When you say besides Rob, are you saying that I don't leave food in the fridge or are you saying my food is not good? I haven't seen you do this yet. Maybe you will at some point. But so far, like me, you seem to have an instinct for bringing food here to eat it. So I appreciate that.

But yeah, I'll open up the fridge. And it's kind of like when I'm at home You know You open the fridge Even though you know There's nothing in there You kind of hope That magically

Something will be Oh maybe I forgot Something here And so I'll do that And I'll just see Everybody else's food That I've been staring at For like eight weeks

And The time keeps getting Substantially longer It just increased By a hundred percent Three hundred weeks I've looked at that Applesauce oh my lanta my lanta um i'm glad you finally got to partake in that thanks yeah right before you leave i'm not gonna

lie i thought that i seriously thought that was from like a former employee oh because i remember one time um our old office manager had this like frozen meal it was like a burrito bowl or something and um when she was here it had been in the fridge for probably like seven months and um then when she left for greener pastures i waited like for a few weeks and i thought i'm eating this and that was like one of the most indulgent glorious experiences oh my god i just chowed down on that burrito bowl i had absolutely no idea this internal battle was raging within you i'm hearing it now yeah this is good i'm glad to get it off your chest what else say the suits we all had a plan

i was the only one that executed it we were supposed to haze rob then that whole day i am the hazy rob joins with y'all in hazing me. So, yeah, great job integrating Rob in the hazing Isaiah club. You know, really made him a part of the team quickly. But that didn't seem like that was our intended goal, I've got to say. I was the only one that executed this plan. That upset me. Yeah.

I had to sit in the steaming Chewy's waiting room. I also did wear a jacket that day, though. I will remind you. You wore a jacket. I remember that. I remember that. Oh, my gosh. That was something else.

Well, and Isaiah was so excited about it that everyone just abandoned ship. Oh, it was rich. And there have been times Isaiah has worn his suit because it was laundry day. That has happened before, I feel like, which also is pretty fun. Okay, I do have one more thing to say. Isaiah, when we offered you, or excuse me, when I offered you the job and called you, I remember giving your phone a ring and it went straight to voicemail. And I was so confused as to why it went straight to voicemail because the interview process

had been long. We certainly were wanting to get you hired ASAP. And it sounded like you were interested in the job. And so I was confused. And so I did not hear back from you that day or in that next, I forget something I had not heard back from you. So I was concerned. So I reached out to a mutual friend of ours and I said, Hey, would you let Isaiah know to expect a call from us? Cause I haven't heard back from the email or text or whatever. And he goes, absolutely. So he reached out to your family and basically your family was like oh isaiah went swimming in the lake and forgot that his phone was in his pocket yes and so i was unable to reach you via

phone yep for a few hours it was like a few hours where i was unable to reach you and finally you you called me and you were like, I'm so sorry. I went swimming. My phone was in my pocket. And I just think that is such, it's just a good story to start your time here. Also in interviews. I remember getting on interviews and he would be there early for like Zoom interviews and he'd be in the corner playing guitar. I thought that was so endearing and cool.

And Isaiah does play 700 instruments. So endearing. Including the nose flute or whatever, the mouth harp. The mouth flute or the mouth harp. Oh, man. Okay, well, let's end this. Let's get this done and say nice things about him real fast before we jump off. Isaiah, it has truly been an absolute honor and pleasure to edit your work and get to watch you delve into so many beats in

Texas that people care about. You do so with so much grace, willingness. You always have a great attitude. You encourage other people. You're positive all the time. And I'm so, so grateful for that. You have the intellect of a scholar and are able to digest and understand issues that are very difficult for the average person and me having to edit your pieces into ways that I'm able to understand. And I know that our readers are benefit so greatly from that. And I'm very sad to see you go, but so excited for this next step in your career, in your life,

and we'll miss you. And whenever you're in Austin, you have to stop by or else I will personally be very, very bitter. Absolutely. Okay. There you go. She'll Batman.

The Texan has been so much better because of you and i'm grateful to have you on our team well the texan is just great on its own it's been my favorite place to work i've said that everywhere um so i don't know what else to say i mean great publication great place to work i'm gonna miss it so okay well maybe we should just end on that now folks thank you so much for listening and we will catch you next week. 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 an email to editor at the texan.news. We are funded entirely by readers and listeners like you. So thank you again for your support. Tune in next week for another episode of our weekly roundup.

God bless you and God bless Texas.