The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - July 30, 2021

Episode Date: July 30, 2021

On The Texan's "Weekly Roundup" podcast, the team gives updates and details enforcement actions that have — and haven’t — been utilized to bring the still-missing Texas House Democrats back to Austin. Additionally,  the reporting team discusses a state senator's attempt to strip the governor of power, UT's plan to exit the Big 12, the results of the special election in Texas’ 6th Congressional District, the National Guard assisting at the border, CRT in the Austin police department, STAAR test results, COVID-19 numbers, and more.

Howdy folks, Mackenzie Taylor here bringing you another episode of the Texans Weekly Roundup Podcast. This week, Texas House Democrats are still in D.C. Our team gives updates and details enforcement actions that have and haven't been utilized to bring them back to Austin. Additionally, a state senator looks to strip the governor of power. UT makes moves to leave the Big 12. Governor Abbott directs the National Guard to assist with border arrests. The special election in Texas' 6th congressional district comes to an end. A former Texas mayor is found guilty of bribery and fraud in a case riddled with scandal. Austin's police department conducts expensive trainings involving critical race theory.

COVID-19 numbers and potential restrictions are relevant once again. UT's affirmative action policies weather a court challenge. And ISD and charter school star test data is analyzed. Thanks for listening in. We hope you enjoy this week's edition. Howdy folks, Mackenzie Taylor here with Daniel friend Hayden Sparks, Isaiah Mitchell, Brad Johnson, and Winston Johnson here on another edition of the Texans Weekly Roundup podcast. Hayden rolled his eyes at my mention of Winston, but I think it was appropriate considering he's laying here subjected to wearing a plastic cone on his head. So I just thought I'd give him a shout out.

You only mentioned six of us. Oh my gosh. Daniel, who did I miss? You missed Daniel. Oh my gosh. The other Daniel? Yeah. Daniel V2? Version 2? If missed Daniel. Oh my gosh. The other Daniel? Yeah.

Daniel V2? Version 2? If you want to call him that. It's true. We have a guest in our podcast room today listening in. Daniel Ackroyd, the most recent addition to the Texans team. He's sitting here unsure of what to do as he has no mic in his phone. Brad, what should we say about him while he is unable to defend himself?

Well, I was going to say he's been working feverishly on our list of grievances. That's exactly right. Word on the street is at least one or two have been resolved already. Although he was very adamant there are four pages.

That was repeated multiple times on Slack. Four pages. I mean, you could make it more or less depending on how you format the page. Format the page, yeah. So this is to say he's got his work cut out for him.

He's got his work. What is it up to now? 70? 70 grievances approximately, give or take? Probably? Sounds about right. Yeah, we'll go with that. If y'all don't know what we're talking about, go listen to the previous two podcasts.

Multiple bakers dozens, you know. Multiple bakers dozens. Oh, Brad, everything you say is just slightly more convoluted than it needs to be. That's my brand. Don't you agree, Zay? Oh, Brad, everything you say is just slightly more convoluted than it needs to be. Don't you agree, Zay? Yeah. Yeah. Well, on that note, Brad, let's make something, you know, well, let's simplify something for our listeners here. We've talked a lot about the Democrats being absent here in Austin and, you know, heading off to D.C. to talk

election integrity, election reform on the state level and the federal level. But there have been some developments this week. Give us an update on what's been going on. Well, you said simplify it. And while there have been some developments, really nothing has changed. So let's just put that out there first. This week, we basically are talking about the details of the things that have not changed. Yes, yes. And some minor little updates, but nothing significant or substantive. But yes, as of this podcast coming out, we are one week from the special session ending.

And House Democrats are still in Washington, D.C. As we're recording right now, there are a few of them actually testifying before Congress, which Daniel has been watching all day. And the Texas House, made up of, right now, mostly Republicans, a handful of Democrats that are back in town, they've been unable to do anything. And that is pretty much the state at which things will remain um but there were a couple big updates this week um the biggest one was representative

philip cortez he uh over the weekend he had been back in austin for a few days came back a democrat from san anton, saying that he wanted to, was intending to work in negotiations on the elections bill. And so he was here for a few days, and then on Sunday, over the weekend, he flew back to D.C. It was announced. And right after that news was dropped, Speaker Dade Phelan issued a civil arrest warrant for Cortez, which he is allowed to do under the Texas Constitution and the House rules to try and secure a quorum.

Now, it wasn't really effective because Cortez was already in D.C. And so, you know, that's out of the reach of Texas DPS. But the arrest warrant was issued. And so if Cortez, whenever he comes back into Texas, DPS has been instructed to arrest him and hold him in their custody and bring him to the chamber. But I'm not sure as far as the length, the lifespan of that. Like, let's say the session clock runs out. Does the civil arrest warrant still apply? That's one of those gray areas that there aren't really a lot of answers to in the House rules or anything like that. So we'll see what happens then.

But that is the most significant update this week. I put a piece up today detailing a lot of the background information and a lot of the statements that have been made by various players, including the Big Three and various other representatives with a stake in the game. I recommend you go read

that for the full rundown, but largely, like I said, in sum, not much has changed at all and for a 30 000 foot view so cortez was in dc democrat he came back to austin and his messaging was that okay i'm going to negotiate with republicans and make this bill more palatable to democrats and then what was the response from democrats in dc were they on board Most of them, at least the ones that were vocal about it, were not on board. They were very upset with him, actually.

A couple said that this wasn't discussed within the caucus. He's not negotiating on our behalf. Nobody that disagreed with that assessment really said anything. But Cortez eventually, like I know like i said returned to dc under a lot of pressure from his colleagues and criticism of them or from them and uh the negotiations just kind of stalled out and there basically are none at the moment has the speaker issued any other arrest warrants uh he is not um on the july 13th representative will metcalf

uh sent a letter to dps asking them to help with securing a quorum under the direction of the sergeant of arms republican who is the chair of the house admin committee and uh but since then there's been no other no other official certainly arrest warrants issued, but no other really statements put out other than, you know, this is, the Democrats should not be doing this and we hope they come back to Texas. Where does this leave us? What's next for the Democrats and the Republicans? Well, Governor Abbott has said that he is, he fully intends on calling continuous special sessions up until the next election if need be and um you know i guarantee you i if if he does not call an immediate special session which he kind of has to at least for the budget uh restore restoration because um that that goes out um at the end of august september 1st there will be no legislative funding.

But if he doesn't add, let's say, election reform to that special, I could see him doing it to the redistricting special or one after that or the one after that. It'll come back. This is going to continue happening. He is very determined to get this legislation passed into law. And all the Republicans basically are too um just leadership house leadership has not really um pulled out all the stops in trying to make that happen in terms of you know issuing a civil arrest warrant before someone leaves the states so which was the criticism he largely received right um you know that the warrant was ineffective at the time it was written, and it will only become effective

once Cortez comes back. And Cortez is the only one that has been issued a civil arrest warrant. So this is going to continue to play out. I have a feeling that there will be at least one or more special sessions in addition to the redistricting one, because state leaders are not going to give up easy on this. Thank you, Bradley. Daniel, we're going to come to you. Let's continue talking about some legislative squabbles here. A state senator this week filed an amendment that would largely fly in the face of a lot of what the governor has done up to this point and take away some of his executive power. Give us an idea of what Kel Selger filed. Yes. so senator kel selger from amarillo uh expressed some discontent

over that whole legislative funding that abbott cut uh the way that abbott was able to cut that from the budget you know the legislature compiles this massive huge bill that brad went through i did not praise the lord um he uh so they passed this big. Then Abbott has the authority under the Constitution for a line item veto, wherein he can go in and strike certain provisions from the budget and say, I'm going to veto these specific things. The rest of the bill can go through, though. And so that's what Abbott did specifically with Article 10 of the budget, which was the funding for the state legislature. It's about $450 million, roughly. My gosh.

A lot of money. Yeah. And this affects the lawmakers' salaries, which are not that much, but it also affects all the staff of the legislature and everything associated with that branch of government. So it's a pretty substantial cut to the budget. And, of course, Abbott did that. Substantial for that branch. In the grand scheme of the budget, it's really not that big.

Okay, yeah. So, yes. As I was saying, that is what Abbott did kind of in response to the Democrats walking out at the end of session. He's been using this as kind of leverage to try and make sure that Democrats come back. You know, of course, we're kind of at a stalemate here to see who's going to win this game of chicken. So that's where we're at right now. But Kel Seliger expressed some frustration with this. It's like the legislative funding, it should not be cut like this. A way that we can get rid of this is by getting rid of the line item veto completely. So in response to that, Seliger filed a new constitutional amendment this week, SJR 8, that would just remove that from the constitution and remove the governor's authority

to have that line item veto power. And that is what he did. And I think he filed it Tuesday. Now, what's the likelihood of something like this passing? So it's going to face an uphill battle for several different reasons. First of all, in order for legislation to pass during a special session, it needs to be placed on the agenda by the governor who calls the special session. Governor Abbott did not place anything that would really, this legislation would fall under. There was legislative funding that he requested, but that's like specific to the legislative funding. It's not saying you can amend the constitution to get rid of my line item veto. Now, I don't think that the governor is going to be too amenable to adding something to the special session to kind of rein in his own power. And now he could potentially, uh, I don't know that he will, but that's a possibility.

That's one hurdle that would have to overcome unless it passes in a future session. Now, the other thing that is blocking it right now, of course, it could move through the Senate and the Senate could pass it because the Senate does have a quorum. But the House does not have a quorum. So that's another hurdle that it would have to overcome. And then but even in the Senate, it hasn't been referred to committee yet. They met the Senate met on Thursday and quickly recessed until next Monday or Tuesday. So, you know, they're still not doing a whole lot. They passed the bills that they intended to pass.

Now they're just waiting on the House. So it's not seeing any movement there. And it doesn't seem to have any other Republicans who are jumping on board with this proposal. So it's more of a statement than anything, right? Saying, okay, well, there may be a Republican in office in the legislature who is not on board with the governor, you know, lying and vetoing this portion of the budget. It is a statement. Could it come back at some point in the future and future regular sessions?

And people say, oh, look what the governor did back in 20 whatever year this is. And, you know, it might come up again in that way. And this might be the beginning of that. But right now, it's just kind of symbolic. Oh, good stuff. Well, thank you, Dean. Well, one more thing is the governor would have to sign the law if it even passes. And it would be very unlikely that it would be veto-proof in support in the legislature. So.

The line item veto bill would be veto-proof. Wow. Yeah. Sorry, that was just fun for me to say. Isaiah, we're going to come to you now. UT has been in the news last week, this week, all sorts of higher education news, but particularly in relation to sports, the Big 12. Give us a little bit of an update what's going on with the University of Texas and the Big 12. Well, everybody has kind of known without real confirmation, but

everybody knows for a while now that UT is leaving the Big 12. And new pieces are falling into place every day. At the point in time when we covered it, UT and the Big 12 had released their first written official statements announcing the beginning of UT extricating itself from the Big 12, which is kind of a milestone. Because heretofore, they had just been relying, like the public had been relying on kind of hasty remarks made at press conferences or just, you know, reporters. Yeah. The public had been relying on kind of hasty remarks made at press conferences or just reporters chasing down hot brass at UT and the Big 12 and just in public. And so there hadn't been a written statement up until, well, when we published this article. It was on July 26th. And the day before that, the Big 12 also announced a written statement announcing a meeting between them. Very vague, but still, again, there hadn't been any kind of public acknowledgement like that

in writing before. Now, tell us a little bit more about these statements and give us details as to why this agreement is so substantial. So UT and the University of Oklahoma announced the end of their media rights agreements with the Big 12. Their statement reads, UT Austin and OU notified the Big 12 Athletic Conference today that they will not be renewing their grants of media rights following expiration 2025. And that's where their contract ends, so they have to do it up until then. So, Brad, maybe you want to jump in more, if you're willing, on the economic importance of the media rights agreement.

Yeah, so obviously college football is the moneymaker in any college sports, all of them. And so UT especially, they pull in gobs and gobs of money just from TV rights deals. And how that usually works, they have a TV rights deal with the big 12 and you know, everyone pulls in whatever amount of money that they get from their, the personal viewing of their games, their contracted games they have televised and it goes into this big pool of money and it gets distributed elsewhere. And I don't think it's,

it's all equal. I guarantee you Texas gets a higher share than say Texas Tech does because they bring in more money. But Tech still does benefit from the just broad amount of money that UT and OU bring in every year. And so financially, without those two schools, those TV contracts are going to be worth a lot less. And so they'll likely have to be renegotiated because without the Texas money and the OU money flowing in, you all of a sudden are in the red in terms of what you expected to come in. So economically, this affects those schools whose programs rely on that kind of thing in order to balance their books for not only their college football program, but their other sports. So it could lead to cutting other sports. We've seen that happen in other schools across the

country. But with this, I think it's likely to see that the Big 12 disbands unless they can pull in a couple of their moneymakers. Hearing a lot of them merging with the Pac-12, which almost none of them are as big of brands as UT or OU, but that would be a stopgap measure for them. So financially, these institutions really stand to lose a lot. And that is one reason why they're fighting so hard, especially pushing the legislature to try and insert itself into the question and require UT to get approval from the legislature before switching conferences. But we'll see more of what the economic impacts are when the new Senate committee convenes next week and they have kind of more of an investigation in it. But definitely lots and lots of money at stake. All right. Thank you both for contributing to that. Hayden, we're coming to you now.

The border continues to be on the forefront of Governor Abbott's announcements, his press releases, everything he's doing in regards to messaging from the governor's office. Give us a little bit of an update on what the latest moves the governor has made in relation to the border crisis. It's important to keep in mind that we are eight months away from a GOP primary, one that is heated between Abbott and the other candidates in the race, Don Huffines and Chad Prather, as well as former Republican Party of Texas Chairman Alan West. I just want to jump in and say Daniel smiled when you gave a definitive timeline for the redistricting.

When you said eight months, I was like, well, I don't know. Primary could be pushed back. Hayden is very optimistic. We'll see if the Census Bureau gets its act together enough for us to actually have a primary in eight months. That was so funny. I am an optimist. You're right about that. So I'm going to cross my fingers and hope that it goes forward as scheduled in March of next year.

And illegal immigration is one of the main topics of that Republican primary for governor. Don Huffines has criticized Greg Abbott for his response, characterizing it as too little too late, and saying that he's had many years to secure the border and take some of these actions and has not done that. But in March of this year, Abbott deployed 500 National Guard troops to the border via Operation Lone Star, which is the state level effort against illegal immigration. He has done this before. He did it a couple years ago, deployed, I think, about 1000 National Guard troops for border crisis response. And this time he is asking or ordering the National Guard to assist the Texas Department of Public Safety with apprehending individuals who are breaking

state law. And at a border security, what he called a border security summit in Del Rio in June, he said that illegal aliens would be arrested for trespassing and committing other offenses against state law. And that's part of the overall effort by the governor to fight illegal immigration on a state level during a time in which many Republicans contend that the federal government has abrogated its responsibility to secure the border and fend off illegal crossings. Give us more of an update on the current status of the border crisis in general? From a 10,000 foot view, it is bad and getting worse. And it has been has not been this bad in terms of illegal crossings for 21 years. So since the Clinton administration, we have not seen this much illegal immigration. There were 189,000

enforcement instances in the Southwest United States region in June, according to the most recent report by United States Border Customs and Border Protection. They were a little late on the draw with their report this month. I'm not sure what that was about, but it didn't come out until I think last week they finally released a report. And usually it comes out 10 or so days after the month ends. And I say there are at least 126,000 encounters in Texas because that figure is outdated. What they usually do is they release a press statement with an overall figure for the Southwest region. And that overall figure was about 189,000 enforcement encounters. But then there's there's a table which breaks down the data and tells us

where those enforcement encounters were. And that information is, is current as of the first within the first few days of July. And that figure said 126,000 Texas encounters, which means there were probably many more than that. So, and I say many, there were probably a few thousand more than that in the Texas sector. So clearly, from these numbers, Texas is affected more in terms of the volume of illegal crossings than any other state. And we, of course, have more border than any other state. So this is an issue that is as relevant to Texas, if not more relevant than it is to any other state. And Abbott's most recent move shows that he is trying to clamp down on violations of state law. And one more action that he took recently is that he, in fact, prohibited

individuals from providing ground transportation to illegal aliens, which we'll talk about later. Thank you, Hayden. We'll definitely get back to this topic in just a few segments. Daniel, we're going to come to you. There was a big special election this week that we certainly had been waiting months for the results of. There were many candidates to begin with, narrowed down to two. We finally got the results this week, and it became a very interesting case study on the impact of a Trump endorsement. But let's go ahead and talk about the results of this special election and why they were significant. Yeah, so this is a special election for Texas's 6th congressional district up in the North Texas area of Tarrant County, Ellis County, and Navarro County. This was a special election that the race kind of began in February after Congressman Ron Wright died.

His wife, Susan Wright, ran for the seat, as well as a number of other people. There were actually 23 candidates in the race in May. Among those, there was Jake Elsey, a state representative for Ellis County. And between the two, Susan Wright and Jake Elsey, they were the top two contenders in May. They were neck and neck in the early voting in May. And then Susan Wright got a nice little bump on election day after a Trump endorsement the weekend right before the election day. And so that pushed her to the top with 19% of the vote. And then Elsie was trailing with, I think, 14 or 15%. And that was in the May election. So the two Republicans in the race were able to keep a Democrat from going to runoff. And so it was certain to stay a republican seat but then the question was

who's going to win between the two candidates is it going to be susan wright who had been endorsed by trump and also a number of gop activists and elected officials in the area or was it going to be the state representative uh j Elsey. Who had challenged Ron Wright in the primary back in 2018. Yeah, so he had been on the ballot in the seat before, was there again. He ran for the state representative in Ellis County, so he had some good name ID there. And he also saw some support from Democrats, I think, who did not want Trump's candidate to win. And so at the end of election night, it turned out that he did win. He actually won.

Even with the early voting, he was ahead, and he maintained that lead throughout the night. And so the final unofficial results from the Secretary of State was 53.27% for Elzey and 46.73% for Wright. So it's still a pretty close election, but ended up in Elzey's favor. Let's zero in on those political factors at play that we've alluded to and talked about a little bit. But what factors at the end of the day do we think without having the voter data yet, helped Elzey pull off the win, which was an upset. That was a bit I mean, I think most folks in Texas thought Susan Wright would come out victorious. Yeah. And I think there are several different factors at play here. I think the one you'll probably see being talked about the most is Democrats in the district. You know, this was back in 2020 and even 2018, Democrats were optimistic that this might be

a seat that they would be able to swing. It's got a lot of suburban voters in Tarrant County. And so it's turned a little bit more blue in recent years, along with other suburban districts in Texas. And so Democrats were kind of optimistic that it would swing. And there's a pretty significant portion of Democrat voters in the district. It's not just like a West Texas August Pfluger seat where the Republican is going to pick up 70, 80% of the district. It's not just like a, you know, a West Texas August Pfluger seat where the Republican is going to pick up 70, 80% of the vote. Um, it's a little bit closer than that. So Republicans usually pick up, I think around like 55%.

Was this seat on the list of targeted, uh, but from the D triple C last cycle? I believe it was. Um, it was, it was kind of like one of those, not the, the close reaches races that people were watching, but it was kind of the second tier. And so with that good number of Democrats in the district, you had several, even the past two Democrat nominees, Janeline Sanchez in 2018 and then Stephen Daniel in 2020, both came out and they supported, and I use that term a little bit loosely, they supported Jay Kelsey in that they were trying to get Democrats out to vote against Susan Wright to kind of show that they're against the Trump-backed candidate. And so it's quite possible.

We don't really know how many Democrats actually got out and voted in this race. It's not a primary race. It was open to everyone who voted. So it's pretty likely that, I mean, at least some Democrats came out to vote and tilted that election more towards Elzey's favor. So that's one of the first factors to look at. And it was interesting in that Elzey's campaign, there were some texts flying around the district specifically targeting Democrat voters saying, hey, Elzey's a pro-ppublic education candidate i forget what the other messages were in the text but you know messages along those lines that for a little bit you know folks were wondering okay where are these coming from who can these be attributed to and there were at least a batch or two that the lz

campaign paid for uh themselves so there were some uh it was a very organized effort. has like Jake Elzey on one side, Susan Wright on the other. Jake Elzey supports pathway to citizenship and open to amnesty, voted to increase the motor vehicle tax to raise more revenue. And then, you know, in opposition to Susan Wright with a big red X's, you've got endorsed by Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, supports funding for the border wall. So these are things that are very partisan, very targeting democrats and trying to get them to support lz now you could show this to a republican and republicans would probably be like oh i want the other candidate right so hopefully right in the in the campaign in the campaign world you're targeting very specific voter base to get them

to come out and support and that you know because lz also is republican so there's that line he's he's trying to tread that is a little more difficult. But hopefully when you send a text like that, the campaign is saying, hey, we're targeting Democrat voters. Yes. And I think the other thing to remember is so you have the Democrat voters. Then you also have the Republicans who might not like the Trump. You know, you had an anti-Trump candidate in the race that was talked up in the media uh way back when now he didn't do perform very well he only got a couple percent of the vote but those voters still probably went and voted uh for lz in the in the runoff just in opposition to trump's pick candidate what was the margin of

of of difference at the end of the day between the two candidates in terms of votes uh in terms of votes i think it was under two two under two thousand so lz got about twenty thousand and uh susan wright got around eighteen thousand somewhere in there okay um so yeah those were the democrats the trump endorsement definitely comes into play other things that come into play you know lz did have higher fundraising numbers uh individually like as far as contributions given to him he raised raised over a million, whereas Susan Wright, I think, got about half a million in her report that she filed. Another thing to be considered is Club for Growth.

The Club for Growth PAC was definitely a big outside influence in the race. They spent over a million dollars in the race supporting Susan Wright and also attacking Jake Elzey. There were a lot of ads that they pushed out in the candidate that were very negative, attacking Jake Elzey and kind of doing as campaigns do and painting like an extreme picture of, you know, saying that he's not conservative. And so they really hammered that down. And I think that might have turned away some Republican voters who, you know, are kind of up in the air

and they're seeing these ads and like, that's not really accurate to paint him as a Pelosi Democrat when he's a Republican. And so I think that might have potentially swayed away some voters. And it, you know, it might have influenced other people to get out and vote against Elzey.

That's up for debate. You can add that to your yard sign debate, Brad. But – and then Elzey also did have some support, some endorsements from Rick Perry and Dan Crenshaw, two Republicans who are still kind of bigger names in Texas. So how much of an influence that played into the race? I don't know. I'll let you debate that. But those were some factors. Certainly.

Now, real fast, give us a little bit of a look at what happens next, particularly in that, you know, a state representative is about to vacate his seat. So last year, I reported on all these dominoes falling after John Ratcliffe was nominated to be Trump's DNI. And you had that go to a congressional race, which led to a state Senate race, which led to a state House race. And I'm pretty sure there's probably like a school district race that we didn't cover. But this will lead to another state race because Jake Elzey's seat is up in the middle of his term. Once he goes to Congress, they'll be down one member of Congress or one member of the House, state House. And so the governor will likely call a special election for House District 10. And another thing to consider is i believe that with the house republicans down one member or that seat vacant they'll need another democrat uh for securing a quorum i don't know if that

will be a significant hurdle because they still need a number of democrats but now they'll need one more well thank you daniel for covering that for us hayden we are coming to you with the story that you have followed since really you started with the Texan and we finally have some developments on this story. But give us a little bit of an update on where this case is now. It involves bribery, involves fraud, it involves an affair. It's very spicy. So Hayden, give us an update. You're right. It is a case that involves lots of lies and lechery. And there has some finality in this case now. Like you said, this has been going on for a while. And I could go on and on about this case

because there's a lot to it. The mayor of Richardson, Texas, who was elected in 2013, was indicted after having resigned and gotten a divorce in the year 2015. She resigned in April of that year and was indicted three years later on charges ranging from bribery to defrauding the United States. And what occurred in that time period is she had promised in 2013 that she would not support developing new apartment complexes in zoning changes for what is called the palisades project which was a project that was being advanced by a real estate developer by the

name of mark jordan who is now her husband at the time she was facing overwhelming community opposition to these projects there was one meeting where there were hundreds of people who testified against having these apartments built. And instead of voting down this apartment development, they advanced it through the process. There was only, I think, one witness who testified in favor of these apartments. So the crux of her campaign was opposing these developments, and she supported them instead. And after she left office when she was indicted, there was a trial in 2019. And at that trial, she was and her husband were convicted of bribery and honest services wire fraud, and they faced many years in prison. But those trials were thrown out of court, not because of an error on the part of the government, not even because of

an error on the part of the defense. They were thrown out because a bailiff had a conversation with a juror that the defense counsel argued in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed had an inappropriate or could have had an inappropriate influence on the verdict that the jury handed down. So those guilty verdicts were completely thrown out and the results of that trial were reversed. As a result, the prosecutors filed additional indictments in December of last year. And this latest development is the outcome of the trial on those additional indictments, which included brand new charges for tax fraud. Now, yeah, give us a little bit more of a more rounded description of, okay, well,

what did happen in that second trial? And what was the outcome there? It's interesting, because everyone has their own truth, right, as to what happens in their life and what they perceive to be the events that unfold. that she was not affected by this real estate developer's gifts, that her voting for these zoning changes for the Palisades project had nothing to do with her decision to vote in favor of those zoning changes. Mark Jordan, who's now her husband, but at the time was her lover because she was married and having an affair with Mark Jordan,

gave her tens of thousands of dollars in cash by check. He took her on extravagant vacations in California, elsewhere in the United States. While she was married? While she was married, while she was mayor. And it wasn't just the affair. It was the fact that she was accepting these gifts from a real estate developer who had a stake in business that was before the city council. And in her view, or at least what she testified at trial, is that none of that had anything to do with the way she voted, that she was simply being

wooed by a lover, and that she lied because she was trying to protect her family and that she was trying to cover up this affair. And she tried to paint this picture in front of the jury that it was just about the affair, that all the lies, all the deception, it was only to cover up this affair, and that her position on apartment complexes was complicated. It was nuanced. She was really not a big fan of them, but she was okay with them as long as they were near transportation corridors, or if they had green space and retail and that type of thing. That's what the local media reported that she testified. Whether or not that's what she truly believes in her heart, that she was just having an affair and that the two had nothing to do with one another, or whether or not that's

just something she concocted to tell the jury to try to get off these charges. That is something for the jury to decide. And they decided that that's not true, that she is guilty of bribery. And I know many of us around this table have worked on campaigns. You know how much emotional effort and dedication goes into working on a campaign. And hopefully, the people who believed in Laura Maska and her candidacy and her tenure as mayor can finally find some closure with these verdicts, provided that they are upheld by the Court of Appeals. Thank you, Hayden, for following that. And definitely, definitely spicy as promised. So thank you for covering that for our readers. Bradley, we're going to come to you. Like many

departments across the country, the Austin Police Department is undergoing very substantial reforms due to moves from its city council. This includes critical race theory. Give us a little bit of an update of what came to light this week. Boston and this consulting group called Joyce James Consulting. It was released, put out there into the ether that this had been agreed to and that this Joyce James Consulting group had been contracted to provide racial sensitivity type trainings to the Austin Police Department, both for, um, current officers and incoming cadets in the academy. So, um, basically it, uh, entails multiple days per person of, uh, these trainings where some lecturer comes and, uh, you know, tells them all about intrinsic biases and that kind of thing. Basically, CRT theory broadly understood that racism is a systemic problem and not focusing

on interpersonal racism. Now, to get there, the contract, to get paid in the contract, it is uh ten thousand dollars per day to this uh this consulting group and uh it could be extended up to uh 2.9 million dollars for five years and that's a lot of money um especially to provide the 58 days of work a year, roughly. And so, you know, obviously a lot of officers and Austinites are up in arms about this. You know, various people within the department object to it entirely. I actually found a memo that was sent after one of these trainings to the city uh to the the police chief police chief chacon and it says that this officer commander donald baker was asked to leave one of these trainings because he would not agree to this it called a contract there's no legal binding

aspect aspect of this, it was just a quote-unquote contract that was put up on a PowerPoint slide and said, do you agree with all these things that we're telling you? And if so, raise your hand. And that's the way they were supposed to show their commitment to the contract and the the goals therein and so um he baker objected to this he refused to agree to that to commit to it and he was asked by joyce james the the company's um founder to leave the the training and um providing the training where her, and then this, uh, representative, it sounds like with, um, what was the group called? I can't find it in the story, but it's, it's a really long name. Um, some basically an anti-racist group and, uh, they go around and,

and train, do these trainings all constantly oh it's called the people's institute for survival and beyond um you know this is their the way they make money and um they uh they say they're tearing down systems of racism so uh apd has has been going through that and that started back in may or back in april the contract was signed and um this meeting that this blow up happened was in late may so um it's it's not surprising but it is alarming that this amount of money is going towards such a thing ten thousand dollars a day is no small price to pay right something else to note, since the term critical race theory is kind of controversial, to say the least, that was actually what James explicitly used to describe. Yes.

At least in her words, one-third of the training. Yeah. So you can put that in quotes. Yeah. There were three components listed, and one of them was critical race theory. Yes. Yeah. Yes.

Well, thank you, Bradley, for covering that and Zae for piping in there. Daniel, we're going to go to you. COVID numbers. We have not talked about this in a hot minute. It's been a little bit since you've given our listeners and readers a rundown for good reason. We've kind of had some smooth sailing in the state in terms of COVID numbers. And there's some spikes going on right now. And now we're, uh, we may see some movement in terms of state restrictions and local restrictions. Give us a little bit of a rundown of what that would look like and how close we are

to that metric. So the department of state health services, DSHS has been reporting COVID numbers, uh, since let's see, like March of last year, uh, when everything hit the fan and, uh And they've definitely improved their reporting since then too, providing a little bit more nuanced details. And recently they have shown an increase, not just in the number of cases, but also in the number of hospitalizations. That is the more important metric as far as policies go,

because that is the policy under governor gray app, its current executive order, uh, that kind of has a trigger mechanism. Uh, when he ended the statewide mask mandate and the business capacity restrictions in March of this year, um, he left in a trigger mechanism in his executive order so that if hospitalizations in a certain trauma service area or the hospital region in Texas, if the certain regions in there go above 15% capacity of COVID patients for more than seven days in a row, then county judges will be able to institute new COVID-19 restrictions in their jurisdiction. So recently with the uptick in cases and hospitalizations we've seen, some regions are reaching close to that point. We're probably

a couple of weeks out before they've actually been there for seven days. The region just north of Austin and kind of the Temple, Killeen area, and then also over kind of along the coast with Galveston and also Victoria regions are going close to that 15% threshold. I'm guessing that they'll probably pass it here in a few days. And if they continue doing that for a week, then the judges in those areas will be able to implement new restrictions. And we're seeing some rises in other places as well, not quite as high as those areas yet. Now, tell us a little bit more about where we're at specifically

in terms of hospitalizations. So to give you a little bit more specific numbers, we're currently at about 5,200, 5,300 hospitalizations as of Thursday. And that is about essentially higher than we were in that little dip that we had last fall. It is going up kind of high across the state. Like I said, the regions that are highest are the ones above north of Austin and then also the coast area. You also see down on the border, the interesting region there, Laredo has gone up. The Rio Grande Valley has not gone up as high. And also El Paso is still quite a bit lower. I think El Paso actually might be the lowest region

right now. West Texas is a little bit lower. The other areas are going up. The urban areas of Harris County, Houston, the Austin area itself, and then also the DFW area, they have seen an increase. It's not quite as high as those other regions, though. Now, what cannot be restricted under Governor Abbott's order? So under Governor Abbott's order, he has specifically pushed back on face masks. Now, if you remember from last summer, he kind of did this back and forth on that flip flop about whether face masks can be required by government or not. Ultimately, in July, he issued his statewide mask mandate. And then in March of this year, he pulled back on that. And then he's doubled down on that multiple times since, even as case numbers have risen recently, he's emphasized that government mask mandates should not be required

again. So those are off the table right now, unless he changes his mind or there's some other loophole that is found. Also, business capacity restrictions cannot be restricted below 50% capacity. So the most that you can limit a restaurant to close down is 50% capacity. And then also, the order says, quote, no operating limits to be allowed for imposed for religious services, public and private schools, and institutions of higher education and child care services. So those are kind of the boundaries that they have. But judges can kind of work around that. Thank you, Daniel. Isaiah, we're going to talk with you about UT once again.

Let's not talk about sports this time, though. Let's talk about affirmative action and lawsuits and all that good stuff. But give us a little bit of an update. This is not the first time UT has dealt with affirmative action in court and challenges to that policy. But something happened this week that was a pretty big deal. So give us a rundown of what happened. Yes. So there's a group called Students for Fair Admissions. And as you might surmise from my name, they oppose affirmative action. And they sued UT over their affirmative action policy, claiming that that policy is discriminatory. The court didn't actually get around to addressing

the merits of the case because federal judge Robert Pittman ruled that the case had already been decided in previous litigation since a leading SFFA member already sued UT in a finished case for pretty much the same reason. So basically there was a brief period between court rulings when UT had colorblind admissions, and that was from 1997 to 2004. 2004 was when the Supreme Court ruled that the University of Michigan could consider race at admissions if it was real specific. And so UT returned to affirmative action then as well. They had this holistic review plan to kind of fill out the rest of the class that wasn't filled by the top 10% rule, which is something we have

in Texas where it's kind of like a substitute for affirmative action. If you're in the top 10% in high school, then you get automatic admission to public universities. So eventually, this rejected Anglo applicant named Abigail Fisher sued UT, claiming she was discriminated against, and initially won to the Supreme Court in 2013. But after that ruling, UT revised its policy to be more specific and fit basically under the threshold. And when Fisher continued litigation, she lost to the Supreme Court in 2016. And so affirmative action in a light kind of sense lives on UT's holistic review process to this day.

So because Fisher and her father and another dude that was influential in those lawsuits are all part of SFFA that's suing UT today and just lost, and because they essentially repackaged their original claims, the court said it was essentially the same lawsuit and that was already settled. Could you summarize the arguments on both sides? So interestingly enough, SFFA argued that UT's affirmative action policy, especially its vagueness, harmed rather than helped minority students. And they had some statistical arguments for that. What I found more interesting was something called the Crow Report. But before the admissions scandal that just happened like last year or the year before, I don't remember when, there was this report that came out from this investigative group for corporate investigations called Kroll something or other. And they found that well-connected like state lawmakers and other higher-ups in Texas had a lot of sway in getting underqualified applicants into UT. And basically, if they didn't qualify, the president

could put a hold on their applications. And it was kind of like bonus points for them, right? If, you know, legislators or other, you know, higher ups and could convince the president, hey, you know, you should admit this guy. And so SFFA claimed in this most recent lawsuit, that that kind of practice was allowed by their holistic review process and the vagueness they're in well is that you always find a way to make this all very digestible for the rest of us who don't read the lawsuits and don't read the arguments so thank you for that brad it has been very hot this week yeah that is that is what outside indicates a fun topic already oh gosh i should have seen that going a mile away but ercot back in the news again mainly

because folks are concerned okay well how much energy will we actually be able to have reserved when these temperatures do spike which they are currently. Where are we at with ERCOT? Well, the piece I wrote was kind of a preview of this slate of hot days that we have ahead and are currently in. It hasn't quite been as hot as predicted. And so things, it's a good thing. Nothing has really gone to hell in a handbasket but um you know this this week and the following week we'll test the power grids resilience to the summer heat which texas generally has been pretty resilient to hot temperatures because that is the predominant force in in texas to the out-of-nowhere winter storm that happened in February.

But this is going to be the biggest test so far for the grid to see how the reforms are working, whether the new leadership of ERCOT and the PUC is capable of handling this and making the correct decisions on the fly. Last week, they held a press conference and said that they were confident, if the need arose, that they could produce 80,000 megawatts of generation, which would be by far the all-time record for production. I think the all-time record happened in 2019, close to around this time, and it was 74,800 megawatts. And something to keep in mind, electricity cannot in any meaningful sense be stored in large quantities. And so what is on the grid is currently being generated and has to be used at the moment. And so, you know, battery power is, battery storage capabilities are far from sufficient for dealing with this.

So it just requires a constant upkeep and constant monitoring of the grid conditions. So largely, we've seen no real issues come from this, but the ERCOT has made specific reforms and more reforms are coming down the road to deal with just the entire market structure of this, of the ERCOT system, which is based on how much electricity is actually provided rather than what's negotiated up front for a certain price. So I recommend you check out the article. It goes in far more depth than I can here. But regardless, this is a time to watch for the Texas grid, which is not really something that people paid much attention to before the February blackouts. And now it certainly is. It's on the forefront of most people's minds.

Thank you, Bradley. Isaiah, we're coming back to you. Let's get down to brass brass tax here you wrote a piece specifically detailing you know traditional isd and charter school star scores and uh it was great piece go to the texan.news to check it out all sorts of graphs always and good stuff included but tell us a little bit about the comparison between charter schools and isds and what those scores meant for these schools i don don't think I will, actually. So overall, first thing I did was I averaged out star scores for ISDs and charter schools.

And there are five subjects in the star, algebra, biology, English 1 and 2, and U.S. history. And regular traditional ISDs scored better than charters in every one of those subjects when averaged across the entire state. And so that was kind of the simplest answer for who got higher scores on the SCAR. Higher scores on the STAR. Now, you also broke this down in terms of racial disparity. Give us some more information on that. Yes. So I forgot to mention one more statistic that favored ISDs.

They also tended to have a greater percentage of passing students in every subject. So at like a given school, a greater share of students at an ISD would pass compared to the average charter school. But in charter schools' corner, they tended to have smaller racial achievement gaps in most subjects. So in algebra, excuse me, so in biology and English one and two, charters on average had smaller gaps between the lowest scoring racial groups and the highest scoring racial groups in those subjects. And so three out of five subjects, charters tended to have, you know, better racial parity. Furthermore, out of the top, the top five in each kind of district, charter and ISD, the school with the highest racial achievement gap was in ISD, which is Dallas. And so after these high points, it gets a little bit finer and more complicated. Like the district right after Dallas in terms of biggest racial achievement gap was a charter. And then right after that was another ISD, Houston.

And so it's a little another ISD, Houston. And so it's a little bit of a mixed bag. But overall, from the statistics that I ran of the top five and top 10 charters and districts across the state, student achievement for black students, for example, was comparatively better at charters under certain metrics. So on the algebra star, for example, the district with the highest percentage of black students that passed the Algebra Star was far, far and away a charter. And that was the Harmony Science Academy Charter District in San Antonio. They had a little close to 100% of black students pass their Algebra Star. And the next nearest one was Cypress Fairbanks ISD, but I don't believe they cracked 80%.

So certain metrics like that, charters won out in racial achievement with greater parity and comparatively better achievement and sometimes absolutely better achievement for racial groups that tend to not score as well at ISDs. Thank you, Isaiah, for covering that for us. We appreciate it and certainly a good breakdown of all the data. Hayden, we are back to the border. Shocker, huh? I'm still sitting here in Austin.

I don't know about you, but. You boys take things so literally and my jokes. Yeah, it's okay. We'll work on it. You made it too easy. But sometimes, Hayden, you're the one I can count on to jump on board the jokes and not be as literal. So I'm just a little disappointed. I'm sorry.

That's okay. I'll try to do better next time. Thank you, Hayden. I appreciate you. So tell us about the incident that the La Jolla Police Department described. The La Jolla Police Department reported on Facebook, in fact, that I don't know why I add the phrase, in fact, after every other sentence that i say we'll have to work on that too well please don't run reporting something on facebook i mean that's

traditionally nowadays how it happens is on social media right still i get it it sounded funny so they wrote on social media that they were notified by a quote-unquote concerned citizen that a family at Waterburger or Waterburger, if you prefer, had witnessed a family who appeared to be sick. They were coughing, sneezing, and were not socially distancing and being careful, etc. An investigation ensued and they found out that this family had or this family told them that they had been released from border patrol custody because they had tested positive for COVID-19. So this police department was notifying its residents as a public health announcement and advisory that border patrol in their community

is releasing individuals from custody with COVID-19. And to add to that, there was a private organization and nothing against private organizations helping people, but what this police department was trying to convey to people is that there was a charity, I believe it was the Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, was taking in these individuals and putting them up in hotels or a hotel, an area hotel in La Joya, which is near McAllen in Hidalgo County. And they were, the police department was very concerned about COVID-19 spreading and increased infections as a result of what they view to be, well, I won't say that they made a policy statement in their post, but they did link this to decisions that were being made by Border Patrol officials in that area. Now, tell us more about what Abbott has had to say about this, what his response has been and how this, you know, more broadly reflects the border debate going on

in the gubernatorial race. Well, as I mentioned earlier, we're in the middle of a governor's race, and Abbott issued an executive order on Wednesday that prohibits ground transportation, is the phrase that the executive order uses, by individuals who are not law enforcement, ground transportation for illegal aliens by individuals who are not law enforcement ground transportation for illegal aliens by individuals who are not law enforcement. And this is purportedly, as he elaborated on in Newsmax appearance yesterday to prevent the transmission of COVID-19 or the alleged transmission of COVID-19 by individuals who have been apprehended by Border Patrol and who are not in the United States illegally. So that is Abbott's response, at least on paper, to this development

in the La Jolla community near McAllen. And that goes to a border development and a COVID-19 development. We'll have to see if that executive order or that announcement has an impact in terms of COVID-19 infections. But I will say that the county judge of Hidalgo County, Richard Cortez, put out a statement in response to this development as well. And he had criticisms for both Abbott and the federal government. So he is unhappy with both entities, the federal government for allowing COVID positive individuals who are illegally in the country to be out and about in the community and not practicing what the government recommends in terms of COVID-19 precautions. And he criticized Abbott for executive orders that prevent the county from restricting individuals, movements and implementing capacity restrictions,

mask mandates, all of the things that we saw during 2020. And as an important side note, County Judge Richard Cortez in Hidalgo County was one of the judges who made very controversial moves as far as the strictness of the COVID-19 regulations go. So he's a strong proponent of government mandates for preventing COVID-19 infections. But he also had criticisms for the Biden administration as well, which is notable because he is, in fact, a Democrat. Certainly something we'll continue to monitor. Thank you, Hayden. Boys, let's go to a fun topic. Now that I think about it, it's not quite that fun.

But I want to know, in light of this ERCOT discussion, would you rather lose power in the summer in the triple-digit temperatures of the Texas heat? I just wanted to say that I put a very fun, fun topic in there. But see, Brad, your topics are like nostalgic what was your childhood like and it doesn't relate to anything we talk about actually it was what was the most trouble you ever gotten as a kid and that would be fantastic i think the other one was what causes you to have flashbacks to your childhood my answer for that was gonna be hot wheels but wow let's put that out there speaking of hot wheels in the texas summer heat oh my gosh would you that was pretty to be Hot Wheels, but let's put that out there. Speaking of Hot Wheels and the Texas summer heat. Oh my gosh.

That was pretty good. No, that's brutal. That was brutal. Just like the Texas summer heat. So I want to know if you'd rather lose power during the winter or the summer. Well, I think as a young person, you're far more capable of weathering the elements this is bad and i have lost power in both winter and summer and the winter did you also have to walk to school uphill both ways in three feet of snow yeah actually just want to make sure yeah

i would rather walk to school in three feet of snow though than three feet of sunshine in the middle of the texas east am i the only one who's seen that meme where it's like we've got a foot of sunshine out here everyone stay inside stay safe no no i have no idea what you're talking about you're alone well i showed it to at least two of y'all and i won't out who it was but one of them is making sarcastic comments toward me as we speak so anyway well well i'll finish my answer and i would much rather lose power in the summer because uh it's just more bearable and and that's coming from a i was gonna say ridiculous northerner yeah you yankee yeah interesting that it was brutal here in the

winter and i'm you know basically an eskimo so you are you're the abominable snowman i'm that terrifying yes apparently that's true what about you zay well i like the heat much more than the cold but i think i would like the heat much more than the cold. But I think I would like the heat much less if I didn't grow up with air conditioning. So I'm going to go with I'd rather lose power in winter. Because you can always just like, I've got a fireplace, I can put a fire in there. But if it's hot, you know, I like being outside when it's hot, you know. But I think a good portion of that is coming in to where it's not hot anymore and if there was just no respite from that that would really that would really suck that would really

be rough that makes sense daniel what about you where are you at with this debate i think i agree with isaiah i can i'd rather not lose power at all but i think you can prepare more if especially if you know in advance that you're going to have a power outage, which you usually don't. But when you can prepare, it's probably easier to prepare for the cold than it is for the heat. Now, there are some complications if you lose water, for instance, that made things a lot worse in the freeze. But just like power itself, and that's the only problem, I'd rather lose it in the freeze um but just like power itself and that's the only problem i'd rather lose it in the winter i think it also depends on your living situation because like i don't have a fireplace i live in a house but doesn't have a fireplace right but the it's an older house so the insulation and the you know it's it doesn't hold heat or cool it doesn't hold any of that as well

so i'm trying to think but also if you have gas heating or electric heating very true like that's gonna be different absolutely well i know one of the biggest problems during the winter storm was that literally everything in my apartment was frozen and with no power there is no way to unfreeze something to thaw anything, and so you can't eat anything. Well, you could have, like, ice pops. Yeah, I'm sure that's exactly what you would want at a time like that. When you're shivering in your below-freezing-degree apartment. Shivering in your timbers?

Shivering in your boots? Yes. Okay. Okay. If somebody had sent those statements to me written down with no attribution, it'd be pretty easy to tell who said it. Oh, man. Well, gentlemen, thank you for obliging me. I know Daniel really wanted to talk about the weather, so this was just for you.

Yeah, thank you. You're so welcome. I mean, I really wanted to talk about the rain, but just weather in general is okay. You know, what is it? Biggers can't be choosers? I can choose. Well, folks, thanks for sticking with us, and we'll catch you next week. Thank you all so much for listening.

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