The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - July 8, 2022

Episode Date: July 8, 2022

This week on The Texan’s “Weekly Roundup,” the team discusses how public school districts compare with charter schools after the release of this year’s STAAR scores, calls to replace the official accused of mishandling benefits for families of victims of the Uvalde shooting, a Smith County constable arrested on charges of theft and official oppression, the Texas Supreme Court considering the limits of civil courts after one of them tried to shield abortion facilities, Senator John Cornyn’s response to conservative criticism of his bipartisan civics education bill, the Public Utility Commission getting stuck with a $200 million bill in obligations to rural telecom providers, and charges for the two men accused of smuggling dozens of people across the border, resulting in the death of over fifty people in San Antonio last week.  Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast. 

Happy Friday, folks. Senior Editor Mackenzie Taylor here on the Texans Weekly Roundup Podcast. This week, the team discusses how public school districts compare with charter schools after the release of this year's star scores. Calls to replace the official accused of mishandling benefits for families of victims of the Uvalde shooting. A Smith County constable arrested on charges of theft and official oppression. The Texas Supreme Court considering the limits of civil courts after one of them tried to shield abortion facilities. Senator John Cornyn's response to conservative criticism of his bipartisan civics education bill.

The Public Utility Commission getting stuck with a $200 million bill in obligations to rural telecom providers. And charges for the two men accused of smuggling dozens of people across the border, resulting in the deaths of over 50 people in San Antonio last week. As always, if you have questions for our team, DM us on Twitter or email us at editor at the texan.news. We'd love to answer your questions on a future podcast. Thanks for listening and enjoy this episode. Well, hello everyone. This is Mackenzie Taylor with Hay hayden sparks isaiah mijella brad johnson and rob laustius and we just had to restart the podcast

i can't i'm so sorry it's already laughing i'm not helpful because brad just tried to switch we just started recording brad tried to switch the mic over to Rob and it just fell out of its holder. It was funny. It didn't even clatter on the table. It was just hanging midair suspended. And it hit the keyboard of my laptop and started pounding the, I think it was the H key on a tweet. So like if I had a tweet on that. Oh, like in Twitter?

Yeah, because it somehow opened up a new tweet and then hit the H constantly. So that would have been, I should have just tweeted it. I think that energized us a little bit for this recording, which was needed. You just tweet out. Oh boy. Well, that brings us a little bit of joy here on a very slow news week we've all kind of been not twiddling our thumbs because there's always a lot to do but there just hasn't hasn't been the abundance of of news happening or announcements made this week that there usually

is especially the last few weeks so we're just kind of all we have news to talk about but it's not as much as usual yeah we're kind of riding this high with like all the Supreme Court decisions. Yeah. And other like state news going on. And now we're detoxing. Yeah. Basically. Well, it's always how it is.

And we didn't really get this last summer. But because there were quorum breaks and special sessions. Oh, yeah. There's a lot happening. But usually the summer after a session or the summer between like the runoff and the general it does get quieter so we're at least getting that now it's been nearly a year since the second quorum break yeah that's crazy this is great right yeah it doesn't feel like that long ago no it doesn't holy cow and the fact that we were in special sessions at this time last year basically is pretty wild to me it seems like we've been out of session for a very long time

i don't know that's how it seems to me but we do have news to get into so isaiah we're going to start with you you wrote a piece diving into the star test scores here in texas how did charter schools compare to traditional schools so if you go if you get all the scores for all the charters in the school districts at once and you separate them into charters and school districts, students at charter schools generally score worse than students at school districts. And so throughout this article, the whole segment here, the main metric that I stuck to was the percentage of students that passed the star. And there are five subjects. And so in the article here, you can look at, I've got a chart that has it differentiated between each of the five subjects. And in all five, school districts generally had a higher share of their students pass each of these STAR tests than students at charter schools. But when you take a closer look at the data, it gets a little bit more complicated. So one thing to remember is that these are meant to be alternatives for the most part, right? And we've talked before about how they have to go through the state board of education to get approved. If you want to like set up a charter school, you've got to go through

that body. And a big point of discussion every time for every applicant is, you know, does this area need a charter school? And a lot of that turns on, well, how are students performing or what's their achievement like at the school district in the area, right? And so another way to look at it is that students that are making good grades at a school district, traditional public school, don't feel, often their parents don't feel the need to try something new, right? So that's all to say that charters generally tend to cater to students that have not been doing well or had not been doing well at their traditional public schools. So something to consider. And we see that demonstrated when we look at how charters

perform in the boundaries of the school district that they occupy. So for example, our biggest school district in the state is Houston ISD. It takes center stage in the Capitol a lot whenever any education bill is discussed. A lot of them are pointing directly at Houston ISD because it's the biggest and because it's unique in a lot of its practices sometimes. But I looked up on a map that the TA provides all the charter campuses in Houston ISD, called out all the ones that didn't serve high schoolers. So we're looking at grades 9 through 12 here, since we're only looking at the EOC stars, and of course. And Houston ISD, compared to all the other charter campuses

in the district, actually ranks below most of those charter schools in terms of the share of students that pass the star. So if we average it across all five subjects, it ranks, let's see, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9th, I want to say, out of like over 20 charter schools in the area and the district itself. So if you compare the district average of the share of passing students, most charter schools outperform Houston ISD if they're in that district. And that is the case in all of the subjects as well. Although it performs better in some and worse than others, it did best, again, in terms of like comparing to other charters in algebra and US history, where it kind of got a little bit closer to the middle of all the schools in the area.

But in terms of English 1 and English 2, that really brought its average down and got it below the halfway mark compared to other charters in the area. That's not quite the case with Dallas ISD, which also has a lot of charter schools in the area. So it's a pretty good comparison. That's the second biggest district in the state. Dallas ISD? Yes. And Dallas ISD performed better than most charters in the area, but still had several perform better than it. So in all of these, there was no ISD that was at the top or at the bottom compared to charters in the area. It's pretty mixed. It's kind of an important thing to understand is that it's complicated.

It depends on where you are. It depends on who's running the school. And in Houston and Dallas, like I said, there are lots of charter schools. In Northside and Katy ISDs, which are also, you know, of comparable size to Dallas, those are like three and four in terms of the biggest districts in the state. Katy only has four charter campuses that serve high schoolers. And in all subjects of the star, average across, it ranked third compared to the Calvin Numbs High School, the Aristoi Classical Upper School, and the Harmony School of Innovation. So all of those schools had more of their students past the star across all subjects in KDISD. But similarly, you know, Northside ISD also,

they just have five charter campuses in that district serving charter students, or excuse me, high school students. And Northside ISD was actually better than all but one of those charter schools in terms of the share of passing students. The one that beat them out was the Shavano campus. But other than that, Northside ISD was performing better than the charters. Is it fair to say that there's not a general rule that could be applied across the board to get an idea of how successful charters are compared to public schools and that it really is kind of specialized in that regard? It's pretty specialized. And you've got ISDs that are run well in terms of how many of their students pass the star, and you've got charters that are run well by that same metric.

And under the same metric, you've got ISDs that perform poorly and charters that perform poorly. So in KDISD, the Leadership Academy is a really notable outlier. It ranked last in the average across all subjects and in each individual subject. And if you look at the chart, it's, it's a pretty steep drop. I said that KDISD ranked behind the top three, which are all kind of together between 90 and 100% in all subjects. And then there's a little bit below that, but then way below is a leadership academy. So that's a charter school whose students are just not performing well at the star. And they're far below KDISD.

But there are other charters in the area. The rest of the charters in the area are performing much better than KDISD schools. So it depends on who's running it. A lot of factors at play. And this is a huge system, right? We've got over 1,000 ISDs two to three hundred, I want to say like around 200 charters, and each of those charters can have more than one campus, and so it's a complicated system with a lot of mixed results. Is that the case regionally as well? Yes, it's a

little bit more systematic, you might say, but the state has 20 education service regions and region eight, which covers the northeastern corner of the state, kind of service regions and region eight, which covers the Northeastern corner of the state, kind of the Piney woods area ranked the highest in terms of how many of their students pass the star. So the actual hard number here is 81.8%. And that's the mean percentage of passing students average over all five subjects.

So 81.8% of their students pass the star is, is a general way to put it. Second place was the region 14 anchored around Abilene. And the Panhandle region was the third. So those are kind of the top three areas of the state where most students are passing the star. At the bottom, we've got region 18, which is the Permian Basin area west of the Concho Valley, 67.8% of students pass the star. Generally, they're average across all subjects. Got it. Well, Isaiah, thank you for covering that for us.

And there are plenty of charts and graphs to look at at the Texan.News and that article specifically. Bradley, we're going to come to you. Two Uvalde officials came out this week taking aim at another local official. Talk to us about what's going on. So state Senator Roland Gutierrez and Mayor Dan McLaughlin, McLaughlin famous for the one that, that, um, yelled back at Beto O'Rourke when he stormed the press conference shortly after the shooting. Calling him a sick son of a you know what. Yep. Yep. know what yep yeah uh the pair penned a letter to governor greg abbott asking him to remove

district attorney christina busby from oversight of the uvalde together resiliency center now that center is a it's a resource center established by the state after the shooting to provide services like a mental health hotline crisis intervention support counseling help with insurance claims a bunch of different services um that the community has been taking advantage of since the tragedy um over a month ago and but these this pair uh gutierrez and mclaughlin i believe mclaughlin's republican right um i don't know if he's necessarily, I mean, it's a local position, so it's not partisan. So it's not really non-partisan.

But he did endorse Don Huffines. Okay. So he, yeah, he's Republican. Safe to say. And Gutierrez is a Democrat state senator. And so just an interesting pair there. But they say in the letter, in the past month, we've heard numerous troubling reports from our constituents about the UTRC and the district attorney, including the

failure to timely deliver victims' compensation resources to those in need. They also added that another family could not get utility assistance while their child was in the hospital with injuries from the shooting. That is one of the responsibilities of the center. There are apparently a lot of issues surrounding this. So they asked Abbott to remove Busby from oversight and hand it over to the Texas department of emergency management, a much larger office that can statewide agency that can, they say,

handle this kind of thing better than when I looked at the website of the district attorney's office, there was like three employees, at least listed on the website. They may have some more, but not a big operation. And so that's really the issue, that there's a lot that needs to be done and not enough manpower in that office to handle it. How did the governor respond so a spokesman told us uh the initial five million dollar investment for the uvalde together resiliency

center was made to uvalde county the governor will support whoever local officials designate as project director of the utrc and so abbott had appointed Busby to this. I'm not sure if she was like the chosen person of the community to do that at the time. She's no longer that, it seems now. But it seems that the governor is kind of saying, you know, you guys decide who you want to run this and I will back that. But he did say, well, I guess, how much you read into local officials designate, you know, they pointed to TDEM. So does that mean TDEM's going to

Department of Emergency Management? Yeah, is going to get this. I don't know. We'll see. But there's clearly some some problems bubbling up down there uh but nothing has changed yet got it well brad thank you for covering that for us hayden you covered a story that is i mean it's just fascinating all around and i think a very uh intriguing

just saga i just loved this story i really loved this story but I really loved this story. But an elected official in Smith County is facing theft and oppression charges. Tell us more about Constable Curtis Traylor Harris. Well, it's funny because even his name is an interesting part of the story. Traylor spelled like Taylor, but with a T. Right, right. And he has gone by Curtis Harris, Curtis Traylor, Curtis T. Harris, depending on which jurisdiction he's running in. But there are a lot of details to the story. Here are some highlights. In 2018, Constable Harris ran against Republican Constable Ben

Adamczyk in Dallas County's Precinct 3 and lost. He came within one percentage point of winning. He then put his name on the ballot for a seat on the Dallas City Council. He sought to unseat Lee Kleinman. It wasn't much of a race. He raised less than $50 and ended up losing that overwhelmingly. but Harris has a career or has tried to jumpstart a political career in Dallas and was not successful. He came back to Tyler or went back to Tyler and ran for Smith County constable. Again, did not spend a lot of money running for that seat in precinct one. He spent about $126 on pushcards that he ordered from Vistaprint. That was the only expenditure that he filed on his campaign finance documents. Speaking of which, he reportedly did not file his required campaign finance reports for his

run in Dallas for constable that he lost. So the history of the campaign finance reports are also in dispute. But the charges that he is currently facing stem from allegations that while he was serving an eviction notice on one of his constituents, he and two other deputies rummaged through that person's personal belongings and stole them. And those belongings included military medals. They included jewelry and other keepsakes and personal items that were contained in other belongings. But the precinct one's constable's race in Smith County is really a case study of a political oddity because when he ran in Precinct 1 Democratic primary in 2020, Constable Harris came in with only 10 winner of the race, Willie Mims, was declared not qualified for the election because he had not submitted the required number of signatures. A judge ordered a runoff between Bobby Garman and Willie Mims, and the runoff only had less than 2,000 voters participate in it, less than 2,000 voters participate. Constable Harris ended up winning that contest by just over 100 votes, having only received 10% of the Democratic

primary. So it was an interesting windfall for him. He had been struggling to pay rent in Dallas when he was trying to start his political career there. And it seemed that throughout his adult life, from the local media reports, he had been struggling to become an independent adult. And then he became this elected official with a $74,000 taxpayer-funded salary and a staff of deputies that report to him. So he was arrested on these charges that were said to take place in early last year, and his bail was set at $30,000 last November, which he posted a bond and Judge Skeen in the 241st District Court released him on those terms. So most people released on bond are given a list of rules to follow. Did Harris abide by the conditions of his bond? He did not. He went to Corsicana, which is in Navarro County, to participate in a police graduation ceremony. And there is video

documentation of this. He was in full uniform and had his service weapon on him, which is a no-no when you are on bail. You're not allowed to have a weapon and you're not allowed to leave the county where you are on probation. You don't say bail. So, uh, yes. So him being outside of Smith County and him having his service weapon on him were violations of his bail. The Texas Rangers arrested him again and Judge Skeen increased his bail to half of a million dollars. Wow. So now he's in jail in Longview awaiting trial. Has he been removed from his role as constable? We're lucky to pay his $74,000 salary while he's in jail because he has not been removed as constable. Wow. And he's in jail in Longview

because he's a law enforcement officer. Otherwise, he he's in jail in Longview because he's a law enforcement officer. Otherwise he'd be in jail in Tyler where he's accused of these crimes. There is a suit pending in Judge Austin Reeves Jackson's court to remove him. And I've looked at Isaiah because Isaiah is familiar with Judge Jackson, but yeah, he showed up in stories before he has. We've covered Judge Jackson before. He presides over the 114th District Court. And I note that because it's a different court than Harris is being tried for the indictment against him. Important to note, we did reach out to Harris' lawyer, Andrew Dahman, for his side of the story, but we did not hear back from him. We also talked to the

Smith County Democratic Party chairman, who declined to weigh in and pointed to local media reports. Next steps would be for Harris to be tried for the charges that the grand jury handed up against him. And we'll wait for the next chapter of this interesting political saga. Very fascinating. When I got this draft, I just could not stop reading it. It's such a fascinating story. So make sure you go to the Texan and read it there. Hayden, thank you so much. What a fun story. Isaiah, obviously for a couple weeks now, Roe abortion has just been the leading story. But give us a general summary about what's going on with Texas abortion bans right now. Yeah, so we all remember the Human Life Protection Act

passed by Stereo Giovanni Capriglione and Senator Angela Paxton. That is the trigger ban that will take effect 30 days after the Supreme Court's judgment in the case. So that's not in effect right now. What is in effect is the old unrepealed ban that the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional in Roe v. Wade since after Dobbs and concurrently unconstitutional in Roe v. Wade, since after Dobbs and concurrently the overturning of Roe, that became constitutional again in

the Supreme Court's eyes. So, y'all might remember the last time we talked about it, there was a judge in Harris County, a district court judge, that had issued a temporary restraining order preventing several district attorneys and the state from enforcing that old ban against a a group of abortion facilities and that has since been reversed by the texas supreme court so if you're not keeping up with the zigzags with the court the state of things right now is that district attorneys can prosecute abortion facilities under the unrepealed abortion ban from the 20s. So that's what's going on right now, basically. What is the reasoning for the Texas Supreme Court's order?

Well, they didn't, I mean, this happens a lot at the appellate level, right? A lot of it is procedural, but they didn't get to the meat and bones merits of the case itself yet. Since even at the Texas Supreme Court, it's still pretty preliminary. It was an emergency, emergency writ of mandamus that they're responding to. But generally, Hayden can jump in and clarify, we've got this bifurcated system in Texas where we have two high courts, right? And are there, decline to answer if you don't know, but is there another state that has two high courts, a criminal one and a civil one? I think Oklahoma is the other state that has two, but other than that, we're the only one, I believe. Yeah. And because of that, civil courts, like the one

that issued the temporary restraining order, stopping DAs from prosecuting these abortion facilities, cannot enjoin state's bifurcated system of civil and criminal courts. Civil courts only have jurisdiction to block criminal laws when there's evidence that the application of those laws could threaten property rights right and so whether that applies here to these abortion facilities is going to be one of the big questions going forward in this case because we've been used so far to all the abortion laws in texas being civil because of roe and casey and the thereof. But the old unrepealed abortion ban is a criminal law. The punishment that it threatens is two to five years imprisonment for an intentional elective abortion. So going to a civil court to block that law is, that's kind of the main procedural issue here, right? Is like, we've got a two part court system.

Do civil courts have the authority to do this here in this case? So in other words, more specifically, are there irreparable injuries to property rights being threatened by the application of this criminal law? So that's going to be the question going forward at the Texas Supreme court. Got it. Isaiah, thank you for covering that for us from start to finish. Rob, our awesome assistant editor, we are coming to you. You're on our pod this week, which is so exciting.

We're just so glad to have you. You wrote a story this week, I believe it was published Monday, about Texas's Senator John Cornyn responding to a lot of hubbub over a civics bill. Talk to us about the history and purpose of this bill. Well, thank you very much for having me. It's great to be on the podcast. So John Cornyn, along with other senators and representatives in the U.S. Senate and House representatives, introduced this bipartisan bill, the Civics Secures Democracy Act, in March 2021. The purpose of the bill was to promote civics and history education, along with fundings for various programs and grants for institutions, educators, and students. It would also require the National Assessment of Educational Progress on Civics and History to be administered every two years to certain grade levels, and would also establish a fellowship program to diversify the civics and history education workforce. The bill was referred

to the House Committee on Education and Labor, and I believe it was the same thing in the Senate in March 2021, and it was recently reintroduced to the Senate floor in June 2022. So why is there hubbub? Why do people have a problem with this bill? So the Conservative National Association of Scholars and Conservative Magazine National Review have both made claims that the bill will allow the Biden administration to promote progressive ideas like critical race theory and action civics, that by introducing this bill, by creating this sort of program for the federal government to fund education like this, it's going to allow them to create a national curriculum.

Some people have said that they're sort of dangling a $6 billion bribe in front of people to promote progressive ideas. I know that former President Donald Trump at the Faith and Freedom Conference in 2022 came out against the bill saying that it would promote CRT and other progressive ideas in education. Got it. So that's kind of where it's all it's all founded. How has Senator Cornyn responded to all of this? So in a statement to Breitbart in 2021, when the bill was first introduced and started getting flack from conservatives, his team said that the CSDA, the Civic Secures Democracy Act would in fact prevent the Biden administration from establishing a national curriculum. They said that this is because the funding is done through

Title I allocations, meaning, quote, these awards are not made at the discretion of the Secretary. The National Center for Education Statistics explains that Federal I title funds are allocated to districts, but given to states who can reserve funds at the state level, based on certain criteria, states are also able to make different allocations to their districts than the federal allocation. So in other words, the money, if I understand correctly, is going to the districts, but the states can kind of allocate how that's done. So in other words, it according to Cornyn's team, it does not allow the federal government to simply do whatever they want. Cornyn also recently responded to a uh a national review article that they had posted on

twitter um i'm sorry that he he retweeted it from national review yeah i'm sorry he didn't retweet it he posted a link to their article saying uh that we need to pre-teach history and civics and quote this false hysterical claims are untrue and worthy of a Russian active measures campaign. Not a serious discussion of our bill. Oh, wow. Well, we'll continue to kind of watch where this bill ends up. But, Rob, thank you for your coverage. Bradley, we are coming to you. Very notable proposal from a state legislator this week who announced that he'll file legislation related to children's minors use of social media.

What happened? that he'll file legislation related to children's minors use of social media what happened so state rep jared patterson announced his aim to raise the minimum age limit to use social media platforms to 18 he told us in a comment from the conversations i've had with school officials in recent weeks i've come to better understand the mental health threat social media imposes on our youth he also said over the years texas has taken steps to improve physical health and safety of young people examples include precluding them from purchasing firearms alcohol and tobacco or requiring car seats booster seats and even seat belts so um the the support for such a measure is uh well we'll get into the next section, but just currently children under 13 are already prohibited from joining platforms under federal law. So basically, Patterson wants the state to just expand that up to age 18.

Got it. What's the justification for taking that step, which is quite a step. I mean, this is a big, this caught my eye, this caught your eye for a lot of different reasons. And I think, you know, as he lays out, there are other restrictions that we have on children. So, like, the idea of having a restriction is not new, but applying it to this certainly is. And that is part of why it's drawn a lot of notoriety, both in support and in opposition in the short amount of time since he has made the statement. But specifically, they believe that this, whether it's Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, are all causing multiple issues with self-image, other mental health problems. One currently Instagram, Facebook is being sued.

Facebook, which owns Instagram, is being sued by a mother for allegedly causing her daughter's eating disorder and so um there i just saw another one about this morning about tiktok being sued because their child participated in something called the self-harm challenge so oh my gosh yeah i don't think it's really a question of whether these things can cause problems uh the question is whether it's the government's role to jump in and whether it's possible. So on the flip side of that, these platforms say it's too difficult to set these requirements.

Yeah, well, what would you do, right? I mean, even if you go to a site that sells alcohol, you just have to click. Right, you can just lie. Totally. Just choose a birth date that's not your own. Now, Instagram, after this lawsuit, a site that sells alcohol you just have to click uh right you can just lie totally like just choose a birth date that's not your now instagram after this lawsuit they announced these new restrictions uh one of them included like submitting a getting on like a zoom video and having an ai

artificial intelligence thing whatever you call it uh guess the age of the person based on how they look it's not even photo id just like a visual that's a new one now there is photo id stuff that's uh that is part of it as well okay um but you know regardless of any safeguard people can get around it right um which is how laws work right in general so that's not new right and uh but these companies are already they're a already charged with uh limiting it to people over at 13 or over and b they already have some strategies implemented to cut down on that just a question of how effective they are. The other aspect of this that I didn't touch on in the piece, but I think is worth noting,

so this would be one state, you know, and that there are efforts to do this in other states as well. I think Florida has some sort of proposal. I don't know how far that's gotten, but regardless, you know, as with many of these laws in many different issues you could have a patchwork of different policies and so kids in texas if this passes would be subject to the state restriction and then you know california surely wouldn't pass something like this um at least there's no appetite right now for it. Um, so it's just, it's a very, it's a new issue that there's a lot of untreaded ground. And so Patterson has said that he's gonna, it's gonna take a lot to just start the conversation. Um, we'll see if anything makes it anywhere in the, in when the legislature reconvenes um but it's he's certainly

caught lighting in a bottle just starting the conversation oh my gosh i mean it was his one tweet had 400 over 400 responses uh so it's a lightning rod yeah and um doesn't take away from the validity of the conversation itself well and i think the legislature has been very prepared to engage in discussions about social media even the last legislative session the censorship bill that kind of went through and passed and is held up in court now but regardless this is something that the texas legislature is not afraid to touch but this is an entirely different proposal and you're right i think that there will be a lot of discussion particularly among republicans who currently hold both chambers

and the big positions in texas government about whether this is the role of government as that is what republicans you know that's that that's what they that's what they talk about right that's where a lot of the disagreements lie so right now there's a huge debate within the republican party on the appropriate uses of state power. The direction, the Republican Party is not as lockstep behind no use of government power as it used to be. And they're currently embroiled in that fight. And which side is going to win? I don't know.

Probably depends on the issue. But this is another example. Yeah. Well, and there's already discussion about the role of government in terms of censoring social media company or not so censoring social media companies but preventing social media companies from censorship yeah and those discussions are i mean almost the same thing right what is the role of government in allowing these platforms or publishers whatever that is deemed uh correct definitionally but who's who knows and at least in texas we saw that one pass pretty overwhelmingly especially within the republican coalition this

is entirely different this is this is so different but um maybe like you know like five ten years ago so a bill like that was unthinkable, but it passed. So I think this is just the beginning of the discussion of this issue. And we'll see where the chips fall. And I think as political divides become even more pronounced, there is more appetite on both sides of the aisle to do things that they may not have deemed appropriate 10 years ago. There's like a fighting of the factions that was not as prevalent a while ago. So interesting to watch. We're going to stick with you, Brad. Let's talk about energy and telephone services here in Texas. There was a significant development in the ongoing fight between the state and rural telecom providers. Tell us about it. So the third district court of appeals ruled

in favor of the Texas Telephone Association, which had been suing the state over the universal service fund. That is a, a fund set up by the state legislature to enable rural telecom providers to follow through on the state mandate of universal service. Basically, every corner of the state, every person in the state has to have access to a phone line, phone connection, and that's mandated in statute. And so because when you get out to these sparsely populated areas, businesses cannot make profits on spending all this in infrastructure and upkeep and then having you know a dozen customers or however many it is yeah um many of these out there that are really affected by this are our satellite phone providers but this the usf has been underfunded. Currently, it's $200 million in debt right now

that it owes under the agreement of the state with the telecom providers. And that's what the court ruled, ordered the PUC, the Public Utility Commission, to adequately fund it. The reason it's underfunded is back in 2020, they declined to raise rates. You pay a percentage fee on every call that's made within the state.

And that was left the same as cost rise. And so the deficit there grows. It's expected to grow another $100 million the time the legislature reconfines next year. But this is an ongoing fight. And the governor vetoed a bill from the legislature ordering them to expand the tax base on this essentially um and so now the court has ordered them the state to to follow through on their commitment and i'm sure it'll be appealed by it likely will be appealed we'll see if the state wants to pick that fight or if they just want to swallow the pill but um this is a lot of money it's a lot of money and they are continuing to drag their feet on it but this might give them the kick in the rear end that they need absolutely

well thank you bradley for covering that for us hayden we're going to end our uh content section with you in a recent and horrific human smuggling case, 48 people were found dead in a tractor trailer and another five died at the hospital. What charges are the suspected human smugglers facing? This one is pretty cut and dry. There were two suspects arrested, a 45-year-old male from Pasadena, Texas, and a 28-year-old male from Palestine, Texas. They are charged with conspiracy and alien smuggling resulting in death. And they are the first suspect, the 45-year-old, and I'm not going to say their names.

I said them in the article, but I don't want to say their names out loud. The 45-year-old is charged with alien smuggling resulting in death. He was found at the scene of the crime, according to the Justice Department, attempting to get away from the tractor trailer where the dead bodies and survivors were found by San Antonio first responders. San Antonio police were the ones who took this individual into custody and turned him over to U.S. authorities. The 28-year-old male was arrested in Palestine, which I believe is his residence, and he appeared in Tyler for an initial appearance last week, but either will be or has been transported to San Antonio for the duration of the court proceedings. He was charged with conspiring with the 45-year-old to smuggle these people,

and as we mentioned, 48 of them were found dead at the scene. 16 survivors went to the hospital. Five of them subsequently died. The dead include Mexican citizens, Guatemalans, Hondurans, and others of unknown national origin. Wow. A tragic story, though. Absolutely.

What consequences could these two men face? Both of them are facing execution by lethal injection. In the United States, if you smuggle somebody and there is a death, that is a potentially a capital offense. Of course, that'll be decided by a judge and a jury. But if, like I said, it's pretty cut and dry. If you're out there and you're thinking about carting illegal aliens over the border, you may think that you're just running an errand that's illegal, but they are facing the most serious consequence that the federal government can impose. U.S. executions by the U.S. government are rare. There have only been 16 in recent decades, but 13 of them were during the Trump administration. So they are rare,

but they do happen. And that is they are facing the death penalty for these charges. Well, Hayden, you've had some very grim stories that you've been covering, but thank you for ensuring that our readers are informed of what's going on here in Texas. Gentlemen, let's pivot to some tweets that caught our eye from this week isaiah i want to start with you um because you are uh tooting your own horn here talking about something that you you tweeted some news that you had to to share with your followers yes i can't believe you are talking about yourself here it's a self-toot. Yeah. Well, there's a Supreme Court decision, Bruin, B-R-U-E-N, that was pretty consequential for Second Amendment rights.

And in light of that decision, the state's case, and that's an effort to kind of legalize silencers, to put it colloquially, is kind of changing a little bit. So that case, basically the judge in this case told Attorney General Paxton that he did have leave to file a second amended complaint, I assume amended in light of the Supreme Court, and also rejected the federal government's motion to dismiss the lawsuit. So translated, that's good news for Texas and bad news for the federal government. And generally, good news for the bill, the new state law that Texas passed, that on paper says firearm suppressors that are made in Texas only for personal use are not subject to the National Firearms Act. And so for those who aren't familiar, the NFA requires you to register suppressors with the feds, with the AFT, and has a very lengthy process for getting permission to get one and costly as well. There's a $200, what they call a tax stamp.

Fun fact, they set that number at $200 because that was the average price of a machine gun when they passed this law in the 30s. Oh, wow. Yeah. And it just hasn't been changed since then. But suppressors are, legally speaking, a firearm under the National Firearms Act. And this

new state law says, oh, if you make one in Texas for use by a Texan, then the Commerce Clause doesn't apply. So the NFA shouldn't apply. And the law sets in motion once Paxton pretty much wins a case in federal court. So that's what's going on now. Got it. Well, thank you for that.

And go follow Isaiah on Twitter, people. Woo-woo. Woo-woo. Brad, what did you find so mine is about um some polling that we saw harvard did a poll on on the row fallout uh the overturning of roe v wade and um it showed that it's an interesting contradiction here among the populace. 55% of respondents said they opposed overturning Roe. Well, 45% said they supported it. Roe obviously said that the states could not put any restriction on abortion themselves um well the when you break it down into certain restrictions

including the uh the 15-week ban which was the exact issue at center at the center of the dobbs case that overturned roe uh 72 percent of respondents said they supported abortion up until 15 weeks. So setting the line there. And reducing it to six weeks, which is roughly what Texas has with the Heartbeat Act, at 49% said they supported a ban at six weeks. And these two positions are in serious contradiction because and it shows that people don't really know what roe did um it did um it made every state's law on abortion unconstitutional and since that has been removed now we're seeing the question go back to the states and all these this patchwork of of different laws but it's just it's interesting to see such a

a uh a lightning rod of a of a supreme court case there's not much understanding of what it actually does certainly when you see a lot of folks in more liberal states saying okay well i'm gonna move out of the country which we talked about i think last week but the i mean a lot of these states are not going to be places that uh just because politically they're more liberal are going to restrict abortions that's just not what's going to happen so that's i mean it's creating already with this overturning a patchwork of different abortion laws and different states have different options for women right that's totally different we're gonna stay the same well one notable example is uh that guy from green day

he said that he was going to move after the dobbs decision uh back to england which has tighter abortion restrictions than california where he had been living. Things like that. So yes, just to prove your point, there's not understanding about what Roe did or what Dobbs did. Another example of that, I think it was Halle Berry. She tweeted something about how horrible the Dobbs decision is. And then, if I remember correctly, she tweeted it from france which has

a pretty strict uh abortion restriction most countries abortion restrictions are tighter than the restrictions and that ro allowed in america yeah so it's it's just very interesting to see the the lack of understanding of this painted so clearly. Yeah, absolutely. Well, Bradley, thank you. And thank you for not tooting your own horn this week. You're welcome. I appreciate that.

And do you like how I didn't really give Isaiah a hard time about that? But I give you a hard time every time you do it. Just wanted to throw that out there. Hayden, what do you have for us? I have a tweet from Judge Clay Jenkins, County Judge Clay Jenkins in Dallas, who is, let's just say, the gift that keeps on giving when it comes to political news.

But he tweeted about the Roe reversal, commenting, the 4th of July, he said this on July 4th, the 4th of July is a celebration of our independence, something all of us, and particularly women, have less of due to at SCOTUS blog decisions this term. SCOTUS blog. I know, that's my favorite part of this tweet is that he tagged a blog that has nothing, it's not a government entity, it is a private organization. I don't know why he didn't just say hashtag SCOTUS or something like that. But he wrote, the right to make family planning decisions and breathe clean air were severely curtailed. More rights are next at register and vote. Obviously, Jenkins is a staunch liberal. And it's interesting that he made these comments on Independence Day, obviously expressing his disdain for some of the recent Supreme Court decisions that have more conservative implications than in past Supreme Court terms. But Jenkins has been a frequent commenter on national and statewide politics, though he is a county judge and has local power.

And particularly as it vehicle to comment on the supreme court yeah very notable and uh we had a an interview at the texas gop convention with lauren davis and by we i mean you um his republican opponent um in that in the november general elections which is very interesting to watch a lot of these just political fights unfold, particularly at the local level post COVID when folks became very familiar with who their county judge was as they were the executive of their county. And yeah, very interesting.

And I did enjoy that interview with Lauren Davis because we got to talk about some of her values and policies in contrast to Jenkins. So if you want to see a rebuttal to some of the actions that Jenkins has taken, I would recommend checking out that interview. Absolutely. Thank you, Hayden. Rob, welcome to the tweetery section. What do you have for us on Twitter this week? So I found a funny tweet from a Mr. Noam Bloom who said the following, SCOTUS, hey Congress, how about you make some laws instead of dumping every important decision in our laps? Congress, clearly this is the end of democracy. I think that this is one of my favorite takes

following the Supreme Court's recent slew of decisions that having fewer decisions be made by unelected officials like the Supreme Court and the bureaucrats is somehow more undemocratic. And that requiring elected officials to make more decisions is somehow, yeah, requiring elected officials to make more decisions is actually less democratic and representative somehow. Don't ask me how I don't understand that calculus. But he also retweeted another person who posted an image of Justice Kagan's dissent with, and I quote, Members of Congress often don't know enough and know they don't know enough to regulate sensibly on an issue. And also members of Congress often can't know enough and again, know they can't keep up regulatory schemes working across time. And in my opinion, if the Congress can't do something, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be done, right? You have to have some kind of bureaucracy. But I don't think there's really anything unreasonable with the idea that

directives for agencies should have to come from elected representatives, and that unelected bureaucrats shouldn't just be able to do whatever they want at any given time. Well, I do think we talk about a lot about the political inconsistencies and ideological inconsistencies of both sides of the political aisle. And I think this highlights one that the left so often falls into, a trap that the left so often falls into, which is if an institution does not align with something that they want in that moment, whether it be the Electoral College or the Supreme Court or whatever institution you might be in the news that day, there's the argument of, oh gosh, well, we need to either change it or abolish it or something along those lines, like change the

form of government. Now, Republicans are far more reticent to change our system of government by definition, right? There's a conservation mindset that comes with just being a conservative. But that is and the right has plenty of pitfalls they fall into. But this is one that so often happens on the left. And I think an interesting example of this is I think if you would have asked most conservatives in the late 20th century, and also probably in the early 21st, what do think of the supreme court i think their decision i think their their view of the supreme court might have been a little less positive than it is after this most recent term you know i had um conservative friends who said that they wanted to get rid of the supreme court honestly because of

of the decisions that it made and it's interesting how that sort of flip-flops uh when institutions do what people want yeah and when the Supreme Court is the one institution where public opinion is not salient, it's not supposed to be considered. And so much of the commentary on the Roe reversal was whether or not it aligns with public opinion when that has nothing to do with whether it was a sound ruling in the first place or whether its reversal was a sound ruling in the first place or whether its reversal was a sound ruling. We talked last week about 61% of Americans in some way or another were for abortion rights in one way or another and how that contradicts the decision that the Supreme Court made. And again, that's kind of the point of this form of government, right, is to have three

independent branches in one way or another and with scaled influence right they're supposed to be a little bit less influenced the the judiciary according to the founders uh wields over the population um not that any one is less important in terms of what how it actually affects lives but there is a difference between each branch and a scaled influence that was put in place for a reason now if those are things that the citizens want to change then that's a conversation to have but that's not how things currently work so very fascinating well i'm going to go true crime here now you boys in the office you boys in the office have heard me talk about this incessantly it's a fascinating story this yo guy this yes that's the yo guy so for those who've

not heard about the caitlin armstrong case here in austin it is fascinating i'd encourage you to go look up some local reporting on this issue but essentially it's a love triangle gone wrong which i think most love triangles probably go wrong at some point, but this went dramatically wrong. Um, basically this couple dating, living together, the gentleman decided to go and spend time with a friend of his who was in town. She's a professional cyclist.

They had previously dated while, uh, him and his current girlfriend who he's living with were on a break. The current girlfriend's name is Caitlin Armstrong. Um, they went out and this gentleman and his current girlfriend who he's living with were on a break the current girlfriend's name is caitlin armstrong um they went out and this gentleman and his friend which is what their families say was their relationship there's a debate about whether that's the case or not whether there was an affair but the families say the only thing we have on record is that they were friends they went out enjoyed time together he brought her mariah wilson back to a friend's house where she was

staying while she was in town his girlfriend caitlin armstrong uh allegedly allegedly not that there's footage of her jeep driving by minutes before the murder that's you know neither here yes immaterial um but basically the allegations are that his girlfriend then drove by went into the house shot this woman this professional cyclist mario maria wilson um went back home and uh to her boyfriend they were brought in for questioning the if you read the affidavit it is fascinating caitlin armstrong never denies that she did in fact murder this woman. It is wild. But because of an inconsistency with a birth date on some paperwork, APD could not issue a warrant.

Unbelievable. Three days later, Caitlin Armstrong flies out of Austin Bergstrom airport. Footage is ridiculous. She's a yoga teacher. She works at a real estate office here in Austin. She has a yoga mat over her shoulder and like a face mask and it's just like walking through the airport like my roommate and i talk about this all the time she's just a girl she's just like a girl like that's hilarious so many of us um a warrant had previously been issued for her arrest

because she did not fail to pay a 600 botoxox bill here in Austin. A Botox bill? I'm not even kidding you. Yes. A warrant was issued because she didn't pay her Botox bill. She died in Nash? No, she did. She went in. They ran her car.

They said it didn't work. There were insufficient funds. However, the card was declined. She goes, oh, let me go grab something for my car. She left her credit card on the counter, got in her car, and drove away. So there's already a warrant out. So anyway, I'll get to that in a second she flies out of out of austin's airport to the east coast i forget if it's uh new york or new jersey and goes missing for 43 days police don't know where she is we hear nothing and finally after a warrant's issued they're like well she's she's

on the east coast she could be out of the country by now how do we like this this murder suspect went missing for 43 days it's wild and it's not like she's some hardened criminal based on everything we you know the public and law enforcement knows about her she just went missing other than her botox fraud other than the botox fraud yes which again not to diminish that crime but murder is a little bit more severe yeah just a tad murder is just slightly more severe than that basically 43 days later she's found in costa rica costa rica and she's been doing yoga in costa rica and like surfing yoga which i don't know what that is but apparently that's a thing in costa rica She told the instructors there that she was there to learn more about her craft because it's her profession to teach yoga here in Austin. And we finally get a mugshot and we had heard that her appearance.

I love how you say we were so invested. I know I'm so invested. We finally get a mugshot and we'd heard that there was bruising around her face, which she claimed was from a surfing accident. Now, when you get plastic surgery, you also have bruising around your face. But she claims that it's from a surfing accident. I'm going to show.

Have you all seen the mug shots? Have I shown these to you? I have seen the mug shot once when you posted it in Slack. But other than that, I haven't seen it. It is wild. Okay. I look forward with great anticipation. This is the same person.

Oh, wow. That's very different. She has definitely declined. And of course she has her hair color changed. But in terms of the actual structure of her face. Those don't look like the same person. Yeah. And she looks a lot less thrilled in that third one than the first two.

The second mugshot is from Costa Rica. The third is from costa rica the third is from harris county her little sabbatical in costa rica was over by the time that third one was taken i would not have believed that that was the same her eye color looks almost different or maybe it's just the eye shadow making her eye color look different but that's that's unreal but i mean her it's definitely i mean again i'm not i should not speak so definitively but there's a nose job that looks like it happened there. Probably some I don't know, but her cheeks look totally different.

Her jawline looks totally different. It's just it's wild. Anyways, they caught her in Costa Rica. There's video of her walking through the airport. They get her to Harris County, hold her in Harris County for a little while. And now she's back in Austin. But it is the wildest story mackenzie i have no doubt that when this case goes to trial oh there will be gavel to gavel uh viewing here

in the office well you just know what this story literally and don't you know like the netflix austin office is like drooling over this as a potential documentary right like a series or something i mean that's dateline is all this stuff of documentaries right there it's wild well and her her boyfriend is who bought her the gun that ended up killing like is what is what was used in the killing of mariah wilson i wonder how he feels he's a straw buyer he's a straw buyer oh my gosh i'm a straw victim we need to close the girlfriend loophole um but it is the why like there are so many parts of the story that are wild and she used a fake passport in exiting the country which people think is potentially her sister's passport it's a crazy story it is an absolutely wild wild story can i ask one question

about this story absolutely how would you describe it do you think it's like wild it is so wild. It's taken up far too much of my time. I have like tweet alerts for the reporters that are following it because I love this story so much. It is unbelievable. And this is a world-class cyclist who was murdered, like one of the best in the country in her field.

And the gentleman who was dating Caitlin Armstrong is also a very gifted cyclist and involved in the community here in Austin. And all happening right here in our very own Austin, Texas, right here in our backyard. It's like cycling hipsters gone bad. It's crazy. So definitely worth going to check out. Okay, real fast before we end here. I took up so much time talking about that story, but folks really go look it up.

It's wild and read the affidavit. I might tweet the affidavit out because it was some light reading it's wonderful fourth of july hayden i hear you have maybe some stories or a story from the fourth of july i want to hear from y'all what you guys ended up doing how your celebrations were if you let off fireworks i did all of those things fireworks were super fun it was like three hours of fireworks that i was involved in which was really fun hayden how was yours we had a great while I was with my parents and siblings for the Fourth of July weekend, we had a little family reunion out on Caddo Lake, and it was a lot of fun. But we went to what was supposed to be a fireworks show. And we went to the location that we went last year. And last year

was a great time. But this year, they positioned the fireworks in such a way on the lake that nobody could see them they were entirely blocked by trees so we had to gather our lawn chairs and everyone else in the crowd is doing the same thing oh my gosh gathering our lawn chairs packing up and driving to a different point on the lake as the show's going on as it's going on and thankfully we found a an area where there were fewer trees and we could see through and see the fireworks and enjoy them. But it was really funny. We were all there. There was a crowd of people gathering at the boat dock because you could sort of see them from there, but not really.

So we ended up piling in the car and going to a different place where we could see them. But that was a little disappointing because we were all ready to watch fireworks. And then the fireworks show started and no one could see them. They were completely covered by pine trees. Was this. OK, I have so many questions. Was this. The fireworks.

Were they let off? How do I. Were they lit? Is that what you say? Were the fireworks lit? Were they. What's the verb? I believe they were. Let off from. i don't know the verb yeah that's so hard activated they were activated

somebody's listening to us making fun of us right now because they know the word but yeah they were they were the fireworks were lit i believe uh from a dock or was it the normal spot had you watched this before and they had been fine? Well, last year we went and we could see them and they were front and center at the part of the lake where this restaurant was and where everyone was watching. But we gathered at the same location as last year and they had positioned the fireworks in a completely different part of the lake that was nowhere near. Was this a city run show? Do you have any idea who put this on it was maybe the city the county i'm not sure who was

running it that's crazy it was you feel like you just stick with what works because pine trees don't grow that fast it's not like you know the pine trees grew an extra foot and that is what caused the problem and i don't know maybe they got in trouble with the fire the fire department last year or something like that i don't know why they moved the fireworks i'm i feel bad because i'm not trying to make fun of this little community that was trying to put on a firework show but i don't know what happened but it was um yeah i'm not i'm not being critical at all i just they they had repositioned them in a in a place where nobody could see them and it was kind of comical literally like a parks and rec episode it's like yeah i'm not being critical at all.

I'm saying, objectively speaking, you all are really bad at your jobs. You guys failed and the cost of the fireworks was just sub-cost. This is, yeah,

not good. Well, thankfully it was free. nobody. Yeah, that's true. But for them, they spent all this money on fireworks

so no one could see them for the first half of the show. And fireworks shows don't last forever, right? So you're like rushing to get over to some place where you can watch them before they end i don't know how long it lasted maybe 30 minutes long enough that we were able to leave and go to a different spot and the show still went on for a little while so it wasn't it wasn't a bust it was just and very amusing yeah that's hilarious that's awesome isaiah did you do anything did you shoot

off fireworks i actually did not this is the first year that i can remember where i didn't shoot off fireworks oh no yeah um well things have been really dry and so yes i saw my family july 2nd the real independence day and uh we didn't show any fireworks. We went and saw the Midlothian parade, and I saw a firework show on July 4th after I was helping Daniel move in Buda, but I didn't actually light a single firework this year. I'm pretty sad about it. There's no firecracker fights.

There's no bottle rocket fights, nothing. I didn't even throw little poppers on the ground. What is it with boys and wanting to shoot Roman candles at each other? I don't know. Do we have any explanation for many of you here at this? I can actually offer a scientific explanation. I would really appreciate it. Roman candles go boom.

And that's really cool. That sounds about right. Okay. Also, they make a big flash. Yeah. Oh my gosh. They do make a big flash. It was Oh, my gosh. They do make a big flash.

It was that study peer reviewed that you just described. If nobody here objects to it, that kind of means you all agree with it, which means it is reviewed by the peers in this in this very room. I do agree that explosions are fun. I spent my 4th of July evening watching boys uh hold roman candles and shoot each other with roman with with those fireworks and um like a duel it was no i have video like it was it was um unbelievable well yes they would light them together and they would run apart from each other so not like shoot each other and like hide behind things okay all right yeah well not really because they were in the middle of the street which again that's a whole other thing

and there was a like they literally were like there was a charred mark on one of oh my andrew's shirt yeah i think that's a battle scar yeah that's what that's what they told me that's what they told me anyways it was delightful was delightful. Brad, Rob, anything that you guys did? Oh, yeah, you guys are both telling each other to talk. Well, so I was also there helping Daniel move in the afternoon. Daniel just ruined all y'all's weekends. No. No, it was a good way to do it.

It was the middle of the day. No firecrackers. It was Americans helping fellow Americans. It was a good way to spend the afternoon. Was it on the 4th or was it on Sunday? On the 4th. It was on the 4th itself, yeah. But I didn't really do much that evening.

I just sort of stayed inside, hung out, read a book. You listened to the fireworks going off. I listened to the fireworks go off. Now, here's what I don't understand. Here's what confuses me. If I recall correctly, it's not legal to set off fireworks in the city of Austin. And yet I heard fireworks being set off otherwise. I still have not been able to wrap my head around this. Maybe it was, maybe I was imagining things.

Yeah. I don't really know how that worked. I got an alert last night that point three miles away, uh, gunshots had been set off and I was like, oh my gosh, in Hyde park. That's so close to me. And then come to find out it was fireworks and that police were like, guys, it's fireworks. Was that around midnight? Yes. As I was getting into bed, I heard three pops and I was like, uh, I guess it was kind of

an echo. Maybe that was a gunshot or not, but I was really tired. So I just fell asleep a few minutes after. You're like, it's fine. It's fine. Yeah. Brad, did you do anything notable on the fourth? You're going to be shocked to hear this, but I grilled.

How happy did that make you? it was cloud nine what did you grill brats oh yeah classic yeah it was amazing and uh that made me i mean that made my tummy rumble well it is lunchtime um and then i watched the last two episodes of Stranger Things, which were very good. And then, to top it off, I watched the greatest movie in the history of ever. Independence Day. I thought you were going to say

The Patriot or something. The Patriot is better than Independence Day. I was trying to think of a patriotic movie that he would qualify it as the greatest movie ever. But this is just so on the nose and the speech by the president in that just makes you want to run through a brick wall like the Kool-Aid man which uh who's in that movie the dude that plays Lone Star that's right and Will Smith that's right okay yeah so i'm happy for you that was my and i gave winston a brat too

and he enjoyed it oh wow yeah that's that actually makes me happy for winston yeah wonderful it was a great uh independence day all around well we should get into stranger things on a different podcast because i know some of us at this table love that show um gentlemen thank you for joining me today and folks thanks for listening we will catch you next, thank you for joining me today. And folks, thanks for listening. We will catch you next week. Thank you to everyone for listening. If you enjoy our show, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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