The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - July 9, 2021

Episode Date: July 9, 2021

This week on The Texan’s “Weekly Roundup,” the reporting team discusses a new Republican candidate for governor, the results of a Sid Miller lawsuit regarding COVID relief for white farmers, a new addition to the Texas Freedom Caucus, and the items placed on the special session call by Governor Abbott. We also talk through the new election reform bills and the potential that Democrats will once again walk out to kill such proposals, as well as a resolution from a Republican that would punish them if they do. Additionally, the team covers Texas public school performance, state senate retirements, and a battle between a Christian nonprofit and the IRS.

Howdy, howdy. Mackenzie Taylor here on another episode of the Texans Weekly Roundup podcast. This week, our team covers a new GOP candidate for governor, the results of a Sid Miller lawsuit regarding COVID relief for white farmers, a new addition to the Texas Freedom Caucus, and the items placed on the special session call by Governor Abbott. We also talk through the new election reform bills and the potential that Democrats will once again walk out to kill such proposals, as well as a resolution from a Republican that would punish them if they do. Additionally, ERCOT news, Texas public school performance, state Senate retirements, and a battle between a Christian nonprofit and the IRS are covered. Daniel Friend ends our podcast with a fun Today in Texas History segment.

We appreciate you tuning in each and every week. Enjoy this episode. Howdy, folks. Mackenzie Taylor here with Daniel Friend, Hayden Sparks, Isaiah Mitchell, and Brad Johnson. Brad Johnson, you've been gone for a little while. Yeah, I have been. You've been traversing across the country. Now, some listeners on our podcast unfortunately thought that you had just up and left us

or that we had up and left you. But neither of those things happened. yeah no you're back like dennis quaid in the movie the rookie i had a hiatus and came back strong wow well maybe strong we'll see how this is so unrelated to what you have done in the last few weeks that it doesn't even make sense well on that note we're gonna go ahead and get started. But Bradley, welcome back. And with your welcome, we're going to ask you to go first today. Oh, boy. There is a very patriotic themed announcement that was made this Sunday on the 4th of July. And the governor's race has a new contender. Who jumped in the race?

Yeah, you might call it a characterized as a-themed announcement considering it happened on Independence Day. Texas GOP Chair Allen West threw his hat into the ring for governor. So he will challenge the incumbent, Greg Abbott, along with former state senator Don Huffines and the conservative comedian, Blaze TV pundit, Chad Prather. And so this had been rumored for a while. Basically, West was all but sure to run for something. It's just a question of what. And a lot of people thought governor was going to be it. And sure enough, that was it. And so Alan West jumped in on Sunday, again on Independence Day, announcing at his church

up in the DFW area. And since then, he's been off to the races running a campaign. Off to the races. That was a good one. Thank you. You're so welcome. Now, you spoke to West just before his announcement. I believe it was that morning.

What did he tell you about his decision to enter the race? Yeah, well, he identified three big issues. Border security is one. And that's going to be a consistent theme. Hayden's covered this quite a bit. That sounds familiar. Yeah. I wrote a piece, I can't remember when that was, last week or the week before that, on how it has already become the issue in the governor's race.

Don Huffhines has hit on that a lot. Governor Abbott, especially since the regular session ended, has touched on that quite a bit. So that's number one on West's platform. Another one is property taxes. He said that it's ridiculous that Texans, it's almost impossible to own your own home because you're constantly paying drastically growing amounts in property taxes every year. You know, that's something that a lot of Republicans have touched on quite a bit. I believe it's on the platform, eliminating property taxes entirely. And so West is very much on board with that.

And the other one is election integrity, which is something that Greg Abbott is also in favor of. He's pushing that the special session. He pushed that during the regular session. So those are, according to Wes, the big three issues for him. So far, he has really drawn a big discrepancy between him and the incumbent on property tax. Abbott has called for property tax relief in the special session, but he has not gone so far as saying that we need to eliminate the property tax system, which West has. So that's a... Which Huffines did as well, right?

I mean, they're both taking very similar approaches. Yeah, everyone is running for that conservative lane, which tends to happen during GOP primaries. When you're running against an established incumbent yeah yeah and so um you know wes i asked west if he's you know what his path to victory is one thing he said was that um he's not running against anyone he you know he's very critical of abbott he has remained critical of Abbott during his time as GOP chair, but he did not say he's running to eliminate Abbott from the governorship. He is running for himself to become governor. the arrogance of officialdom when elected officials believe that no one should be able to challenge them if they don't stand up for the principles and values that they ran on. That's something that not many people have said. And West obviously is not afraid to speak his mind and does all the time. So the governor's race is heating up quite a bit,

and I'm sure it will continue to. Yeah. So let's zoom out a little bit for the whole field of candidates and incumbent himself. What does this mean going forward? Yeah. So this means that there is at least a second legitimate, well-funded, probably West is good fundraising chops, a candidate against Abbott. Now Prather will see where he comes in with fundraising. But if he has a good haul, then that means there are three legitimate opponents, which is something that Abbott has not faced in his entire political career, even with lower level races. So Abbott, you know, Abbott has a reason to not take it easy. And, you know, the old adage of running scared is how you have to run in politics.

Abbott needs to do that. And these other candidates need to capitalize on whatever shortfalls they can't. And especially coming off the regular session and then whatever happens during the special session, I'm sure they will use as fodder for their campaigns. Now, the governor also came out this week with fundraising numbers. What's that looking like? Yeah, he announced a massive, almost $20 million haul across a 10-day period. That's insane. That's a massive, massive fundraising haul.

And the reason it was only in 10 days is because there's a moratorium on fundraisingxas political candidate in history and so or at least that's according to his release that he said that um we'll see where the other candidates fall in on that west obviously he's only been he announced on the fourth so he probably won't have a very notable filing uh this time the July semi-annual. But historically, he can raise money in his Florida seat. He did quite a bit. So I would expect him to gain some ground. Dunha finds he's very wealthy himself. And I would expect to see some level of self-financing. But he also is a good fundraiser. And so we'll see where he comes in there. It's just, it's going to be a good gauge for where this field is at once we do see the

filings that come through. Absolutely. And in Don Hafez, you have somebody who's, you know, very familiar and close with the legislature. And with Allen West, you have a very big name. So very different kinds of candidates that will be going against the governor. Well, thank you for covering that for us. Let's talk about another statewide elected official. Sid Miller, the agriculture commissioner here in Texas, had a win in a lawsuit that he's been going to bat for. Now remind us, Isaiah, what this lawsuit was about. So the American Rescue Plan Act, which is Joe Biden's CO2 relief stimulus bill, provided loan forgiveness to socially disadvantaged farmers and some other businesses. It does not provide the same benefit to white farmers because of the USDA's definition of socially disadvantaged Department of Agriculture. So a number of Texas farmers joined Sid Miller, who has been suing at

his private capacity to claim that the USDA unlawfully discriminated against white farmers. What did the judge rule and why? So Judge Reed O'Connor, who is the federal district judge for the Northern District of Texas, granted Miller and the farmers a preliminary injunction to stop the USDA from discriminating based on race until the case is resolved. In his order, he called policies that classify people by race presumptively invalid, and said that the USDA actually hadn't met the legal threshold for discrimination, which can be lawful in certain cases. So in his wording, he says the policy must target, in order to be legal, a discriminatory policy must target a specific episode of past discrimination and not simply relying on generalized assertions of past discrimination.

Second, there must be evidence of past intentional discrimination, not simply disparities. And third, the government must have participated in the past discrimination it now seeks to remedy. And we've talked before about political applications of critical theory, like critical race theory especially, and the order dug into some interesting assumptions, namely the assumptions of theory, namely the idea that equal treatment can produce racist outcomes. O'Connor wasn't convinced that denying debt relief to whites would secure a better outcome for non-whites, and he actually was the third or fourth judge to rule this way in a similar lawsuit so there's another class action lawsuit involving farmers in wisconsin

and uh around that same time actually like tail end of may a similar injunction was issued for another class or no single individual farmer in florida um with the same result that miller and and the farmers got yeah which would be a great name for a band, by the way, and there was another case called Vitolo versus somebody. It doesn't matter. It's not in Texas, but similar case involving a businessman instead of a farmer. He owns a restaurant and that's been written about a little bit more widely. But so three or four preliminary injunctions so far have been issued against the feds for racial discrimination in the AARP.

Got it. Well, Isaiah, thank you for following that so closely. Certainly a piece that our readers have cared a lot about and just followed very closely. Brad, we're going to come to you now. And now Sid Miller does have a challenger this primary season, a GOP challenger in James White, a state rep from Orange, I believe, in East Texas. Now, ahead of the special session, which started on Thursday of this week, he came out with a very big announcement. Well, the scale of which we'll let the listener decide. But he came out with an announcement um and essentially joined a very prominent caucus within the house you know what happened yeah so uh as you mentioned chairman

james white who is primarying uh sid miller he also earlier this month or actually this is last month just after the session ended uh said that he would not run for reelection. And so obviously that sparked a lot of rumors that he would run for something else. He doesn't seem to be someone that would want to just go away at this moment. And so this week he announced in another kind of twist, he announced that he would be joining the Texas Freedom Caucus, the group of conservative legislators in the House that band together on a lot of issues. This is interesting because since he is not seeking reelection, he will only be there for, you know, two special sessions. And then, you know, unless there are more that Governor Abbott calls, that's really it. So it's an odd move, but it does seem to help the caucus's prospects during these next specials, the two special sessions. Yeah. So talk through that for us.

What does this mean for White and the caucus going into specials? What does it yield for both of them? It increases their membership to nine first of all uh you know they had bled some membership uh a couple of members left out of their own volition in the last interim um another couple retired and then they had one person um who ended up not seeking re-election jonathan stickland leaving during the 86 regular session. So their numbers had dwindled some. They did add one, Representative Cody Vassut, who replaced former Speaker Dennis Bonin.

But this, first of all, in just a numbers game, gives them one more vote. And that's always better for the prospects of the caucus. But I think something bigger is that it gives them another chairman within their ranks. I'm not exactly sure how many. There's at least a few of them that do have chairmanships. And White would be another one. He chairs the Homeland Security and Public Safety Committee. He was, as Daniel reported, instrumental in advancing constitutional carry,

which another Freedom Caucus member, Matt Schaefer, authored and pushed hard. And so having another chairman gives them obviously more influence. We'll see how much that comes to play. And then I think the third aspect of this move that gives the Freedom Caucus more oomph behind them is that White is one of the members on the newly established House Select Committee on Constitutional Rights and Rebodies, through which many of these special session items will likely move, at least according to Speaker Dade Phelan. He created the committee just for the special session for many of these items. We'll see how many of them move through that. But, you know,

based on committee assigning committee referrals today on the House floor, there are already multiple bills that have gone to that committee. And so White, along with Representative Matt Shaheen, they're the two Freedom Caucus members that are on this committee. So that's something to watch. We'll see how much it plays into it. But they're definitely outnumbered on the committee in terms of Republican legislators who do not exactly share all of their beliefs. But White is always someone who has gone to bat for things. He's often not afraid to shy away from contentious issues, for example. Or tough votes. Yeah, constitutional carry. Like he advanced that. That was not an easy thing to push and he did it. So

I think those are the three biggest aspects of this move that we should watch. Yeah. And the political ramifications of this move, I'm curious to see how that'll even shake out because it's a very truncated amount of time that he'll be part of the caucus. The caucus itself, as you've noted, has become more prominent in leadership positions in the last few years, whereas before that they were really just a thorn in the side of the speaker for better and for worse in terms of what they could actually accomplish. That is entirely up for debate. But the aim of the caucus has changed very much. So I'll be very curious to see

you know what happens with this and it's not that it's not some huge move but it's interesting politically in light of his run for agriculture commissioner so what does this mean going forward in that regard yeah um the political cynic would say that this is at least in addition to the legislative aims of this, it's an attempt to kind of really solidify his conservative bona fides for the campaign. And, you know, I think it'll definitely help in that direction. How much, we don't know. We'll see. But the fact that this is basically a short-term rental, only so much can be done and only so much association between white and the freedom caucus can be really developed. But we'll see if it's enough come campaign time.

Good stuff. Well, Brad, we're going to stick with you this week. The governor right at the final hour here before the legislative session, before the special session, announced the last of his priority items. Now, on a special session call, only the governor can determine what the legislature can consider and he finally announced what he would in fact allow the legislature to address so there are 11 items on the call what are they so in order that uh the governor listed there's bail reform election reform board security social social media censorship article 10 funding which is which is the section of

the budget that he vetoed that funds the legislature, family violence protection, requirement for student athletes to compete in sports within their own sex, restriction on abortion-inducing drugs, supplemental payment to the teacher's retirement system, a more comprehensive critical race theory ban that was already passed during the regular session, but the governor was on record saying that he didn't think it goes far enough. And so it's back on the table. Property tax relief, as I mentioned earlier, we'll see what kind of form that takes, which bills the governor pushes to meet that item.

You know, one thing that was filed today was a complete abolishment of the ISD M&O rate. Now that was filed during the regular session by Representative Andrew Murr. It didn't go anywhere. We'll see if that is something that the governor considers. I kind of think it won't be. We'll see some other more tinkering at the margins kind of stuff or just a similar move from the 2019 session where they compressed tax rates by injecting their own the state funding. The next item is an appropriation to betress the foster care system. And then another appropriation to enhance cybersecurity measures within the state.

Is there now, in a special session, is there an order that these have to go in? How do legislators address these items? Well, it's interesting because the governor said before listing out these items and when he first announced that there would be a special session, that he would put these up one at a time until the legislature accomplished the goal that he had for them. He wouldn't bring forward B until A had been completed. Right, yes. And that is obviously not what he's done here.

He's listed out 11 things. Now, things can be added later. We'll see. But anything can be brought up at any time. We've already seen all kinds of legislation being introduced in both chambers. And ultimately the, the two chambers govern whether what, which bills go through at which time.

However, the governor doesn't have to sign them at specific times. Like he, if he gets a first, he doesn't have to sign that immediately. He can wait until B gets to his desk, sign that and then sign A. So it's kind of a, you know, jockeying back and forth of power as, you know, separation of powers dictates in our system. Good stuff. Now, what were the reactions from legislators? Were they all gung-ho? Were they all on board?

It was a mix i would say certainly among democrats basically all of them were not happy uh we saw the house democratic caucus have a presser today and during that they basically denounced the entire agenda as just a conservative red meat appeal for the election coming up. Primary support. And so Democrats actually were pretty united in that. However, I did notice that Senator Lucio in the Senate, he filed the abortion-inducing drugs bill restriction. So he's obviously, for that agenda agenda item he's in favor of. But among Republicans,

there were those such as Senator Brandon Creighton who were pretty gung ho about it. He said, you know, I'm ready to get to work on these important priorities for Texas. However, Senator Bob Hall, you know, he voiced concern about a couple of things that were left off, specifically a ban on vaccine mandates and on children's gender modification, i.e. puberty blockers or sex reassignment surgeries. So it's kind of a mix between the Republican caucus, and I'm sure it just depends on which item. So I have a hard time seeing that many Republicans at all are opposed to whatever border security measure the governor is identifying. But, you know, other items may have different levels of disagreement. Certainly. Thank you, Bradley. Daniel, we're going to come back to you here.

Well, not come back. This is your first of the podcast. Welcome. Except that joke I made. What's that? Yes, that's true. Yeah. I can make it again, but you probably don't want to hear it again you probably would expect it yeah unlike the spanish

inquisition oh my gosh okay well we're going to go ahead and jump into this um election bills now this is likely going to be the more uh controversial portion of the legislative session or at least the highest profile argument on the house floor and among legislators. During the regular session, we had House Bill 6 and Senate Bill 7, both very big proposals, huge, long, grateful that you read it so our readers didn't have to. What are the proposals from Republicans now that we're in special session? So the proposals look very similar to what we saw in the previous session. You know, after the House and Senate Republicans, they filed separate bills. They were very similar in election reform, but there were a lot of specific details that were

different in each bill. And so there was a lot of negotiations happening toward the end of the regular session about what was going to be in it and what the final bill would actually look like. And then they, by the time they finally did get something out uh it was really too late at that point and then uh of course the democrats walked out and killed the bill at the last hour so um you might expect that they'd just take what they had uh that they had agreed upon and move forward with that uh they have not done that they've actually they, they've taken a similar thing of what they passed or what they almost passed, and each chamber put forward their own omnibus version. There's a lot of parts that overlap. There's a lot of sections that are completely identical in the text, but there's

also some differences in the text itself. Another interesting thing, of course, Senator Brian Hughes is the chair of the Senate State Affairs Committee. He's the one who put forward this legislation last time, and he did the Senate bill again this time, SB1. And then in the House side, instead of Representative Briscoe Cain, who's the chair of the Elections Committee, who put forward the bill in the regular session, they've handed that bill to another representative, Andy Murr, who put forward HB3. And that bill is going through the special committee that Brad talked about earlier that Phelan just created. So those are the two different bills. They're similar, but they're not identical. There's still some things that they're going to have to work together to figure

out which version they're going to pass. So on that note, give us a little bit of insight on the differences between the two proposals. Mm-hmm. How'd you drink water? The timing of that was great. Well, I was trying to get a sip in there. I know. I did not give you enough cushion. My bad. My bad. There's some bigger differences. There are some smaller differences. One of the things that they talked about was the prohibition on 24-hour voting. This was something that they had done or tried doing in Harris County last election. earlier this year. And there was some debate over what hours the voting could be restricted to. And there's like a one-hour difference in these bills.

So the Senate version, the early voting hours have to be between 6 and 9 p.m. 6 a.m. and 9 p.m. Whereas the House version can go till 10 p.m. So not like a huge difference there. They can probably get to a pretty easy compromise. You can go for 9.m. So, got it. Not like a huge difference there. They can probably get to a pretty easy compromise. You can go for 9.30.

Yeah, pretty simple. Yeah. Just go right down the middle and you get it. Or, you know, like an arm wrestle over it.

We should be in those negotiations, Daniel. We'd be great mediators. I think so. Yeah. Like we could have like a, we can do math. Math?

We can divide, you know, okay, what's the difference here? It's 30 minutes. I mean, even if you don't want to do math, you could do like rock, paper, scissors. That's also really fun.

Yeah. Good. Okay, great. Which they might end up doing with the bill. I don't know. We'll pitch it to the leaders of the chambers. So there's small differences like that. Then there's bigger differences too.

There's, you know, in the bill that was almost going to be passed, there was a proposal for a live stream feed of where the votes are tallied so that bigger counties have to have just something there so that citizens can see that their vote is sitting there. It's not being tampered with. It's going through the process as it should and kind of reassure some integrity stuff there. So the Senate version has that provision in there, but the House does not have it in there. The House is also lacking some other policies. It kind of toned down some of the pushback on Harris County, the drive-through voting and the soliciting mail ballot applications.

It sort of contains those provisions as well, but in a little bit of a different way, not as clear in Gunko as the Senate version. And then those are some of the big ones that caught my eyes. that was going to pass earlier this year, but did not, would have allowed basically any politician or political party who is harmed by vote harvesting, where vote harvesting actually tips the election one way or another, they could sue and there was a civil liability put in there. I did not see that in the House version as I was looking through it. It is there in the Senate version. So there's some differences like that um and then some other smaller textual differences but those are the big things another thing worth noting democrats had criticized a kind of a limit on the voting period on sundays in the previous bill they said it was targeting souls to the polls which is like a tradition in african-american

churches to go to church and then go vote right away. And so there's some pushback on that from Democrats and both versions have taken that out. But both versions have left in other provisions as well. Got it. Now, because election reform is on the governor's call, other bills can also be filed. It doesn't have to be these big omnibus provisions that, you know, the chosen authors for each, you know, put forward. What other proposals have we seen from lawmakers on

the subject? Yes. So Speaker Phelan had suggested kind of in between the regular session and now that one way of tackling election reform would be to take a piecemeal approach and pass basically all the things that are in the big omnibus election bill, just as separate individual bills. And we could still see something like that go through. There's been a dozen bills already that have been filed from Republicans that are, you know, similar or identical even to the proposals in these big bills. And so they could make their way through the legislature and just pass those as kind of this piecemeal approach where everything that goes into the law

is actually the same as SB1 or HB3. But it's not under one single title. It's under a bunch of different smaller titles. Got it. Cool beans. Well, we'll continue to watch as this all goes through the process. Thank you for covering that for us, Daniel. And again and again for reading these giant bills so we don't have to

we appreciate you hayden are you ready my friend i think so i'm so glad to hear that so now the big story at the end of the regular session was democrats walking out of the house chamber quorum busting in order to kill the election reform bill, Republicans had worked through the process up until that point. There were other factors at play. Certainly, the placement of the bill on the calendar had something to do with that, made it very easy to kill at the end of the day. But regardless, they did that, and that was the final nail in the coffin for the bill. How might Democrats approach that issue this legislative or this special session? I think it's interesting that this issue occurs amid the controversy over election reform, because one of the primary criticisms of election reform produced by Republicans is that it might

or that it would disenfranchise voters. But Republicans could contend that by breaking quorum in the regular session, Democrats were preventing the duly elected Republican majority from passing legislation, which is what voters sent them to Austin to do. However, Democrats would contend that Republicans with this legislation are trying to prevent or are trying to impinge the legitimacy of future legislatures. So that is the groundwork for what could be breaking a quorum during the special session. And the quorum in each house is two thirds of the membership, as we know. Democrats are in the minority, but Republicans cannot pass anything without, can pass virtually nothing without Democrats in the

room because they can't, without the Democrats in the room, there is not two-thirds of the membership in either chamber. They're elected to be present during deliberations. And so this method is not employed very often. And as we've discussed here before, it's not a legitimate way of killing a bill under the rules. And Governor Abbott, as we've discussed before, has vetoed legislative funding over this. And he's put that back on the special session agenda, as Brad referenced a few moments ago. And some have said that that's an incentive for lawmakers to not break quorum. But the rules are clear. This is not, there isn't anything in the rules that say, if you don't like a bill, you can just leave so that the chamber can't vote on it. However, the way that the chamber enforces the rule against breaking

a quorum, it's more or less up to their discretion. So they don't necessarily have to bring the hammer down on people who break quorum. And they didn't during the regular session, because it was toward the end of the deadline, and there may have been things going on behind the scenes that we aren't aware of. So the enforcement against the rule was not there on the day before Memorial Day when they broke quorum during the regular session, but that may or may not be the case this time during the special session because I think Republicans are very serious about passing this bill this time. Have Democrats been laying the groundwork to break quorum again? They have, and I think that comes by the way of awork to break quorum again? They have.

And I think that comes by the way of a justification for breaking quorum. They can't do this with everything, obviously, because it's a very high stakes process breaking quorum. But it probably gets old being in the minority party in any state legislature. Certainly. Tensions get high at the end of the session. Never having very limited legislative victories all the time, especially in Texas, Republicans have been in charge for many years. So this is a way for Democrats to show their base that they can get something done, even if they're in the minority, something as important as killing

a Republican-backed election reform bill that would have major consequences. And of course, Democrats, one Democrat has described supporters of this bill as terrorists. They view the GOP election reform bill as a disenfranchisement. Many of them view it as a racist because of some of the issues that Daniel just talked about. So the justification, they're definitely laying the groundwork in the way of a justification for breaking quorum again. Have Democrats done this in the past? Is this something that historically has happened in Texas before? It has happened in the past. And as we'll talk about in a second, some of the same individuals who were involved then are also involved now. But in 2003, I think the entirety of the Democratic caucus, than 50 people went to Ardmore Oklahoma they left the state and the sergeant at arms at the time I believe his name is Rod Welsh sent for

the absent members and he deployed the Texas Department of Public Safety to go arrest them and bring them back to Austin and at the time Speaker Craddock reportedly, Tom Craddock was a speaker at the time. He's in the House. Yeah. Of course, he's the longest serving member. Yeah. He reportedly said that that resulted in the loss of hundreds of bills and hundreds of millions of dollars, potentially, because it happened right before one of those really consequential deadlines in May. So this has happened before. And some of the same people involved then are also involved now and making comments that indicate that they might be interested in doing it again.

Now, at least one Republican lawmaker has filed a resolution to try and address this issue and say, okay, Democrats, don't get too far ahead of yourselves here. Now, this resolution from Representative Tenderholt in Arlington, how would this actually work? What would it do and how would it incentivize Democrats to stay in Texas? As I talked about a second ago, the rules give a process to state representatives for forcing a quorum. And as I stated in the article this morning, that would be a really messy and controversial process. What this bill or what this resolution does is it would give representatives the chance to amend their own rules to add incentives for lawmakers not to do this. And that would involve stripping them of their privileges of seniority. And many of these

Democrats who are talking about leaving the state have been in office for a long time, they have earned a lot of those privileges. So they would lose some of those. And I think those are things like prime real estate in terms of office space in the Capitol, parking spaces, and other traditions and customs that go along with being in the house for a long time. And they would also potentially lose memberships on committees, and they would potentially lose their committee chairmanships. And the Republicans, and I say Republicans, because this is the scenario we're talking about, but the rules would say that if even if there's no quorum, the members who showed up could vote to strip those privileges from the absent members. So those are the incentives. And I don't know if incentive is the right word. What Tenderhold is trying to do

with this resolution, House Resolution 5, is to disincentivize Democrats or anybody from skipping town to avoid facing a bill that they disapprove of. Good stuff. Now, you've already alluded to this, but there were members of the legislature in 2003 that were there when the last quorum break happened. Who in the legislature now was present at that time? It's interesting because our current governor, Greg Abbott, was attorney general at that time, and he assisted the sergeant at arms for some of the legal background that was necessary to help them secure quorum. Fascinating. are the same people involved. And the state reps that are still in office are Garnett Coleman, Yvonne Davis, Joe Deschatelle, Harold Dutton, Ryan Guillen, Trey Martinez-Fisher, Richard

Pena-Raymond, and Sinfronia Thompson. And I spoke with Representative or Chairman Raymond last month, and he is committed to killing the Republican election reform bill. Representative Armando Wally this morning at the press conference, Brad talked about said they're prepared to use any parliamentary methods at their disposal to kill this. We've had Representative Christina Morales tell us that she is prepared to defend what she views as the integrity of the democracy by killing this bill. And Representative Raphael and she I mean, the list goes on of Democrats that have said that they are absolutely going to hold the line against this. And these individuals that I just named, are ones who went to Ardmore there. They are

individuals who left the state to kill a Republican redistricting plan in 2003. And they very well may do the same thing again during the next 30 days or so, as the Republican Party tries to get this signature legislative accomplishment through the process. Good stuff, Hayden. Thank you so much. Bradley, we're coming back to you. Now, notably absent from the special session call is anything related to the power grid. After the February storms, it's been top of mind for many folks, particularly during the legislative session for legislators. But the governor did make an action this week related to this tell us about it yeah like you mentioned it's not in the special session at all and much

to the chagrin of people who uh would who do not like the list of things that are being discussed during the special would much rather see it consist solely of power grid related stuff. But yeah, Governor Abbott did something today. It was on the regulatory side. And I think it's not that the legislation that was passed by the House and Senate during the regular session won't do anything, but this will be, at least based on these directives, more substantial, at least in my opinion, reading through what these tasks are. And so what the governor did, he issued four directives to the Public Utility Commission. Now, that's the bureaucratic body that oversees ERCOT, which, of course, regulates and kind of controls the power grid. Those directives are to restructure market incentives to drive

development and maintenance of more reliable power generation, most notably from thermal sources. When you hear reliable power generation, that's usually referring to non-renewables, anything that you can effectively turn on on demand, whether it's burning coal, burning natural gas, or turning on a nuclear reactor. And so that is the first one. The second one is to foot renewable companies with bills for the costs incurred by the state for compensating for their lack of generation, especially during times of high demand. So as we saw during the February storm and the June kind of grid scare that happened, the wind didn't blow. And so that caused obviously a lower output of wind-generated electricity.

And there are a lot of people, especially in the more conservative side that say that kind of distorts the, um, the market pricing, um, that is kind of a, a very delicate balance. Um, rather it is rather, rather than get paid upfront for a certain amount of generation, these places get paid for what generation they do supply. And when supply does not come in from whatever source it has to be made up for. And that usually comes in the form of much higher breaking case of emergency generation. That's called ancillary services. So the proponents of reforming that say that it distorts what the actual market picture is. And so they want to see renewable companies pay more for when they can't generate, whether that's paying for their own dispatchable power or paying for ancillary services. The third one is to create a maintenance schedule for thermal generators to ensure that there is always adequate supply on the power grid.

This is something that is generally already done. The ERCOT schedules maintenance operations usually for the spring when the temperature is much more mild and there's going to be less demand for air conditioning, things like that. So that kind of already happens. I'm not really sure what this additional maintenance schedule would consist of, but we saw during June, especially a lot of thermal plants, thermal based plants go out of commission unexpectedly because of mechanical issues. Now that's something that's going to happen regardless. You can't,

you can't expect when those things are going to happen. But in terms of already planned maintenance, that's generally scheduled already. So we'll see what form that takes when the PUC finally narrows down its path forward on that directive. And the fourth one is to expedite transmission projects that move electricity from the point of generation to consumption. And so Texas, in a lot of places, this is something we saw during the February winter storms, there is not enough basically roadways for the electricity to reach population centers, and especially for backup generation. And so this would, this would ideally, um, kind of just put on a fast track construction of new transmission projects and, um, you know, uh, um, jumping through the

regulatory hoops that need to go through. So, um, that's generally the gist of what governor Abbott issued to this week. Now, how does this relate to legislation passed during a regular session? Yeah, like I mentioned at the top of this segment, it's different. It's, I would say, more comprehensive and substantial. And obviously, it's regulatory. So it's not coming through legislation. Yeah. It's through regulatory dictate and that's something the governor has the authority to do and so what the next steps of this

are the puc has to consider what orders themselves to issue on each of these items and then through their uh process approve whatever solutions they have. And then obviously it's up to the industry to implement these things. So I think the two most important ones to watch are the first two that I mentioned. I went into pretty substantial depth about the renewable side. On the first one, we have seen a lot of coal plants and natural gas plants go out of commission and not replaced with new updated versions of those plants so in one of my recent articles there was a chart that showed what net generation added or lost

during the last roughly six seven years and while we've gained a lot of wind and solar generation, we've lost a lot of coal and natural gas. So that specifically is aimed at allowing these other thermal sources to develop and create new power plants that can supply electricity. Good stuff. Thank you, Bradley. Isaiah, we're coming to you. Tell us about an event you covered this week, the Texas Association of School Boards event and what it seemed to primarily focus on. So it lasted from June 24th to 25th, and it was a training event for school board members with two dozen topic sessions. None of them were devoted to catching up on learning loss after the pandemic year.

However, there were several events devoted to racial training, lobbying, and even one on growing the social media influence of your school district. This kind of focus isn't very new at all, which is why the legislature in 2017 started requiring school board members to attend a training called Governance for Improved Student Learning. But this required session was the only one out of the 24 at this TASB training devoted to learning acceleration. Now, TASB is not a government agency. It serves an entirely different purpose, advocacy primarily in education. But how closely are public agencies like the state or school boards involved with trainings like this? Well, for one, there's a money connection.

This training cost $435 to attend in person and $335 to attend virtually, and school boards pay for the members to attend. On top of that, the money, the state requires school board members to attend trainings like these to earn so many hours of professional development, as they call it, every year. For required trainings, like Governance for Improved Student Learning, the state certifies some qualified groups to host the training, like the TASB. Got it. Now, one of the items talked about that was not necessarily center stage, but a portion of the conversation was around was learning loss. How significant was learning loss over the course of this school year? It was not very good. In all subjects but English, star scores, and that's Texas' statewide standardized test for high schoolers, middle schoolers, star scores dropped quite a bit. The steepest drop was in math, but scores in English, which has long been our lowest scoring subject, thankfully rose a little bit this year. But in math, biology u.s history um the percentage of students that passed dropped

from like seven to nine points depending on the subject and um you've got another article and we've got another article on that that's linked in this one so good stuff isaiah thank you for covering that for us daniel there was an announcement this week this week yeah this week why was that hard for me to say i don't't know. It's the English thing. It's the English thing. Too bad we don't do that for a living. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Great. I mean, no, but so there was a very big announcement made this week by a very prominent city and state Senator. Tell us who we're talking about and what the announcement was. The Senator you're referring to is the senior most Republican in the Texas Senate, Senator Jane Nelson from Denton County of Flower Mound, to be more specific. She has been in the Senate since 1992, making her the longest serving Republican in the upper chamber of the legislature. I think there's some other Democrats

who have been there a little bit longer than her, but for the Republicans, she has been there the longest. She is currently the chair of the Finance Committee, or as they like to say it, the Finance Committee. And Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick has asked her to stay in the role until the end of her term at the end of 2021. And I expect she'll do that. I don't see why she would just get up and leave in the middle of a special session,

but you never know. I guess she could. Yeah, certainly. Now you alluded to this, to the location of her district, but where exactly is her district located? So her district is primarily in Denton County. It's mostly the, I think, lower half of it where it's more populated, closer to the DFW Metroplex. And then there are also some portions of her district that do dip down into Tarrant County and Fort Worth, but the majority of her population is in Denton County. Now, who is going to run to replace her? Well, there are a couple of names going around here. The first one to come up was Representative Jared Patterson, who after her announcement of her retirement, he tweeted that he was considering running for this position.

He is a state rep in Denton County. And there's another state rep in Denton County as well, Representative Tan Parker, who has also recently announced that he is running for that position. It was kind of an interesting announcement. I think he's running. I'm pretty sure. He's running. It wasn't explicitly clear. Yes.

So those two state reps are potentially going to be in a primary together. We'll see if they eventually both do run or if maybe one of them backs out. But for the time being, that looks like the two big names that are going to be in there. There could be some other state reps in the area. And, of course, with redistricting this year, maybe this year, probably this year, it's supposed to happen. They keep saying it's going to happen, but I don't believe the Census Bureau.

They should have given us the numbers a year ago. I'm not bitter about this at all. I was going to say, do you know how to tip on a shoulder? Yeah, if y'all knew how much Daniel rants about the Census Bureau, like nothing else. I think it is an important agency, and they have an important role to carry out and they suck at it.

Well, and Daniel got the redistricting beat months ago and was excited about reporting on it. He does great work reporting on demographics and even just the political ramifications in districts and how population plays into those factors. So he was excited to report on redistricting during session. And the last, those dreams were squashed so quickly. I guess the upside is supposedly there's going to be a whole special session basically devoted to that. Just to your beat.

October will be your month, Daniel, or whenever it is. October is what we're hearing. Good stuff. Well, thank you, Daniel.

Isaiah, we're going to come to you. We've talked a little bit about a Christian civic engagement group here in Texas that has been in a battle with the IRS over its tax-exempt status. Remind us what happened with Christians Engaged. First, we just have to establish that Christians Engaged, as a name, fits so poorly into any sentence. Civic engagement, Christians engaged.

So I'm going to stumble. Christians engaged, which doesn't sound like a noun at the end of it, is a faith-based civics education group out of North Texas. It was founded by Bunny Pounds, who has been working in Republican circles for like a decade. And she also ran for Congress as a Republican before founding this nonpartisan group. When the group applied for tax exempt status, the IRS initially denied them, saying that they were not neutral and that the biblical teaching they espoused were typically affiliated with the Republican Party, their words. So the group sent back an appeal letter pointing

out that 501c3 groups don't actually need to be neutral and that many of them take divisive stances on political issues. The main thing to avoid is involvement in particular campaigns for particular candidates, which can jeopardize their tax-exempt status. But for Christians Engage, for example, they do have a right-leaning stance, but they argue that since that is consistent across all elections and races and doesn't really point to a particular candidate or particular spot, that gives them enough neutrality to qualify. So since all the efforts and communications of Christians Engaged are pretty steady regardless of elections, that was their argument.

And I'm guessing this was convincing because the IRS pulled an about face and decided to grant them tax exempt status earlier this week. Got it. So basically it all ended up, you know, A-OK for Christians Engaged. Yeah. At the end of the day. Yeah. And I was happy to see on our little bar on the side of our website, Trending Stories,

that the story of IRS granting them status has now replaced the story of them being denied status. Because I hate when outlets only focus on the bad part of a story and don't follow it to the end. So I don't have any exciting IRS quotes. I hardly had any exciting IRS. There are no exciting IRS quotes. So this story is just kind of grinding to a halt here, but we like it. Well, Isaiah, thank you for covering that for us. And just like you said, it's so important to tell the whole, the whole portion of the story, not just the crisis written part of it. Exactly. It's fun to see. There's a peaceful ending to this. Exactly. We like you said it's so important to tell the whole the whole portion of the story not just the crisis written part of it exactly it's it's fun to there's a peaceful ending exactly we like to hear it daniel we're coming to you one thing we really like to do at the texan

is focus on aspects of texas history when we can we have a whole series on our website of today in texas history wherein one of our writers takes an event and really does a great job of summarizing and talking about what happened on that day in Texas history. We live in Texas, we love Texas, and we like to focus on just the important aspects of our history. This Sunday, we celebrated Independence Day here in the Lone Star State. And, you know, the US was celebrating as a whole, but you zoned in and wrote an article on a specific portion of history here in this state. Tell us a little bit about what happened on July 4th. So in July 4th of 1845, I don't think it was a coincidence that they chose this date.

Of course, it is the U.S.'s Independence Day. That's when we celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Whether or not it happened on that day, you can debate about that later. But in 1845, as Texas was looking at joining the Union, the president of the Republic of Texas at the time called a convention in Austin of delegates to basically begin drafting a state constitution for the proposed state of Texas. And so that began on July 4th here in Austin in 1845. That is not necessarily like as big of a deal as signing the Declaration of Independence, but it was an important part in Texas history and kind of an iconic moment. And I guess they chose a good day. Yeah. They gave me something to write about too.

Thanks for that, folks. Now, who was elected as president of the convention? So the person who was elected as the president of the convention was Thomas Jefferson Rusk. If you recognize the name, you might have heard about Rusk County. That is a county in Texas that was named after him. He served in the Texan Army. He fought at the Battle of San Jacinto and was also recognized in that battle by Sam Houston in his account of the fight. Actually, another history piece that we wrote about was on that pivotal monumental battle

that was fought and Houston's account of it. And in it, you know, I just did a search of Thomas Jefferson Rusk on our website and I found this article. I'm like, wow, I already wrote about him. So he fought alongside Houston there. And then alongside Houston, he would also become the first U.S. Senator for Texas after he joined the union. So that was kind of an important person. There is a picture painting of him in the Senate chamber that I actually went over there and got a picture for the header of our article. I like it. All of the article itself is proprietary, and you took the photo and wrote the piece. Very good stuff. Now, what were some of the things that Rusk said?

So he gave a speech after he was being elected as the president of this convention. And, you know, you have to go and read the whole thing because it is quite a good thing. I'll just give you a little snippet here. One of the things that he said, the history of the world may be searched in vain for a parallel to the present instance of two governments amalgamating themselves into one from a pure devotion to that great principle

that man, by enlightening his intellect and cultivating those moral sentiments with which his God has impressed him, is capable of self-government. Of course, talking about the U.S. and Texas. And it's really a rah-rah Texas and a rah-rah U.S. thing. So if you love the U.S. and Texas, it's fitting. It's a piece that you should go read.

Awesome. Well, Daniel, thank you for covering that for us. Always love when we can show some Texas pride and really zone in on historical aspects of our state. Wonderful. Well, gentlemen, let's zoom out here and talk about something fun. Daniel, I'm going to let you take a little bit of the lead on this one. But I want to talk about our favorite works of science fiction.

And this is particularly relevant in something that, you know, you have done a lot of work on. Yes. I suggested this because I'm going to give a shameless plug. One of my favorite works of science fiction that has become one of my favorite in the past few years has been C.S. Lewis's Science Fiction Trilogy, which he wrote back in the 1940s about going at someone who gets kidnapped and is taken to Mars and then he goes to Venus and then the third one is actually set in on Earth and it's kind of an interpretation of his abolition of man and so I had a whole class my senior year of college we had this class devoted

to this trilogy and we were actually writing a book kind of analyzing the different things about it and what kind of inspired him to do different things. The chapter that I focused on was on the third book, which was, again, his interpretation of The Abolition of Man, another great read. So I just found it really fascinating. And we wrote a book about it. It was just like a, within our own university, published for like a week. And we had like printed copies of it. But now we're actually getting it legitimately published. So you can find A Compass to Deep Heaven on Amazon.

You can pre-order it too. You can pre-order it. It's coming out next month. I've pre-ordered it. I'm waiting for it to come. So y'all should go and do that as well. That's pretty cool. It is really cool.

Our very own published author. He writes for fun. He'll be published on Amazon, and he writes professionally. He writes for fun in the hot, hot sun. Coming out of his ears. Well, good stuff. Isaiah, do you have a favorite work of science fiction? Like most people probably, I've seen more than I've read. I'm a big fan of science fiction movies.

If I had to pick a book, it'd be The Einstein Intersection by Samuel Delaney. Ever heard of Samuel Delaney? No. Well, The Einstein Intersection is this retelling of the Orpheus myth, which is one of my favorite classical myths. But it's set in... You are so smart. I love that.

I wish we could all say our favorite classical myth that that will be our next fun topic yes that's that's what makes you a smart person no english major it's set in this world where like humanity has kind of bred itself out it's it's very strange but humanity is not like a distinct species anymore um no two like beings almost are the same species and so that sounds really bizarre but they're like they're basically humanoid beings that are essentially they can speak like us but they have you know animal attributes

or you know different body parts anyway it's interesting but wow there's a lot of classical references in it

like there's this big mutant minotaur type thing but mainly it's you know this artist's quest to

into an underworld journey like Inception or what was that terrible Blade Runner rip off mute on Netflix. So another or fake journey, which I'm a big fan of. So, wow.

Well, dang, that's good stuff. Um, Bradley, what about you? My favorites of all time is, uh,

Ender's game. A classic. Orson Scott card. It, uh, was the first book, second book, actually animal farm was the first book. Second book, actually. Animal Farm was the first that I just couldn't put down and finish real quickly.

Really? Yep. I think that was in sixth grade. I read Ender's Game in seventh. And so we have such nerds at this table. Other than that horrible iteration they call the movie with Harrison Ford, I believe, is in it. It's a very good story, a very good book. I recommend you never, ever watching the movie.

Yeah, I already made that mistake. Just reading the book, yeah. It was bad. Have you read the book yet? No, unfortunately not. It's really good. Now, the movie might have totally ruined it for you. Probably did. That reminds me, Brad, of me needing to tell you Now the movie might have totally ruined it for you. Probably did.

That reminds me, Brad, of me needing to tell you, you need to replace the tape between your glasses. It's getting kind of worn out. Hayden, I appreciate you more than I could tell you. That's good. That's so good. We've already had our boss, Connie Burton, call me a nerd. Now Hayden.

Awesome. Sorry, I didn't mean to pile on you. What world are you living in? Yeah. Hayden, you started it. I'm just jumping on board now. Um,

speaking of which Hayden, do you have a favorite? I think the last science fiction book I read was probably in grade school and I can't even remember what it's called, but it was about an alien invasion where the aliens had superpowers. I can't, I can't, I can barely remember the premise of the book. So I don'tpowers. Was it Alien? I can barely remember the premise of the book.

So, I don't know. And it was probably a children's version where the text was really big and a really bad cartoonist drew the animation. So, H.G. Wells? I'm trying to Google it. No, that's a writer. That is a writer. That's a different writer.

Yeah. Is he the famous communist in in american history one of them one of those novelists that was i don't remember that but that's true i mean he was one i think he was one of them that was a prominent communist i'm sure he was probably accused of being a communist at least certainly at some point yeah or dale i think it was hg wells the one i'm thinking of okay war of the worlds war of the worlds that was that's it but it wasn't it wasn't the real real one it was like a dumbed down one because i was like seven or eight when i read it so you know they made a radio show about that and people thought it was real yep yes i remember learning about this because they played it without any

warning or something or they they played it and people tuned in too late after the warning or something like that. And everyone thought it was real. People didn't catch, apparently, that it was played at the same time every night. So it was pre-planned. If there was an actual alien invasion, I think it would be happening. Or be broadcasted over the radio constantly. It's kind of like people thinking babylon b is not satire it's like what world do we live in the movie version of war the world is actually pretty good so unlike the one with tom cruise

yeah i liked it i thought it was decent so mckenzie what's your favorite i feel wholly equipped to talk about this subject. I'll just say that. I did this because I knew y'all would enjoy it. I'm trying to think. I think I read Ender's Game as a kid. I'm pretty darn sure I did. Now, we know in memory, so I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure.

I know I owned it, and I read it pretty much every, I'm still talking, Bradley. I know you're disparaging me, and i'm choosing to ignore it but um wait after after what this section usually turns into you're complaining about me barbing you on something no i just want to make sure you know i i can hear you but i'm choosing to not acknowledge it but you just did i know i know i know i was hoping nobody would notice. But I think I read Ender's Game. I'm not a big science fiction person, although I will say as a kid, I forgot about this. Never mind. I was a big science fiction fan as a kid.

There was a Christian dragon series that I read religiously. And I had a chain meal. Lord of the Rings? Well, that too. That's like an exception. That's almost like classic. I think that's entirely true. Yeah, that's more fantasy.

Science fiction is not so much. Unless the dragon was going into space or something. Yeah, a space dragon. Guys, I had a chainmail. Yeah, that's totally unrealistic. A book about dragons, that's kosher. I had a chainmail bracelet that was like handmade i can't believe you just admitted this on the podcast yeah i um i had a sweatshirt

that said dragons in our midst i was on like forums online talking about all the like revelatory references did you do any reenactments dragon tales no i did not did you have nightmares about the rapture i actually it did bring forward a lot of conversations with me as a young child my parents about revelation every time our church would go through revelation when i was a little i was always i would always have nightmares that i wasn't raptured that's bringing a whole uh left behind isn't it is basically the next step in this conversation i mean i guess it's not yeah i didn't ever leave behind no it does not say there might be a dragon out here um regardless

but i'll say c.s lewis to go back to c.s lewis loop back to the original i i listened to both mere christianity and the great divorce on a big road trip i just had to finish over the holiday weekend and they were both amazing i mean i listened to them before them before, but I, or I'd read them before, but I'd never listened. And it was really fun to listen to. I'm not sure that mere Christianity falls under the science fiction category. But I, we were talking about C.S. Lewis.

Yeah. C.S. Lewis is great. Thanks for bringing it back. Go buy the book. You're welcome. A compass for deep heaven. Wow. Good stuff.

Folks on that note, thank you for listening and we'll catch you next week. Thank you all so much for listening. If you've been enjoying our podcast, it would be awesome if you would review us on iTunes. And if there's a guest you'd love to hear on our show, give us a shout on Twitter. Tweet at The Texan News. We're so proud to have you standing with us as we seek to provide real journalism in an age of disinformation. We're paid for exclusively by readers like you, so it's important we all do our part to support the Texan by subscribing and telling your friends about us. God bless you, and God bless Texas. you