The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - June 14, 2024

Episode Date: June 14, 2024

Show off your Lone Star spirit with a free "Remember the Alamo" hat with an annual subscription to The Texan: https://thetexan.news/subscribe/ The Texan’s Weekly Roundup brings you the latest news in Texas politics, breaking down the top stories of the week with our team of reporters who give you the facts so you can form your own opinion. Enjoy what you hear? Be sure to subscribe and leave a review! Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast.This week on The Texan’s “Weekly Roundup,” the team discusses the most interesting upcoming primary runoff elections, including:Four Texas House Republicans Censured for Violating Caucus Bylaws After Campaigning Against ColleaguesCongressman Henry Cuellar's Bribery, Money Laundering Trial Date Moved to 2025Appeals Court Revives Lawsuit Alleging Biden Administration Censored Doctors Critical of Fauci, COVID-19 LockdownsRising Property Costs, Complexities of Insurance Gauged by Texas House CommitteePaxton Secures Injunction Blocking Federal Transgender Policy in Texas Public SchoolsPaxton Sues Over Biden's Health and Human Services Rule Prohibiting 'Gender Identity Discrimination'Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza's Removal Lawsuit Faces Motion to DismissPflugerville Public Library Hosts ‘Trans Clothing Swap and Social’ for MinorsDallas City Council to Propose Decriminalizing Low Marijuana PossessionAbbott Appoints Three Judges to New Fifteenth Court of Appeals With Jurisdiction Over Suits Involving State

Paris, the Olympics, it's happening. It's happening very soon. How athletes train, these guys train too. Stomach is a muscle. They have to stretch their stomach eating these giant balls of iceberg lettuce. Just stretching it and stretching it. Oh my gosh.

This is like the U.S. Open that's currently happening right now without Scotty Scheffler appearing. If he was arrested for, say, trying to drive past a security guard that was uh you know feeling too busy well howdy folks it's mckenzie here with matt brad and cameron we have a different setup this week we're remote podcasting matt's not there there. Like, he usually isn't. He was there last week. But this time, Brad and Cameron can both see me instead of just Brad. But I can't see Cameron. So Cameron at any point wants to get my attention. He's got to go through Brad and make some sort of signal,

bad signal that makes its way to me. So, Cameron, I'm sorry you're getting the short end of the stick here. Well, me and Brad have our baseball background, and so we understand third base signals to the hitter. So we've already worked out a whole system here. Oh, that's good to know. Brad, are you ready to be in the seat of responsibility for this line of communication?

Yeah, I only have one question for Cameron. Are we pro-bunt or not? Are we anti-bunt? Pro-bunt. Okay. It's the only way to defeat the shift. I agree. I agree.

Better learn to hit the other way. But nobody wants to do that, especially Joey Gallo. Matt, how's West Texas treating you today? It's hot. Is it? How hot? Upper 90s. Dang. It's 55 and rainy here in Dublin. And I'll say this. My husband and I both were getting pretty darn soaked in the rain and wind. So we went into the equivalent of a convenience store and bought an umbrella. The only umbrella they had, it was $5. And I tell, when I tell you it lasted eight minutes,

that's not an exaggeration. It is now a crumpled, uh, rotten little piece of metal that has warped into some unrecognizable, uh, shape. And I, I kid you not, it lasted eight minutes. Sounds like a piece of postmodern art right there. Okay, speaking of postmodern art. Sorry, Brad, go for it. I'm going to say, can an umbrella rot? I'm confused by that. No, just rotten as in poor quality.

All right, thesaurus. Can you calm down also i will say ridiculous i will also say i'll send this to you guys okay i'm sending you photos of this i will also say that we went to trinity library speaking of post-modern art and there was this weird post-modern art installation in the one of the most beautiful libraries in the world, Trinity College. It's this unbelievable, gorgeous library right where they keep the Book of Kells. And it just ruined the whole library. It made me so mad. But they're keeping it there for a while, I guess. It's like this giant globe that's got to be 20 feet in diameter.

It's so weird. I'm trying to send these to you and they're not going through. Anyways, you made me think of it. Thank you. But yeah, lasted eight minutes. So Matt, you're 90 something degree weather. The hot weather sounds pretty nice right about now. But gentlemen, let's go ahead and hop into the news here. Brad, some legislative action happening, not legislative action, some action happening in legislative circles, more like it. There's a complaint against four House Republicans, and it was finally acted upon by the caucus itself, the GOP caucus. What happened? So a reminder of the complaint, Representative Glenn Rogers filed a

complaint with the Texas House GOP caucus alleging that Representatives Tinderholt, Harrison, Schatzlein, and Toth campaigned against their fellow colleagues, which is a violation of the caucus bylaws. The complaint was filed. The caucus executive committee began looking into it. A pretty straightforward thing. They violated it. It happened. They campaigned. The question is whether that's a rule that should even be a rule in the first place. And I have a feeling that that's going to get addressed at some point. But ultimately, the caucus executive committee made up of Representatives Ollerson, who's the chair, Lacey Hull, Shelby Slauson, J.C. Chaton, and Jared Patterson unanimously censured the four R's in question. A strong condemnation was issued in a letter.

No other penalties were levied, though, And it was pretty much the outcome everybody expected. Um, you know, they violated the rule, but there didn't seem to be much appetite to actually punish with anything, at least in a large amount within the caucus. So they kind of found the middle road there. The letter read in part, while we have been asked to ignore or refuse to complete an investigation or determine a curative action, our bylaws compel us to address these violations. You may wish to disregard them, but it is our responsibility as officers to carry them out to the best of our abilities and enforce them when necessary. In response, the four representatives who were censured in a joint statement said, we are proud to have helped many true conservatives join the Texas House,

something we will continue to do, regardless of any absurd caucus rules designed to protect the uniparty swamp at a time when Republicans should be unifying against Democrats. The caucus is divisively punishing conservatives. No love lost there. I mean, they're using it as a PR victory lap, as they have since the complaint was filed. And overall, there was a lot of smoke and very little fire here as an ordeal. There's talk about expulsion originally, and that's in the bylaws.

That's one of the options among a fine and a suspension. But there's a question that even if they had been expelled, it seems like the membership resets after the November election when you know who is actually going to be in the House caucus. And so after the November election, when all those representatives win, I don't know if some of them, a couple of them have Democrats, Democratic opponents. But when they win, you know, the membership would reset. So the implication on like a speaker vote seems like it probably wouldn't be there even if they were expelled. But that is an open question. We don't really know how that would have played out. But overall, just more Republican infighting. It's not ending. And it won't. We have a long speaker's race to go that's going

to get pretty intense. So this is just, you know, an appetizer, I think, for that. It feels like we're still at the very beginning stages of the speaker's race, so certainly agree with you there. Where did this rule originate from in the first place? So in 2019, there was a proposal to amend the caucus bylaws to include this rule put forward by State Rep. John Rainey. I believe it was in connection with former State Rep. Jonathan Stickland campaigning either against Rainey himself or other members of the caucus. You know, the intent was to prevent members from campaigning against other members. And that the then chair of the caucus, Dustin Burroughs,

created a working group that fashioned the final rule. You know, interestingly enough, one of the members on that working group was Representative Tenderholt, who is now being censured by the rule. You know, interestingly enough, one of the members on that working group was Representative Tenderholt, who is now being censured by the rule. You know, there were, it was kind of a divide between the more, you know, conservative right wing of the caucus and some more moderates. It was kind of a balanced working group there. But they came up with this rule and it's been in there ever since um but i think this is going to be stripped at the next caucus meeting or at least it sounds like there is an appetite for that cameron oh my gosh when they say campaigning against a fellow member does that mean explicitly endorsing an opponent does that mean just

showing up to a campaign event like how do they determine what is the campaigning part is pretty broad you know both of those would apply okay and then there's also a financial component a separate section or subsection that says you cannot give money to an opponent of a colleague. So I'm not sure if that one was triggered in this case, but the campaigning section definitely was. We saw these four members going on the Contract with Texas bus tour, going into Speaker Dave Phelan's district campaigning for David Covey, a bunch of other districts, and they made a big show of it as part of their PR strategy. And they were pretty successful in a lot of these races.

Obviously didn't take out the speaker, but yeah, that answer your question? Yeah, because I'm just thinking to myself if um if this rule isn't revoked let's say and it remains as part of a part of this platform um is would there be a way for a member to sort of skirt around the rule and continue to essentially non-campaign but campaign for an opposing candidate like without explicitly endorsing an opponent but still maybe showing up to a campaign answering questions or saying what's good or what's bad about certain you don't you don't have to exploit it's not just explicitly endorsing it's you know

campaigning on behalf of a challenger and obviously obviously that's broad, but there's a lot of different actions that apply there. Yeah, so it's the sort of vagueness of the definition can be sort of utilized. Yeah, I mean, I think you know campaigning against when you see it. Yeah. Now, interestingly enough... So you know it when you see it sort of thing. The financial side of this does get a bit more interesting.

Okay. I think it was Kerner Volt put out a piece on members donating to the Associated Republicans of Texas, which is a very incumbent favorable, at least certain incumbents, incumbent favorable organization. And, you know, they defended Phelan big time in his race I think they went to bat for you know a lot of the members that ended up losing their races and some others that won there was you know some members have donated to art. And the question is, does that count as violating this financial prohibition? That's much harder to prove because it's money going into an organization. You have no idea if that money given by X representative was used against Y representative, you know?

Art was involved in the race against steve toth giving a lot of money to skeeter huber his challenger whom toth defeated so there's that vagueness there you know another good point actually chairman oliverson raised this to me was that you know if that if that's true if that applies here then so does any member giving money to Greg Abbott who just took out a bunch of incumbents right so so if they if they don't remove the rule do you think they'll need to add additional definers to the rule so people know essentially like if they're breaking the rule or not yeah probably although I you know in this case the members knew they were breaking the rule or not. Yeah, probably. Although, you know, in this case, the members knew they were breaking it and they didn't care and they said that. They

said in their statement, we'd do it again, basically. And, you know, that's their position. They're not shying away from it. I think ultimately this results in the rule just being stripped because there are even members who that have spoken to me and said you know they're not in the camp of harrison toth shatzline tenderholt who said this just is a dumb rule it was a dumb rule in the first place and we need to get rid of it so it's still a rule right now right so obviously and that was oliverson's point you know whether you like it or not this is a black and white rule, and we need to enforce it. But they didn't enforce it to the fullest extent.

Just like they did in 22, by the way, and Toth was censured under this too, last cycle, along with Ben Lamon and I think Brian Slayton for doing the exact same stuff. So two times this has been enforced, I use air quotes there, with no actual punishment being penalties being levied. So I think that tells you where everyone is on this rule. Its days are numbered, I think. And I will say, too, we saw a reaction to Oliverson acting in his capacity with the rule and specifically because of his campaign for Speaker that was launched a little while ago. So it was interesting watching some of those online reactions. Brad, you already kind of talked about this, but quickly give us an overview of the perspective that Oliverson offered and kind of the criticism levied against

him. Yeah, I mean, from those, you know, more reactive on, you know, Harrison et al side, they were, they were people saying, you know, we, how can we support you for speaker? And these are just like average people on Twitter thing. How can we support you for speaker? And these are just like average people on Twitter. I think, how can we support you for speaker if you censured these members? And then Olofsen responded with, because I'm fair and balanced in my application of the rules, and this is his argument that this had to be done. The members knowingly broke the rule,

and it's a rule whether we like it or not you know the interest another interesting part of this rule fight that i think is more impactful is when we get to the speakers race and whether members uh you know outright ignore or stick to the caucus bylaw that members are supposed to support the caucus-endorsed candidate on the floor. We saw last, in 2023, Tony Tenderholt ran against the Speaker, against Phelan. Phelan won the caucus endorsement. Tenderholt still took it to the floor and voted, obviously, for himself, right? One of three members, Schatzlein was another one there. The other one was Slayton, who's obviously no longer in the legislature. But we're seeing, we're increasingly seeing these rules, like, what's the point? You know, there's not a lot of adherence to these, or at least

there's more and more examples building of people not following it. So at some point the question has to be asked, is it worth having in the first place? Yeah, are they going to strip the rule completely, either one of those, or are they going to add additional definitions to that rule and then actually enforce it? I don't think you'll see anything change on the speaker endorsed candidate section. At least that's just what my gut says but definitely something changing if not outright removing the uh the um prohibition against a campaign against your colleagues so overall this was there was a lot of there was a lot of fury yeah furor over this and it just kind of petered out you know well it, it's just an interesting conversation about legislative rules, you know, and the adherence to them and the enforcement of them.

And it's just an interesting conversation to see how it's going to play out. And I will say, too, worth noting that when these rules are made, there's usually some sort of political end in mind made by those proposing it or adopting it. And circumstances change over the course of a few years, and it may no longer serve the purpose it was intended to serve in the beginning, whether that's broadly speaking or very specifically speaking. And so watching this change a little bit is very fascinating, both politically and in terms of rulemaking. So we'll keep an eye on it. And of course, the rules in the House are always a joy to watch be formed and molded and debated. So that will be a fun part of this next legislative session. And the caucus rules are no exception. Bradley, thank you. Cameron, we're going to come to you.

There has been an update in the ongoing Henry Cuellar DOJ debacle. Tell us what's going on. It has been an ongoing debacle. The trial date for this indictment, he was indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice, will now take place next year, notably after the general election in November. A court order was issued on Friday. This is coming out a week after this issue was put out. After both Cuellar's defense team and the federal prosecutors made a request for the change of date, his trial was originally set for this July, but has been postponed to spring 2025. An interim pretrial conference is scheduled for December, and jury selection will begin on March 31st, 2025. And to just catch people up on

what has happened leading up to this, in May, the DOJ indicted both Cuellar and his wife for having allegedly accepted approximately $600,000 in bribes from two foreign entities, one from Azerbaijan and a bank headquartered in Mexico City. We've seen the fallout from this. There were two Cuellar-connected consultants who pled guilty to this money laundering scheme. And then after that, another person pled guilty to this. So sort of dominoes are continuing to fall with Cuellar's case here. interesting I'll mention here is Jay Furman, who won the GOP primary runoff for Texas Congressional District 28 last month and will face Cuellar in the general election, the NRCC has now added that congressional district race to their list of priority races. So the case is being delayed. There's been lots of fallout from that. Now the NRCC is going to be targeting the upcoming election. So

we'll be following it. It seems like things are happening every single week with this case. Nothing as of right now, but what's up? Yeah, I think the Cook Political Report, after this broke, moved it from a strong Dem to a lean Dem projection, I think. And that itself is interesting. Yeah, the partisan index, we have it at D54. Yeah, that's not razor thin, but that's fairly close. Yeah, definitely. Especially here in Texas, as things have been shifting demographically to the more Republican end of things.

In South Texas. In South Texas. In South Texas, yeah. Especially in that area. And very interesting to watch as all of this went down, the congressman ardently saying, I will continue to run for re-election. And now we see the trial date move to after the election period. So very interesting to watch.

And Cameron, I know you're on that one. Thank you so much. Matt, we're coming to you. A federal appeals court has revised a lawsuit against the Biden administration and several professional medical licensing organizations who plaintiff doctors say threatened to revoke their board certification status due to their criticism, throwback of COVID-19 shutdowns, vaccines, etc. Give us the background. That's right, Mackenzie. The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Texas against several professional medical licensing organizations, as well as U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, essentially alleging that a now disbanded

government board, the Government Disinformation Board, coordinated with these groups, which are private organizations, to target certain physicians who basically spoke out about things that the government didn't approve of. Specifically, these physicians criticized Dr. Anthony Fauci. They criticized the government's response to COVID-19, such as the shutdowns. They criticized the COVID-19 vaccine, and they even spoke out about abortion policies and laws. Now, the doctors allege that this now disbanded board, coordinated with these groups that issue board specialization certifications in different practice areas of medicine to essentially threaten or revoke those certifications of those physicians unless they stopped that conduct, stopped that speech, et cetera, et cetera, or just outright revoked it because of the speech. Now, the government disbanded the board, and that was

one of the things that the government cited in their defense, which is one of the reasons the federal district court kicked the case for standing. They appealed that decision to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which revived the lawsuit. And one of the judges writing separately elaborated that there are other circumstances, particularly cases that he's ruled on, where the government is being sued for some conduct that is unlawful. And they reversed that action in order to make it moot, in order to avoid judicial review. And the judge very much admonished any attempt by the government to avoid judicial review by doing things like that, and so he applauded the majority panel's decision in being able to allow the plaintiffs to go back to the trial court and essentially make a connection between this disbanded board

and these groups. And if they can make that connection, they receive First Amendment protection and the government cannot threaten your licensure or take action against you for speech that they do not like, which runs the file of the First Amendment. Now, to clarify the significance of this specialized certification in medicine, while it doesn't necessarily revoke their license to practice, these board certifications are required to practice at most hospitals, especially most major hospitals. They're also required to be eligible for certain insurance pools, being in networks, et cetera, et cetera. So the revocation of these certifications essentially, to some extent, acts as suspending their license to practice medicine, thus denoting

the serious nature of the consequences these physicians were facing. So it goes back to the federal chalkboard. We'll keep an eye on the case that proceeds. Absolutely. Matthew, thank you for your coverage. Bradley, we are coming back to you. Give us the gist of the House insurance hearing that occurred this last week. We have some interim hearings going on, and this was one of the notable ones. Yeah, the insurance premium, rise in insurance premiums has been a big issue around the country, including in Texas. And so the House Insurance Committee took that up. Politically, this was interesting because that was outside the bounds of the interim charges that was issued to Representative Tom Oloverson's committee.

The obvious reason for that is that he is running against the Speaker, for Speaker. Instead, the Insurance Committee was given the task of evaluating amusement park regulations. And I forget the other one, but it was something other kind of silly. Just some behind-the-scenes politicking there. Now, Olverson and the committee just ignored that and decided to take up what they wanted to, which was evaluating property insurance rates and just the general insurance environment in the state of Texas. You know, leading off the committee, Oliver said something, I wouldn't say it's prophetic, but it's interesting, especially given what happened in the committee

with the discussion. You know, he said the gist of which was, we know that there are a lot of factors affecting the insurance market in Texas, and many of them we have no control over. I mean, that right there is, anytime talk anything economic there, the state has very limited ability to do anything of much significance when it comes to state laws. You know, there's things they can do that they were talking about during this hearing. like inflation, just the still the knock-on effects of the COVID pandemic is causing cost increase. And Cassie Brown of the Texas Department of Insurance told the committee that premiums paid last year in the state of Texas have grown 30 times the amount in 1964, which in today's dollars was $9 billion. So it's gone 30 times that, according to Brown. It's a lot of money. Automobile insurance rates are up 25.5% from

last year, and homeowners insurance rates are up 21.1%, according to Brown. A big reason for this, example for this catalyst, I should say, is that things cost more. That's partially inflation. But, you know, when you look at CPI inflation, it's right now like 3.3% or something. But when you look at inflation within the industry, it's a lot more stark. And when the cost of a new car or a used car increases, that's the cost of replacement for your insured car increasing. So that's going to have a knock-on effect to the premiums you pay because the insurance company is mitigating risk at root, and part of that risk is the financial burden they'll take on

should you, you know, total your car. And so, you know, that's part of it. Home, same thing with homes with raw materials and mid-level materials, you know, roofs, they cost more. The other thing talked about was weather. You know, the frequency and severity of property damage from weather has increased. You know, there's a lot of talk about climate change, and that's a politically loaded term. But, you know, over the past century, humans have become more resilient against weather. That's something that's not talked about much in this debate. That comes in terms of, you know, lives lost.

But property is still damaged. You know, we just had a hailstorm up in, I think, Dallas, and a lot of property damage there. We're entering hurricane season. That's going to cause issues. We just had floods out in Southeast Texas. All this causes property damage and that affects insurance rates. Cost flows downstream to the rate payer, the policy holder, whatever it is, the consumer of anything. So overall, there's not a lot to do, but it was a good example of acknowledging the problem and evaluating it.

Some of the things that they suggested were on the home side of things, adher that, you know, they were hit by a hurricane. And there was one home built by Habitat for Humanity who followed the rigorous standards. And it was left standing while all the contractor-built homes around it were crumbled. So, you know, that's part of it, just doing things better. Yeah, I've seen some pictures like that floating around online over the past few months of the diminishing quality of home building like yeah like when they're putting up the what's it called like the internal the frame the framing of the home like nails all over the place and like the two by fours like misaligned and stuff and it's like what is causing this

diminishing quality of home building i'm not i'm not sure i mean it's it's probably uh you know builders trying to save money i mean that's really what it comes down to right um and they don't have to pay it on the back end if it does crumble they're not on the hook for that cost if anything that gives them the incentive to come build a new one, right? Right. So, yeah, there's really no skeleton key here. There's no silver bullet that's going to fix this. And a very big part of this is still feeling the effects of the COVID shutdowns

that caused a backup in production for various goods uh supply chain logistical stresses and uh and backlogs when the freaking boat got caught in the suez canal you know that that had a knock-on effect for a lot of stuff. It's just life. It happens. And there's no good solution. But it was an interesting discussion to listen to, if this kind of thing interests you.

And yes, Mac? I was going to say, can you... Well, I was going to let you finish, and then I was going to ask you a question. Yeah, go ahead. I was going to say, can you, well, I was going to let you finish and then I was going to ask you a question. Yeah, go ahead. I was pretty much done. Okay, great. How many interim hearings can we expect from a committee like insurance when I'm just curious from a political perspective, how much we'll see Oliverson kind of take the reins of his committee in that way and continue to hold hearings on subject matter more directly related to his committee when of his committee in that way and continue to hold hearings on subject matter more directly related to his committee when, of course, there's political chess being played by

both the speaker and the chairman. How many more hearings can we expect for this interim? I think in August. But it's really up to his discretion. You know, if he thinks they need more to evaluate whatever it is they want to evaluate, then they'll do it. So, yeah, I don't think there's a cap or a limit at all. Yeah. And it depends differently for each committee, and it depends on what the interim charges are and all of that. But very interesting to watch politically. Bradley, thank you. Matt, coming to you, the

Attorney General prevailed in securing a court order that blocked a rule expanding a federal civil rights law to include the protection of gender identity in public schools. What are the details of this rule and what does this mean for Texas? So at present, there is a federal law passed by Congress that provides certain civil rights protections for certain classes of people, and particularly in public schools. One of those protected classes is that it is illegal under federal law for a public school to discriminate against somebody on the basis of sex. So the Biden administration to the U.S. Department of Education had proposed a rule that expanded the definition of what the basis of sex means to include gender identity. And through that expansion, according to the Attorney General,

they were planning on using the rule to implement certain pro-transgender ideologies in public schools and undermine certain state policies, such as no biological males on sports teams that are designated specifically for females. Requiring public schools that have bathrooms separated by sex to allow someone teachers would be required to have students use preferred pronouns. Those were the examples that the attorney general gave that would barring application of the rule, but specifically for Texas and other relevant states that were party to the lawsuit, essentially citing rules for applying injunctions. The judge stopped short of issuing a nationwide injunction against the rule. Now, the lawsuit will continue. I believe once they find that the rule is unlawful, there could be a court order blocking its enforcement nationwide. But for now, the rules enforcement remains blocked for Texas public schools. Matt, thank you so much for covering that for us. We appreciate it. Interesting to watch these federal actions have effect here in Texas and state officials combating

them. Thank you for your coverage. Cameron, we're going to come to you next. Another Paxton lawsuit story. This time challenging the Biden administration's Health and Human Services Department. Tell us about it. Yeah, so this is very similar to what Matt just talked about with Paxton suing the Biden administration. This time, the Health and Human Services Department over that new rule that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, color, national origin, age, disability, or sex and Paxson is taking issue with how HHS is determining sex discrimination to include discrimination based on gender identity so that same sort of Title IX implementation here with the Health and Human Services. The effective date of the new HHS rule under Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act

is set for July 5th of this year. And the contention for Paxton mainly is he wrote in the lawsuit here, I'll quote, Under the final rule, HHS requires health care providers like Texas Tech University's health science centers to fill prescriptions for puberty blockers, even when doing so would violate state law or risk losing millions of dollars in federal health care funding. So Paxson is actually being joined in the lawsuit with the state of Montana and the plaintiffs, Paxson and the state of Montana, they are seeking for the court to determine that the rule is unlawful and prohibit Texas and Montana from having to implement these new regulations. So another Paxson lawsuit against the Biden administration, I'm sure we'll get a response here in the next few months. Awesome, Cameron. Thank you. As always, Paxson remains busy combating the Biden administration a tale as old as time. Thank you. Matt, coming to you next, what are the latest developments

in the second attempt to remove Travis County DA Jose Garza from office. So the Texas legislature recently passed a law that allows citizens to file petitions in state district court seeking the ouster of rogue prosecutors, and you can't see my quotation mark fingers, that are essentially defined as prosecutors who implement a rule or policy refusing to enforce a class of state law. They define that type of policy as essentially being incompetent under the Texas state law and Texas constitution, which allows after a trial for that official to be removed from office. The first petition that was brought against Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza was ultimately rejected because one of the

elements of the law requires that you cannot presently be charged with a crime in order to qualify to file one of these removal proceedings. And the man who brought the first petition was presently charged with possession of drugs. The background on that was that he was going into the Travis County Courthouse, went to the metal detector, the metal detector went off, the deputy looked in the backpack and found some narcotics. So since he was indicted on those drug charges that resulted in his petition to remove Garza, which ironically sought to remove him for refusing to prosecute narcotics laws, caused that petition to be kicked. Fast forward, Austin resident Mary Dupuy filed a subsequent very similar petition, and that petition ended up seeing this chief administrative judge for the region allow it to

move forward, and he assigned a Bell County attorney as the special prosecutor to litigate the case. Now, in looking into the allegations raised in the petition, the special prosecutor ended up filing a motion to dismiss, saying that he looked at the allegations and that he did not find that they arose to the level of incompetence that required Garza's removal from office. And he kind of went through his explanation of various different things, including the one very clear violation, which was Garza had a rule refusing to enforce marijuana laws in Travis County. And he actually cited a policy that Garza, an internal memo that Garza had put forward after the removal law was passed by the legislature that said that that policy was suspended. And he said that he was able to find

cases that were being prosecuted after that. So that indicated that Garza wasn't just completely refusing officers on a do not allow list that prevented them from testifying in court in criminal cases. He said that that did not essentially constitute refusing to enforce a classification of state law. Now, he filed this motion to dismiss the petition, and that was met with kind of two different interesting reactions. One, the petitioner, Dupuy, she filed a motion with the court seeking to have a new prosecutor appointed and went through and kind of methodically picked apart the motion to dismiss, saying that he essentially failed to conduct a investigation that satisfied a particular standard for the court, such as conducting investigation under sworn oath depositions, all that sort of thing. She also accused the special prosecutor of potentially being lazy or hearing that he had been drunk. And she'd also wanted to amend her petition and tried to contact him several times.

And he never returned her call before he filed the motion to dismiss. So a number of things in that. And then the administrative judge overseeing the case, Judge Waldrop, he did not accept the motion to dismiss right away and has essentially set a hearing saying that they're going to discuss certain aspects that are raised in the motion, including why these findings were not meeting certain standards, such as sworn conditions, et cetera, et cetera. So while usually a prosecutor filing a motion dismiss results in a case going away. The fact that the judge wasn't readily signing off on it, it was a very interesting sign. So all eyes are watching on it to see whether or not the case, the second attempt fails and goes away,

or whether or not the judge rejects this motion and appoints a new prosecutor or gives the special prosecutor more instructions on how to conduct his investigation and, you know, informs him to come back with something better. Who knows? We're keeping an eye on it to see where it goes. Plenty of different paths forward. Matt, thanks for breaking that down for us. Cameron, a local Texas library has taken a very interesting approach to June being Pride Month. Tell us about it. Yeah, so the Pflugerville Public Library hosted a trans clothing swap and social on June 8th aimed at children up to eight years old. This came across my timeline and it's something we have talked about previously.

A lot of these towns across Texas hosting some of these Pride Month events that allow for children to be in attendance. And what I actually found that was interesting is this Pflugerville Public Library event has happened in the past. And it was actually a local news outlet who did an interview with one of the individuals who helped organize the event. I include all those quotes in the piece. I won't read them here. But like I just mentioned, there's been lots of different events over the past few years that have occurred across the piece. I won't read them here, but like I just mentioned, there's been lots of different events over the past few years that have occurred across the state. The Texas GOP actually recently

released its legislative priorities for the 89th legislature and lists, quote, stop sexualizing Texas kids as one of their top issues. And if you dig into what they highlight with that being a top issue, they state that it aims at, quote, prohibiting taxpayer funding to any entities that permit or promote sexually inappropriate content to minors and legislatively banning instruction on sexual orientation and gender ideology in schools and libraries. And they actually call for an attempt to repeal, quote, affirmative defenses in Texas Penal Code and redefining harmful materials to remove loopholes provided by the modified Miller test. And for those who are unfamiliar, the Miller test was actually a Supreme Court decision that is this legal parameter that is used to determine whether expression constitutes

obscenity. So some details there, I go through in the piece highlighting what those Texas penal codes are, going a little bit deeper on the Miller test and some of these instances that have occurred across the state. So people are interested in checking that out. They can go read it on the texan.news. Absolutely. And this is definitely one of the more unique instances we've seen in this saga lately. We've covered a lot of events of a similar ilk, but this is definitely new, this clothing swap for trans children. So Cameron, thank you for bringing attention to that for our readers, for our listeners. We're going to stick with you for another story. Another Texas city will attempt

to pass some local marijuana laws. Update us. Yeah, so the Dallas City Council will be proposing a city charter amendment that will decriminalize low levels of marijuana possession. This according to a press release from Council Member Chad West and the proposal will actually be similar to a petition from an organization called Ground Game Texas that they called the Dallas Freedom Act. And in this Dallas Freedom Act petition, the measure would instruct police in Dallas to stop issuing citations or making arrests for Class A or Class B misdemeanor marijuana possession. And what's interesting is Lubbock is a city we've covered that attempted to introduce this decriminalization of marijuana in this past

election, and actually voters rejected it quite outright. But we're seeing some moves at the federal level as well with the DEA making moves to reclassify marijuana from a Schedule 1 to a Schedule 3 drug, so moving it from the most harshest level to a less harsh level of enforcement. And the move was made official after the Justice Department announced and made it official proposal days after conversations were occurring about this reclassification move. And then also Governor Greg Abbott has made statements about local versus state enforcement of marijuana. And he actually said in an interview with KAMC, this was at the time Lubbock had proposed their decriminalization measure and he said the issue is bigger than just the issue about marijuana on the ballot he said quote local communities such as towns cities and counties they don't have the authority to override state law if they want to

see a different law passed they need to work with their legislature and make sure that the state will pass some sort of law. So Abbott speaking about it, how local communities need to work with the state government, but then we're seeing a contrast with the federal government loosening, essentially, the enforcement of some of the marijuana scheduling. So interesting dynamics at play here when it comes to marijuana. There's lots of conversation about marijuana laws, not just in the state, but in the country. Particularly here in the state, when it comes to Delta 8 and Delta 9, they're going to be addressing that in, I believe they already did, an interim hearing. Delta 8 and Delta 9, they're going to be addressing that in a, I believe they already did, in an interim hearing. That's, Delta 8 and Delta 9 are hemp derivatives that have low percentage of THC, but they're legal. There's been calls to recriminalize Delta 8 and Delta 9.

We'll see if that happens. Texas, a bit more strict on its enforcement as opposed to some other states. We talked about on one of our Send Me Some Stuff episodes about different states actually pulling back on their decriminalization efforts. So an ongoing conversation, lots of information packed in there, but people can check it out, listen to our podcast, read the articles. It's all there. Federal, state, local angles, all sorts of crazy stuff going on here. Cameron, thanks for breaking it down.

Bradley, coming to you, Governor Greg Abbott announced the appointments of three inaugural justices for the 15th Court of Appeals, a new court. Walk us through what happened here. Governor Greg Abbott announced the appointments of three inaugural justices for that new 15th Court of Appeals, a new court. Walk us through what happened here. Governor Greg Abbott announced the appointments of three inaugural justices for that new 15th Court of Appeals that is going to have sole intermediate jurisdiction over disputes involving the state. That's why this is important. Currently, I think it can go to many different ones,

but often it goes to the third court of appeals. And I'll get into why that's interesting in a minute. But the three initial appointments to this court are Scott Brister, Scott Field, and April Ferris. They were appointed to terms that begin on September 1st and run through the end of 2026. Brister will serve as the court's chief justice. I believe after 27, the court expands to five, and I think those are through appointment. But then eventually all of these justices will have to run on a statewide ballot.

And that is interesting to note because the Third Court of Appeals, which hears a lot of these cases centered on the state and state law, is Democrat heavy. Because it's a district that includes Austin, it's not a statewide ballot. So it leans left in its partisan index. The Third Court of appeals does, but the state itself leans right. So you're going to get different kinds of justices on there elected to those positions. This 15th court of appeals was created by Senate Bill 1045 by Senator Joan Huffman, sponsored by Andrew Murr in the House. It passed last year. It had two main purposes, to lighten the litigation load for the current set of appeals courts and to provide a new venue for suits brought by and

against the state. You know, as I mentioned, most of those currently go through the third court of appeals. But this is, you know, the state has been very frustrated with what, with how the third court of appeals has ruled on a number of things. They ruled that the OHE could not investigate child gender modification as abuse, as child abuse. Eventually it got banned under SB 14 last year. But there's that ruling. You know, it's likely, it sounds like the state is thinking that the Third Court of Appeals will rule against the state on the Death Star Bill,

on the field preemption law that we've talked about a lot on here. Obviously, the next stop after that will be the Supreme Court. But the Republicans in the legislature and in state executive offices have gotten fed up with the third court of appeals ruling against them, essentially. And there are arguments both sides. This really is an end around the third court of appeals. And, you know, Republicans say that a statewide, cases that affect state law, that affect the whole state, need to be adjudicated by judges elected statewide. And so you don't have, you know, judges in Austin elected mainly by Austin, which is obviously very liberal, you know, hitting pause on state laws that the elected legislature has passed.

And obviously the Supreme Court is the last stop for all this stuff, but this, in their mind, saves time and money on these legal cases. You know, the other side is, I mean, this is just a naked political move to get around the Third Court of Appeals that itself is duly elected. So overall it's interesting, you know, kind of puts a bow on a pretty big legislative fight that we saw during the session last year. Absolutely. Well, Brad, I did not mean to distract you so much during that segment,

but Matt had his cat very aggressively attempting to get into his lap and make an appearance on the pod. And at one point was hugging Matt's wrist with a vengeance, I'll say. So I was cracking up. It was so funny. Well, Matt, what's your cat's name? I don't remember. Topaz. There you go. Well, Topaz making quite the appearance on the pod. Thank you, Bradley. Coming to Cameron here. Actually, I'm just going to plug your piece here, Cameron, real quick, and you can add anything else you want to. But we got to move on to the Twitter-y section here.

I think ballot security and privacy has been top of mind for folks in Texas, particularly after former GOP chairman now Matt Rinaldi's ballot was revealed right ahead of the state GOP convention by current revolt saying that there was a security issue with certain voting machines here in Texas. And Cameron covered this week a hearing in the legislature in the interim detailing some of this process, which was very interesting, definitely worth going and reading Cameron's piece at the Texan. Cameron, do you have anything quickly to add before we move on? Yeah, I'll just mention one thing here about this method that was used to essentially reveal the voter history. A Secretary of State representative was at this hearing and was asked about this supposed

algorithm that was used to reveal voter history, and She said she was unfamiliar with the technique that was used. I'll just read her quote here during the hearing quote the method that we are aware of and the method that we have been able to look at and consider is the idea that To determine how a voter has voted or where a voter has voted is through a process of public information and process of elimination. In limited circumstances, through publicly available records, you may be able to identify a specific person's ballot. The Atkins, who was the representative, reiterated that this is in limited circumstances. She went on to say, quote, the article that's out there, and there's some pending litigation, purported to

have an algorithm or some sort that ties a voter back to their ballot with their ballot number that's on there. On that issue I have not seen that algorithm nobody has presented it to our office so we don't know what they're talking about there. Just some interesting insight into what the Secretary of State said at the hearing. Absolutely. Cameron, thank you. And folks, make sure to go read his piece at the texan.news. Bradley, let's move on to our tweeter-y section here. What do you got for us? Mac, I have one question for you. Where's the beef? Lord in heaven.

Tell me, Bradley. Well, it's coming on July 4th in the hot dog contest that we see, hot dog eating contest we see everywhere every year that is going to lack, the sport is going to lack its top star. This is like. I've heard about this. This is like the U've heard about this. This is like the U.S. Open that's currently happening right now without Scotty Scheffler appearing.

You know, if he was arrested for, say, trying to drive past a security guard that was, you know, feeling too busy. Did you see the body cam footage of that? No, I didn't. Of Scheffler, Brad? No, I didn't. It's really, I didn't. It's really interesting. I mean, Shuffler's just basically standing there following directions, and it's very interesting. Of course. It would be like Shohei Ohtani not being in the World Series,

which that might happen again. I guess that's a bad example. It might be Tom Brady being prohibited from participating in the Super Bowl. Yeah. And one of his seven that he has. Joey Chestnut will not be, at least for now, will not be allowed to eat at the nation, compete I should say. It's not just eating, it's competing.

At the Nathan's hot dog eating contest because he is he signed a deal with a vegan hot dog company. What? I think. Really? If I understand this correctly. And he wanted to eat vegan hot dogs. Which Nathan is like

heck no. Can't do that. No. We're not letting a competitor up here. This is us. Yeah. We're the original hot dog, I don't know, the original hot dog maker. They're the most famous. Yeah. So there's that.

And that is interesting. Maybe it gets resolved. I hope it does. I hope so. It needs to. But the follow-up twist to this is, I'm reading a Barstool Sports headline, Unfinished Beef, the puns are just perfect, Joey Chestnut and Kobayashi are going head-to-head one last time

to decide who the true hot dog hero is on Labor Day. Whoa. There's a Netflix special. Put aside the Tom Brady roast. This is the new king of Netflix. Yeah. The Joey Chestnut versus Kobayashi contest for all the marbles. The two greatest of all time.

East versus West. This is like if Joe Montana could go up against Tom Brady. This is like Michael Jordan against, I'm not going to say LeBron, I'll say Kobe. Well, they did play against each other, actually. Another bad example. This is like Babe Ruth and Aaron Judge in a home run contest.

And the only other thing I'll add to this, other than just I cannot wait to watch this, is there was a show my dad would watch with me called Cheap Seats. It was kind of a spoof ESPN commercial. They would show weird sports,

and these guys would sit there and commentate on it, like Mystery Science Theater 3000. And one, they were doing a hot dog contest, and they did a spoof ad for this toy called the feed me Kobayashi doll and this dad is talking about how you know he got his daughters this and he's never seen such joy on their faces but the feed me Kobayashi doll eats everything so he's going broke but it's worth it to see the joy on their faces and it's amazing this is a true Titanic clash yeah well Kobayashi I remember he was like a big deal at one point he was a dog he was dominating oh yeah and he

says like he's this stature wise tiny little Japanese guy yeah he's just wiping the floor with everybody he's amazing stature-wise tiny little Japanese guy. Yeah. And he's just wiping the floor with everybody. It was amazing until Joey Chestnut came on. I remember this was over 10 years ago, probably, watching a video of how these guys, like, how athletes train. These guys train, too. Oh, yeah.

And I saw one guy was eating. The stomach is a muscle. Yeah, they have to stretch their stomach stomach eating these giant bowls of iceberg lettuce. Just stretching it and stretching it. Oh, my gosh. But it's so crazy how they remain thin. Yeah. So I don't know what they do afterwards, just like not eat for a week or two weeks or a month.

Maybe. I don't know. Maybe. Well, Mac is not. She disappeared. or two weeks or a month maybe i don't know maybe um well mac is not she she disappeared so matt i guess i'll throw this to you what's uh what's your tweetery of the week well i uh i actually saw i think it was cameron chatting about um elon musk and uh how he uh he got his bonus package voted through,

but then I guess it was announced that they're reincorporating some of his companies. I guess maybe it was Tesla in Texas. Is that correct, Cameron? Yes. SpaceX and Tesla, yeah. And did you see whether or not it was Tesla as well, though? I think it was. I'd have to look back at what I wrote.

I don't remember off the top of my head. I'm pretty sure it was Tesla. And the comment was notable that he was bringing it here because Texas still has a law that doesn't really support their business model, which is direct from the manufacturer to the consumer sales rather than going through a dealer. And that was something we saw Tesla very much wanting the legislature to change that. And so that makes me wonder whether or not that's going to come up again this next legislative session and how willing lawmakers are going to be to entertain making some sort of exception to that rule. I guess in layman's terms, what it is is an auto manufacturer has to sell their cars to an auto dealer that then sells them. So, hey! Oh yeah, sorry. I was on the phone with Daniel

trying to troubleshoot and let's hope above all hopes that all the files are still there. Have you guys moved on through the tweeter-y? We hit Matt. Wait, were you done? Is it my turn now? No, I think I pretty well summarized it. Has Cameron gone? We hit Matt. Wait, were you done? Is it my turn now? Or are you still going? No, I think I pretty well summarized it.

Has Cameron gone? No, I was just going to say the ribbon cutting on the world's largest buckies went down. It's going to have 120 fuel pumps. It's going to be 75,000 square feet. How many urinals? I don't know. I'm sure they're going to have a lot. And they're going to be impeccably clean. Absolutely.

Yes. Absolutely. And so this is going to be almost 30 times the size of a traditional convenience store. Everyone knows these Buc these buckies are massive. What's up, Matt? I got one problem with buckies, though. Oh. You're going to make some enemies here, but let's hear it.

Well, I think people will join me here. But have you ever noticed how they don't have squeegees out there at the gas pumps for your windshield? I've never noticed. What's up with that? Yeah, they don't have squeegees at the gas... I've never been to a Buc-ee's, though, that had squeegees for your

windshield. So you have to go somewhere else to get your window squeegee. So I thought that was kind of weird. That is. I never thought about that. But that's it. World's largest buckies. World's largest buckies. Well, it's a pretty big deal. And I must go visit it, as I'm sure you gentlemen have. I've visited so many Buc-ee So in order to talk about this story,

I do have to be a little, how should we put it, direct in some of the descriptions that I'll be using, but I'll do my best to make it easy to listen to and not be quite so graphic. Fair? That was the world's most wordy trigger warning I've ever heard. I have no idea what you're going to say.

Yeah, you do, Cameron. You do. Oh. So Paris, the Olympics, it's happening. It's happening very soon. Apparently, some of the water sports will be taking place in the River Seine. Not typically a river that folks want to dip their toes in, nonetheless, their entire selves to, you know, participate in their sport of choice. I think also, according to several articles I have read, that it has been illegal to swim in the Seine since 1923. Okay. So in order for the

Olympics to take place on the Seine, a very significant cleanup effort has had to take place. It's cost about 1.5 billion at this point. The process, the cleanup effort has cost that much money. Now, a lot of Parisians, being the fickle folk that they are, are ardently opposed to the Olympics being held in their city. Many of them plan to leave town entirely so that they are not present while people from all over the world come to attend the Olympics in their hometown. They're just getting out of Dodge. That's notable because we have both the French president and the mayor of Paris saying, hey, this river cleanup effort is going to be successful by June 23rd, which is just about 10 days away here at the time of recording, that we will be the first to enter the river. We ourselves as the leadership heading up this Olympic effort will be the first to get into the water, swim around, and prove that our cleanup effort has been successful.

These Parisians, upset that the Olympics are coming to their town, have decided, some of them, not all of them, but the French are famous for a dramatic protest, have decided it would be appropriate to defecate in the river on that day so that when their leadership enters the river to prove that the cleanup effort has been successful, that they will be swimming in very unsavory things. Okay? That might be the greatest protest i've ever heard it's unbelievable there is a hashtag it's been trending there's a page on twitter it only has a thousand what's the hashtag but well it's in French and it basically means hold on let me

find it it basically means I'm defecating in the Seine on June 23rd but in French and they don't use the word defecate they use another word and that is what the movement it's called

I'm thinking of that the French guard and Monty Python where he says he I'm wondering how they're going to do this are they just all going to line up alongside just in a

and just all do it at the same time or is there going to be like designated areas and there's going to be long lines of people like taking turns is there going to be here's of people like taking turns. Is there going to be? can find when and where to participate so that they ensure that the timing and the flow of the river enables the protest to be successful, right? So there's that part of it. And then there's also, I think, a pretty logical sect of folks observing this I think, man, I don't know if the French are going to pull this one off or if they have, you know, the bravery here to really make this thing happen. If they're really going to say, hey, us French, us proud people, proud of our country are actually going to go ahead and do this. So, you know, I think there's kind of two angles here. One saying, yeah, they've got it pretty planned. There's a time, a place, a plot. And the other saying,

yeah, it's not going to happen. It's just a lot of talk. Well, I'll be interested. Maybe I'll check out some of those Facebook pages, see if there's like any more information. Like, is there like a preparation protocol, like two day, 48 hours leading into it, you know, maybe don't use the restroom. So you're ready to go. Maybe introducing is some medications to help, you know, people might get stage fright, you know, being out in the open. So drink a lot of coffee. This is a very special edition of the podcast. You are welcome for bringing this up. Cameron, you're right. I think there's a lot of thought that has to go into this to make it successful. You know, it's not just dropping the drawers and going at it.

You know, you got to think about it a little bit. You need some strategy, some preparation, so everything goes smoothly, let's say. We can. Well, on that note, folks, I'm getting the I'm getting I'm getting multiple texts from our team saying that batteries are running low. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the subject matter. And it has entirely just to do with the batteries. So on that note, I'm going to end this edition of the weekly roundup. Folks, thank you so much for listening and we'll catch you next week.