The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - June 16, 2023

Episode Date: June 16, 2023

Show off your Lone Star spirit with a free Texas flag hat with an annual subscription to The Texan: https://go.thetexan.news/texas-flag-hat/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=weekly_roundupThe 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: Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick saying his “good faith” with Speaker Dade Phelan is “broken”The Texas House appointing a committee in anticipation of a school choice special session Gov. Greg Abbott threatening mass vetoes unless the Legislature reaches a compromise on property taxesThe end of Texas’ three-year COVID-19 disaster declarationAbbott signing the “READER Act” to remove explicit materials from public school librariesAbbott’s illegal immigrant busing program expanding to Los AngelesThe new leader of the U.S. Border Patrol A court ruling it unconstitutional for the federal government to impose vaccine mandates on Texas National GuardsmenSen. Ted Cruz requesting answers from Mark Zuckerberg over child sexual abuse networks on InstagramA poll showing Cruz leading his Democratic challenger Colin Allred by 5 percent The Legislature approving $1.5 billion for the expansion of rural internet serviceControversies and criminal histories in the race to become mayor of PalestineA lawsuit against the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office alleging violations of constitutional rights

Happy Friday, folks. Senior Editor Mackenzie DeLulo here, and welcome back to the Texans' Weekly Roundup podcast. This week, the team discusses Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick saying his good faith with Speaker Dade Phelan is broken. The Texas House appointing the committee in anticipation of a school choice special session. Governor Greg Abbott threatening mass vetoes unless the legislature reaches a compromise on property taxes. The end of Texas's three-year COVID-19 disaster declaration. Abbott signing the Reader Act to remove explicit materials from public school libraries. Abbott's illegal immigrant busing program expanding to Los Angeles. The new leader of the U.S. Border Patrol. A court ruling it unconstitutional for the federal government to impose vaccine mandates on Texas National Guardsmen. Senator Ted Cruz requesting answers

from Mark Zuckerberg over child sexual abuse networks on Instagram. A poll showing Cruz leading his Democratic challenger Colin Allred by 5 percent. The legislature approving $1.5 billion for the expansion of rural internet service, controversies and criminal histories in the race to become mayor of Palestine, and a lawsuit against the Bexar County Sheriff's Office alleging violations of constitutional rights. As always, if you have questions for our team, DM us on Twitter or email us at editor at thetexan.news. We'd love to answer your questions on a future podcast. Thanks for listening and enjoy this episode. Well, howdy folks. Mackenzie here with Matt, with Brad, with Cameron, and with Hayden slash Rob. Hayden slash Rob, how are you today?

I am doing A-OK, Mackenzie. How are you doing? Hayden is unable to join us today, so Rob will be taking over his stories. We'll be chatting through all sorts of things. And he's had a pretty big news month, but he definitely has some stories that we need coverage of today. So Rob, thanks for joining us. Brad, we're going to go ahead and start with you. The property tax fight has raged on this week, including a particularly fiery press conference from the Lieutenant Governor. What do you have to say? It seems like one of these fiery press conferences is happening every week now. Lieutenant Governor Patrick again underscored his commitment to providing a $100,000 homestead

exemption in the legislature's plan for property tax reform. He said, quote, bottom line, if homeowners don't get their $100,000 exemption and their $1,200 to $1,400 tax cut every year for the rest of their lives, there will be no property tax cut for businesses. He then stated that they may raise that number of $100,000 if pushed further by the governor in the House. The Senate and Patrick feel that homeowners should be given a more accentuated tax cut compared to other forms of property owner.

Compression. The other option, the houses, which is just only rate compression, applies an equal amount of rate reduction to all property owners across the board. But who benefits more from each plan varies based on the type of property owner and the value of the property. For example, a homeowner with a lower home value will benefit more in this next biennium from a raised homestead exemption. If the homestead exemption goes to $100,000, someone will have a substantially lower property tax bill if their home is worth, say, $250,000 than if it's worth $750,000. So that is what the Senate is backing.

However, that's also $4 billion towards this homestead exemption that would not go towards the across-the-board rate compression. So that would dilute further what the house would like to do with their rate compression plan and applying that to all forms of property renters and all commercial property owners would not benefit at all from that homestead exemption so it's um the the senate and patrick are digging their heels in a lot on this and they have continuously. And I don't know if there's any sign of them letting up yet. We'll have to see. Now, just as this fire press conference seems to be a weekly tradition at this point, so does Patrick taking aim at Speaker Phelan.

What do you have to say about that? Mentioning a situation with House Bill 30, a bill that would close the dead suspect information loophole, Patrick said a deal was struck to exchange the passage of that bill for the passage of a Senate bill in the lower chamber. He said HB 30 passed the Senate, but the other one, which he did not name, I don't know what the bill number he's talking about is because he hasn't said it, was not passed by the House. So this prompted him, along with the ongoing property tax stalemate, to say, my good faith with the Speaker is kind of broken. That really kind of just confirms what we already knew, although it is pretty impactful to hear it actually spoken from the lieutenant governor. But, you know, there is it is clear there is no love lost between Lieutenant Governor Patrick and Speaker Dade Phelan. Has the speaker responded? Not directly. Last week, his spokesman put out a statement chiding the Senate for obstructing passage of the property tax plan, namely this version of all compression,

which the governor proposed as a compromise between the chambers from the regular session. Back then, the appraisal issue between Homestead and an appraisal cap caused the deadlock. Now the Senate is digging its heels in for specifically the Homestead, not against compression, but against this compression only plan.

And around and around we go. Yeah, no kidding. Well, we'll come back to a little bit more of the same topic in just a minute here. Cameron, we're coming to you. We expect a school choice special session. Abbott has essentially guaranteed that much, but we had our first indication of what that might look like. Tell us about the recent developments with the select committee in the house. Yeah, so the Texas House has created a new select committee on educational opportunity and enrichment in anticipation of a school choice focus special session this year. House Speaker

Dade Phelan announced that it would be comprised of 15 members on this committee, and it'll be a bipartisan group of lawmakers, and interestingly, some of whom have previously indicated opposition to school choice legislation. Yeah, absolutely. So give us a little bit of background on who those members might be. Yeah, so twice this session, the House has failed to move legislation that would have supported school choice. And notably, the House made explicit in its early budget proposal that state money would be prohibited from being used for a voucher or ESA program, ESA being educational savings accounts. Of those members to vote for this Herrero Amendment,

as it was called, to eliminate the funding for school choice programs in April, eight of those lawmakers will sit on the special selection committee, as three who registered as present not voting are also on the new committee. A second vote for the school choice legislation was triggered in May due to Rep. Ernest Bales calling for a new hearing over Senate Bill 8, which was the Senate's plan for school choice legislation. Five voted against school choice legislation a second time during that vote, and four members shifted their votes to support school choice during the second vote. And so that brings the number on the committee in favor of school choice to eight of 15 members. I know that's very complicated. It took a while for us to go through

all of that. We have much more detail on the individual members in the piece if our listeners are interested. Yeah, absolutely. So as of right now, according to the last vote, to reiterate your point, there are eight out of 15 members in favor, just according to the last vote that we had during the legislative session on school choice. Yes. Okay. Has Governor Abbott said anything new about what a special session on school choice? Yes. Okay. Has Governor Abbott said anything new about what a special session on school choice might look like? Yeah. So earlier this week, Governor Greg Abbott indicated that school choice, the special session will tie in ESAs with other educational priorities. And as he said, quoting, if you're familiar with House Bill 100, you can expect it to look like that. And House Bill 100 was the last-ditch effort the Senate made to incorporate education savings accounts, which ended up failing during the end of session this year.

Yeah, absolutely. That was quite the situation. It started out as some, I think it was a teacher funding initiative and ended up being some last-ditch effort to pass school choice. Yeah. To save our summer bill. Right. Cameron, thank you.

Brad, the long-awaited, as in the three-minute-awaited conclusion to what we talked about earlier. On Wednesday, Governor Abbott issued a warning to the legislature and specifically the Senate on the stalemate over property taxes. What did he have to say? So at a bill signing for the bill that will increase penalties for trafficking fentanyl, he was asked by a reporter about the property tax situation, specifically why there were so

many Senate bills that had not been signed yet from the regular session. And he said, quote, my last day to sign or veto bills is this Sunday. As we get closer and closer to this Sunday, all of these bills that have yet to be signed face the possibility, if not the probability, that they're going to be vetoed. I've already looked at all the bills that I will agree to sign so far, and with each passing day, there will be more that simply are not going to make it to the finish line. Should no compromise be reached, Abbott indicates many bills awaiting a signature will be outright vetoed, and specifically vetoed, not just ignored because a bill becomes law automatically if the governor hasn't signed

or vetoed it 20 days after reaching his desk so that would basically his leverage here is the veto not um not pocket pocket vetoing right um abbott has been prepping this leverage for some time now as of monday this week and i don't think that's changed much at least as of wednesday it had not changed at all um he had only signed 10 senate bills in the previous week compared with 232 house bills so a clear discrepancy there um not this previous Monday, but the one before that is when it's hard to say is when this this fight really heated up. But it did even more than it already had been with Lieutenant Governor's press conference last week. So that is that is probably the onus for why Abbott is exercising this leverage here. This week also he specifically vetoed two bills by Senator Paul Bettencourt.

Bettencourt is the Senate's author of their property tax plan with the homesteads, and he's considered their go-to tax mind in the upper chamber one of those bills that was vetoed is it was a an attempted fix to the local government debt maneuver that we've talked about before that happened in amarillo where they used they basically found an end around voter approval or voter disapproval and approved $260 million in spending for a Civic Center project that was rejected two years before. That was vetoed. And the governor specifically said that this has loopholes, didn't say what they were,

but that can be addressed after we finish up this property tax relief. So tensions are rising higher than they already were. And Sunday seems like a pretty important day. Put into consideration or context for our listeners, the significance of vetoing a bill like that, that you think on paper the governor would be very for. And you talked a little bit about the author, but the issue itself. I mean, this is a pretty big issue that the legislature was set on tackling for months ahead of time yeah i mean there were there were hearings in both the house and senate after this issue in amarello really came to light and um you know there were some forceful phrases thrown around like this is the most egregious use

of taxpayer or local government debt that i've ever seen was something a house member said. Betancourt himself was determined to try and address this. And I mean, there's no doubt that the governor would be for closing that loophole. But there is a bigger game to play here in getting this property tax plan that they have all staked so much political capital on across the finish line before there's any further problems caused or frustration caused. Yeah. I have a question for Brad. Is this a common tactic in Texas for a governor to use to threaten vetoing bills unless the legislature doesn't pass other pieces of legislation? Is this common? I would say on an individual bill level, yes. That's a typical point of leverage what's new in my mind that i haven't seen before

is him just threatening to veto 200 bills right that are pending right um you know that the scale of it i think is what's new there's no history of it uh not that i'm aware of now there may there may be not in recent history okay yeah um certainly. Certainly not with Abbott. Yeah. We do have the budget that got vetoed in part last cycle when the Democrats fled to D.C. So there have been situations that are similar, but the intra-party dynamic that's at play here is relatively new, at least again in recent history. Yeah. And in Abbott's tenure as governor, I think it's fair to say there's always legislative tension. We've just seen a lot more this cycle, particularly among the big three, the big Republican leaders, than we have in a very long time. And during the regular session, Abbott basically sat out the property tax issue. He said, bring it to me.

Yeah. It's basically his posture. Essentially, his posture was, I will sign anything. Right. At least publicly. Get me something. And then when he called the special session, he specifically said compression only. Now there's questions whether he has the authority to do that or not, or if he has to just pick a broad item. But he did that because he saw it as a potential compromise between the two chambers' plans that they couldn't agree on before.

Because it would take out the appraisal aspect. Because the House wanted an appraisal cap, the Senate wanted the homestead exemption, and specifically didn't want the appraisal cap. So the governor thought, oh, we'll just go with compression for now. And maybe we can figure out the other stuff down the road. But that's not what happened. Yeah, I think it's interesting seeing the threat of the use of executive authority to veto these bills. Yeah. Like you guys were saying, this isn't something you typically see here in Texas, at least.

Well, I mean, also the way the system is set up during legislative session, the governor is probably the least powerful of the big three. You know, especially the lieutenant governor has a lot of power during the session and as does the speaker of the house. But this is where his authority comes in this is where his check on the legislature comes in the ability to veto and exercise the political leverage that the other two had been trying to deploy on each other the entire session um but the jury's still out on if it'll work maybe we'll know by sunday right yeah exactly um okay did patrick respond to this threat getting back on track here? He did. As this debate has kind of unfolded, a lot of it has happened on Twitter, which is kind of surprising. At least this one wasn't a meme that we saw during regular session. But Patrick put out a fiery tweet that said,

In a ploy to apparently get his way, Governor Abbott suggests he is threatening to destroy the work of the entire 88th legislative session, hundreds of thousands of hours by lawmakers doing the work the people sent us to do. The governor suggested the threat today to veto a large number of Senate bills is an affront to the legislative process and the people of Texas.

He has now made his position clear. He doesn't want homeowners to get the $100,000 homestead exemption. That is the hallmark of the senate plan uh as he frequently does uh the lieutenant governor is trying to use his bully pulpit to um to get support for his his plan and all politicians do that right um and previously to cameron's question of like precedent the lieutenant governor has been pretty politically in line with the governor very reticent to make any sort of criticism and would always opt instead if there was slow rolling of legislation to lob criticism toward the House and be very deferential to the governor. So this in part is huge in terms of Patrick's posture toward his fellow state leaders. Yeah. Yeah.

Maybe they can have a Wednesday breakfast and hash all this stuff out. Although I think the chances of that are pretty slim. Who knows? Okay. Well, Brad, thanks for your coverage. Matthew,

we are coming to you out in West Texas. Governor Greg Abbott announced he would not be renewing the COVID-19 related disaster declaration after three years of keeping it in place. Tell us why Texas remained under emergency order for so long and what did the legislature do to finally cause Abbott to lift his orders? Well, most are familiar with how Abbott's early orders during the pandemic shut down the state, distinguished certain businesses from others, limited gatherings, mandated masks, and follow generally what most states did in reaction to the virus. He later reversed course during his reopening of the state and issued mandates that prohibited

local governments and private businesses from implementing a variety of mandates, such as vaccine mandates, mask mandates, etc., noting that it would remain in place until the legislature codified the order. The legislature failed to do that during the 87th session. But finally, this past most recent session this year, Senate Bill 29 by Senator Byrne Birdwell passed that prohibited local government mandates relating to COVID-19. Now, with the passage of SB 29, Abbott announced this past week that he would not renew the executive order this month, which I believe expired either yesterday to today. So happy not living under emergency COVID orders today, I suppose. Now, there's some important details here.

Birdwell's legislation does not go into effect until September 1st of this year. Secondly, it does not prohibit mandates by private employers, which is something Representative Brian Harrison says the legislature needs to come back and address this year, pointing out how medical staff could be fired for not taking the vaccine. Abbott has signaled his willingness to add other issues to the special session agenda this year. This issue he has not weighed in on specifically, but not much is going to happen on the front of Abbott adding other issues to special sessions agendas until the property tax standoff, as y'all have been hearing about, is resolved between the two

chambers. Yeah, absolutely. Very good stuff. Very spicy. End of an era. Matthew, thank you so much for your coverage as always. Cameron, we are coming to you now. The Reader Act would prevent children from accessing sexually explicit materials in public schools. It's now been signed into law. Tell us a little bit about the journey of this legislation. Yeah, so just a brief background on what else the bill does. It will require library vendors to prohibit from selling library material that is rated as sexually explicit. It will require a recall of that material rated as explicit. Vendors will be required to develop and submit a list of material rated as sexually explicit to the TEA, which is the Texas Educational Agency, there will be rating guidelines based on the contextual analysis of library material. And so a lot of the conversation around this bill was centered on

this definition of contextual analysis. And the author of the bill, Jared Patterson, explained it as being based on three principles. And those three principles are the explicitness or graphic nature of sexual content, how often sexual organs engaged in the sexual act are explicit in the material, and whether the material intentionally panders to tit titillates, or shocks the reader. And so the new law will give parents the ability to provide written consent to a school district for a student to access the material if the material is rated as sexually relevant, not sexually explicit. And so the bill has been subject to long committee

hearings and debates based on a lot of these definitions. And what was interesting during these debates is if you were watching the video feed of the Senate or the House, you could always see Patterson kind of lurking in the background of these videos. So he has been very engaged during this entire process. Yeah, absolutely. So what has been some of the pushback since the signing was announced? So a lot of the opponents of the legislation have suggested this was akin to book banning. And often they would tout this report that claimed that had found 2,532 instances of books being banned and 1,648 unique books. And the report would say that many of the books are targeting LGBT groups or the books were primarily highlighting characters of color. But a report on that analysis described it as, in quotes, simply false.

As this analysis examined library catalogs from this report and found that 74% of the books reported to be, quote, banned were still listed as available in school districts. So this law will go into effect September 1st, and there will be no doubt this will continue to be a point of contention as school districts and book vendors will be adjusting to this new law. Absolutely, Cameron. Thank you. Matt, coming back to you, Governor Abbott announced the state of Texas has dropped off 40 illegal aliens in Los Angeles. Give us the details of a voluntary busing program where they offer rides to any non-citizen illegally present in the country to self-described sanctuary cities across the nation, which has resulted in over 20,000 immigrants being dropped off around the nation, the latest target being the city of Los Angeles. This comes roughly a week after LA announced that they too would join the ranks of sanctuary cities across the nation, meaning they will not allow city resources to assist federal immigration authorities in the enforcement of federal immigration law, such as LAPD, assisting ICE, et cetera, et cetera.

Now, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who's a Democrat, lashed out this morning on Twitter at Abbott over the drop off, saying that he was playing politics with human lives, but said the city was prepared for the situation. Other cities around the nation that have received a considerably higher number have forced to declare emergencies due to the strain the continued bus programs have caused on city services, including New York, which has received thousands, prompting the mayor to declare a state of emergency. So far, LA has only received 40, so we'll check back soon and see how that's going after some more buses arrive. Now Abbott has used the program to demonstrate how severe the crisis is at the southern border and has accused the Biden

administration of downplaying the severity and not doing its job relating to border security. For now, it appears the state of Texas is going to continue the busing program and will continue to monitor it and see what new developments occur. Absolutely. Thank you, Matt. Rob, hello. Hello. Good to be here, Mackenzie. Welcome back to the podcast.

Thank you. It's been a hot minute. When was the last time you were on the podcast? It has been a long time, actually. Yeah. Yeah. Well, our listeners have been starved of Rob time. So here we are, getting you back on the pod.

Let's have you go ahead and jump in on some Hayden stories this week. The U.S. Border Patrol will have a new chief after June. Who is that and why is he taking over? So the current Border Patrol chief Raul Ortiz announced last month that he would retire at the end of June after serving as a Border Patrol agent for 32 years. He took over as chief in August 2021 after Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas convinced him to forestall his retirement. Mayorkas named Jason Owens to be the new Border Patrol chief. Owens has served as the chief of the Border Patrol's Del Rio sector since shortly after a massive number of Haitian nationals crossed the Rio Grande illegally in September 2021. Owens is also the husband of Republican Cassie Garcia, who last year lost the race for Texas' 28th congressional district to Democrat Henry Cuellar.

Yeah, very notable. And folks, make sure to go read Hayden's story at the Texan for more details on all of that. Absolutely. I cannot do justice to Hayden's story at the Texan for more details on all of that. Absolutely. I cannot do justice to Hayden's story. I think you did pretty darn well. Thank you, sir. Matt, coming back to you, the state of Texas had a major victory in a federal appeals court, not just over vaccine mandates on Texas National Guard troops, but over who controls the troops and at what times. Give us those details. The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling siding with Governor Greg Abbott over the COVID-19 vaccine mandate imposed by the Biden administration on Texas National Guard troops, writing that neither the Constitution nor the law gives Biden the power to punish Texas National Guard troops when in service of their state. Now, what happened earlier on was the administration had imposed and then repealed the mandate requiring all troops to

receive the COVID-19 vaccine. But after Abbott challenged the legality of that order, he filed a lawsuit in federal court which denied an injunction. He appealed that to the U.S. Fifth Circuit. Oral arguments were held. Shortly after oral arguments were held, the Biden administration withdrew the mandate. And then they attempted to argue that the case was moot because the mandate was no longer in place. However, the White House was also continuing to try and punish the troops who refused the shot during the time that the mandate was in place, threatening a variety of punishments from court-martialing, discharge, withholding pay, preventing them from training, and even withholding funds for the National Guard from the respective states. Ultimately, the court held that

when the Texas National Guard is not federalized or called into service of the United States, it remains under the control of their respective governor as commander-in-chief, and therefore, the federal government may not impose a vaccine mandate and inflict penalties for refusing to comply with it while the National Guard is in service of the state and not the federal government. Wow. Well, Matt, thanks for that rundown. And folks, make sure to go read his story at the Texan as well. Cameron, let's talk about some federal news here. Senator Ted Cruz has previously gone after Mark Zuckerberg and Meta, I'm still not used to calling Meta, Meta. Anyway, for how they censor certain content and alleged blacklisting of accounts, but this is different. Tell us about this new information that was just released.

So a recent bombshell report on the pervasiveness of pedophilic content on social media sites prompted Cruz to formally request Zuckerberg to inquire about their content moderation and censorship practices on their social media sites. And this prompt was a recent report from the Wall Street Journal that gave details about how Instagram has connected underage sex content with a vast network of accounts through the site's recommendations feature. The details of which are really quite appalling, and I will only be briefly touching on a few things that they found. Researchers found a range between 500 and 1,000 accounts that are interconnected in this buyer-seller network.

And Instagram has become this key discovery mechanism for how this network discovers new accounts. And the network on Instagram uses explicit hashtags to let accounts connect via the Instagram search function and is a primary driver of the content advertisement. The content sold by these accounts goes beyond what they call baseline sexual content by minors with representations of increasingly disturbing content being created and sold. And this information is reported on by the Wall Street Journal, which was found by a team of researchers at Stanford University. And the researchers found Instagram, the social media platform with the most pervasive networks, because of the recommendation algorithms

that connect accounts and the direct messaging feature that allows buyers and sellers to connect. Yeah, it's a pretty wild and crazy story. And I definitely encourage folks who want more information on how this all went down to go and read your story at the Texan camera and some wild stuff. And even just in how, you know, users are hiding some of this movement on Instagram via, you know, coding with emojis or, I mean, there were just a myriad of different things. Yeah, going private, public to avoid detection. It was really in-depth and the work the Wall Street Journal did and the work the Stanford researchers did. I have all that in the piece. So if people are interested,

they can check it out and get all of the details there. Absolutely. What is Senator Cruz hoping to accomplish with his investigation? So he's requested that Zuckerberg and Meta provide written responses to how Meta and Instagram have identified, collected, and blocked certain hashtags, how they denote unique posts associated with these pedophile networks on their platform. He also asked for a full list of search terms that have been blocked and how many times that Instagram and Meta systems recommend certain search terms, and if Meta received reports regarding these pedophile accounts, how many were reported or reviewed by a actual human moderator. COVID-19 conversations, but not curtail certain content that is harmful to, as Cruz said, the most vulnerable members of society is really what is of most concern to him. Yeah, absolutely.

Cameron, thank you so much. Hayden slash Rob. Hello again. Let's talk about a poll released in mid-May which gauged Texans' belief on a wide variety of issues, including an upcoming U.S. Senate race in 2024. Man, this is set to be another huge Senate matchup here in Texas. How do those candidates line up? Yeah, so the survey from the University of Texas at Tyler found that of those polled, 42% said they would vote for the incumbent Republican, Senator Ted Cruz, while 37% said

they would vote for his Democratic challenger, Colin Allred. 14% said they did not know who they would vote for, and 7% said that they would vote for someone else, although I don't know who else has declared themselves running, but it's interesting nonetheless. Of those who were asked about the favorability of Cruz, 41% said they had a favorable view of him and 49% said they had an unfavorable view. But Cruz is a famous politician, so he has lots of people who like him, who dislike him. Unlike his challenger, who does not have the same name recognition, 48% of those polled said they did not know enough about Allred to have an opinion on him. Wow. So what else is included in the poll besides this high profile Senate race we're looking forward to watching?

So there were various other questions about, you know, social, cultural, political issues. For example, one of the questions dealt with the subject of gender identity. 72% of pollies said that they believe there are only two genders, man and woman, while 27% said they believe there are only two genders, man and woman, while 27 percent said they believe there is a range of different gender identities. A little more than half of Texans also support Governor Greg Abbott's busing program for foreign nationals, as well as using state funds to extend the border wall. But over 60 percent said they support deploying state police and National Guardsmen to secure the border.

An equal percentage of Texans approved and disapproved of Abbott's handling of what is in the poll, quote, immigration at the southern border is 47%, 47%, even Stephen. But about two thirds disapproved of President Joe Biden's handling of the border, with only about 27 percent approving. Overall, in this poll, Biden had an approval rating of 35 percent compared to Abbott's 49 percent. Well, Rob, thank you so much. Bradley, we're coming to you. One of the legislature's priority bills this session concerned rural broadband development. What passed? Two chambers approved $1.5 billion in surplus funds to be appropriated for various internet expansion purposes, specifically through cable internet service, burying lines, building, raising poles,

all the, what you typically see as internet infrastructure. There are more than 777,000 Texans across the state considered unserved by the federal government's internet metrics, meaning they do not have access to 25 megabit per second download and 3 megabit per second upload speed. That's the floor the federal government has set when tracking this. This, along with the 2021 creation of the Broadband Development Office, are meant to help expand that coverage. Though it is an expensive endeavor, there's been hundreds of millions of dollars given to the state of Texas

by the federal government for this purpose. The state has allocated its own federal government for this purpose. The state has allocated its own money, including this now, $1.5 billion. It will have to be approved by statewide voters in November to create the fund necessary to disperse this money. But those things usually pass overwhelmingly. Yeah, absolutely. Is there any criticism of this strategy? Some have argued that the objective could be achieved far more cost effectively by allowing tech like Starlink or satellite Internet to be a part of the program. It is not included. And Representative Matt Schaefer made that argument back when the bill was passed in the House initially.

I think that was March or April. Representative Trent Ashby, who carried this bill, answered Schaefer's criticism by saying that the federal government does not count satellite internet service as adequate enough to include in their metrics of served versus unserved because of potential disruption caused by cloud cover or tree lines. So it seems that the problem here rises with the federal government and how they classify these different strategies. But in short, that is not included in what this money can be attributed or allocated for. Yeah, there you go. What didn't make it that was in the bill that legislators were trying to get across the finish line?

So originally the House version allocated $6 billion. So this is a substantial decrease from what they originally passed. The Senate wouldn't budge on that amount. I'm sure there were, you know, there's always competing interests on this money and the surplus amount and how they're going to disperse it. Also not included in the bill, but was included in the original one, was providing an allotment to the Universal Service Fund, which is something I've written about quite a bit. That fund subsidizes telephone coverage to very remote portions of the state, most frequently deploying satellite phone service. Interesting how when we're talking about telephone service, satellite is okay, it's kosher, but internet service, it's not. Again, that would apply to the federal government in the way they classify these things. But the USF has gone through a rocky couple of years.

Back in 2020, the Public Utility Commission declined to increase the rate, the per call rate that funds it. And they didn't want to raise taxes during a pandemic. Governor Abbott vetoed a bill that would have done the same thing during the 2021 legislative session under the same guise um but then that caused the debt to pile up um the state constitution mandates that everybody have access to a telephone connection in some way or another and so um so then what's the i guess the only then backlog on that is just funding bills like making its way through the process. What do you mean bills like when you say that it's constitutionally required of folks to have that set up. Is that taken care of like in terms of phone connection or is that literally like I mean what's stopping it aside from just like funding and bills making their way through the legislature? Well, the PUC sets the rate currently. And so the legislature, there were a couple bills filed to change the way the USF is funded.

None of those got through, including in this HB 9. And so now it's back to the PUC, which was ordered by a court to sufficiently fund it. So it had to raise that per call rate from roughly 3% to 24% until that fund is solvent. And so it's on solid fiscal footing now, but who knows if some other disruption comes into this and causes another massive deficit owed to these companies. Then we're back in court and another judgment is going to come against it. But overall, that was HB9 and what the state decided to do on broadband this session. Awesome. Well,

Brad, thanks for breaking that down for people like me who don't know what's happening. I appreciate it. You're not welcome. Rob, we're going to head back to you. Let's talk about Palestine.

This is one of, one of Hayden's favorite things he covers. And so I really hope we get this one right in particular. Indeed. Did I say it right? Palestine. Palestine, Palestine, tomato, tomato. I don't know how they say it over there, but yeah, I sure hope I can do justice to this story because from what I understand, this is like one of Hayden's sort of favorite things he's reporting on so far. So Hayden, I hope I do a

good job. Shout out, Hayden. What's happening in Palestine, Texas concerning the mayoral election there this month, Rob? So next Saturday on June 24th, Palestinian voters will decide a runoff over who will become their next mayor. Current Councilwoman Chrissy Clark or former Councilman Mitchell Jordan. There were two other candidates, but Joe Baxter was knocked out in the May 6th election, which is what later led to this runoff. And candidate Mike Ezell dropped out in the May 6th election, which is what later led to this runoff.

And candidate Mike Ezell dropped out before the election was held. In that May election, Clark received 46% of the vote compared to Mitchell's 41%. Ooh, okay. So tell us about what's controversial about this whole situation. It'd be easier to say what's not controversial about this mayoral election. Both candidates have been accused of improprieties. Before the May election, Clark was accused of indebtedness that would have disqualified her from holding office under the city charter because she had deferred on her city property taxes. The city council, at her request, amended its charter to allow her to run, and she is apparently now starting to pay those taxes. On top of that, the candidate who dropped out before the May election, Mike Izzell, claims candidate who dropped out before the May election,

Mike Ezell, claims that threats to his safety have been made, including him and his wife hearing gunfire outside his house on election day, having Palestinian police officers show up and identify the bullet casings as belonging to an AR-style rifle. Ezell dropped out shortly after the city council amended its charter to get around Clark's tax situation. So there's another controversy for you. On top of that, both Clark and Jordan have tangoed with criminal charges in the past. A grand jury indicted Clark in 2005 on suspicion of stealing her teenage daughter's social security information, but the case was dismissed after two years and she was never found guilty. Several years ago, Jordan was found guilty in a case where he used his nephew's ID after he was pulled over by police, later saying that he was in a bad place at the time as his father had recently died.

Jordan said that he is not proud of what he did, but he is proud that after the judge and district attorney required him to attend school and community service and pay a fine, he turned his life around and started to successfully serve his community. From what I understand, both candidates have tried to use each other's histories with this against one another for the election. There's also an accusation against Jordan that he has not paid child support, although he said that the child support was not established until his twin children were four years old and that he has been paying that back child support. So if Hayden was here, he could have gone on about more of the stuff happening and everything. But it's pretty darn good justice here. And folks, make sure to go to the Texas News and read this story.

I will say, and Rob, you are privy to this as well in the process of editing. As Hayden dug into this story, more and more came to the forefront, just information from and statements from these candidates. Very interesting to watch the back and forth and the rhetorical bombs being thrown back and forth. So make sure to go read. Indeed, there are direct statements from the candidates themselves in Hayden's piece because he has been doing a magnificent job of covering everything that's happening over there. Absolutely. Hey, listeners, if you're enjoying our podcast, subscribe to the Texan right now while you're listening. We're not funded by corporate interests or big donors, so we rely on the subscriptions of

everyday Texans to keep doing our jobs. When you subscribe, you'll get access to all our stories as soon as they're published so that you can stay informed, up to speed, and ready to vote at the ballot box. A subscription is $9 monthly, but you can save by purchasing an annual subscription for $90, coming out to just $7.50 per month. And new product alert, new subscribers will get a free Texas State Pride flag hat with all sorts of color options to choose from. Definitely go check this one out. I am literally wearing it right now as we speak. It is sitting on my head as we record this podcast. For more details, visit the texan.news forward slash subscribe or click the URL in the description of this podcast.

Brad, do you have anything to add? No. It looks like a great hat. It is a great hat. Thank you. It's very comfortable. Are you going to wear it a lot? I am.

I'm going to wear it all day. Just around the office. It really goes with my outfit. Will you wear it tomorrow or next week? you going to wear it a lot? I am. I'm going to wear it all day. Just around the office. It really goes with my outfit. Will you wear it like tomorrow or next week? I will not wear it during the work week. Absolutely not. Okay. That's where you draw the line.

No. Yes, exactly. Except you'll wear it today during the work week. Yeah, because I've been challenged. Because you're trying to prove a point. My goodness gracious. Let's jump back to our stories. Matt, we're coming to you.

A civil liberties law firm is suing the Bexar County Sheriff over an interdiction program they say violates the Constitution. Give us the details. The Bexar County Sheriff's Office in San Antonio is facing a federal lawsuit brought by the Institute for Justice on behalf of a San Antonio businessman who the IJ alleges was subjected to a lengthy illegal search during a traffic stop. According to the lawsuit, plaintiff Alex Schott was stopped by Deputy Joel Babb in March of 2022 while driving to meet a client for his family-owned oil and gas pipeline business. Noted that Babb does not enforce traffic violations for the sheriff's office, but instead works as a member of an interdiction unit that uses traffic violations as probable cause to initiate traffic stops with a view to interdict more serious crimes such as human

trafficking or drug smuggling. Now, Babb held Schott for over an hour on the side of the road, placing him in his patrol car, even in the back caged area, subjecting him to an intense interrogation. And after he called a drug dog to come perform a inspection of the truck, they used an alert that they say was a falsece to conduct a search of the truck without a warrant and basically turn the inside of the truck upside down before they ultimately didn't find anything and cut him loose. All of this, the Institute for Justice says, was done without probable cause. Now, this instance prompted the law firm to look into this unit with the sheriff's office in more depth and say it revealed a program designed towards getting around the Fourth Amendment. They're asking the federal court to block these policies and require the sheriff to adhere to constitutional standards in performing traffic stops, as well as seeking monetary damages on behalf of their client. Now, we'll keep an eye on this case as it works its way through the federal court system.

Absolutely. Thank you, Matthew. Gentlemen, we are pivoting to our tweeter-y section here. Brad, why don't we start with you? I see impeachment. It piques my interest. Oh, does it? It truly.

So on Friday last week, I was reading through House and Senate journals during the Pa Ferguson impeachment process. Nerd. Yes. And I came across a section that showed while all this was going on, two members of the Texas House resigned from their posts to go serve in World War I. That was going on at the time, you know, across the pond. Yes. We're aware.

So I thought that was interesting and so I tweeted it. And then, Derek Ryan, we had him on the podcast, a consultant here in Austin, does a lot of data stuff. He did some more digging on them, and he said,

both George Petty and Myron Blaylock, the two members, served in World War I and World War II. Petty ran for U.S. Senate twice as a Democrat. The first time he had Republican backing, the second time was against LBJ. He finished third in that race and died in 1951. Blalock, meanwhile, served on the Court of Appeals and was the Democratic National Committee chair, or I guess the Democratic Party chair in Texas,

and he died in 1950 but that wasn't interesting. Have you tweeted about this? I literally said I tweeted this. Oh I missed that. Huh. Sorry. I wonder what you were doing. Something more important. Oh okay.

Yeah. That's why it's not tweeter-y. Yeah. I think that hat might be squeezing your head and preventing Oh, okay. Yeah. That's why it's not Twittery. Yeah. I know, but it wasn't linked. I think that hat might be squeezing your head and preventing blood flow. What are you saying about the shape of my head, Rob? I don't know. He wants to keep his job.

It's so good. His face just changed entirely. I'm crestfallen. Oh, my goodness. Cameron, why don't we talk about burgers we're talking burgers okay you know i was saying um i always look for something interesting for this tweeter and i came across this controversial take about burgers wow and its origins here in Texas. Okay. Well, you can trace the burger all the way back to ancient Rome, early fourth century, but the modern burger is said to have been invented

here in Texas. And there is reporting. I'm looking for the reporting right now. But there is. Okay. So there is reporting. It is scarce. Yes, of course. But evidence shows that it was started here in Texas. The name hamburger was apparently coined while two individuals from Texas were selling these sandwiches at the World's Fair. And I looked into this because they're citing from a book called The Complete Hamburger, The History of America's Favorite Sandwich. And who was the author of this book? Ronald L. McDonald.

No way. Dun, dun, dun. Oh my goodness. The conspiracy goes deeper. The golden arch is the all-seeing eye of the food industry. All I'm saying is look into it. Look into it. But no, I just thought that was interesting. That's crazy.

For a second, I thought you were going to tell me that the burger, which Americans consider its prime. I don't know. When you think about American food, you think about burgers, right? I mean, that's like a staple. I thought you were about to say that it was also an Italian food. That was going to be so sad for all of the U.S. I always heard it was from, it traces back to Hamburg, Germany.

Oh, if we want to go deep on this, I got the wiki pulled up. He's got the wiki pulled up. Okay. You can always trust Wikipedia. You never have wrong information on there. Well, you see, that's why I said I go to the sources

of what is being cited here because there is an entire section on the wiki called Controversial Origins. Oh, my goshins of the hamburger. And it goes into what Brad just said about the Hamburg origins. And apparently that they were serving this Hamburg-style burger, but it was just raw meat that they were serving. And there are some choice words to describe these Germans who have said they invented the hamburger, but I won't go into that.

I'll allow our listeners and readers, if they're interested, to go check out the Wikipedia. Controversial origins. You may have to do a little tweet thread. Ooh. This is something I've seen that some people do in the Midwest, claiming that it's a German-style thing, which is like a bread with raw ground beef and chopped raw white onion. Yikes. Yeah.

It's not what I would personally eat. Prefer? Yeah. If I'm going to eat raw beef, I'd rather have it in the form of a steak than in the form of ground beef well steak tartare is like a chop tartare is delicious but it has to be like incredibly

high quality beef for it to be yeah and prepared in all the right ways not just ground beef off the shelf no yeah that's not happening probably not huh well I'm fascinated and Cameron I do think a tweet thread might be something you should whip up tomorrow morning as a podcast goes live. You know, a lot of the stuff I cover is not your typical politics stuff. So maybe this will just

slide right into the type of coverage. You know, I go back and forth between all sorts of things. And so right in between the cruise story with tech, social media, people are going through my Twitter feed and it's hamburger. Hamburger. They'll be like, I just follow the random guy. It is not even that random. Social issues and education takes up like 95% of what you do. Throw in an AI article here or there and we'll call it good.

A little Bitcoin. A little Bitcoin. That's right. Matthew, I'm excited about yours as well well please tell us about your tweeter i'm rather pleased about it as well uh for mine i'm going to point to a tweet of my own uh this week big ben national park here in southwest texas celebrated its birthday on june 12th having been adopted as a part of the national park system in 1944. A couple of fun facts about Big Bend. It encompasses over 801,000 acres or 1,252 square miles. It sees over half a million visitors per year. It's one of the largest parks in the U.S. National Park System. And prior to its adoption

in the U.S. National Park System, it was a Texas state park known as Texas Canyons State Park. So put a little bit of fun information out there for our readers to check out, funneling with more details about some of the interesting native species that occupy the park and a little bit more historical facts about it. If you've never been, it's a pretty awesome vacation. It sounds like it. My goodness. I have never been to Big Bend National Park and I really want to make my way down there. I've been to 15 national parks, which is kind of, that's a pretty good number. What? Come down sometime.

We'll go hiking. We'll go hiking. That's exactly right. I'm so game. I just want to go in the summer when everyone else is there and literally baked into crisps. That's a great idea.

Let's wait until it's like the most uncomfortable time to be outside. That's the ideal time to go outside. Yeah. It just, it's, I turn into a potato chip, you know, just crisp right up. As far as, as far as parks go, it's, it's pretty, um, out there. It's, it's a pretty, um, how would I say it? There's not a lot of civilization nearby.

Uh, so definitely for those planning to uh visit there take plenty of water and it's not on the way to anything like for people who live in you know the major cities in texas big bend is very out of the way so you got to make a very ardent effort to get down there so maybe we'll go back to that we'll figure it out um, but you know what would taste really good on a hot day in Big Bend National Park? Rob, tell me about what your tweeter is. This year, between the dates of the 12th of June and the 26th of August, in this glorious summer, the Chick-fil-A peach milkshake is back. It came back this Monday and it's going to be here through August little bit of an imperfect texture but nonetheless it's a fantastic summer treat and i'm really looking forward to getting one at some point over the summer that's that's what i'm looking for excellent transition by the way thank you

between stories thank you um i think you can solve your straw problem using one of those boba straws. Yes. Boba straws. See, I've never had boba tea. Whoa. I've never heard people talk about it. I think you'd like it. I think you'd like it. I think I probably would. There are enough variations where you can find one that you'd like. Yeah.

I just, I've never gotten around to going to a place to get it. You know, like I'm not sitting around my apartment thinking like, man, I could really go for a boba tea. For sure. It's like Big Ben National Park. It's a lot of the way. Yeah. If I'm sitting around for something something it'd be like an Arizona green tea if I'm like if I want something but you know I'll have to get boba we'll have to do boba tea sometime in the Texans office I'm game yeah left have a boba tea tasting sometime on the podcast little sampler

oh it sounds real good right now. Um, well, this has been really fun guys. Anything else to add? Anything else to say? Brad? I got nothing. Boba teas? Yeah,

what are you doing? I don't even know what that is. So, oh gosh. I actually, you know what? I believe that. Yeah,

I think so. Matt, do you know what boba tea is? I've never had boba tea, no. Okay. Okay. So we got to introduce. So just me and Cameron, who have? There's lots of boba tea shops in California.

No. Now you're pulling my leg. There are a lot in Austin, though, too. A ton. I just have've never gotten. You know, we'll have to do it sometime soon. You'll have to get boba tea. It's pretty fun.

Boba straws is the perfect solution to Chick-fil-A. Maybe I'll have to get one of those reusable boba straws then that way. Because Chick-fil-A, it's the same problem with the Oreos at the cookies and cream milkshake, which is probably my favorite milkshake from them. But the Oreo, you know, it's good because it breaks up the experience of drinking a milkshake when you have to like stop and get out like a nice big oreo chunk covered in ice cream like it's a good you know overall problem to have it's a good problem to have it might be overall a smoother experience though if it wasn't a problem so i don't know interesting experience versus taste yeah there's a the milkshake you know i don't know i'm no professional milkshake

drinker i'm an amateur milkshake drinker i do it for the fun of firing professional though no i don't think i want to be a professional you know i wouldn't want it to be like my day job or something you know okay well folks i want to remind you that i am wearing our awesome new texas texas flag hat It's pretty killer. It's been really comfortable. I'm enjoying it. I might take this one home. Poor Daniel won't have any more product to photograph.

He'll have to order more. I think the hat's worth the $90 subscription, and you get the reporting for free. I love that. That's a good way to think about it. That's a good angle. So folks, make sure to go check it out. It's a $90 hat.

It's cheaper than what some hats are going for these days. Yeah, some hats are expensive these days. That's a good angle. So folks, make sure to go check it out. And our current... It's cheaper than what some hats are going for these days. It's ridiculous. Baseball caps? Yes. I guarantee you I can find you a $100 baseball cap on Google in five seconds.

You get an awesome hat with priceless information. I like that. See, we just need to stick with Matt and Cameron's sentiments and not do the Robin Brad of it all. Here's one from, I've never heard of this company, Loro Piana for $525 made in

Italy. A cashmere baseball cap. Well guys, hey we have a much cheaper alternative to that cashmere baseball cap. And it's ridden with Texas pride. Anyway, folks, go to Texas.news. Check one out.

Get yours today. Thanks for listening and we will catch you next week. Thank you to everyone for listening. If you enjoy our show, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you want more of our stories, subscribe to The Texan at thetexan.news. Follow us on social media for the latest in Texas politics and send any questions for our team to our mailbag by DMing us on Twitter or shooting an email to editor at thetexan.news. We are funded entirely by readers and listeners like you. So thank you again for your support. Tune in next week for another episode of our weekly roundup.

God bless you and God bless Texas. Hey, listeners, if you're enjoying our podcast and are up close and personal, nope, we are not covering the legislative session. I need to change my ad copy here. Hold on a second. I mean, there is still a session going on. Oh, it's true. Half a session with the House adjourned. Daniel, please put this at the end of the podcast.

I changed the part about the product and did not change the part about the lead at all. Well, we are in the legislative session. Should we just keep this whole thing in? Okay. We're enjoying our podcast beautiful reader this is your time to check your phone your email or something