The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - June 25, 2021

Episode Date: June 25, 2021

On The Texan’s "Weekly Roundup," the reporting team talks through the latest details on impending special legislative sessions, Beto O’Rourke rallying in opposition to GOP election reform legislation, The Texan's veto tracker and the bills vetoed by Governor Abbott so far, the Texas power grid going in to summer, a bill designating places of worship as essential during disasters, the rhetorical battle over the border waged among gubernatorial candidates, the IRS defies a Christian group's application for tax exempt status, border security realities as told by a former ICE special agent, tax abatements for solar projects promising one to two jobs in return, a state representative calling for an investigation into Pornhub, and updates on how statewide races are shaping up in Texas.

Howdy, howdy. Mackenzie Taylor here on the latest episode of the Texans Weekly Roundup podcast. This week, our team talks through the latest details on impending special sessions, Beto O'Rourke rallying in opposition to GOP election reform legislation, a new lawsuit targeting an election residency requirement, our veto tracker and the bills vetoed by Governor Abbott so far, the Texas power grid going into summer, a bill designating places of worship as essential during disasters, the rhetorical battle over the border being waged

among gubernatorial candidates, a Christian group being denied tax-exempt status, border security realities told by a former ICE special agent, tax abatements for social projects promising one to two jobs in return, a state rep calling for an investigation into Pornhub, and updates on how statewide races are shaping up in Texas. We appreciate you tuning in. Enjoy this episode. Howdy folks, Mackenzie Taylor here with Daniel Friend, Hayden Sparks, and Isaiah Mitchell. We are without Brad Johnson this week. It is the Three Amigos and me. So we have all sorts of things to get into.

Hold up, hold up, hold up. Oh dear. Yes, Daniel. You said three amigos. Last time I checked, I'm the only friend in this room. Everyone laughs really hard. How many times a week do you think that joke is made by you, Daniel? No fewer than seven.

Yeah. It's like once a day. Yeah. It's such a specific number. It's such a specific number you got an answer oh man so we're just uh a little bit saturated in that joke but it's okay the market's a little saturated on the podcast too many times so okay yeah i'd be curious to know how often that actually has happened well thank you for that introduction daniel and on that note we're gonna start with you

since you have just brought us so much joy with that delightful joke that delightful little uh tidbit um what are french for oh man that's rich okay daniel so we've heard a lot of talk about special sessions plural and and this week we have some news as to how that will actually go down the governor has come out with a few more details not a ton but still enough to get us talking what's going on what's the when's the date for the first special session so the date for the first special session will be on july 8th 2021 so just a few weeks away uh lawmakers will still have their uh fourth of july holiday that they can celebrate before going back to the legislature to work.

Take those trips to Disneyland sooner rather than later, folks. Yeah. And I think Disneyland is now open, unlike last year. Oh, that's true. I didn't even think about that. Yeah. Regardless. July 8th is when it's going to start.

Special sessions last a maximum of 30 days. Now the governor can call a special session immediately after the end of those 30 days. So there could be, you know, if they don't get everything that he wants done, he could say on August 8th or I don't know how many days are in July. I always forget. Anyways, August 8th, August 7th, whatever. He calls another special session right away. He could do that. We'll see if he does or not.

But there is going to be at least two special sessions this year. He's talked about a later one for redistricting, but of course the census data is still not out. So they can't really do that. Right. And that one's guaranteed for the fall essentially is what we're hearing. The redistricting special session will be October is what we're hearing. We'll see what's going on,

but with that later on, but that's what we're hearing as of right now. So has the governor come out and said what will be on the agenda and it is you know important to say the only things that can be addressed constitutionally during a special session are the things that the governor places on the call yes right so abbott determines what these legislators can address unlike the regular session that we just had lawmakers can't come in and just file whatever bills they want they have to file bills within a specific topic now that can be come in and just file whatever bills they want. They have to file bills within a specific topic. Now that can be interpreted in different ways. And I'm sure different lawmakers,

Democrats will probably try filing different bills than the Republicans will on certain topics. The governor has said that he's going to put at least three things on the agenda. So of course, the big one that everyone has been talking about and has kind of expected after the Democratic walkout at the end of the regular session is the election integrity bills that Republicans have been pushing. Now, Republicans have talked about doing this in a single omnibus bill like they had tried doing with SB7. Uh, but, uh, Speaker Dade Phelan has also suggested the idea of doing it kind of a, a piecemeal approach and trying to cram through a bunch of different bills on a bunch of smaller different bills. Um, so election reform, that is going to be one subject, uh, two other subjects that, uh, Governor Greg Abbott has said, uh, in a recent town hall that he intends to put on the agenda is going to be a, uh, kind of a of a stronger ban on the critical race theory teaching.

Isaiah kind of covered some of that this past session. And then the other subject that he mentioned was also a kind of prohibition on social media censorship. There was a bill that went through the legislature in the regular session, but it also died before making it out. So those are items that he said that he's going to put on. One thing that he noted previously when he was talking about the possibility of

a special session, he said that he would go one item at a time and kind of make lawmakers tackle issue by issue rather than kind of putting all these issues on the agenda right at the beginning and letting them go at it at their pace. So we'll see if Governor Abbott follows through on that. I imagine on one issue, he will certainly wait until later to do that to give him some leverage. And that would be the legislative funding that he vetoed from the state budget.

So the legislature is funded through, what is it, August or September? Yeah, it's September 1st, I believe. So they're funded until then. The staff is funded. But after that, there's currently not funding for them in the budget because Abbott vetoed that. Yeah. Likely to give him leverage and make sure that Democrats are present in the legislature to vote on some of these bills. Yeah, and we'll see how that ends up because there are different mechanisms by which members can fund their offices.

Campaign funds can be used. So if Democrats really are bent on saying we'll be out of town, we're going to break quorum again and make sure this election bill doesn't pass, they have some options whether or not they'll utilize those and say, yes, we're going to fundraise to fund our offices for biennium, who knows. But that's going to be interesting to see how they operate with that, if they actually leave the state or leave the Capitol or not. Real fast, Isaiah, I'm going to come to you because critical race theory was a big topic during the legislative session. You covered it extensively. Now, if a bill was passed during the session, why would Governor Abbott place it on this call? First thing that comes to mind, everybody likes to speculate about political pressure from, you know, Don Huffines, especially. In Abbott's own words, he said that we've passed

this bill, but it doesn't go far enough. That's what he said, doesn't go far enough. That, I don't know, verbally, it seems a little bit counterintuitive to what I think would be the big glaring change that the bill underwent when it went through the legislature, which was, you know, these many, many amendments that were included in the required reading section. From Democrats. Right. There was a lot of Democrat amendments that, in a lot of Republicans' views, watered down the bill, right? Yeah. And I think more accurate than watered.

I mean, I won't speak for people who think it is watered down, but what it did was it expanded the list of required reading of historical documents and learning about historical figures to include a lot. Yeah, there's a lot added. Yeah, there's quite a bit. And so I would assume that Abbott has his mind on that, but he hasn't been very specific.

Good. Yeah, good stuff. Well, thank you both. Daniel, thank you for covering that. Isaiah, thanks for the addition. Hayden, we're going to come to you. Now, you were at a rally, as was Daniel this last weekend, wherein Beto O'Rourke, former congressman, former presidential and Senate candidate, held a rally on the Texas Capitol steps. What was the nature of the event and how many people were there? It was a moderate crowd size. There were about a few hundred people there. This wasn't a situation where the Capitol grounds were packed out and overflowing with demonstrators or anything, but there were a lot of people there. And they were there to hear from Beto O'Rourke and a

lineup of speakers. And most of them were there for about an hour and a half, standing around listening to these speakers. And it was the typical fanfare of a political rally. But there weren't any marches or any violent encounters or anything. It was mostly pretty uneventful. They heard from speakers and they interacted with one another. And aside from a few counter protesters, and by a few, I mean, literally like three or four. Yeah, there were no incidents or clashes. So law enforcement monitored the event and it was a peaceable rally. Got it. So how did speakers characterize this election bill? Now we've talked extensively about how big of an issue this has been during the legislative session. I mean,

we even just talked about it. Democrats walked out at the chamber. The issue has been probably the biggest partisan talking point from the 87th legislative session. How did Democrats talk about supporters of the bill? What do they characterize the bill as doing the speakers at the demonstration included nicole collier chris turner and who have led this issue democrat state representatives and members of the texas house elections committee and a couple of members of congress but the remark that really stood out was from Representative Jasmine Crockett, a Democrat of Dallas, who said that the supporters of this legislation were terrorists. As she was recalling what occurred in the hours that led up to the walkout that occurred on the second to last day of session, she indicated that the Democratic leadership was

trying to seek some kind of compromise or negotiation and to work with the other side and she said that while she didn't fault them for wanting to do that she felt that that was negotiating with terrorists she didn't even liken it to that she called it negotiating with terrorists and that's why she and many of the other state representatives who were there chose to walk out. So the strongest possible language was used against the supporters of Senate Bill 7 and related election reforms. And the reforms were derided as racist and oppressive and illegitimate to a democracy. Got it. So, you know, what are next steps for this law? It's certainly not dead,

as we've already alluded to, but walk us through what these next steps will look like. Right. And as Daniel just highlighted, election reform has been promised by Governor Greg Abbott as a special session agenda item. He has not yet announced the specific agenda for the coming special session on July 8. But he has pledged that this will be revived. And Republican leadership is on board. So they are gearing up for round two, because there will be another fight, in all likelihood, another fight on election integrity. And more than one Democrat has confirmed, a couple of them to us, that they are considering another walkout and even leaving the state if necessary to prevent the consideration and passage of reforms like Senate Bill 7. And if anyone is interested in

the specifics of that bill, we do have a breakdown. Daniel did a breakdown of this bill shortly before it was the walkout of the final version, the conference committee report, so that we can get past some of the rhetoric on this issue and get into the policy of what the bill would actually do and the reforms it would implement. And actually see what was deemed objectionable by Texas Democrats, right? Good stuff. And to be fair,

during the special, who knows, we might get a very different version of some sort of election integrity, election reform. We may not be the exact version. There's no guarantee. There are no guarantees. They could,

that there could be stronger, weaker. Who knows? We don't know what conversations are happening behind the scenes. We don't know what they could take. The conference committee report that they were trying, Republicans are trying to pass and just reintroduce it or they could come up with an entirely different version absolutely those are both possibilities good stuff hayden well thank you for covering that daniel we're going to come to you um more on this topic

there was a lawsuit filed this week um talk to us about what it is. What is this new law that they're targeting and what the lawsuit actually entails? Yes. So a couple of civil rights organizations, if you want to call them that, it was LULAC and Voto Latino, which LULAC is the League of United Latin American Citizens. This is not the first time they've kind of opposed different changes and policies related to voting in Texas. They also filed a lawsuit back in the fall against Governor Greg Abbott when he restricted the or limited the number of mail ballot drop off locations that could be had. So they filed another lawsuit just recently this week against Senate Bill 1111, which was from Senator Paul Bettencourt and signed into law by Governor Abbott. It's set to go into effect September 1st.

The bill would prohibit individuals from establishing residence for the purpose of influencing the outcome of a certain election. So essentially what it does is tightens those residency requirements for individuals who are registering to vote. One of the big things that they talk about is it restricts individuals from being able to list a PO box as their address, their physical address on voter registration. Senator Betancourt, when the bill passed, said our press release basically saying, like, who could live in a two by three PO box. They want to have individuals who have a physical address, their home, where they're living at, be on their voter registration. Got it. Now, what do the organizations actually allege in their suit?

What grounds are they standing on here? So basically, they're repeating the talking points that we've seen from the left on these election bills, you know, for the past six months, however long they've been talking about this. It's been going on for years longer than that. But essentially, just that this is a voter suppression bill is going to make it harder for people to register to vote. They say that it's kind of going to make it harder for college students who might go to college and then not be living at their home where they're registered to vote. And kind of they're concerned about limitations there. So they've said that the new law imposes vague, onerous restrictions on the voter registration process, chilling political participation, and further burdening the abilities of lawful voters to cast their ballots to make their voices heard.

And they've called, they've said that SB 1111 serves no legitimate, let alone any compelling government interest. Got it. Now, how has the bill author respond? What kind of, you know, arguments are we hearing from the other side? So kind of like I pointed out, Ben Court is not obviously on the same side of the people suing against his bill. Surprise, surprise. He says it's his bill and he filed and then passed.

So he is defending it. And again, he pointed to the press release where, you know, he in the press release that he issued when the bill passed, you know emphasizing why this legislation is needed and kind of having those restrictions, especially on the UPS PO boxes and prohibiting individuals from using that. In the press release, he said that there has been a known problem since 2018 and that there are approximately 4,800 voters registered at a private UPS PO boxes in Houston. And, quote, there is quite frankly no way anyone can fit into a two by three inch post office box. I don't know what you're talking about.

I've lived in a post office box before. I think a lot of people have. I mean, it's tricky getting the furniture inside there. I think if Brad was here, he would definitely make reference to the Monty Python video we just watched where they're talking about, you know, when I was a child,

I lived in a hole in the ground. Oh, yeah. A shoebox in the middle of the road. I used to live in a P.O. box. Brad is not here, and yet his voice is still being purported on this podcast. I mean, it is one of the rules that we have at the as writers of the texan rule number two is to have a basic understanding or develop an appreciation for monty python so yeah just carrying that out

those are rules made by the writers mind you yes but they're important they're very important good stuff um yeah i think that pretty much sums up you know i was like are we done with the segment or not are we just gonna talk about Monty Python? I think so. Okay, good stuff. Well, thank you, Daniel, for covering that for us. Hayden and Isaiah, we're going to come to you all next. You two have been monitoring and keeping up with the veto tracker on our website.

For those who don't know, we do have a veto tracker at thetexan.news where you can see all the items post 87th legislative session that the governor has chosen to veto. And it's quite interesting to see what makes a bill vetoable. So let's talk about this. What's the biggest veto so far? I think the biggest veto or at least the one that has received the most media attention would be the veto of Article 10 of Senate Bill 1, which is the appropriations bill, i.e. the budget, which will cut off funding for the legislature beginning at the start of the fiscal year on September 1st. Abbott has really taken the role of the boss who's docking the legislature's pay because they aren't showing up for work. That is the demeanor of the governor's mansion toward the legislature right now because of the walkout over election reform. Of course, the legislature doesn't want its funding cutted. And many lawmakers have argued

that that punishes the staffs and creates anxiety at the Capitol over whether or not they're going to have the funding to do their jobs. And that is probably going to loom over the coming special sessions. But that's one of the vetoes that has garnered a lot of attention. Of course, it's not the only veto. There have been about 20, 22 vetoes, I believe. I'd have to double check the number on that. But we're not talking about hundreds of vetoes. We're talking about a couple of dozen vetoes. And I know one of those was an animal cruelty bill that Abbott said would create a situation

where too much was criminalized and there would be too many regulations in place and that the the current laws were significant enough to curb animal cruelty and we didn't need this additional legislation yeah so those are a couple vetoes that stood out that that had some media attention attached to them a lot of their some other issues and maybe isaiah can speak to a couple of those but yeah those are the ones that stood out in my mind. That's good stuff. Now, Isaiah, have any trends emerged in all of this?

Some small ones. No majorities, I would say yet. But what catches my eye as I go through these vetoes is that several of them seem to trend along the lines of law enforcement and judicial systems, namely like expanding parole eligibility for certain youthful offenders, loosening probation requirements, sealing juvenile criminal records. I believe that was a Gene Wu idea, and reducing certain misdemeanors. Those are all a few proposals that he vetoed. Also, here and there, Abbott vetoes a lot of bills and claims that his purpose for vetoing them is that they, those bills would have filled a purpose that another bill already

or better accomplishes. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the thing. Some of these vetoes aren't as spicy or exciting as I think the animal cruelty one, and obviously the budget's a huge deal, but the animal cruelty one is a lesser known item that actually started a lot of conversation within the halls of the Capitol and between legislators. It was a very interesting conversation that happened.

But a lot of these vetoes aren't necessarily, well, necessarily an objection to the policy, per se. It could be the first veto that the governor issued was the author actually asked him to veto it, saying this bill wasn't what I wanted initially. It wasn't what we set out to accomplish. You know, would you please veto this? This is my bill and it's no longer what I wanted it to be, right? Or redundancy in law or something along those lines. So sometimes the vetoes are more administrative, or at least the reasoning presented is more administrative. Or tactical. I mean, some of these, I think the very first veto was a bill that Senator Hughes had written, and he asked Abbott to veto it because another bill had passed. I don't know what the right word would be. It wasn't that it was better, it was it addressed a more specific issue or something along those lines. And ultimately, this author of the bill asked Abbott to veto it. So certainly some of these vetoes are more strategic and less about philosophical differences with the legislature. Yeah, absolutely.

Well, good stuff, gentlemen. Thanks for covering that. Daniel, we are coming back to you. Let's have you talk about another Brad issue here, the Texas power grid. What happened last week with the grid? Well, I can tell you this this much for our listeners. The grid is in a very unstable condition we are probably all going to die the one way that you can prohibit your death

is by subscribing to the dexan.news to stay up to date on the latest information where we actually don't do this hyperbolic you're all gonna die that was very well done daniel yeah yeah. Text about news and subscribe, folks, please. Thank you. There was a lot of hubbub on Twitter and Facebook and TV and the media. Everybody was freaking out because ERCOT, which is the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, everybody loves to make fun of the R now. We're so reliable. of the r now um but they issued a statewide electricity conservation request uh because and i'm just reading brad's article here you can read the full thing on the website because he knows a lot more about this than i do and it has charts yeah it has lots of charts um but the the

generator is responsible for producing over 12 000 megawatts of electricity most of which was thermal generation tripped offline for various mostly mechanical reasons. And so ERCOT did issue this kind of this notice, kind of urging people to conserve their energy. Of course, we saw everybody putting the come and take it thing with their thermostat on social media, which is clever, funny. But no emergency conditions were triggered, and that conservation alert was all that the tight conditions amounted to. Now, the notable thing that everybody kept on pointing out was this was less than a week after

Governor Greg Abbott declared at a press conference that, quote, everything that needed to be done was done to fix the grid in response to the February blackouts that we saw, which obviously was a lot worse than what we saw last week. Yeah, absolutely. Now, there are this seems to be a fairly unpolitical topic, but in fact, it's very political. So let's get into a little bit of those details of the different views on the subject. Yes. So we'll start on the left to right because that's how we read.

A lot of the people on the political left have kind of pushed back against the state's actions to deregulate the energy grid in Texas. Now, of course, if you don't know this, if you're not familiar with the grid, ERCOT, the Texas grid, is separate from the grid on the western part of the country and the eastern part of the country, which have their own grids. And then Texas has our own. Now, it doesn't cover the entire state. I think El Paso and maybe Lubbock is actually transitioning onto it. Yes, Lubbock is now on the grid. But Texas has its own thing because everything is better in Texas. They want everything to be better in Texas.

Yes. And so what Texas did was they kind of took this approach of deregulating its energy grid and kind of moved away from having a highly regulated thing so that ERCOT is now more viewed as a flight controller tower, which is monitoring the flow of electricity and helping facilitate different private companies

who are operating on the grid. This is my very basic understanding after reading Brad's article, so bear with me. Hey, if you can explain it that well after reading it, it says a lot about Brad's reporting. So basically, a lot of people on the political left are saying we need to have increased regulation. We need to make sure that these companies are in line. We need to make sure that they are taking actions to weatherize their grid and make sure that they're prepared for both the heat that Texas faces and also the frigid temperatures that we apparently faced once in 100 years, like we did this winter. Yes.

So just increasing the regulations is kind of what the left wants. On the right, they've kind of pushed back a little bit more against the shift that we've seen in where our energy is coming from. There's been a lot more renewable energy use in Texas, namely with solar power and wind power, whereas the other more traditional sources of power have kind of declined over the past few years, and there's less new natural gas, less new coal sources

coming online and creating power for Texas. The Right points out that a lot of these renewable energies are heavily subsidized by the government that is essentially offsetting their costs, putting them at a kind of a business advantage over these other energy sources. And so they're saying this is unfair. So those are kind of the two kind of broad positions that we're seeing uh this this argument i'm sure this argument is not going to end anytime soon um now i think i you'll have to get brad's opinion on this but i think it'd be kind of surprising if governor abbott puts energy stuff on the special session agenda so i don't think it's going to be as big of a focus as election bills but yeah his direct quote was

something along the lines of everything that needed to be done during the session with urquhart and energy and power grid etc was done yeah that was the messaging so i suppose if something really bad happens this summer which it didn't last week it doesn't appear like we're gonna all lose our power and be stuck in the heat um but if it does then maybe things will change and this will be an issue again. Who knows? We'll see. Well, Daniel, thanks for covering that for us. Isaiah, we're going to come to you. During the pandemic, there was concern among Texans that their places of worship might be closed or deemed unessential, either by the state or by localities.

Now, that did not happen the same way it did in other states and localities were really the only ones enforcing any sort of rule in that regard. And that was sparsely done. But this legislative session, some precautions were taken in the form of some bills to ensure that that does not happen in the future. Explain how this law works that was signed by the governor. So I'm going to headline House Bill 525 by Matt Shaheen because it's the most extensive. We've also covered Senate Joint Resolution 27, which has passed but is going to need a general election vote, and another one by Scott Sanford. So the way that Shaheen's bill works is that it blocks all government bodies at or below the state level from stopping or limiting the activities of any

faith organization. It says governmental entities may not prohibit a religious organization from engaging in religious or other related activities. And one reason why this is more extensive than the others is because, for example, SGR 27 that we mentioned only applies to religious services. So other activities that faith organizations do would not be protected. So that's just one example. This also goes further than the original law, not by much, or excuse me, our standing law. In Texas, we have the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

And what this does is protects, it does almost essentially the same thing, but there are some slight differences. And the main big difference is that there's an exception carved out of the bill for government actions taken with a compelling state interest. So for example, in the Chick-fil-A case where you've got these guys suing San Antonio for kicking Chick-fil-A out of the airport, San Antonio is arguing that this exception in the religious freedom restoration act enables them to, you know,

make decisions like these based on contracts and things like that. So Matt Shaheen's bill does not have this exception. A compelling state interest would not give leeway to these local governments to limit religious activity. So we kind of already alluded to this, talked about it a little bit, but give us insight as to what these proposals are stemming from. Like you mentioned, shutdowns of religious activity in Texas were almost exclusively local.

I say almost exclusively because some argue that leeway in the governor's orders allowed local governments to do this, but that's another discussion. Mainly, county judges and mayors were the chief authorities shutting down religious organizations. Yeah. It should be noted that many, if not most, avoided shutting down churches and mosques and so forth. But in Dallas County, for example, County Judge Clay Jenkins banned in-person worship services in April of 2020. In Fort Worth nearby, Mayor Betsy Price issued an emergency declaration that made it actually a citable offense to fully open churches. So churches that fully opened were, you know, potentially subject to fines. I don't know how many of those were actually issued,

though. And in McKinney, the city of McKinney, and in Cameron County, their stay-at-home orders actually met with legal challenge and were unsuccessful for the governments. So after this pandemic, there was actually some legal precedents set in favor of religious organizations in light of the pandemic shutdowns, and that was echoed at the U.S. Supreme Court as well. Got it. Well, good stuff, Isaiah. Thanks for covering that for us.

Hayden, we're going to come to you now. You've covered the border extensively, and Brad has a piece this week specifically about the gubernatorial race, how that's shaping up, and how the border is affecting the narrative and the rhetoric being thrown between the candidates, not even between, because I think the governor is largely ignoring his opponents, and really, the rhetorical bombs are being thrown at him, and he's either responding or just governing. It depends on the perspective on that. But give us a little bit of a snapshot of State Senator Don Huffines' demeanor toward the governor in terms of the border. Well, Senator Huffines has been very calm, mainly keeping to himself and not criticizing.

I'm just kidding. No, that has not been the case. It's been very confrontational. Senator Huffines has called the governor out for what he believes is a slow response to the border crisis and for failing to prioritize the border wall sooner. Don Huffines has been a state senator in the past, so he has had a legislative role. But this race is likely going to become about immigration primarily and possibly also about property taxes. He's a very liberty-minded candidate, but he also supports law and order in terms of the border. So he has teamed up with, for example, the mayor of Uvalde to endorse his campaign and to criticize Abbott for his response to the border disaster. But I call it a border disaster because Abbott is the one who declared it a disaster in many counties along the southern

border. And that has been part of his response to the surge of illegal aliens crossing the US Mexico border. Good stuff. So, you know, in terms of the timeline of the governor's response in terms of the border, give us a little bit of an update on that. What does that look like up to now? I think one could characterize it as slow and steady, perhaps. It hasn't been the case that oned some of the extremely high numbers of illegal crossings that we've seen in the past few months. There have been, I think, north of 180,000 illegal aliens apprehended in May, according to the most recent CBP update. So the border crisis is escalating. And as the border crisis has worsened, so has, well, as the border crisis has worsened, Abbott's response has been stronger and more assertive, and he's focused more and more of his

spotlight and energy on immigration, which is why he announced the border wall in June, which is why he launched Operation Lone Star in March, which has apprehended more than 1,700 criminals, as well as tens of thousands of illegal aliens, which of course the state can't punish people for crossing the border illegally, but the state can't file charges for things like trespassing, and they can't refer people for federal prosecution. So Abbott contends that his response has been proportional to what has been happening in real time, whereas Huffines would say that he's had seven years, and he is continuing to quote unquote, ask the federal government's permission. Although Abbott, as a former attorney general, has also

contended in the past that he has limits to his authority because the Supreme Court has ruled that there's only so much a state can do on the issue of immigration, given the fact that it is, in fact, a federal responsibility. So that is an overview of the positions of the two sides. As you alluded to in the beginning, Abbott has not been responding necessarily directly to Huffines. But of course, in any campaign, you're looking at a candidate's actions through the lens of which candidate you support. So you could characterize that as governing or like you said, you could characterize that as ignoring Huffines or just dismissing his candidacy that would depend on on whether or not you have a favorable opinion about it and that will be for the Republican primary voters to decide. Absolutely and no one can really know except the governor and his team so interesting to see all of that and the timeline by which all these actions have been taken. Thank you Hayden.

Isaiah we're coming back to you. Now you you wrote on something that has been quite a big story, both at the national and the state level here in Texas, but an organization here in the state, a Christian group, has been in one way or another denied a tax-exempt status by the IRS. Walk us through what has going on and what is Christian Engaged? So, Christians Engaged is a faith-based civic engagement group in Garland run by Bunny Pounds. Now, if y'all don't know about Bunny Pounds, she has been working in Republican circles for about a decade, and she ran for Congress as a Republican in 2018. And, you know, before then she was working as a fundraiser and on various campaigns and stuff like that. So in 2019, she founded Christians Engaged with the express goal of nonpartisanly encouraging Christians to vote their faith and get involved in politics. The IRS denied them tax-exempt status and cited their affiliation and their entanglement with Republican partisanship. So now what's happening?

We have a little bit of a scuffle between Christians Engaged and the IRS. Yes. So in the IRS denial letter, the IRS director, Martin Stevens, said that since the group is not neutral, in his words, they are unfit for the exemption. When they fired back an appeal letter, they disputed the claim that neutrality is required for a tax exemption. That's not quite in the law, and they pointed to certain other 501c3 tax-exempt groups that have similar aims and goals but are not necessarily neutral. One that they pointed to was the Libertarian Christian Institute, very similar except libertarian. And another one is Michelle Obama's When We All Vote initiative, which is co-chaired by a lot of high profile liberal celebrities. And so an example from each side of the spectrum

there. I dug up some organizations in Texas that are tax exempt and also seem to have a political bent. I think the one nearest to Christians Engage would be Pastors for Texas Children. And for those of y'all who don't know about Pastors for Texas Children, that's a left-leaning lobbying organization on education advocacy. So it's not quite the same as a get-out-the-vote type of group that this is, but it's similar, but not politically neutral, but still has a religious and Christian basis to it. They also claimed, or noted, I should say, that Christians engaged communication does not apply to a particular candidate for a particular campaign. It's unchanging and is just kind of generally ideological. So it's not nakedly partisan. Right. Absolutely.

Now, what are next steps in this process? What else could be, what other actions can be taken by this group? Do you think there's any hope in terms of, you know, reestablishing that status? Well, it was an appeal letter to the IRS that the IRS could accept and reconsider. This type of thing before has turned into a lawsuit. Do you remember, a lot of us remember during the Obama administration, the IRS had a practice of denying tax exempt status to certain right-leaning groups. And that turned into a lawsuit that I think went to the Supreme court. But so that could develop here as well,

I suppose. Good stuff. Thanks for covering that for us. I think good stuff is my new phrase. I'm just realizing that I got called out a lot for saying, I like it. And now I'm saying good stuff because I got berated for saying, I like it all the time.

So I just wanted to say that to y'all because I'm very aware of that. You know, it's good stuff. What? Mighty fine burgers. I don't even know what that of that you know what's good stuff what mighty fine burgers i don't even know what that is daniel you don't know what mighty fine is no it's a really good burger you're smiling upon remembrance of it so i assume they're very good it's good it's what five guys should be wow yeah maybe that's what our fun topic will be burgers what's good what's not

i ate at five guys like two years ago and i still haven't financially recovered but hey they give you peanuts $27 is it five guys the one that gives you peanuts for you yeah i think so yeah i think they do ever gotten peanuts at five guys really am i wrong okay no i'm right okay michelle is not michelle's nodding that's i'm she's my i was like i've never gotten any um okay well we'll talk about that later remind me sorry that's our topic hey i interrupted with my own with my own uh you know qualms with myself okay well let's go let's uh let's head on here on our other topics hayden we're back to the border illegal immigration in texas um now this is an incredible piece you wrote uh very in depth you talked with folks who an incredible piece you wrote very in depth. You

talked with folks who've been involved heavily in the in the border crisis on a very personal level and professional as well. What are some things you discussed in this piece? Give us a 30,000 foot view of what you talk about. We discussed border security with a retired agent, special agent with Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations. He worked in Mexico City, he worked in El Paso. And if you have not read Special Agent Victor Avila's book, Agent Under Fire, this is one of those books that it was a page turner. I could not put it down it was an excellent story and i you know not to i i don't promote books often um but i he recounts his

story and his in this uh this work and it was it's very moving um you finished it so fast too yeah i read it on a friday and you gave it back to us on a Monday. We were like, whoa, wow. It was just, and it's just inspiring anytime you have someone who goes through something like that and then comes out on the other side and is able to share what they went through and what they learned from it is incredible. But we discussed with Special Agent Avila the situation on the border. And, you know, we don't say things like, here's what to do if you're attacked by a Mexican drug cartel. We very much keep it informational. And I recommend that you go read the piece because he shared some excellent insights with us. And we also spoke with the district attorney of Hidalgo County, a Democrat who has discussed some of his concerns with the federal response to the border disaster.

And we lay out some of the criminal activity and the risks that are associated with illegal immigration, because a lot of the time what occupies the subject is a discussion of only one type of person who's coming into the country, which is the person who is coming here for a better quality of life. And that person, those individuals definitely exist. But unfortunately, anytime you have a situation like this, there are risks that go along with it. And we discussed that in the piece. And it's far more complicated than just the plight of those folks whose stories deserve to be told.

It's just that there are a lot of other factors at play here as well. And it takes away from their stories, right? When these other folks have different motives and approach the issue very differently. So now you've talked about this briefly already on the podcast, but give us another look, real fast 30,000 foot view of the status of illegal immigration in Texas. Well, there were CBP reported, and I want to distinguish because sometimes the data differs a little bit because the numbers that they are able to produce in terms of a sector by sector breakdown, those numbers, I think, are a little bit behind their current as they are able to produce in terms of a sector by sector breakdown,

those numbers, I think, are a little bit behind their current as of the third of June. And then they release a press release that has an overall number that's usually a bit higher. And I think that's because by the time they issue the press release, they're able to have a little bit more updated information. So according to the sector by sector breakdown, we had more than 118,000 illegal immigrant apprehensions in Texas Border Patrol sectors. But according to the operational update, we have 180,000 in May across the Southwest region. So we are at the height of a historic surge on the border. And as we noted just moments ago, when your front door is open or your back door is open of your home, you might have a friend come in, you might also have a burglar come in. So that is one way to view the situation. And the piece is illegal immigration

is making Texas vulnerable to violence by Mexican drug cartels, I'd encourage you to head to our website, thetexan.news, and to check it out. I like it. Thank you, Hayden. Daniel, and I see I just went back to I like it. Wow, we are hitting all cylinders today. But Daniel, we're coming back to you. As Brad is driving with his dog elsewhere, we are going to be covering his pieces for him. Talk to us about Chapter 313. Let's just start with a broad overview of what that chapter in code is and what it does. So it is a chapter in state code, believe it or not. Wow. Yeah. Which is an economic development program within the tax code, more specifically, that allows school districts to trade taxable property value for promised job creation.

So if a company comes in and is kind of negotiating like, can we move our business here? What can you give us? The school board can vote to give them a tax break. Essentially, that's what it does. Yeah. In exchange for saying, we'll create X amount of jobs. Yes. So with Tesla moving into Austin, I think it's Del Valle, Del Valle ISD. I don't know how you pronounce it. You know, they also gave them a chapter 313 abatement

to create that factory where Elon Musk is going to crank out his cyber trucks. Crank out his cyber trucks. But there were two proposals this week that were related to solar that Brad wrote about. Again, I'll probably butcher this, but I will do my best. You know, you'll knock out at the park. So just like you said, there were two proposals this week.

Brad wrote them both. Give us a little bit of insight as to what makes these notable. So these are both, you know, we talked about energy earlier. These are both for solar panel projects. I don't know. They're not wind farms. It for solar panel projects. I don't know. They're not wind farms. It's like solar farms. I don't know.

They farm the sun. They farm the sun. Solar projects. They harvest all the sunships. That's where they're made. Oh, we learned so much from y'all. Y'all have such good insight. No, but this field of solar panels that they want to create.

And, you know, usually when a company comes in and says we're going to promise x amount of jobs it's usually you know above i think 20 for rural uh places and a little bit higher for more the urban areas and uh these ones promised to create uh two jobs in smithville and uh in troy isd it was promising to create one whopping job. It was a big job. Yeah. Maybe. Yeah.

I mean, can you imagine installing a solar farm by yourself? That's pretty crazy. I'm sure those things are heavy. But the Smithville ISD was a tax break proposal of $170 million, and that was approved by the school district. And Troy ISD, their Chapter 313 tax break was for $135 million. That was what it was negotiated for, but the school board actually voted that down in a 6-1 vote. So the two jobs in ISD are in the stages of being set in the process of being set. Yeah. But the the one job, the one person in Troy ISD will not get to carry his money around

the solar panels. Well, and these, these different projects, you know, they'll say, hey, well, in the process of building, we'll create X amount of jobs, there will be multiple jobs. But in terms of long term sustained jobs, they're promising one job and two jobs, right. And that's what we're dealing with. And in order to, you know, fill out this application and be considered, usually it's 25 jobs. That's the minimum. But there was a waiver filed by both of these projects that said, okay, well, yeah, you can promise one job or two jobs, and you're still going to get the money, which is just very interesting to think about, particularly in terms of the taxpayers in these school districts and what they're being tasked with here financially. Well, Daniel, good stuff. Thank you for covering that for us. Isaiah, now a state rep this week, the chairman of the General Investigating Committee in the Texas House called for an investigation into Pornhub. Give us background.

Yes. So State Rep. Matt Krause called for an investigation into Pornhub and their parent company, MindGeek. He says, well, he was requesting this to Attorney General Ken Paxton and the DPS, who kind of have a history with weeding out this kind of thing. But Krause insinuated a connection between the company and human trafficking and pornography that is non-consensual, like underage or depicts rape or other non-consensual content.

So those are Krauss' allegations. Now, what's happening with the company currently? There's a broader storyline here. Give us insight. Krauss mentioned in the press release that accompanied his announcement or request, I should say, that it mirrors a similar request at the national level by a number of women that are calling themselves victims of trafficking and other practices that they're accusing that the company engages in. Pornhub is also in the middle of several lawsuits. I'll say several lawsuits by, you know, similar Jane Does, mostly anonymous, except for, I think I found one named plaintiff, Serena Flatis in California in the, in federal databases. But yeah, just dozens of anonymous women suing this company

claiming that they are engaging in a lot of these practices that Matt Krause is alleging. Got it. So kind of jumping on that bandwagon a little bit and asking the Texas Attorney General to come alongside and call for an investigation. Well, good stuff. Thank you for covering that for us. Before we move on to our incredible fun topic that I assume will yield some incredible debate, I want to talk real fast about the statewide races, how they're shaping up. Daniel, you had a piece on Eva Guzman, and we talked about her prior to this, but it's official now. She's running for attorney general. Yes, she is officially in the race.

She has launched her campaign. She launched it on Monday. I did an interview with her. You can go read some of the things that she told me on her website. That is going to be a spicy race because it's not just a former state Supreme Court justice in the race. It's also the current land commissioner and the current attorney general. And who else might be joining is yet to be seen. There could be more people. It could be, even if it's just just says three it's going to be a wild race yeah absolutely and now politically it'll be fascinating to see how this all breaks down because we have three very prominent folks who've been on the statewide ballot before so the name id argument is an interesting thing in and of itself um the frequency by which they run is different for supreme court justice versus an ag or a land commissioner but still it will be interesting now additionally state representative Representative James White this week

was on the Chad Hastie radio show out in West Texas and hinted at a run for another statewide office. Yes, he has said, well, he's officially said that he's not going to be running for re-election for his House seat, but he has said that he's interested in running for a statewide position. And on Hastie, he suggested that that would be agriculture commissioner, which, again, that would be an interesting primary because the current agriculture commissioner, Sid Miller,

has said that he is also going to be running for re-election. Yeah, and we thought for a while that he'd be challenging another sitting statewide elected official. The statewides are going all over the place right now. He followed through on his poll. He sent out a poll to people saying, donate $25 if you want me to run for re-election. Donate $50 if you want me to run for re-election donate 50 you want me to run for a higher office i did i did the checking after the uh the

fundraising numbers came out and more 25 yeah more 25 so he's he's sticking with his what people told him to do it's a smart fundraising um smart fundraising apparatus interesting well good stuff and it'll be interesting to see because we've already seen speaker of the house dade phelan and and to be fair the quote i believe from uh representative white being on the show said that he wants to be in a quote position to fight and protect texas agriculture not leaving much to the imagination soon thereafter texas house speaker dade phelan came out and said agriculture commissioner james white has an excellent ring to it who is with me interesting to see how this will shape up. Well, Daniel, thank you for that.

Okay, let's talk burgers. Mighty Fine Burgers, what the heck is that? Where are they? Mighty Fine Burgers, apparently they're owned by the same company that owns Rudy's. Someone was telling me that. Like the barbecue joint? Yeah. I love Rudy's.

And so if you love Rudy's, if you like Five Guys and the big, thick, juicy burgers, you'll love Mighty Fine. They don't do all the wild toppings that Five Guys does, which I'm never a big fan of anyways. Just give me some lettuce, tomato, put some ketchup on there, and it's a great hamburger. Now, where is Mighty Fine? I don't think I've ever seen one. There are different locations. There is one pretty close to my new apartment that I just moved to. Are you serious?

I'm going to be spending all the money there. All the money? I don't think it's quite as pricey as Five Guys. It's more than if you go to P. Terry's. It's going to be more than that. Okay. Hayden, do you have an opinion on burgers not really i'm not not enough strong opinions so is this trying to you're trying to develop

like some kind of argument is that it are you am i supposed to are you just assuming that i'm always trying to formulate an argument or be combative well what kind of burgers do you like very uh very interesting to see you come after me daniel i'm asking you the same question yeah the same exact question there's a place in austin called juboy uh juboy burgers oh yeah i know where that is it's delicious way overrated are you serious yeah have you been there i went there like right after the freeze happened. Okay. Um, I went there with a colleague, a colleague. Oh, Ben introduced you.

Of course he did. Yes. Interesting. And mighty fine is better. Really? Interesting. What makes it better? I felt like it was overpriced at Jew boys and it just wasn't anything special for what you're paying.

Have you tried their Lockhees? No. Did you try their Lockheed's? No. Did you try their chicken sandwich? I don't remember what I tried. It was a burger. It was a burger. It was not chicken. Okay.

Yeah, they have a, I forget what's on it, but it's delicious. And I think it's close by. Like, I live relatively close to it, so I really, I like it. I've only been there a couple times, but it's good. Isaiah, what's your favorite? What kind of burger do you like? As I have said how many times do I have to tell you? Juicy Burger in San Antonio might be the best.

Yeah. That's the one with a lot of bacon juice in it. Is that? I told you my friend learned after three burgers that he couldn't eat the stuff. But yeah, Juicy Burger. It's really good. Is bacon juice just grease? That's what I should have said.

The word escaped me. Wow. But yeah, it's Juicy Burger. For those of y'all who haven't heard, I don't remember when I talked about it before. I feel like it was early. Yeah, I think it was one of the first podcasts where we interrogated you about ice cream and burgers or something i can't remember what it was what the context was well you can say um like let me get whatever like such and such burger and uh make it a wet burger which just sounds terrible but it's it just not does not sound appetizing but uh it makes it so much better

i believe so and i don't know whatever sauce they have i don't know but um yeah i went there on several trips with um my then my then roommates at the time in college and after three burgers like or three trips there or something we asked like what does it mean to have a wet like what does that mean what's the what's the juice and juicy burger and i said oh you know, there's like bacon grease and other stuff. And so Nabil had already chowed down on like several of these burgers. And so, yeah, I guess he's going to hell. There's a problem with that.

Gosh. Okay, so as far as fast food burgers go, P. Terry's, In-N-Out. Whataburger. Whataburger. Okay. Is it Whataburger or is it it what a burger we're not gonna get into that i'm getting into it what a burger or what i should be terry's on monday and it was pretty good hayden that was not the topic we were on hayden's trying to be switching topics off of

the hotly contested issue of whether contested how you pronounce whatever hey or isaiah you said what i say what what okay yeah like the watts in a light bulb whataburger got it yeah and you worked there so you're right you i hadn't even yes daniel yeah that's what i meant you have some i still have the spatula yeah yeahden, back to P. Terry's. I'm so sorry to yank your bit from you. It wasn't a bit. I was just saying I liked P. Terry's, I thought. Well, you pitched the question to Isaiah, like what the final verdict was, and I was just interrupting to say my opinion,

and then you switched over to how you pronounce the word a burger. So it all happened so fast. Now I'm hungry. Yeah. Maybe we should get some burgers after this. Maybe that's what we do. Daniel, opinion, fast food burger? I do prefer In-N-Out over Whataburger.

Sorry. How dare you? The options, the sheer number of options you can get at Whataburger. But I don't need the options. I just need a hot, fresh burger. I need the options. I've got a variety. I've got a couple of bad Whataburger experiences, so I feel like I'm burnt out on them.

That's not good. Okay. That's fair. Well, before we offend the entire Texas populace, we should probably sign off. I feel like the Whataburger is a good place to sign off. I'm going to hate and say these bad Whataburger experiences. I'm like the Whataburger is a good place to sign off. I hate saying these bad Whataburger experiences. You're going to get a lot of

angry tweets. Oh yeah. Maybe we should add this on a Twitter poll tomorrow and actually do it. Okay. I didn't leave Whataburger. Whataburger left me.

Wow. For Chicago. That's fair. You're right. Yeah. That is right. Yeah. Michelle's confused.

It's okay. We'll explain. Okay. Well folks, thanks for bearing with us. That was quite a podcast. We'll so proud to have you standing with us as we seek to provide real journalism in an age of disinformation. We're paid for exclusively by readers like you, so it's important we all do our part to support The Texan by subscribing and telling your friends about us. God bless you, and God bless Texas. Thank you.