The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - June 4, 2021

Episode Date: June 4, 2021

This week on the “Weekly Roundup,” the team discusses how election integrity, gambling allowances, and emergency power reform died, and whether the Republican-led legislature delivered conservative results. They cover what the governor said about special session calls and vetoing funding for the legislature, a Bush running for office in Texas, Trump wading into Texas politics, new details about the attorney general’s legal troubles, and the governor issuing a disaster declaration at the border.

Howdy, howdy. Mackenzie Taylor here, senior editor on another edition of the Texans Weekly Roundup podcast. The end of session, sine die, has officially come and gone, but not without impending special sessions to come this summer and fall. In the meantime, our team gives a rundown of how the legislature ended things. We give details as to how election integrity, gambling allowances, and emergency power reform died, and discuss whether the Republican-led legislature delivered conservative results. We talk through what the governor has said about special session calls and vetoing funding for the legislature, a Bush once again running for public office in Texas, Trump wading into Texas politics, new details about the

Attorney General's legal troubles, and the governor issuing a disaster declaration at the border. We appreciate you tuning in. Enjoy this episode. Howdy folks, Mackenzie Taylor here with Daniel Friend, Hayden Sparks, and Brad Johnson. We're all sitting here on a very rainy day in Austin. There's thunder going on. It's crazy, but session is over. So we are in one way or another a little bit relaxed, right Bradley? If you say so that was more sarcastic than not because the day after session a lot of news happened and news has continued to happen which is the nature of the business but um all that to say session's over daniel you're staring off um is session over i well that is a question we will get into very soon.

Yes. Yes. That was a good foreshadowing, though. I like it. We like a good teaser on this podcast. But let's go ahead and jump right in. Daniel and Hayden, we're going to start with y'all. The marquee discussion and conflict in the legislature in the last week was related to election integrity.

Both of y'all have covered this beat in one way or another throughout the course of session. Daniel, we're going to start with you. Just give us some details about what the bill entailed itself before we get into what happened. So it's been very much a lightning rod issue throughout the entire session. For some reason, it's been like the most partisan thing, more so than the heartbeat bill, more so than constitutional carry. This seems like it's gotten the most pushback from Democrats. Yeah.

The most attention has been here throughout all of this. Like even, you know, the, the day that, uh, Beto O'Rourke drove in from El Paso, uh, you had the election bill being heard in a committee, but you also had constitutional carry being heard in that committee the same day. And he didn't go there for constitutional carry, which was odd, coming from him especially. All that to say, SB7 went through very different iterations, but it ultimately went through a conference committee, the House and the Senate conferees worked out negotiations and figured out what they wanted in the final bill. I did a breakdown of that that you can find on our website that goes into a lot more detail. You know, it's 67 pages long.

So there's a lot of stuff in it. Some of the big things in there. You have a lot of pushback on policies that were kind of pushed in Harris County last election, especially as it related to the whole COVID-19 situation and trying to make elections more COVID friendly. They tried doing some different things that were Republicans questioned at the time. They said, can they legally do this? So Republicans wanted to come in this time and codify it very clearly in law that you cannot do these things. That would include drive-through voting, 24-hour voting, and also Chris Hollins, the county clerk in Harris County, tried sending out mail ballot applications. They weren't solicited, so even if people didn't request one, he could send them to them. So they would kind of prohibit all of

these practices. Those were some of the big things. Another big thing that got some attention was voter ID for mail ballot applications. Right now, if you go into the election booth and you want to vote, you have to show them some kind of form of ID in order to vote. This would extend that voter ID practice for mail ballot applications so that you would need to include on your mail ballot application either your driver's license number, and it could be an even expired driver's license as long as it's still valid with your address and whatnot. So either that or the last four digits of your social security number or a statement that you do not have either of those numbers attributed to you. And then that is cross-referenced when the application is received with your voter registration

to make sure that it is you who is requesting this mail ballot. That was something that also got some pushback from Democrats and kind of a bellwether issue. Bellwether? That's not the right word. Lightning rod? I don't want to say lightning rod twice. Hey, it's okay. Anyways, another big issue there. And then there were various other proposals that were in the bill as well. You know, one of the things, there's been a lot of talk about how this would make voting harder and it would be voter suppression.

That's kind of the talking point for Democrats. Republicans say, no, it would in some cases make voting easier. And one of those ways that it would make voting easier is it would extend employers' requirement to allow employees to vote not just for election day, but also for the early voting period, which would increase the flexibility of when someone could go vote. And it also dealt with lines, right? So saying, okay, well, on election day, if you're in line to vote when the polls close, well, you still get to vote. And they extended that to early voting as well.

Correct. They did, you know, with the prohibition on 24-hour voting, they limited the time of when you can vote. So you can vote between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m. And they increased the minimum amount of time that the polls need to be open from eight hours to nine hours. So in a way, they restricted it, but in another way, they kind of expanded it. Kind of complicated there. Now, one of the fun things that I thought was kind of hilarious,

you had a lot of these uh blue check mark twitter personalities go out tweeting on saturday night that uh their the legislature was going to pass a bill or the senate was going to pass a bill that would prohibit voting in the middle of the night in the middle of the night yeah but they didn't pass it in the middle of the night they passed it after 6 a.m yeah so tell us a little bit about what happened in the Senate on Saturday night. The legislature adjourned sine die on Monday. Yes. Sunday was when it was going to be heard in the House.

Hayden will talk about that. And Saturday is when it was making its way through the Senate, right? Yes. So tell us what happened in the Senate. It was a full weekend for the legislature. So on Saturday, I think Saturday was when it actually came out of the conference committee and it was actually filed with, you know, all the administrative procedures that the bill has to go through. That was when it was printed out. It was printed out.

They actually sent out a copy to senators that kind of circulated in the morning. And then they had to do a corrected version because there were some errors in the printing. So the bill didn't change, but there were some corrections that they made. But that went out in the afternoon. And under the Constitution, I believe it's the Constitution, not the rules, they have to wait until the next day in order to actually bring that to the floor and vote on it.

So the Senate, if they had waited until the next day, Democrats could have had plenty of time to filibuster the bill and then it would die in the Senate. Filibuster being a loose term, but yes, exactly. Just filibuster, chububbing whatever you want to call it talking killing time wait until the end of the day you know when they can't pass it after midnight on sunday and so in order to kind of avoid that give them plenty of time to pass it republicans voted to suspend that rule and go ahead and bring the the bill to the floor on Saturday night. And so I believe it was just shortly after 10 p.m. on Saturday when it was brought up for a vote. And so at that point, all the Democrats started their long campaign of debating the bill and asking Senator Hughes questions about various provisions in the bill.

And that went on from, you know, 10 at night to 6 in the morning. So literally 6 a.m. was when they stopped. Yeah, just like 6.08, I think, somewhere in those lines. Yeah, that's crazy. That's the latest night of the session, right? By a long shot, I'd say. I think so. By like three or four hours, it's the longest night of the session, right? By a long shot, I'd say. I think so.

By like three or four hours, it's the longest night of the session. Certainly for me. Yeah. Thank you for staying up and following that for us. Hayden, we're going to pivot to you. So in terms of the House specifically, what went down with the election integrity bill? Give us a little bit of insight from your perspective and your beats. Well, what people should understand about what happened in the House is it happened over the course of several hours. This was not a situation where they called up SB7 and the Democrats stood up and pounded their fists on the table, got up and stormed out. They had been discussing issues ancillary to SB 7 for

several hours. In fact, the chair laid out a resolution, what's called an out of bounds resolution, just after 730 in the evening, that would have allowed or it did allow the House to consider the provisions in the conference committee report that were in neither version that the legislature had passed prior to then. In other words, things the conference committee added to the bill that had not been approved yet by either chamber. So this resolution allowed them to take up SB7, the conference committee report for SB7, and to consider those extra things. But what was interesting is about an hour and a half before everything came to a screeching halt, they took a vote on this resolution. And the vote to pass

this resolution was 79 to 35. There were only 35 nays. And that indicated that a lot of Democrats had not voted because of course, the Democrats were opposing this resolution. And they had been trying to kill this resolution via points of order. I think there were a total of three, but all of those points had either been overruled or withdrawn from the dais. So they were unsuccessful in killing HR 2007, which was the out of bounds resolution as it's called. And then the conference committee report for SB 7 was laid out. And as they were laying out that bill, there were additional points of order on the bill. But what ultimately occurred at around 1045 is someone moved to excuse pro tem Joe Moody, who is the speaker pro tem for the house. And Representative Vesut objected to that motion. And they ended up having to take a vote on whether

or not to excuse pro tem Moody. And on that vote, it was 86 to zero to excuse him, which a lot of that I mean, a lot of that maneuvering is just to figure out, okay, Democrats all left, but let's get it on the record. The Democrats all left, right? That's kind of the point of what was going on there. And it was clear at that point that there were fewer people on the, I mean, you could tell just by looking at Brad and I were on the floor, you could look around and tell that the crowd was thinning, so to speak.

And there were not that many people in the room. And I actually spoke with Chairman Richard Peña Raymond yesterday, who was in the room still even after the quote unquote walkout. And I asked him why he was still there because he voted, he's one of the few Democrats who was still in the room and he voted to excuse Pro Tem Moody, meaning he hadn't left like most of the other Democrats. And he told me that the reason he was still one of the reasons he was still in the room is because he was at the speaker, he was near the front about to give a speech against SB7. So this was something that happened over the course of several hours. It isn't something that was, you know, planned to happen at a specific moment.

From the reports that I've seen, it was an evolving discussion. And Chairman Raymond was still there getting ready to give a speech against SB7. So the reason he was still there, and we haven't had a chance to speak to the other Dems that were still there yet. But the reason he was still there is because he was getting ready to fight against sb7 so that's how that's how quickly things happened at the very end but this was a process that occurred over several hours and in all reality there had they had only about an hour left before the midnight um on the last day of or or midnight on Sunday. And that was the last day for the House to approve conference committee reports. So they only had an hour left to move this bill. And the rules, the rules of the House state, that they can force a quorum if they want to.

He could have locked the doors. He could have sent the Sergeant at Arms, the DPS, to arrest the members that were gone. But quite frankly, that would have sent the sergeant at arms, the DPS to arrest the members that were gone. But quite frankly, that would have been a lose-lose for everybody. I mean, it would have infuriated the Democrats, Phelan would not have, that would not have put him in a good position. And so they did not, and I haven't confirmed that with the Speaker's office, that that's why they didn't take that course of action. But he had that tool in his tool belt, and that was not employed in this instance. So from a 30,000 foot view perspective, we're talking Sunday, the work, you know, nearing the deadline, SB seven

has still not been brought up in the House. Republicans in the House are getting antsy. Democrats are, you know, very alert and ready to go. There have been talk for, you know, 24 hours at this point that Democrats in the House may walk right and may break the quorum. Because like you've talked about, if a quorum is broken, if there's no, you know, there aren't enough members there to warrant discussion on the floor, you're done. Like you can't write on a bill. Right. So that's what we're getting at here is Democrats chose to walk out and completely- They did. But what ultimately I want to, as an asterisk to that, is that they still had points of order ready and they were still planning that as an alternative to walking off the floor. To try and kill the bill. Right.

Because they had other things that they were trying to do to try to kill the bill. That wasn't the only thing the democrats had to do but ultimately governor abbott said that he would place this on the special session agenda on a special session agenda because this is a republican priority and they will have another chance at this when the special session rolls around yeah good stuff well gentlemen thank you for covering that for us. Definitely one of the biggest, if not the biggest fight of the session. You know, it was in the last two days of the regular. So thanks for following that for us.

We're going to pivot here to something that Brad has covered that was also a point of contention over the weekend, but was not as widely publicized or as big of a deal politically. Really fast, give us a quick rundown of this resign to run bill and what happened. So as it was originally constituted, it was closing this sort of discrepancy in state law where if you're a precinct chair or a county party official, if you're going to run for another office,

you have to resign your current position to do that. That doesn't exist for state party officials, whether it's the chair, vice chair, or members of the SREC. And so this bill originally was just going to close that. It was just going to require the chair, vice chair of certain political parties and the SREC, the executive committee members of those parties, to have to resign before they run for another position. Now, it fell into the spotlight on Sunday when the conference committee slid in a bunch of really unrelated provisions. They included requiring the vice chair and the srac to be elected on the primary ballot

and then um most egregiously they it exempted the democratic party it only it specifically tied it to the republicans and that was it exempted any other state party. Yeah. And so that, after a lot of rhetorical fighting on social media and in the press, it eventually fell on the weight of itself. And they reverted it back to the original version, which with a couple very very very minor senate amendments um that's how the procedurally they were able to to pass that uh without letting it die after the whole you know the conference committee report so real fast give us a reason you know talk to us just a little bit about the importance politically like what they're even trying to get out here um well it's what's the point it's to prevent people from running, um, running for other office with control of, you know, a party, um, or at least a significant position within that party. One person this would have applied to if it was in place was, uh, as a Susan Wright, who is currently running for Texas 6. She is currently on the executive committee.

And if this were in place, she would have to resign in order to do that. We'll see who else this applies to down the road. But this will go into effect on September 1st. And so if anybody runs next year in the primaries for whatever position that holds an office, they will be tied to this bill. Got it. Thanks for covering that for us. Daniel, we're going to come to you. At the beginning of the legislative session, if you would have asked us what some of the biggest issues would be on the slate of the legislature, emergency powers and reform for the governor's

executive power, particularly during a pandemic or a stated disaster emergency, would have been right up there, top three. I think it actually was in one of the articles we wrote, podcast. I think we've talked about this plenty. Yeah, absolutely. And for good reason. And it wasn't as if proposals were not filed this legislative session. But what happened

with the governor's emergency powers this session well um not much like nothing right not yeah well nothing there was nothing uh there was no new significant checks that were placed directly on the governor's emergency powers. Chapter 418 of the Texas Government Code is where the Texas Disaster Act is. That is what gives the governor authorities to issue disaster declarations for, you know, whether it be a pandemic like we saw or whether it be Hurricane Harvey, which is still a disaster, or whether it be the border crisis which governor abbott just uh did that i don't know if we're talking about that sorry if we are we're spoiling that hayden gosh daniel lots of that's the basis for these disaster declarations and all the executive orders

that come along with that um and so there has been talk about know, this is too much power to hand to the governor without any additional checks from the legislature. There's talk about increasing those checks. Uh, and there weren't really any new bills that placed checks on that specific part of the code. Um, the only thing that I have seen that really changed with the Texas disaster act is that they did pass a bill that would, uh, removes the part of the Texas Disaster Act is that they did pass a bill that removes the part of the Texas Disaster Act that allows the governor to regulate firearms during a disaster. So there were little things, but it wasn't necessarily, hey, governor can do this, can't do this in ways that were initially proposed at the beginning of session. So what

caused this result? Well, I think the biggest thing that we saw was that there was just a big difference in approaches by the Senate and the House. The House was the first to move. You had Representative Dustin Burroughs, who's the chair of the Calendars Committee, in a very powerful position. And he put forward a proposal that would put right next to the Texas Disaster Act, a new piece of code that specifically applies to pandemics. When this was originally filed, it really didn't do much other than just codify what the governor Abbott had already done and kind of put in, you know, those emphasizes the restrictions that Abbott had emphasized in his, in his handling of the pandemic. Yeah. You know, like not regulating firearms or not regulating churches,

things that, you know, Abbott by and far handled more conservative than, you know, whether it be Gavin Newsom in California or other Democratic governors. Right. Now, that was just, but this was just applied to pandemics for the House version. Eventually, as the bill progressed, it got some pushback from conservatives and they added in some significant legislative checks so that in a pandemic disaster, it would need to receive the approval from the legislature in order to renew it beyond, I think, 90 days was the eventual line that they fell on when they passed the bill. So it would increase some legislative checks specific to pandemics. The Senate took a different approach. They didn't put in anything that was really specific to pandemics. They didn't have these detailed policies of how to outline or how to address a certain type of disaster. Rather, they just simply said with Senator Birdwell's bill, which was a constitutional amendment when

it was originally filed and some enabling legislation. And what this approach would have done would have reformed the Texas Disaster Act itself and said, if there's any major, you know, wide sweeping disaster declaration that affects like a large portion of Texans, then that would need to be approved by the legislature to be renewed. I think beyond the just renewed beyond the 30 days that the governor can initially do that. And so the Senate passed this out almost unanimously. The only person opposing it was Senator Sarah Eckhart, who was the Travis County judge at the beginning of the pandemic. Um, but, uh, when it got over to the house, it kind of just sat there and languished. And, uh, those two policies just butt heads and eventually none of them came out at the end of the day yeah so real

fast there were some other bills that related to covid19 and the pandemic that passed the legislature what were they so you know the big ones notable ones yeah like the gun one that i mentioned uh there was also the property tax loophole uh that brad would be able to tell you a lot more about he wrote an article on it. You had liability protections for businesses that operated during the pandemic with SB6. You had several bills that would allow people to go ahead and visit family members in the hospital or nursing home. You had another one that would actually several address the kind of religious liberty aspects and making sure churches could stay open. Those were some of the big ones that we saw.

I like it. Well, Daniel, thanks for covering that for us. Brad, we're going to come to you. Now, as always happens at the end of a legislative session um particularly here in texas there is debate surrounding how conservative the tech you know the session was particularly when the republican parties in the majority of both chambers all the statewides that's just what's going to be you know the litmus test right is if republicans are in power how conservative did they govern debates already raging about this issue post 87th walk us through the arguments yeah so i

have a pretty lengthy piece on the website about it um i advise you to check it out but um i spoke with representatives jared patterson justin holland kyle biederman as well as texas gop chair alan west and as you can, those individuals had markedly different opinions about that question. You know, undoubtedly the biggest testament to whether it was the most conservative session in Texas history are the fact that, you know, the heartbeat bill and constitutional carry passed in the same session. and those aren't the only ones you know you had the critical race theory restriction pass um you had the spending cap the increased spending cap or um on you know for the budget that was passed um you know you had other ones such as prohibition on closing places of worship during a declared disaster, an abortion trigger ban should

the U.S. Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade, police defunding related legislation, and the sanctuary state for the Second Amendment. So, quite a bit was accomplished. Now, there were also significant key priorities that failed, conservative priorities that failed, and most notably is the election bill. Also is the emergency powers that went nowhere that daniel talked about uh taxpayer-funded lobbying something i've covered quite a bit that failed uh big tech censorship legislation uh gender modification proposal which was something that's been talked about and will continue to be talked about a lot uh prohibiting you know puberty blockers from being used on kids and sex reassigning surgeries,

but also the bail reform stuff. So it's kind of a mixed bag overall. Now, obviously, is it the most conservative ever? That's a relative question. If you're just looking back at the last session where they focused on school finance and property taxes, and really that was what took up most of the energy. I think it's hard to argue it's not more conservative than that. Now, ever, I don't know. I don't know all the history of every legislative session, but. It's hard to argue that it's not. You're saying that it was more conservative.

More conservative than the last one. Which a lot of folks called purple, right? That was kind of the nomenclature used about the previous session. And the budget itself, you know, the one requirement that the legislature has every session, the budget was within the population plus inflation line. Now, that doesn't include the $16 billion in federal funding that state is going to have to take up in a special. But that didn't happen last time. They didn't keep it under that line. So, you know, it's a mixed bag.

Representative Patterson told me, he said he doesn't think there's any argument that this has been the most conservative session ever. Justin Holland echoed that. He said, you know, based on his barometer, which is just an overall scope of conservative legislation, not just the RPT priorities, he sees no reason that this shouldn't be considered uh at least a very conservative session i thought if not the most now uh gop chairman alan west had a markedly different opinion he said i think you have to give this legislative session an f so they delivered on about two and a half con carry uh religious liberty and the heartbeat bill which wasn't the same as the abolition of abortion but uh pretty close to it um you know it's it's pretty substantive but um of the republican party priorities yes yes that's right and so wes took issue with the fact that you know the first 75

80 days of the session not a lot was done at least in terms of passing things that doesn't mean things weren't going on behind the scenes and you know negotiating on let's say election integrity and that kind of stuff so um he was upset about that um you know representative kyle biederman he took a different approach from the others um he said a lot of it depends on how you gauge it is it the number of rpt priorities passed or are we talking about the number of other conservative issues he says it was a pretty good session given what they all pushed through. But if you're going based on the RPT priorities, then it fell short. So that's basically where it's at. I recommend you check out the piece to see more of what they said. And obviously, there's not going to be a lot of

agreement. No one's convincing each other one way or the other on this. They have their own arguments for their respective sides. Yeah. Good stuff, Bradley. Hayden, we're going to come to you. Another issue that, you know, gained a lot of steam, particularly the beginning of session, petered out way before these others that we've talked about that petered out, gambling. What happened with gambling in Texas?

Well, long story short, no one cared. Ultimately, what happened is there were a number of proposals that were introduced. But the primary backers of these proposals was Las Vegas Sands, which is a company out of Nevada that is pro casinos, obviously, it's a casino gambling company, and they hired more than 70 lobbyists to get this done and it wasn't just casinos it was also sports wagering proposals that were backed by major professional sports organizations and they went to bat for these no pun intended for these policies and they ultimately amounted to a little more than a couple hours of committee testimony, because Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and Speaker Phelan really did not view these items

as priorities. In fact, Lieutenant Governor Patrick said in February, that they weren't going to see the light of day as far as he was concerned, because they were too involved and complicated, and had too many interests to unpack in order to get it done in their limited amount of time. Plus, there may not have been a lot in it politically for anybody involved. So while it was said at these committee hearings where they considered a couple of these bills that they were seriously contemplating it, I really think that's all they were doing. They were just thinking about it. And while they may have considered it this session, it wasn't important enough to the policymakers and the decision makers to actually move it out

of committees and move it to the floor and get it across the finish line. But as Brad just alluded to, if you ask, you know, 1000 different people in Austin, whether this was a successful session, you're probably going to get 1000 different answers, because everyone has their list of priorities that matter to them. And everyone has an opinion about what should have been further up the list in terms of what they considered first and what they fast tracked and what they treated as essential items of business. But I don't really think any groups other than the lobbyists hired to get this across the finish line considered this a critical issue during this legislative

session. Yeah, so casino bans sports wagering bans will remain in place until at least 2023 unless Governor Greg Abbott happens to decide it warrants a special session agenda item, which is unlikely very much. So I think it gained a lot of steam in terms of news cycles because a lot of money and a lot of people were hired to bring this thing forward, but there was not much interest from the legislature. And it's a good media topic, too. People like to hear about it. Yeah, it's interesting, and especially since Texas is such a large state

that has a casino ban and we have so many casinos in surrounding states, it always gains, you know, dust up in the media about it and some media attention, but the lawmakers just weren't interested this time. We love a good media dust up. Well, Brad, speaking of a media dust up, this is not quite that, but we're going to call it that special session. We've already known at least one would be called. The governor has been very forthright in that in the last few weeks,

but now we have more details. Give us a little bit of insight into what is on the docket now yeah so on uh lubbock radio host chad hasty's uh show this morning being thursday uh governor abbott joined to give his thoughts on the session and he was asked about he was actually pretty forthright about uh specials and what his plans were something that he hasn't really been of late but the big news is that there will be at least two special sessions there will be the one that we already knew about with redistricting and the ARPA funding

the federal money, $16 billion that the state has to decide what to do with but now we're going to have at least one more and it'll be before that session, which will, the first one will, the first declared one or announced one will likely come between September or October. So there will be another one before then to take up explicitly election integrity and the bail reform, two emergency items that Governor Abbott included before the session, and neither of which got done. So, there will be, it sounds like probably around August that this first one will be, and those will be at least the two issues that are taken up. He, Governor Abbott has, he didn't indicate what other issues he is considering or will put on which

session or if there will be a third session. We have no idea. He's kind of balked at those questions, declining to provide more specific details. But he said those, that will come out soon. And he, he mentioned the fact that he's right now focused on the roughly 1,000 bills but he was asked again whether he will sign

constitutional carry and he said he will um and he said there will be a ceremony for it just that's kind of up in the air so in short uh at least two special sessions and um it'll be for election integrity bail reform and then federal dollars and redistricting got it good stuff bradley um well thanks for covering that for us hayden we're going to come to you now the governor in the news again uh after election integrity failed to pass the house um had some very strong uh words for the legislature on twitter um and then followed up with some action but give us a little bit of an idea of what went on there with governor with the governor and the legislature. Well, speaking of vetoes, Governor Abbott said he would veto Article 10 of the Appropriations

Bill, which is the budget for the state for the next two, I say next two years, it would be the biennium that starts on September 1. But he said he'd veto Article 10, which is the appropriation for the legislative branch of government, which would include the $600 a month payment that lawmakers receive. So lawmakers only make $600 a month. What a shocker. Right, they do. Yeah, it's not because it's I mean, it's a it's the way our system is designed. It's a part time legislature. And they receive a per diem during session of $221 a day. But it's questionable whether this is actually a constitutional decision because the Texas

Constitution dictates that they are to receive $600 a month for their services, lawmakers, and the per diem. It doesn't say the amount of the per diem. I think that's set by the Texas Ethics Commission. But we'll have to see how that plays out in terms of whether the governor actually has the authority to dock their pay, so to speak, because the governor is not the boss, so to speak, of the legislature. He has the ability to veto bills and resolutions. But ultimately, the legislature answers to the constitution and they answer to their own rules. So we'll have to see how that plays out. Absolutely. And there's even questions of,

okay, well, how long would legislators actually be without pay if this were to happen, right? It may not even be very long if any time at all. they're different you know depending on when election integrity it's passed but he's you know threatened it he said he will do it and um that would mean at this point our understanding and most folks understanding is that would mean you know no pay for staffers the legislative budget board the uh reference library there's all sorts of different and we we tried to clarify that but unfortunately we didn't hear back from them yeah and all we know right now is governor abbott said he would veto right all of article 10 so yeah we'll see what happens well hayden thank you for that daniel we're going to come to you we have been long awaiting this announcement from george p

bush he has been hinting at it for a long time. So give us a little bit of an idea of what this announcement was. What do we finally know for sure? So back in October, it was kind of rumored, speculated that George P. Bush was considering a run for the Texas attorney general, even against the current attorney general, Republican Ken Paxton. So that rumor had been circulating, and I think he kind of doubled down on that later, and then he was still considering it. And then, surprise, surprise, a few weeks ago, he said that he was going to have an announcement,

and last night at his campaign kickoff, he announced that he was running for none other than Attorney General. We're all shocked, aren't we? Yes. After going on live radio and hitting the Attorney General Ken Paxton repeatedly, it's shocking that he would choose to challenge him in a primary. Yeah. Yeah.

So not a huge surprise there, but it is going to be an interesting race that you have, you know, two statewide elected officials now running on the same ticket. I don't know if Attorney General Ken Paxton has officially filed to run or officially announced his campaign, but it's presumed and by all indications he is. So it's going to be a fun race. What's the, yeah, tell us why. Give us some of the context for this matchup. So some of the context, you knowup so some of the context you know again this goes back to october uh at the end of september beginning of october right then

you saw some drama unfold in the attorney general's office to say the least you had about eight top senior officials in the office uh raise the alarm, blow the proverbial whistle, so to speak, and raise allegations against Attorney General Kent Paxton for using his office, you know, for the abuse of office and bribery, criminal misconduct. So they reported this to the FBI, to the Human Resources Department in the OAG. And yeah, so there was a lot of drama there, lots of kind of scandal that's just been kind of unfolding since then. There's been a whistleblower lawsuit since several, actually all of those whistleblowers were eventually pushed out of the office. Either they resigned or were fired. And so some of them actually filed a

lawsuit against ken paxton and now that's kind of ongoing it's quite the drama yeah good stuff so what you know what big factor what big name is kind of hovering over this race right now i think the big name is a name that republicans still love and up to, even though he lost the last presidential election with Trump. Yeah. What's going on? Who is it? It can remind me. I can't remember.

Donald Trump, actually. Donald, oh, okay. Yeah, Donald J. Trump. Doesn't he live in Florida now or something? I think he lives in Florida or maybe he moved to New York or something. I don't know. I can't keep track of it. Yeah.

But the attorney general, or not the attorney general, the land commissioner who's running for attorney general, George P. Bush, did tweet out last week that he had both of the candidates, but he was going to weigh in on the race and endorse one of them. So it'll be interesting to see which way he goes, because that will be kind of an influential endorsement. Kind of. Yeah, kind of. I mean, it's still like two years down the road. Will people still care about Trump then? Probably, but it's still two years away. I think only so much that the attorney general has to do with the legislative session. But literally, we're three days removed from the session.

And we already have. We're less than a year. Well, okay. Well, it actually depends on when redistricting does. They might push the primary election back. Yeah, but it's. A year and a half. It does feel like 2020 still doesn't.

The primary though is in about a year. Yeah, a year. Yeah. But regardless, we are just several days removed and we're already into campaign season. Speaking of campaign season and Trump and endorsements. Wow. It's a trifecta. I know.

We have quite the transition. What happened with the governor and Trump this week? Well, Governor Greg Abbott nabbed the coveted endorsement of the former president. He is running for re-election, 22, Greg Abbott is. And the two have talked a lot. The whole time Trump was in office. Are you in on these phone calls, Brad? You, Trump, and Abbott sitting around?

Yeah, I'm secretly recording them all, you know. But they interacted quite a bit when Trump was in office, you know, whether it was on border stuff, whether it was on foreshadowing, whether it was on coronavirus orders, anything like that. So they have a somewhat of a history and Donald Trump in his release, he said, no governor has done more to secure the border and keep our communities safe than Governor Abbott. He further said that Governor Abbott will continue to be a great leader for the Lone Star State and has my complete and total endorsement for re-election. So not very ambiguous there. He's clearly backing one horse and Governor Abbott is facing right now two primary challengers, former state Senator Don Huffines and the conservative humorist Chad Prather. Huffines, since he jumped in the race, has really hit Abbott on mainly one issue. Um, and it's the border, uh, Huffines has, has criticized Abbott for not securing it, not doing what he can to build the

wall. Um, you know, all these various things. And that is clearly something that, um, you know, Trump cares about. Obviously that's one of the biggest reasons that he got elected in the first place. And coincidentally, probably not coincidentally, Hayden will talk about this in a second, but just before, literally hours before this endorsement came out, Abbott declared a state of disaster on Texas' border counties because of illegal immigration. So, I think, you know, you can read between the lines and see that those two things are at least somewhat related. But that is going to continue to be a huge issue in this gubernatorial race and, you know, expect Abbott to continue to address it, I would say. Certainly. And if, you know, if you're a statewide elected official and you

have primary opponents and you're getting hit on something you're going to address it um but you know at the same time it there's there are optics everywhere right even between the current presidential administration and the governor's office here in texas there are all sorts of different combinations of optics that are being taken into consideration but that is really really fascinating we'll see how that uh impacts and huffines came out the statement and called himself was it the true trump candidate yeah so and we've seen you know trump endorsements come and um other candidates who are very supportive of the president also um you know not having that same support and i think

regardless of what happens with which candidate he endorses in the AG race, I think you'll see something similar from the one that doesn't get it. Certainly. Because it remains the most coveted endorsement in the Republican Party right now. Certainly. Well, good stuff.

Thank you for that. Let's go back to Attorney General Ken Paxton here. Daniel, your beat on the Attorney General's ongoing legal problems had a little bit of development this week. Walk us through what's going on. So the Office of the Attorney General, this is the whistleblower lawsuit that I was just talking about. It has kind of gone through the court process. It went to the trial court. The OEG has argued that the Whistleblower Act, which is what the whistleblowers are trying to sue under, doesn't really apply to this particular situation. They have various arguments of why that's not the case.

They tried bringing this argument to the trial court. The trial court in Travis County sided with the whistleblowers to let the lawsuit go ahead and proceed, and so the OEG has appealed that decision to an appellate court. In the appellate court, they just filed a new brief, kind of rehashing the arguments they brought to the trial court with some other new facts as well. Got it. So what new information are you talking about specifically? So the new information, they kind of rely, not heavily, like this isn't like the only part of the argument. They have several different aspects of why they think that the Whistleblower Act doesn't apply to the situation, which the other side obviously does not agree with. But one of the things that's new about the brief this time in the appellate court is they go back and they actually look to some new comments purportedly made by Jeff Mateer,

who was basically the person right below Ken Paxton, his first assistant, who was one of the whistleblowers that kind of raised the alarm back in September, October. And he resigned. He had resigned his position immediately. He's not actually one of the plaintiffs on the lawsuit, but he is obviously an important person in the case. And so according to the OEG, Matier had said under oath, he swore under oath that Paxton had committed no actual crime. What they say is that he said that they didn't actually see any actual crime being committed, but rather they were concerned that if they continued down this path, that a crime would be committed. And so they're saying that since there wasn't any actual criminal misconduct, but it was only a concern about potential misconduct, then it's not applying. We'll see how the whistleblowers respond to that. And again, these are some comments from

Matir. I don't the the full transcript of what they're pulling these quotes from so i don't know what the additional context is but i'm sure that more of that will be said in future briefs good stuff well daniel thanks for covering that for us that is like the never-ending legal battle and it'll only get continued to you know be splattered in the news as the primary wages on hayden let's go to you the long foreshadowed subject of border um disaster declarations give us a little bit of insight into what happened this week well as brad alluded to earlier abbott declared a state of disaster in a number of counties on the border which would

trigger more options in terms of federal funding and other resources. He did allege that the federal government has all but abdicated its responsibility along the southern border, that they're not responding to requests for assistance. And he also touted Operation Lone Star, which began in early March and has resulted in the successful apprehension of more than 1300 criminals. And they've also referred more than 35,000 illegal aliens for CBP custody. And that is the state's effort to supplement border security. And as Brad mentioned moments ago, there have been political developments, and the Abbott campaign is probably taking a good look at those. But this is also definitely in response to something that has been ongoing for a while. And it is another tool that the

governor is using to fight the border crisis. So this isn't necessarily or it isn't something that happened overnight. And he's just now deciding to do something about the border crisis. The governor has been taking steps for the past several months to get this crisis under control. As far as the state is concerned, Senator Huffines would contend that he has not been doing enough and that there is more that the state can do. The way Senator Huffines would contend that he has not been doing enough and that there is more that the state can do. The way Senator Huffines would word it is the governor currently is asking the federal government's permission to do certain things and Huffines argues that he would not and that he would be more aggressive in his border strategy.

But Abbott has been taking steps since March in terms of Operation Lone Star. And there were even some things that he did before then. But this disaster declaration, it's several pages long, lists off a number of allegations against the federal government, including that they are invoking or that they are implementing policies that are contributing to human trafficking and human smuggling, and that they are not doing what it takes to curb illegal immigration and stop incentivizing the illegal entry into this country by all sorts of individuals, and that they aren't picking up the tab and they aren't doing their part to care for unaccompanied minors in federal custody. So we'll have to see what kind of

resources the state is able to secure and how this most recent disaster declaration, whether it's effective in getting this crisis under control. Yeah. Well, good stuff, Hayden. Thank you for covering that for us. Gentlemen, our last newsy topic of the day. Let's talk about session takeaways. So we are done with the 87th regular. It is very clear we'll be back for at least two specials at this point. But I want to talk about what was surprising, what kind of takeaways y'all have, what may not have been surprising, just observations you have contextualized in previous sessions what you know what's your post-mortem what do you have i'm still very mad the census bureau killed my beat i think your beat will be resurrected very soon yeah yeah this fall yeah yeah at least your beat comes back mine is just gone until 2023 it will give me more time to actually learn Red Apple. That's the system that the lawmakers use to actually draw the maps for redistricting. So I'll be able to actually do a little bit more research.

Do they just draw fun shapes? Is that basically how it works? Yeah, basically. It's like, how wild of a shape can you draw? That's good stuff. Bradley? Hmm, takeaways. It's good stuff. Bradley? Hmm. Takeaways. Well, it was a very weird start with coronavirus and all the restrictions that were in place to the Capitol. So, you know, this was the first session that we could be on the floor since we, you know, we launched halfway through the last one. Yeah. And, um, you know, I, I was,

I was here for that to the end of that. And, it was kind of like drinking out of a fire hose. So I can't really compare at least my personal experience with, with this one, but just two very weird things because, um, because of the,

you know, the restrictions and, um, you know, having to not being able to get incredibly good access to lawmakers except by phone. Um, it just was very odd. Um, I thought that, well, one of my beats really took off during the session because of the winter storm. Um, you know, something that I was, I had been writing on for a while and just it was kind of

obscure i mean it's texas the biggest energy producer in in the country but it was it's not something that people really think a lot about and then all of a sudden it was and it was on the trending page for a good two weeks yes yes yeah minimum it was quite the quite the story yeah so um that was that was fun that was interesting it was exhausting but um it was worth it and well not that the storm wasn't but you know the covering it afterwards was and i i enjoyed it um it was nice getting to be on the floor and really experience what session is. And that was towards the last half of the session. But yeah, it was just it was an interesting situation.

And well, I guess we'll see. Barring another pandemic in two years, we'll see what that's like. Yeah. Don't yet. Everyone knock on wood after brad said that well i think to to give you a shout out of during that winter storm there were moments where you were literally typing articles on your phone because of that that was the only way you could get things done and you know all y'all were here at the office in one capacity or another camping out

and doing the job regardless of whether or not there was you know um power back at your place and water and um it was quite the quite the ordeal but y'all absolutely killed it during that and you're right it's very funny that your beat that we made fun of you for of how boring it was all of a sudden became i kept telling you guys how important it is we know it's important but it doesn't It's central to literally everything we do. Yes. You cannot get around energy in modern day society. It's a pretty powerful subject.

Oh, my God. Unreal. Absolutely unreal. But Daniel Hayden, what were your real takeaways? Well, this was my first session. And, well, it was my first session working in Austin. So a lot of the lessons I learned were basics about how the Capitol works and how Austin works. And one of the things that surprised me was, you know, the media covers a lot of floor fights. And I think based on,

you know, Hollywood portrayals, things like that, maybe we just picture politics as this endlessly adversarial environment where everyone's at each other's throats all the time. But what I was surprised to see is how close legislators are with one another, that they often work together for better or for worse. They are oftentimes friends and they work across party lines. So that was interesting to see how it's not always, not everything's controversial. It's not always, they're not always arguing back and forth about everything. And a lot of what we see on the floor is as heated as it gets. And I'm excited to continue to learn more about how all of that works. But that's what interested me the most about this

session. The dynamics of the legislators. Yeah. It's also hard to you know you can sit through as many trainings as as you can try and learn about how things happen when things go down but it's at least for me there's no substitute for going through it right and um you know having to think on your feet and figure stuff out as you go. Um, you know, that's, that's something that you can't really get in the interim at all. And so, um, that was another big takeaway for me. I like it. Daniel. I think one of the things that I enjoyed learning about the most is the difference in procedure between the house and the Senate and the house.

You have a very by the books following the rules, actually having rules. And you have some more political dynamics with the Speaker of the House being elected by Republicans and Democrats, and that will affect things. And then in the Senate side, you have Lieutenant Governor who has a lot of say about what comes to the floor. And you also have a lot of rules that are not really very ruly. They're a little bit more like guidelines. Yes. And the votes to suspend those rules are utilized often. I think that's where people get messed up, right?

Is you can certainly, there is some just, you know, making it up on the fly in the Senate. But a lot of it is, you know, the lieutenant governor wielding his majority and saying, okay, guys, collectively we are going to vote to suspend the rules right now so that we can take up whatever the heck we want. And that's all set beforehand. Yes. They hammer out what's going to happen. They know. Yeah. Yeah. happen they know yeah yeah and i think also like you know we wrote about this before session and i didn't realize how how influential it would be but changing it from the what was it two-thirds

rule to the five-ninths or whatever depending on how you do the math yeah that was interesting too to see how many huddles there were like how often everything comes to a halt and they all huddle in front of the governor all huddle in front of the governor or huddle in front of the speaker. Yeah. And they're negotiating. I, you know,

you never quite know what's happening until after it all plays out. But that, that's also interesting how often they stand at ease and, and work things out among themselves before they go back on Mike. One more difference is that, uh, in the Senate, like I mentioned they

generally know how things are going to play out it's it's all pre-scripted um for the most part in the house it's chaos and you know you can enter a day thinking your bill is going to get through and then by the end of it you're left with a heap of ash yeah and um so it's two totally different worlds a heap of ash it was very dramatic it was but it's true oh my gosh it's so true i think your sackcloth out oh lord um i think this session was markedly different from previous sessions particularly in the speakership and you know i think it's fair to say during the Strauss era, but during his five terms, there was very much a, okay, well, here are the folks who are in with the speaker.

Here are those who are not. Those who are in with the speaker have roles of power. They are the lieutenants and you don't mess with them. And if the speaker does not want something voted on, on the floor, if he does not want something passed through committee, it would not get passed through committee. It would not be voted on by on the floor. If he does not want something passed through committee, it would not get passed through committee. It would not be voted on by on the floor and your vote on the floor would determine your loyalty to the speaker. So say an amendment comes up that the speaker couldn't guard against. Well, if you're loyal to the speaker, regardless of what your position on the policy was, you should vote according to your allegiance. And session it was very interesting i think in a lot of our conversations with legislators to see there wasn't that same approach to legislating where

chairman were like well i have this bill in committee and either i want to vote it out of committee or i'm being pressured to vote it out of committee regardless of what what instance it was or what bill it was and so it would get passed right and then it would move on to calendars and then the calendars chairman would sit there and think oh gosh okay well i have these bills in my in my lap they're either going to die with me or i'm going to put them forward and there ended up being a lot of bills that would have placed pressure on the on the chairman um and seeing kind of the haphazard way in which bills went through and certainly there was some organization certainly there were certain things the speaker did not want brought forward

and vice versa, but it was a very different approach than previous sessions. A little bit more autonomy. Yeah. And whether or not that hands off was a conscious decision of saying, Hey, we're not going to run the house this way this time, or if it was due in large part to just the power you know

invested in the speaker being more in the members um there are two schools of thought there and you know i won't i won't side with one or the other here but that was very apparent as well the speaker also threw his weight behind several slates of legislation you know the the ercot electricity stuff um and then the uh well the criminal justice slate and then the criminal justice slate, and then the healthcare slate. And so that's where, from my conversations, that's where the speaker really spent a lot of his time and political will. Well, telehealth was the only policy mentioned in his end-of-session speech,

or maybe there were a few others. There were a few others, yeah. But it was one of the most prominently placed mentions in his cyanide speech yeah well it was it was a low number too it's a priority number i think it was hp4 um and so it's uh you know obviously that signifies high priority for the speaker himself certainly um well gentlemen thank you so much for for jumping in on all of that with me today and informing our readers. Y'all are awesome. Folks, thanks for listening, and we will catch you next time.

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