The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - June 9, 2023

Episode Date: June 9, 2023

Get a FREE “Fake News Stops Here” mug when you buy an annual subscription to The Texan: https://go.thetexan.news/mug-fake-news-stops-here-2022/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=weekly_roundup The Texan’s Weekly Roundup brings you the latest news in Texas politics, breaking down the top stories of the week with our team of reporters who give you the facts so you can form your own opinion. Enjoy what you hear? Be sure to subscribe and leave a review! Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast. This week on The Texan’s Weekly Roundup, the team discusses: Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick calling Abbott’s plan to abolish property taxes a “fantasy”The lawyers for Attorney General Ken Paxton appearing at the Texas GOP headquarters to criticize his impeachmentBrian Harrison asking Gov. Greg Abbott to add vaccine mandate bans to the special session agendaSen. Ted Cruz criticizing a new law in Uganda that increases criminal penalties for homosexualityAbbott signing into law a ban on child gender modification in TexasThe replacement for the state’s Chapter 313 school district tax break programA slate of new public safety laws that cracks down on street racing and “rogue district attorneys”The journey of bill to expand police records disclosures to the governor’s deskThe Legislature’s market reforms to the state’s ERCOT power grid before the sweltering summerA new alternative to the Texas Association of School BoardsTwo Houston women sentenced to a decade each for drug trafficking and conspiracy

Happy Friday, folks. Senior Editor Mackenzie DeLulo here, and welcome back to the Texans Weekly Roundup podcast. This week, the team discusses Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick calling Abbott's plan to abolish property taxes a fantasy. The lawyers for Attorney General Ken Paxton appearing at the Texas GOP headquarters to criticize his impeachment. A Texas lawmaker asking the governor to add vaccine mandate bans to the special session agenda. Senator Ted Cruz criticizing a new law in Uganda that increases criminal penalties for homosexuality. Abbott signing into law a ban on child gender modification in Texas. The replacement for the state's Chapter 313 school district tax break program.

A slate of new public safety laws that cracks down on street racing and rogue district attorneys. The journey of a bill to expand police records disclosures to the governor's desk. The legislature's market reforms to the state's ERCOT power grid before the sweltering summer. A new alternative to the Texas Association of School Boards. And two Houston women sentenced to a decade each for drug trafficking and conspiracy. altering summer, a new alternative to the Texas Association of School Boards, and two Houston women sentenced to a decade each for drug trafficking and conspiracy. As always, if you have questions for our team, DM us on Twitter or email us at editor at the texan.news. We'd love to answer your questions on a future podcast. Thanks for listening and enjoy this episode. Howdy folks, Mackenzie here with Brad, with Cameron, with Hayden.

I almost forgot to press start on the podcast for Matt Stringer specifically. So Matt, well, you're joining us from West Texas. We appreciate you jumping on. You'll be working for West Texas for a little while here. We miss you in Austin and all your shenanigans. Yeah, it's a lot of fun, but I like being back in the countryside for a little bit. Yeah, some breathing room. Okay, gentlemen, well, let's go ahead and jump into this week's news. Brad, we're going to start with you. If they weren't already, the gloves are now coming off and the legislature's dispute over property tax relief. What did the Lieutenant Governor say this week? Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick held a press conference

on Tuesday to dig further into his position on supplementing tax rate compression with a homestead exemption increase. The House passed its compression-only plan last week and then quickly gaveled out in, for them, a one-day special session. It's a deft maneuver to try and force the Senate to accept its plan. It hasn't done that yet. The Senate remains in town and is trying to rally support for its plan that, on top of compression, includes an increase of the homestead exemption, standard homestead exemption, to $100,000. During the presser, Patrick challenged Governor Abbott to a Lincoln-Douglas-style debate on the issue. He further criticized Speaker Dade Phelan and called the idea of eliminating property taxes, quote, a fantasy. It's chock full of

a lot of stuff. Abbott has backed a plan to eliminate the school district maintenance and operations tax rate, which accounts for about half of property tax bills in Texas. Though he's occasionally used ambiguous language when discussing it, specifically saying, I want Texas to be on a path towards eliminating property taxes. What he's meant is eliminating that one component of property tax bills. But that is what prompted the eliminating property taxes is a fantasy comment by Patrick. Both plans would allocate the $12.3 billion in the budget to continue the 10 cent rate compression that was started in 2019. And this would just supplement that. Who's backing which plan and is there any end in sight? So the House's plan would add 16.2 cents of rate compression to the budget.

Backing that is obviously the House, Speaker Phelan. Governor Greg Abbott is backing that one. He has decided to pick that one as kind of a compromise because during the legislative session, the regular session, the House was dug in in favor of its appraisal cap, and then the Senate was dug in mainly against that and in favor of its homestead exemption. So Abbott kind of tried to split the difference between the two and just go with all compression. Also notably behind the House's plan is a former Abbott opponent, Don Huffines, who has been among the most vocal proponents of compression-only reform and literally trying to eliminate property taxes in Texas at all regular session and before then too during his gubernatorial

campaign. But it's interesting to see those two on the same side on this on the flip side is the senate uh the lieutenant governor and in his personal capacity texas gop chair matt rinaldi yeah which i think typically it'd be safe to say you'd expect to see huffines and rinaldi at least on the same side of any given issue. So fascinating that Huffines is now on the Phelan Abbott Texas House team. Yeah. And so Patrick said he will reassess the issue on Monday, kind of where things stand, namely whether to run out the clock on the special session or adjourn sine die and force the governor to reconvene another special session.

Give us a brief explanation of rate compression, homestead exemptions, and appraisal caps. You wrote a great piece this week detailing a lot of these terms used in the debate about property taxes. So I'd encourage folks to go to thetexan.news and read the entire piece. But give us a brief overview of those terms. It goes into a lot more detail than I can go on here, but just briefly, rate compression involves the state using its own surplus dollars to reduce the tax rates on the local level, forcing them down by a certain number of cents on the dollar to use the 2019 one, 10 cents reduction in whatever the tax rate is for your local school district. And then supplements the money that would have gone through property taxes there with state dollars into the school finance system. Homestead exemption is an amount of money taken off the top of a home's taxable value. With the

current 40k homestead exemption for school district taxes, a $300,000 home can only be taxed on $260,000. The Senate wants to raise that to a hundred thousand dollar exemption an appraisal cap which is currently dead and going nowhere um limits the increases in the taxable value of a property year to year currently homes have a 10 appraisal cap meaning that the amount of taxable value of your home can only increase up to 10% each year. Now that's different than the market value. You're going to have two different values on your appraisal notice. Currently, or sorry, during the regular session, the house wanted to have that down to 5% and

extend it to all real property. Like I said, currently only homesteads benefit from this. So that's a brief overview, but go check out that piece if you want more details on it. Awesome. Thank you, Bradley. Hayden, Attorney General Ken Paxton's attorneys came out swinging at a news conference this week. What did they have to say? We attended a news conference at the Republican Party of Texas headquarters right down the street from our offices, at which the attorneys for Ken Paxton, who is facing 20 articles of impeachment, criticized the process by which Paxton was impeached and said the charges are baseless. Tony Busby is one of the lawyers who will be defending Paxton throughout this proceeding. He said the articles of impeachment look like they were written by a third grader. And he said, quote, Not even traffic court would accept this foolishness.

The speaker has done great damage to the institutional reputation of the House of Representatives. End quote. railed against the House for asking its members to vote on these articles and said he called them baloney and said he was embarrassed that Paxton was bound over for trial on these charges. He said that he hopes they are dismissed summarily, but if they do in fact go to trial, he is prepared to call up to 66 witnesses in the attorney general's defense. There was another lawyer for Paxton at the news conference. Dan Cogdell also said that he wanted to see a fair process and he wanted transparency. He made clear that he is not on Paxton's legal team because he agrees with Paxton politically, but because he wants to see fairness done in this process.

And the importance or the significance of 66 witnesses, correct me on my numbers here, information that they gained from their interviews. But 15 witnesses were interviewed and I believe Harden, the attorneys that has been hired by the board of managers, disputes that they only considered the evidence from those 15. I'd have to go back and look at his statement, but they also probably looked at documents from others as well, but directly interviewed 15 witnesses. And so the 66 then is Paxton's team going forward and saying, hey, we'll bring our side forward and we're not scared to interview people. It's kind of the statement that's being made there as witnesses. And they highlighted that the trial in the Senate is going to be very different than the process in the House. None of the House members interviewed witnesses directly, at least not part of a formal proceeding. That was all done indirectly through their investigators. So 66 witnesses, definitely more than the House interviewed through their

investigators during this process. Busby and Cogdell, like you said, are high profile attorneys here in Texas. Tell us a little bit about their background. Busby is a high profile figure in Houston. He ran for mayor against Sylvester Turner and another candidate in 2019. He advanced to a runoff, but then lost to Turner pretty handily. I believe the vote margin was 57 to 43%. Turner won that with a comfortable margin. And Dan Cogdell, I remember yesterday, I did not realize he was not announced beforehand to be one of the attorneys. When he approached the microphone, I thought, wait a second, that's the guy who represented Clive Doyle at his trial. And Clive Doyle was one of the surviving Branch Davidians, David Koresh's sect there in Waco. He survived the Waco siege and Cogdell represented him at his trial successfully. If memory serves me, he was acquitted. So Cogdell is also a high profile attorney here in Texas. Did these lawyers foreshadow how they might defend Paxton against impeachment in the Senate? They said that they would call the 66 witnesses and said that they wanted transparency in the

process. One note in the news conference that I thought was interesting is they said the trial shouldn't happen necessarily as early as the Senate says it will happen, which currently the trial is scheduled to happen to begin by the end of August. And they want to set the rules for the trial on June 20th. Busby said that that might be jumping the gun a little bit because they have a lot of evidence that they want to get through and they want to be thorough in their defense of Paxton, even though they're hoping the charges are dismissed out of hand. They did show the famous tile countertops that have become almost a comical representation of this case because the investigators refer to these countertops as granite and these

are part of the bribery charge they're saying that nate paul paid for paxton's home renovations as part of a bribe for all of this favorable treatment that he is alleged to have provided to paul in exchange for these goods and services and the the countertops have become a symbol of the defense of paxton saying that they can't even get the small detail right. How are they going to get these big details? They want the public to believe that they are correct on the 20 articles of impeachment when they weren't thorough enough on this small matter, which is the argument that they're making. And then they said that Paxton never made motions for a continuance in his securities fraud case and that the delays were out of his hands. He did make, Cogdell pointed out that he did make motions per his right as a defendant in a criminal trial, but there were no motions for a continuance to produce unnecessary delays in the case. But then Hardin came out with a

statement on Wednesday evening refuting much of what was said. He said that the House members were given several days to review the transcript of the testimony and that he sort of mocked the statements that they made and said that people should go watch My Cousin Vinny and the opening statements in My Cousin Vinny as a reflection of Cogdell and Busby's arguments. So not particularly responding to the substance, but just kind of ridiculing them for having this press conference at RPT headquarters. It's going to be fascinating to watch lawyers take over the legislature in this way, not the ones elected. To be fair, there are many lawyers elected to state office. But to watch a trial go down in this way with high profile lawyers that a lot of Texans are familiar with, either geographically in certain parts of the state or just because of the previous clients they've represented. These are very high profile folks who will be battling it out with rhetoric. And to your point, Hayden, there will be a lot of these statements

flown back and forth between the teams, so to say, which will be interesting. So, Hayden, thanks for your coverage. Matt, we're coming to you out in West Texas. A bill seemingly disappeared after it passed both houses of the Texas legislature, but after catching lots of attention as an explanation was finally given regarding what happened to the bill and where it is now. Give us the rundown. Representative Joe Moody, who's an El Paso area Democrat, filed legislation, carried strong bipartisan support reforming the public information laws surrounding certain police records. deceased individuals or records pertaining to living people who consent to the records being released to be released when a request for public information is submitted for them. Now, the bill caught broad spread attention after it passed both chambers because for some reason, days started going by without Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick signing the bill to show the Senate had passed it. Without his signature, the bill couldn't proceed to the next stage of the legislative process,

the governor's desk, where the governor can either sign it and it will go into effect as law, or the governor could veto it. So it sort of fell into this black hole state that was unexplained, thus catching a lot of the public and media attention. Finally, at a press conference this week, Patrick explained where the bill was, saying he had learned there was a deal cut on the last day of the legislative session between the House and the Senate to each pass a bill that the other chamber wanted. The Senate passed House Bill 30, which is the bill the House wanted. And Patrick said that the House had agreed to pass a Senate bill. He couldn't remember which one it was. But after the House passed HB 30, or after the Senate passed HB 30, the house then refused to honor their side of the bargain and pass the bill that the Senate wanted as part of the deal, breaking their promise. Patrick said this caught his attention as he was signing bills.

So whenever he got to this one in the stack, he set it aside to quote, see what it was about. Now, I guess it took him a number of days to find out what it was about. And that's what started really catching the attention because you typically don't see a delay after a bill is finally passed for it to take the chamber's head, either the speaker for a House bill that passes the House or the lieutenant governor for a bill that passes the House or the lieutenant governor for a bill that passes the Senate. And so during the press conference, he said that not to worry about it. He always intended to sign it. He was just waiting to see what it was about and I guess learn more about it. And sure enough, later that day on Texas Legislature Online, it showed that the bill finally received his signature and is now on its way to the governor's desk to review. So it was definitely a legislative saga worthy of a schoolhouse rock like explanation. I love it. It's a great piece for those who are curious about some of the

inner workings of the legislature to go read at the Texans. So Matt, thank you so much for your coverage. Cameron, we're coming to you. This story gained a lot of traction online. You're a very online type of dude also. You know what's trending on Twitter. This is just something people should know about Cameron. He just knows what's going on.

I just like to know what's going on. You're right. There's some people that are in the political sphere that are terminally online. Yes. They never leave. Yes. I touch grass. Yes.

I touch grass. Cameron does like to bike and hike and do outdoorsy type of things anyway. But that's very true. You're not chronically online. You're just very tuned in. Yeah. You're very aware. Although you weren't aware of the tiger shark video I told you about.

Well, I'm not on TikTok. Yeah. Well, this was on Twitter. This was on Instagram. This was on Facebook. I'm sure it was everywhere. I'll show it to you. Maybe we can talk about it later.

We'll talk about it later. I have a story for our Twitter maybe. Yeah. This is a little foreshadowing of our Twitter section for sure. But Cameron, this story gained a lot of traction online due to the confusion that stemmed from this law itself in Uganda. Tell us about what went on with Ted Cruz and what does this Ugandan law even do? Yeah, so Ted Cruz posted a Twitter thread last week condemning this Ugandan law that would imprison an individual who commits the offense of homosexuality. And the person convicted would be

convicted for life. And a person found guilty of aggravated homosexuality, they'd be subject to, this is in the law, suffered death. And so the confusion online with the Twitter thread and with many of the other outlets that were reporting on this was with the term aggravated homosexuality. It took me a while to actually track down this bill. I had to do a lot of digging because a lot of the other outlets, they were reporting on other reports on other reports. I wanted to get my eyes on the actual law that the Ugandan parliament had passed. So as many were reporting being gay in Uganda is still penalized under Uganda's constitution. This new law and the terminology of aggravated homosexuality is defined in the bill as someone who commits an act to a

child, to someone with mental illness, or is under the influence, or is a relative of the victim. So that just gives some context to that term that was being thrown around and causing a lot of the confusion. And Cruz, he was not alone coming out and condemning the law. President Biden issued a statement from the White House. Other world leaders also tweeted similar things. But a lot of the online fodder really started once Cruz engaged in a back and forth on Twitter with a pastor where they were essentially exchanging Bible verses with each other to support their sides of the argument. So Cruz, he's been fairly consistent with his views of religious and political liberty.

Just for some additional context, he voted no on the Respect for Marriage Act, and his reasoning for that was it would set the stage for the IRS to target people of faith and deny tax-exempt status. He has also criticized the Supreme Court's Obergefell v. Hodges ruling and called it an overreach of the courts and has said about a lot of these issues that it should be left to the state. So this Twitter interaction we're all seeing is consistent with a lot of the things he's said in the past. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks for your coverage of that.

It definitely made quite a flurry of activity on Twitter. Yeah. It was fascinating. Cameron, we're going to stick with you. Governor Abbott signed Senate Bill 14, the ban on gender modification for children, which will go into effect September 1st. Tell us a little bit about this bill. We've covered it extensively, but now that it's law, or it's about to be law, tell us about its long journey to the governor's desk. Yeah, so just a quick reminder for our listeners, the bill would prohibit doctors from performing surgeries or administering puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to children under 18

for the purpose of gender transition. This bill really was a win for the grassroots conservative groups who have been very vocal about the issue. And what's interesting is we're seeing a lot more of these culture war issues make their way into the legislature. And like you said, it was an uphill battle with this bill as long hours of public testimony there were protests there were arrests there were multiple blocks on the floor by house democrats there was intra-party conflicts over some of the amendments proposed and the language in the bill but it eventually was passed, and now it's going to be making its way into law. What's next with this law? Well, I think we can all expect this bill to be challenged in the courts, but we've seen some similar enforcement actions that

have already been ruled on that might give some insight into what might happen. So the Department of Family and Protective Services were challenged in the courts after Kim Paxton labeled child gender modification as child abuse, and the DFPS was ruled to allow to continue to investigate families and doctors that provide the gender modification interventions. And we've seen Paxson continue to launch investigations into Texas hospitals that have been administrating these types of treatments. So we're sure to see this continue and the challenges coming up in our judicial system. So it's the issue. It's not going to be going away. Absolutely. Cameron, thank you for your coverage. Brad, another bill signed into law this week

includes the property tax break program that will succeed Chapter 313. Tell us about that. In a closed ceremony on Wednesday, Governor Abbott signed HB 5 that will create a new abatement program between school districts and companies. An abatement is a decade-long reduction in the taxable value of a property. It's intended to attract business development in Texas. The new version provides for 50% abatements. I think it was up to, under 313, it was up to 80% abatements. And these new 50% abatements would last over a decade. Eligible projects for those agreements include construction of a new or expansion of existing facilities under the categories of manufacturing, dispatchable generation, natural resource development, technology innovation, and critical infrastructure

facilities. I think it's important also to note that these are agreements between the company and the school district, though with the new version, there are a lot more parties involved. Does this new version solve any of the concerns that a lot of critics of Chapter 313 have had in the past? Well, one segment of critics believes that the entire idea of a tax incentive program is not worthwhile or flawed. Kind of the original sin of the program was just existing, that it was providing these breaks, picking and choosing winners and losers. However, among the legislature, most concerns about 313 that caused it to not be renewed in 21, I think have been addressed, hence why this was signed into law. The new version seems to address the three main flaws of 31313 as cited by legislators last session. It excludes renewable generators,

which accounted for more than two-thirds of all 313 agreements during its 20-year lifespan. That was a hard line drawn by Patrick in the Senate as well as many in the House. Even Abbott as well came out against including renewables. It sets a higher job creation standard and eliminates the ability of ISDs to waive those standards. Nearly every renewable project that got a 313

had the job creation standard waived, frequently promising only to create one or two permanent jobs. Finally, it gives the state, specifically the comptroller and the governor, veto power over these agreements. Under the old version, the governor had no role, and the comptroller and the governor, veto power over these agreements. Under the old version, the governor had no role and the comptroller's role was more ministerial. So overall, I think legislators who were not happy with 313 but not opposed to a similar type of economic development program, their concerns have been absolved here with this.

We'll see how implementation actually unfolds after the law becomes effective on September 1st. There you go. Well, thank you so much for your coverage of this issue from start to finish. Hayden, coming back to you, the governor signed another bill, border security measures into law at a news conference this week. Give us an overview of some of the bills that became law. At the Capitol, Governor Abbott signed a series of bills into law that are designed to bolster public safety, including House Bill 17, the quote unquote, rein in rogue district attorney's bill, which is supposed to keep them from using their power to exercise broad prosecutorial discretion to decline to enforce laws like the Texas Prohibition Against Abortion. There was also a bill, HB 28, that increases the possible sentences for aggravated assault if the victim ends up paralyzed or in a permanent vegetative state. The bill was spurred by two cases in which the victims were left paralyzed and one of

whom later passed away, but the perpetrators were only eligible for a maximum sentence of 20 years. So they would, under the current law now, be eligible for up to life in prison. There were also bills to crack down on street racing and to provide additional funding for rural law enforcement, including a boost for salaries for deputy sheriffs who are notoriously underpaid. So the funding would go to sheriff's department salaries. There were also criminal penalties added for assaulting nurses and other health care workers and a bill to criminalize cutting off one's ankle monitor while on parole or probation, which, interestingly enough, was not a crime before Senate Bill 1004. And then another bill to crack down on catalytic converter theft.

So this is just a roundup of public safety bills that Abbott put into effect with the ceremony at the Capitol, and he was flanked by members of the House and Senate who have carried many of these pieces of legislation. Abbott took some questions from the press afterward. What did he have to say about property taxes and other hot topics? Well, as news conferences generally go, just because you have one topic that was the center of the press conference, reporters will usually carry things in a different direction if the speaker opens it up for questions. And most of the questions were about property taxes. We asked a question about Ken

Paxton's case and whether Angela Paxton would participate in the trial. Abbott declined to answer that other than to say he would leave it up to Angela Paxton whether she would recuse herself. But Abbott did answer some questions about property taxes. Notably, he said that he would call repeated special sessions until property tax relief is delivered for Texans and that he was not interested in obsessing over the process. He said taxpayers aren't interested in that. And Brad already went into detail of the differences between Abbott and Patrick on property taxes, but he doubled down on his positions and said he's prepared to take however much time it takes. There you go. Hayden, thank you so much. Matt, coming back to you, a state representative is calling on Governor Abbott to

add a comprehensive ban on vaccine mandates to a special session call this year. Some legislation banning mandates did pass during the regular session. But why is this lawmaker saying the legislature needs to go further? Representative Brian Harrison, who's a Republican from Midlothian, is asking for legislation banning all vaccine mandates, including by private employers, to be added by to a special session call this year, whether it is a subsequent special session after the current one or whether or not Abbott could amend the current call. Harrison notes that a federal vaccine mandate through CMS, which is the Center for Medicaid Services, was recently lifted and that that mandate had provided for type of protection for religious or conscious objections. With that gone, he notes that nurses and medical staff may be fired for refusing the vaccine now, highlighting the importance of passing new laws. Comprehensive legislation addressing vaccine mandates and emergency powers has failed to

pass the Texas House during the past two sessions, this session and the previous one. But this session, the legislature gained the most ground by passing SB 29 by Senator Brian Birdwell, which bans local governments from implementing local vaccine mandates or closing businesses, et cetera. However, it does not curtail state agencies or private employers, for example, from implementing something such as a vaccine mandate. Harrison had strong words for the House failing to fully prevail on the issue without comprehensive legislation for the past two sessions in a row and praised Abbott for adding the issue to one previous session call and for protecting people from mandates via past executive orders. Abbott has signaled he'll add more issues to be addressed by the legislature this year after

property taxes and border security is addressed, but hasn't mentioned whether or not this is an issue he would take up. There you go. Well, Matt, as always, thanks for your coverage of that issue. Bradley, the legislature passed a number of power grills, power grills. Oh, my gosh. I just am hungry for some hamburgers. are you firing up your power grill for some barbecue power grill i've got some extreme cooking going on there power drill i don't know what i was thinking you were combining power grid and power or your grid and bill basically was what was going

on i think oh my goodness i'm gonna blink a few times before I read more. Brad, the ledge passed some power grid bills. Do you know about them? I might know something about them. Do you know about them? It's how my mom talks. She goes, do you know about them? Give us a rundown.

Well, there were no grills in the making of this story. Was this the best intro I've ever given you? Now, yes. Okay, good. Now I really want to spend all weekend grilling. I realize also grills are a sore spot for you living in the city of Austin, which we don't have to get into. I don't live in Austin anymore.

That's true. Yeah, I have a grill. Cameron, sometimes you talk not into the mic, and then our listeners can't hear you. What's the deal with grills in Austin? Now Brad will get on his soapbox. If you must. Back when I lived in an apartment,

I brought my grill down from Cincinnati when I moved here, but I had to get rid of it because my apartment complex would not let me have it. Propane or charcoal? Propane. Well, any grill was not allowed, but fire hazard or something. Nonsense. it because my apartment complex would not let me have it propane or charcoal propane because well any grill was not allowed but fire hazard or something nonsense uh but that was a city regulation hence the disdain for the city of austin on uh on prohibiting grills so interesting

yeah now that we got that out of the way the uh power grid bills that passed this session. There were a number. Governor Abbott actually signed a handful of them this week, but there are multiple others awaiting his signature. Probably the most notable is the PUC sunset bill. SB7 was one of the bigger bills towards the end of session on power grid stuff. There was a lot in it. That was the one the Senate basically tacked onto the PUC sunset bill to make sure it gets across the line. It includes the $1 billion netted performance credit mechanism program. That was a big point of contention between industry members, generators on one

side, industrial users of electricity on the other. But that was passed in the PUC sunset bill along with a new ancillary service market, which is just a segment of generators set aside to kick on when conditions get tight and they trade electricity on something that is a market that is different from the wholesale or cop market that we normally think of when we talk about this it also includes a kind of requirements um i know there are some such such as those at TPPF, that wish it was stronger, more stringent, but it does have a firming requirement in there

that requires these generators to either supplement their main generation if it goes offline with backup generation or purchase electricity from elsewhere and to fulfill their commitment to power however much they have, to supply however much electricity they have promised to the grid. That is mainly aimed at wind and solar, which ebb and flow with the intermittence of the weather. And then a fourth aspect of this was the

study on cost allocation. That's something that Governor Abbott called for back in July 21. Cost allocation of reliability to renewables, specifically that when they don't perform, the cost incurred by the state

to bring on these ancillary service backup generators should be allocated to the renewables who, in the eyes of Abbott and others, cause the unreliability of the grid. additionally there was the Senate's $5 billion power grid or natural gas plant loan program that was passed that was we talked about HP5 earlier that was kind of the piece that the Senate got through the House in exchange for the chapter 313 replacement

to go through also included is a ban on hostile nations from connecting to the ERCOT grid, whether it's through an individual associated with them or through a company associated with federally declared hostile nations. And then finally, there is an aspect of transmission allowance, specifically the PUC establishing a program to help utilities finance transmission lines, which gets electricity from the point of generation to the point of consumption in the population centers. So it's very costly. This should help with that. overall you know you can real there's more details on this in the article that

i wrote but overall this none of this really will become effective or truly felt by the time the summer hits the summer heat and so uh grid regulators are very concerned about the uh states the ercot grid's ability to to meet demand with dispatchable supply. And so they've issued the warning that we're going to be relying on wind and solar, wind especially when the sun goes down in the hot July and August heat. So we'll see how it goes, but a lot more reticence this time, this summer than last summer. Also, is it just me or has it been relatively cool considering the time of year it is?

Yeah, it has been. Okay. No one else has any opinions about this. Cameron, I know you're, you're, you're,

you're new to the block, but I was hoping it was going to be hotter sooner. Yeah. It feels like it's very, like I went home to, to Arizona to long story. Well, it's not a long story my brother got engaged it

was awesome saw my family it was like 93 degrees thank you it was it was kind of long though like I'm bored now it's a really long drawn out story I don't know why I said it was a long story it really wasn't but it was 93 95 degrees there and I honestly was unprepared for it and that has never happened where i've left texas and somewhere else i've been unprepared for the heat but it's like a dry heat out there yes and it is very different and like my everything like my skin dries up everything is weird but i but i usually the heat is still heat right and it's hot here i don't know it just seems very temperate right now hayden i hope you just didn't jinx us what matt oh don't jinx us yeah i hope you didn't just jinx us because

mother nature in texas are probably listening to you right now thinking i'll show her it's june like this is wild mother nature is a fan of the tex podcast, so we got to be careful. That's true. Okay, well, now that I've successfully tangented us, Cameron, a new school board policy and curriculum group has seemed to pop up out of nowhere. Tell us a little bit about why and where this group came from. So the organization, Texans for Excellence in Education, TEE for short, came across my radar after I saw a few state legislators tweeting about it last week. And TEE seems to market itself as an alternative to TASB, which has come under some criticism. And TASB is Texas Association of School Boards, correct? You got it. Boom. Because, well, they've been under the spotlight

because of their transgender student policy and some issues with parental transparency. We saw Carol ISD be a school district whose board voted with the intent to leave TASB after people like Rep. Brian Harrison call out TASB and advocate for school boards to leave the organization. So what are some of the things TE offers that is different than TASB? Well, they propose a comprehensive transparency and ethics policy where they ensure all meetings are recorded and live streamed. School districts will be subject to the Texas Open Meetings Act and Texas Public Information Act. Also, the issue of social emotional learning, which we have reported extensively on and continues to be an issue for parents. TEE says it'll offer a classical social and emotional learning policy that will focus on critical thinking and rational analysis, as opposed to what we have seen with

the increased focus on DEI or diversity, equity, and inclusion models. So we will see if more school boards follow in Carol ISD's footsteps and leave TASB as now there seems to be a viable alternative. There you go. Thank you, Cameron. Hayden, last but not least, two defendants were sentenced to lengthy prison sentences on drug trafficking charges. Your beats are so lighthearted and fun. What crimes do they commit? So these two chicks did drugs in Houston and now they're going to prison for a long, long time. Great. We can go to Twitter section now.

What did prosecutors have to say about this? Anything spicy? Hey, that was the most lax i've ever seen you on the podcast ever the most casual i've ever seen you be okay i'll do my job for real now so two 24 year old women were sentenced to 10 years in the federal penitentiary on charges of trafficking an estimated 2.25 million dollars worth of narcotics such as heroin and fentanyl. They tried to smuggle fentanyl and cocaine through a Border Patrol checkpoint and it was disguised.

The drugs were disguised in order to attempt to evade border patrol protection. They used a convoy of two vehicles and border patrol dogs alerted the agents there guarding the checkpoint that the narcotics were in the vehicle, whereupon they found 25 kilos of cocaine, five kilograms of fentanyl and 255 grams of heroin. And so the case went to, did not go to trial. They both pleaded guilty and federal prosecutors went over some of the details of those crimes, including the police dogs. Wow. You did your job very well. How did they conceal it? Like, how were they trying to sneak it across? I'm not quite sure.

I think usually it says here that they were disguised. This is the part of the news release that they published. They, quote, disguised fentanyl concealed in the front and rear bumpers of her Chevrolet sedan, end quote, which they will hide them in different parts of the vehicle. Yeah, I've seen some crazy videos of how they try and sneak the drugs across. Yeah. It's wild. Like fake fruits and vegetables.

We covered a story once of them trying to smuggle drugs in an onion shipment. Wow. So they will. I forgot about that story. Use all kinds of methods to try to get stuff across the border. Onions. I never thought the word onions would be a headline of ours. And yeah,

there you go. Okay. Well now we will move on to the Twittery section. We're going to save yours for last Cameron. Cause I have a lot of thoughts about. That's why I put it in there. Yeah, exactly.

Thank you. Matthew, why don't we go to you? Tell us, I love how you oftentimes have the Texas parks and wildlife department in your That's why I put it in there. Twitter and looks like they've acquired a few new parcels of land around the state for some new state parks, including their latest acquisition, which is a 17,351 acre powder horn ranch, which is one of the, they say one of the largest remaining tracks of unspoiled coastal prairie land in the state says that a coalition of conservation groups helped make the purchase possible and that

the new state park should be opening soon. They also listed one, two, three, four, five other new state parks that are going to be opening up around the state. And so I'll retweet the link and should be an interesting little read about some new wild, new wilderness, new lands for Texans to go explore. I love it. Awesome. Bradley, what do you have? So this week was quite the week in terms of sports news. Lionel Messi, arguably the greatest soccer player in the world. Is that how you say his name?

Yeah. Lionel? Yeah. Not Lionel. No. That's the Americanized version. Again, you boys keep me educated. Yes.

So you're welcome. I'll educate you on something else after this. This is the PGA and Liv merger. Okay. I saw, was it McElroy saying something about this this week? Rory McElroy? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It was interesting. I don't know that much about it.

I didn't see what he said. He said something along the lines of, oh, dang it. I don't actually, I'm going to butcher this. And then you're going to go watch it and you're going to fact check me. And then it's going to be a conflict between us. So embarrassing. Yeah, it will be. He was basically just talking about it because he declined to go. Like money was thrown at him and he declined to go to live. Right.

Yeah. So he was talking about that. And a reporter asked him if those offered. Contracts with live should be made whole by the PGA. I believe that's what they, what he asked. And I think McElroy, I think Roy said like, yes, but also it's not really, he like answered, but declined to answer at the same time.

But I don't know enough about the negotiations to get into it. I was going to ask you or my brother-in-law, but it was fascinating. Well, I guess we'll get into it now. gonna ask you or my brother-in-law but it's fascinating i guess we'll get into it now yeah bring it on so a couple years ago a the pga is the professional golf association it's the um the governing body for professional golf and it has existed without competition for decades i'm not sure when it was created, but it's been around for a long, long time. And players are paid through the PGA,

both in winnings for each tournament that they win, but also rankings and all this stuff. It's very complicated. But that's what has been running professional golf for years. But a couple of years ago, the Saudis started their own competition for the PGA, which is called LIV. I'm not sure what the acronym stands for, but it was run by, oh, what was his name? A former professional golfer who is kind of a black sheep of the golf community. But they started just throwing wads of cash at these golfers,

including Phil Mickelson. He went over there. He's kind of on the tail end of his career. Dustin Johnson, one of the great... Oh, wow. Yeah. Greg Norman is the guy that was the CEO and commissioner of LIV Golf. And so. Liv has just their strategy has been just to throw all this Saudi oil money at these golfers.

Yeah. Get as many of them as they can. They got some pretty big names. It's huge. Johnson. Obviously, like you said, Phil Mickelson's Brooks Koepka, who just won. Yes. Just won the Masters.

But while this has happened, all the players who went over to LIV were banned from PGA events. Masters is different. That's why. It's run by its own thing. That's why. LIV players could play in that. But the question, the PGA was putting in a hard stance on don't go over there um stay loyal to the pga rory was one of the big proponents of the pga along with tiger woods

apparently tiger turned down to close to a billion dollars from liv to stay with the pga now he does not need the money yeah but you're seeing some of these older guys like Phil Mickelson going and cashing in with LIV. You're seeing younger guys who maybe aren't quite good enough to make the PGA going over to LIV to make a lot more money and actually have a professional career. So it's been just basically a standoff for a long time between these two organizations and neither was really giving in nobody really watched

the LIV at least not that I know of I certainly have not I'm just I just watch the majors I'm not a religious golf watcher but it's interesting to see and they announced this week a merger between the two the PGA CEO announced

it and wrote a letter to the players and people like McElroy and others who did not take the money and stayed loyal with the PGA are rightfully upset. Yeah. Because all these players are likely that left for LIV

going to be welcomed back in. Now they might have to pay a fine. We don't know the details on that yet. We don't know the details on the merger itself other than the the um saudi official who is running liv and runs the whatever their investment fund is that they have uh will be the chairman of this whatever this new thing is oh really yeah and the pga ceo will be ce it. Okay. So they both will have a say in this, and I assume that it's going to be a wash with Saudi money, because that was the competitive advantage of this new competition league. And so it's just going to be very strange to see how this unfolds. We don't know how much fallout there's going to be, what the actual payout from the Saudi government is.

I think overall it's probably good for golf to have all of its stars on the same field, on the same course. But there's a lot of people that are very upset wow because i knew i'm it's all coming back to me now because i remember a while ago a friend of mine was trying to tell me about all the money that was being poured in by saudi and i i don't even remember all the details but that's crazy and mackleroy i didn't i didn't say this because i wasn't sure what it was in context to because he had said like this will be good for golf. He must have been talking about the merger is what he was saying. Like he said it this week.

Probably. Yeah, I think I think it was this week. But anyway. Yeah. Fascinating. This is an increasingly deployed strategy by the Saudis. They have now two English Premier League soccer team. Wait, no.

Qatar has one. A lot of these oil-rich Arab countries are buying soccer teams. The term is called sports washing, trying to get more involved in sports. Yeah, like the Premier Leagues of the world. That and specifically

to deflect from the very real problems of these countries on like human rights and whatnot. There's a lot of people in England very mad about it. Manchester City

is owned by one of these. I think they're owned by the Saudis. Oh my gosh. I didn't know that. Yeah, it's either them or the Qataris. Actually, it might be the Qataris.

I don't remember. But then the Saudis also just purchased another English team, Newcastle. And so they're just shelling out money to buy it, to get more investment in all these sports. And now they have golf. No American sports teams, NFL, MLB. Not that I'm aware of.

I do know that American leagues are a lot more strict on golf excluded well this is different because they created a competitor um but there's a lot more restriction on who can own a team right like i know there was discussion about elon musk one time purchasing or bezzos some sports Bezos too and there's a lot more ability of current owners to veto new owners at least as I understand it but yeah this is it'll the creep will keep coming yeah they're gonna try for you know I'm sure an NFL team at some point wow well thanks for that that explainer that was really helpful I feel much more educated again. Hayden, what did you have this week? Earlier, I talked about HB 28, the law that increases the sentence for aggravated assault. And we were able to get a picture of Brandy Todd with Greg Abbott as he was signing this into effect.

And the law, the Todd-Hoglund Act, is named in part after her. She survived just a horrific assault in Stephenville. Slauson said, grateful to see the Todd-Hoglund Act signed into law. It's truly been an honor to work with these incredibly determined families to strengthen aggravated picture with Greg Abbott. And I think it's an incredible testament to someone taking something terrible that happened to them and turning it into something good and embodying what it means to be a survivor. And it was inspiring to see her sit up straight, smiling next to Greg Abbott and have this triumph over what was a horrific and violent attack. And I was impacted by her story. And I think anyone who heard her testimony would be as well. Yeah, absolutely. And I know you've covered a lot of those bills that have made their way through the legislature. So folks, make sure and go read that coverage from Hayden. Cameron.

Yes. The long awaited tweetery that I have been so excited to talk about. Yes. Tell me about this. I'm online a lot. And I'm paying attention to things. This came across my timeline that shark attacks have been occurring in Texas. You don't usually associate sharks in Texas. Yeah. At least I didn't before I came out here. I would have been more prepared.

Does that count the sharks at the Capitol? Ooh. I'm so honest. Peyton just raised his little eyebrows like, that's right. Well, so Texas took the sixth spot in this. 50 states. Yeah, 50 states.

And so there has been 40 unprovoked attacks, shark attacks here in Texas. You know, I was guessing, I was thinking Hawaii's got to be number one. But no, it's California. And then number two, Florida. But you, when I brought this up earlier, you were saying you've gone down some rabbit holes. Major rabbit holes. Tell us about some of these rabbit holes.

I just sent y'all a video. This video went viral and for good reason. I'll let y'all watch it first before I actually... Are we going to describe what we're watching on the video on the podcast that listeners can't see? Brad, I will say this is a video a lot of our listeners probably have seen it. And second of all, it's much easier to describe as opposed to a built-in wall fixture oh my gosh yeah so that folds into a wall bradley you're really digging up really old bones here he he is he brought it up you did that's true okay y'all are really digging up really old bones yeah have you guys seen the video the camera did you just watch i'm on 22nd 23 in the

two minute video it's two minutes long well you just need to see the initial attack of these sharks can you say that again attack just a guy trying to enjoy his kayaking. It looks like he's prepared out there. That kayak is chock full. It's major. Yeah. He's going to be out there for a couple hours. Maybe the shark smelled that.

Maybe it was cooking something. Well, I think the shark, people are saying, experts in the field, biologists are saying that the shark mistook him for a seal or something along those lines. Because as soon as he bit the kayak,'s like this is not yummy but the video is literally this kayaker just going about his business and all of a sudden a shark kind of like how would you describe it launches itself onto the side of the kayak like directly he's just swimming super fast toward the kayak and lifts his head out of the water and tries to take a chomp out of the kayak. It is a wild, wild video.

Well, these marine animals, sharks, orcas, you're bringing up the orcas are attacking ships now. Yeah. What the heck's going on? It's kind of crazy. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's true. I have so many. Yes.

Orcas off the coast of Spain are learning how to capsize boats and have capsized multiple boats at this point. You say that like they're taking lessons. Like they're orchestrating. Someone's training these orcas. One orca did it and then they think the behavior was passed on to the other. Because orcas communicate with each other. It passes down.

Not hereditary, but that they learn behaviors from the other because orcas communicate with each other like it passes down not hereditary but that they learn behaviors from the other orcas and so they are learning it from this from this it's a female orca of course not to toot our horn but she learned how to do it and then passed it on to all the other workers out off the coast of spain yes and they're caps and you can watch videos of these orcas capsizing boats yeah matt have you ever seen the like nature videos i'm trying to think maybe it's like nature on pbs or whatnot but there was this one that was either in antarctica or one of the two poles but there was like a seal on a little iceberg out in the ocean and the orcas were hunting it in a pack. And they get together and they create a tidal wave to try and wash the seal off the ice block. And the seal will wash off and then jump back on real quick.

But, you know, it's something similar to that. Yes, exactly. The orcas are brilliant in their hunting methods. Is the next step sharks with laser beams on their foreheads? No, sharks are too dumb. Orcas are very smart. Thank you. Thank you for getting that. Oh, I was just sharks are too dumb. Orcas are very smart. Thank you for getting that. I was just being like, no, orcas are so smart.

Also, now who's obsessed with animal facts? When have I... I love animal facts. Brad, if I criticized you about it... Wait, what are you talking about? You criticizing me for all of my stupid animal facts. I don't remember your stupid animal facts.

Like the country of Australia losing a war to emus. Which has a biopic coming out, by the way. That's not like a biological fact about an animal. That's like a weird historical event that is... What about the massive continent-wide war between ants going on

beneath our feet? That one got derision from you, too. But Brad, I'm sorry. I will say I will acknowledge my bias against facts that you share. beneath our feet interesting that one got derision from you too yeah that's just everything but brad i'm sorry i will say i will acknowledge my bias against facts that you share as long as we're acknowledging great um but i just sent you guys a video about this ship that's literally sinking in the water with orca or because orcas like a crew had to be rescued because these orcas are like sinking these yachts for sport well after the blackfish documentary all the orcas caught on and like we're getting our revenge

yeah that's probably right are there orcas in the gulf random thought um they might migrate through the gulf but I don't believe yeah they go through the Panama Canal oh my gosh

yeah they can they have there have been sightings Panama Canal. Oh my gosh. Yeah, they can. There have been sightings of pods in the Gulf of Mexico, but they aren't native. So like in Washington state where I'm from, there were two classes of orcas. They were transient and there were resident orcas. And the transient orcas would be the ones

that would come down from Alaska and migrate down to California and vice versa, whereas the native orcas lived in the sound or in the ocean off the coast of washington yes a war it wasn't a clash they would compete for food and sometimes there would be clashes between the clans yeah the transient orcas were usually much bigger because they have to fend for themselves and had more like they were just tougher than the resident orcas who just kind of sit around and eat all the salmon yeah it's really are there still orcas at sea world or that they do away with there are it orcas at sea world but i do believe there is one orca soon i think she's very old, like 90, 100 years old. I could be mistaken who is being released

into the wild very soon. Is its name Willy? No, but I loved those movies growing up. Yeah, I can't find the exact. Yeah, Lolita. Second oldest captive orca

back into the ocean. Let's see how old she is. How old? I'm trying to find it. I wouldn't be surprised if orcas live that long. That's impressive. How old is she? Years. It's been

50 years and she left the wild, so I don't know how old that means that she is but anyways we're 50 yeah she's old oh dang it i turned my slack notifications back on can you hear this okay well folks thanks for bearing with us cameron thanks for choosing a really fun twitter tweetery that i like to talk about you're welcome that was fun it was fun um folks thanks for listening to us blather that is particularly true of today and we will catch you on this next week's episode thank you to everyone for listening if you enjoy our show rate and review us on apple podcasts spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts and if you want more of our stories subscribe to the texan at the texan.news follow us on social media for the latest in Texas politics and send any questions

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