The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - March 12, 2021

Episode Date: March 12, 2021

On this week’s “Weekly Roundup,” the reporters discuss the rescinding of COVID-19 restrictions, public universities’ approach to mask mandates, legislation seeking to address “Big Tech” censorship, a slate of proposed election security measures, Texas democrats decrying the border crisis, the City of Austin seeking to keep their mask mandate, Congress’ latest COVID-19 stimulus package, Planned Parenthood being bumped off Medicaid, and Texas sending the National Guard to the border.

Howdy folks, Mackenzie Taylor here, Senior Editor at The Texan, and welcome to another edition of our weekly roundup podcast. This week, our team walks through the rescinding of COVID-19 restrictions and how Texas reopening compares to the strategies of other states, public universities' approach to mask mandates, ERCOT reform proposals in the Texas House, legislation seeking to address big tech censorship in the state, a slate of election security measures proposed in response to 2020's elections, a lawmaker seeking to abolish abortion in Texas, Texas Democrats decrying the crisis at the border, the city of Austin seeking to keep its mask mandate in place in defiance of the state, Congress's latest COVID-19 stimulus package,

Planned Parenthood being officially bumped off Medicaid, and Texas sending National Guard to the border. Thanks for joining us today and enjoy this episode. Howdy folks, Mackenzie Taylor here with Daniel Friend, Isaiah Mitchell, Hayden Sparks, and Brad Johnson. We are in the middle of all sorts of committee hearings today and taking a break to bring you the news from the week. Hayden, are you ready? I think so. I think I'm ready. This week yeah i think i'm ready this week i'm not so sure this week you're not so sure i like it daniel how did how did it go over the capital taking some

photos it was fun yeah it's actually nice to actually be there and be able to see people in person and take pictures and yeah it's it's a nice change from being locked in an office for two years that's fairly true yes that's a bit dramatic i don't think you were locked in an office for two years. That's fairly true, yes. That's a bit dramatic. I don't think you were locked in the office for two years. But we were under a lockdown for the majority of the time that I've been in Texas. Has it really been the majority? Well, maybe not a lockdown, but a disaster declaration, yes. Yeah, something along those lines. That's true.

Well, we are glad to be coming at it this week. And Daniel is our photographer throughout all of this. So a lot of the photos you're seeing at the Texan are taken by our very own Daniel friend. But Hayden, let's start with you. One of the bigger news stories from the week is that the mask mandate expired. A lot of the COVID-19 restrictions initially, you know, put into place by the state by the governor have been, you know, expired on Wednesday. Give us a little bit of rundown of what that looked like.

Well, this decision was announced last week, it wasn't something that took effect immediately. Governor Abbott decided to make the effective date yesterday, or if you're listening Wednesday. And I want to be clear to anyone who might be listening to this that based on the reaction to Abbott's decision, you might think that he was issuing some kind of mandate that people do the opposite of what they've been doing, which is not true. Abbott has said that we are now going to be able to make our own decisions. And as of Wednesday, that is the case. So essentially now the policy we're operating under is the same

policy we have always operated under prior to COVID-19, which is, you can take into consideration the recommendations that are made, and make your own decision about what is safe for you and your family or your business. So if you want to wear a mask, you're more than welcome more than free to do that. This order does not impinge your ability to do that at all. And if you're a business owner, and you want to require your clients or your customers to wear masks, you have every right to do that under this order. And you may in fact, have people removed from your property if they are trespassing after you ask them to leave because they're not wearing a mask. What this order does prevent, however, is local governments, local counties from instituting their own mask mandates unless there is a threshold that is met in the trauma service area, which is maybe Daniel can explain this a little better,

but it's essentially the state is divided up into different hospital areas. And if coronavirus patients exceed 15% of hospitalizations in a particular trauma service area, the local county can then institute a mask mandate and business capacity restrictions. However, those restrictions cannot be 50% and they cannot institute restrictions on churches, schools and daycare centers. So this order takes us back to how we've handled things like the flu. Everyone, what I mean, and you go back to the beginning of this pandemic, there was never a hand washing mandate. There was never a, you know, cover your mouth when you sneeze mandate. Everyone followed that recommendation or not based on their own personal choice. And that's how masks are now. So we, people are still going to be wearing masks because a lot of businesses

are requiring it. But it's not from the governor's mansion and mandate that people wear masks. Certainly. So and currently there are, you know, none of those hospital regions, none of those trauma service areas exceed that boundary, correct? Correct. So currently there are, as of when I checked today, there have been no trauma service areas that have had coronavirus hospitalizations exceed 15% for seven consecutive days, which is the rule. So there are no counties in Texas that are eligible to institute a mask mandate at this time. Got it. And we saw those numbers go down a couple weeks ago as Texas was freezing over. That was when a lot of those

regions, you know, when you, there's one in Dallas-Fort Worth area, one in Houston, one in Austin, one in San Antonio. There's, I think there's 22 total regions and a good majority of those all declined below the 15% threshold for seven consecutive days during the, during that Texas freeze that week when we, everybody was locked down for other reasons. That was when under Abbott's previous orders, things were starting to open up under that same threshold. So in terms of the disaster declaration, the initial declaration from which Governor Abbott was able to wield these kinds of executive powers, where are we in terms of that declaration?

So that declaration has continued to be signed. He signed it again in March. Basically, he signed that, I think the first one that he signed was in March, I think it was March 13th of last year. And so in order to continue having these executive orders that he issues these regulations, these, or even suspension of certain regulations related to hospitals or nursing licensing, trucking. All the different policies that he has kind of implemented in response to the coronavirus have to be done under Chapter 418 executive orders, which in order to have those declarations continue, they have to be renewed every 30 days. And so he has continued to do that month after month since March of last year and on through today. There's even still one in place now. And I'm sure that part of that is not just so that you have a mask mandate,

but it's also for things like different um, you know, different regulations lifting to, for hospitals, for nursing, stuff like that. Um, there, there's a wide range of policies that he's changed and yeah. Well, and I would imagine, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but this residual rule that if hospitalizations exceed a certain point that local governments can have a mask mandate, I would imagine that the governor has to have a, does that some kind of disaster declaration even for that? Okay. And I don't,

I'm not sure if I mentioned this, but the statewide capacity restrictions are also lifted. So businesses are now allowed to operate at a hundred percent except within the parameters that I discussed. But once again, there, there's some language out there about, well, the people of Texas, they're not going to be following health expert recommendations any longer.

There's nothing in this order that says people cannot listen to the CDC, listen to Dr. Hellerstedt or any other of Texas public health officials. If you want to continue sheltering in place, I mean, you could wear a hazmat suit if you wanted to. There's nothing in this order that pre-prevents that from happening. This just returns us to the same rules that we operated under prior to the pandemic. And the statewide blanket, essentially, is what has been removed. And like you pointed out, private businesses are still,

they still have masks requiring the storage. And once again, that's consistent with a philosophy that governs other areas of the state. And that is people are allowed to do what they want on their own private property. That's just the public policy in Texas. Well, Hayden, thank you for covering that for us. Let's stay on this topic. Daniel, you wrote a piece this week that specifically shows how Texas has responded to COVID-19 and the restrictions that the state has put in place compared to other states. Tell us what you found.

Yeah, so broadly speaking, I think where Texas falls in comparison with all the other 50 states, Washington, D.C., if you want to include that, I didn't in my analysis, but the other states that have Republican governors tend to be a little bit more open, a little bit less tighter restrictions. So Texas has been more restrictive in that sense, but it's been less restrictive than most democratic states, states with democratic governors who have been either praised by liberals or criticized by conservatives for the really extreme lockdown policies like we see in New York and California, Michigan. Notably, there is one exception with that,

Michigan with the mask mandate, in which Texas actually issued a statewide mask mandate before Michigan did. Absolutely. And now how does this compare to, you know, say business restrictions? Yeah, so on business restrictions, there was actually a really helpful analysis done by this organization called MultiState. They do a lot of comparison in other policy areas between state and local governments. this whole analysis comparing the reopening process for different states and how they rate, you know, whether restaurants are open, whether bars are open, whether gyms are open, non-essential retail stores. They have 11 different factors that they consider in doing this analysis, and they've ranked all 50 states, comparing them with an openness score, as they call it. And so with this openness score, Texas, like I mentioned earlier, has fallen way behind

or prior to Governor Abbott's change in his orders that went out effective on Wednesday. Prior to that, Texas was ranked 28th. Now, most of the states that were ranked higher than Texas were led by Republican governors, while most of the states ranked below Texas were led by Democratic governors. So in this scoring process, which has a score from 0 to 100, 100 being the most open possible, no restrictions on anything. And also another factor that they consider also is local preemption or whether a state

will allow local governments to issue orders that are tighter than the statewide restrictions. So most of the – even most of the Republican states that have been more open have allowed local governments to take some steps to force businesses to close and whatnot. And so taking into consideration all of those factors, Texas had ranked or been rated at 62 out of 100 prior to the changes on Wednesday. Now, after those changes, it got bumped up to 93. So a huge difference there. And the reason why it's at 93 and not 100 is because, like Hayden was mentioning earlier, there's still that possibility for local governments to issue stricter restrictions. So that's where Texas is right now. There's a few states that have higher scores, namely Alaska, Florida, and North Dakota that have higher

openness scores. And then right now we're also on the same level as Alabama and right above South Dakota, which is at 92. Got it. So in terms of the mask mandate, possibly the thing that Texans care most about that gets the most traction in terms of social media, where does Texas compare on their statewide mask mandate? So there are, out of the 50 states, there are 11 states that have never issued a statewide mask mandate. Those would be Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Tennessee. And additionally, there have also been several states that have lifted their mask mandates, their statewide mask mandates, before Texas did. And those would be the states of North Dakota, Iowa, Montana, and Mississippi. So those are the states that

have been a little bit more lax on masks. Now, the catch with that, of course, is that local governments have often implemented their own mask mandates. I think in Tennessee, I read something that there was like 70% of the state was covered with mask mandates of some sort. So even if there wasn't a statewide mask mandate, there might be local mandates that require it on a broad scale, lots of major cities. And I think we've seen that in Texas too, prior to Abbott's statewide executive order, kind of in that April, May timeframe of last year when things were really up in the air between the local and state government, there were lots of local governments that were municipalities and counties passing their own mask mandates. Now, under Abbott's new order, localities, even if they go above that 15% threshold, still cannot implement any fines for a mask mandate. Now, of course, we're seeing challenges to that, namely with the city of Austin

that says, no, we're going to keep the mask mandate. We're going to continue to fine. And so there's some butting heads right now. The attorney general has threatened a lawsuit. Maybe by the time this podcast is out, there's actually a lawsuit. I don't know. Brad will be covering that. You just stole all of my thunder. That is literally our next topic. Dang.

Look at that. I didn't realize that was on the agenda. Well, hey, Brad. City of Austin. Who'd have thunk, right? Who'd have thunk? Man, is the attorney general doing anything on this? Well, we don't know Brad. City of Austin. Who'd have thunk, right? Who'd have thunk? Man, is the Attorney General doing anything on this? Well, we don't know yet.

That's true. We shall see. That's true. As Danielle alluded to, the City of Austin, they dug their heels into the sand and is opposing the statewide mask rescission. They are saying they're going to keep theirs in place and they will fight who is saying this at the city uh well one person that said it was councilman greg cassar but the the council itself decided not to explicitly rescind its its uh mask order um on tuesday when they were in session. And so he put out a statement that just said, you know, wearing masks is the safest thing to do,

and so therefore we are going to preserve ours through health code. You know, they argue that they have the authority to do this over, to have authority over the health regulations, health code regulations of the city itself within their boundaries. Now, obviously that provides yet another example of state versus local power, the constant fight about that.

But Mayor Adler backed Kassar's statement later on. This came after, as Daniel alluded to, that Attorney General Paxton threatened the lawsuit. And Adler said, basically, bring it on. And so we're just here on Thursday afternoon. We're awaiting the filing of the lawsuit. I would be absolutely shocked if it doesn't come um i would be also shocked if it's uh you know not out there by the time this podcast goes out um so the attorney general gave austin a deadline of 6 p.m on wednesday to rescind their mandate they didn't

and so we'll see where the chips fall yeah as always the city of the city of Austin and the state of Texas are going to blows. Yep. Nothing new there, but exciting. Shocking. Yeah. Exciting to watch the developments unfold regardless. Isaiah, let's chat with you about public universities here in Texas and how they're responding to Governor Abbott's mask mandate rescission. Specifically, you know, is there an exception built into the governor's order for universities, for public universities?

Mostly, yes. And as always, the confusion comes down to enforcement. Like Daniel kind of alluded to earlier, we've been under this network, this mesh of competing local and state authorities that sometimes aren't always so competing. And there's just been confusion about who's in charge and who's on the other end of the gun when it comes to consequences for not wearing a mask. For most major public universities, and it's probably safe to say most public universities at all in Texas, mask requirements will keep on. So in the governor's order, it says that no jurisdiction may impose a penalty of any kind for failure to wear a face covering or failure to mandate that customers or employees wear face coverings. Is a public school a jurisdiction? No. So that's a little bit of a loophole, but it doesn't, again, say anything about enforcement. What it does do is encourage public schools and colleges to operate according to guidance issued by the Texas

Education Agency, which allows school boards to remove their mask orders or keep them. I thought this was a little bit weird because the TEA oversees public schools like K through 12, but not college. College does have a counterpart in the higher education coordinating board of Texas, and they have issued guidance for health protocols previously, but not since like 2020 for the last semester. So the governor's order just kind of punched it to the TEA. And if you look at the statements of a lot of these schools, like UT, for example, comes to mind, they mentioned that they are going to continue with TEA guidance, which strongly

recommends masks, but at the same time acknowledges that schools are very safe and not the spread centers that many predicted them to be. Right. And again, allows them to vote out their own mask orders in the school board. So which universities are requiring masks at this point? All the major public universities are. So I went through Texas A&M, their whole system's doing it. UNT, UT, University of Houston, and Texas Tech. And so among those, those are the

biggest public universities in the state. And after that, you've got community colleges and smaller public universities, and it gets a little bit uncountable. But all those major public universities are keeping their mass requirements going for at least the end of this semester. However, UNT's president told students to expect a robust in-person campus experience, his words, for the upcoming school year, complete with the full spectrum of on-campus activities. What that will look like, we don't know. But in his letter, he said that he was optimistic about the university's ability to do that because of protocols like the mask mandate. Certainly. So a little bit of that loosening will play in with that for sure. So in terms of noncompliance, right, so if folks don't choose to wear masks on campus, what will that look like and how will that be dealt with?

Again, that's always confused. That's always the big question. So what we're hearing here is we kind of have half answers on a lot of these things from the universities and from different authorities. Yeah. I mean, I think a sharper way to describe it would be that, for one, universities don't want to send out a letter on their letterhead saying, if you don't wear a mask, we're going to, you know, kick you out of school with no refund. And nobody's doing that. But it's couched in rhetoric of we must continue wearing masks together, you know, and behind that, you know, we wonder what fist is in that velvet glove, right? But we've reported previously on how major Texas public universities have built in into their websites,

waste your students to report each other and tattle for health protocol noncompliance. Will you get kicked out of class? That depends on the professor. Depends on the school. Will you get suspended? UT had threatened something like that previously. I think probably for like repeat noncompliance with health protocols, but how often that's been enforced. That's probably been very rarely enforced, but you know,

records aren't kept on how many students are going to expel for repeated. You know, this measurement is just impossible and it depends on the class you're in, depends on the school you're at. All we know is that for the most part, students are going to have to wear masks if they're major public school students're at. All we know is that for the most part, students are going to have to wear masks if they're major public school students in Texas. And that's not going to change until at least the beginning of the 2021 school year. Got it. Well, thank you so much for covering that for us and trying to get into the specifics of this craziness here and sharpen it for our readers and listeners.

Brad, we're coming to you. The Texas House came out with a really a slate or proposal this week of different bills that will address the ERCOT crisis here in Texas. We joke that Brad's energy beach all of a sudden went from this boring beach that not as many folks were interested in reading about to one of the top in the state. Walk us through these priority legislation pieces and what we can expect going forward. Yeah. So as you said, it's every one of them is dealing with a different aspect of the ERCOT electricity grid situation. You know, one of the big things coming into this and the fallout after the blackouts was the realization that, you know, at least a handful of ERCOT board members, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the organization that is essentially the air traffic controller for the electricity grid. A handful of those board members did not even live in Texas. And so right off the bat, House Bill 10, which is the first on the list, requires in-state

residency to serve on the board. It also expands the ERCOT board with five new members. One would be appointed as an at-large member by the lieutenant governor. Another at-large member would be appointed by the speaker and the governor would get three appointments. Two of them would be at-large and one of them would be specifically to represent quote residential consumer interests on the ERCOT board. Each person, most people on the board, they have a specific representation, whether it's, you know, generators or retail suppliers.

So this would be adding one for residential consumers. You know, the second bit, probably the second biggest, if not the biggest issue in this has been the talk about weatherization. Now, obviously, you know, the big part of the problem was that the generation, the energy supply infrastructure was not equipped to handle such frigid temperatures for such a long time. And the governor has added that, fixing that as an emergency item. And there's been a lot of talk about it overall. And so House Bill 11 would mandate that. Generators and other post-electricity aspects of the industry.

You know, you have the gas suppliers that's that's more at the at the other end of this every every point after electricity is generated they would all have to be uh they would have to safeguard to get their infrastructure against less than 10 degree temperatures that would be put in statute and as i mentioned the gas House Bill 14 would require the Railroad Commission, which governs the natural gas stuff, to establish rules for weatherization. And so, you know, that would be, in my opinion, the second or the first tier of these bills. The second tier, one thing I have is House Bill 16, which would prohibit residential consumers from using the wholesale indexed electricity plans, such as Gritty, that has been subject of a lot of discussion.

A person receiving a $17,000 utility bill, that would be prohibited for you and me. Anyone that's not a commercial or industrial consumer. Then another one I have here is that this would be important for the communication, but it's more of an indirect response. House Bill 13 would establish a disaster response council composed of ERCOT, the Public Utility Commission, and the Railroad Commission, and the Texas Division of Emergency Management, basically it would streamline communication from one place to the next. And communication was a massive problem during this. But, you know, I don't – I think this will just be a slight help to that.

Certainly. Are there any other updates, just generally speaking, in terms of this situation? Yes. Well, as we sit here, the Senate Committee on Jurisprudence is hearing testimony from ERCOT CEO Bill Magnus about the repricing situation. Earlier, I was listening into the State Affairs, House State Affairs Committee on that issue. The question essentially boils down to, do we backtrack and change prices of transactions that have already been cleared? Do we go and redistribute transactions that have already been cleared? Do we go and redistribute money that has already exchanged from one hand to the other?

It's more nuanced than that because of the various decisions that were made throughout this process, but it boils down to that, and we'll see what happens. Regardless of what happens, you're going to have winners and losers. The PUC chair, Arthur D'Andrea, said in testimony that he thinks it would be a bad idea and also that he himself does not have the legal authority to do it, to reprice. If the legislature wants to order it, that's one thing. It might withstand lawsuit. He said if PUC does it without the legislature's backing, then they're going to lose a lawsuit and lose very badly. So we'll see where that goes.

I like it. Thank you for staying on top of that for us continually. Daniel, let's talk big tech, certainly something that has been at the forefront of a lot of discussion among Republicans and Democrats federally. Now we're seeing that conversation pivot to the state. Walk us through a bill that was filed this week and tell us a little bit about why it was filed. So this bill is Senate Bill 12. That is one of Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick's priorities. It was filed by State Senator Brian Hughes. And it is also supported by Governor Greg Abbott. He touted it at a press conference with Hughes last Friday. They were talking about big tech, the censorship that has been happening on several social media platforms

like Facebook, Twitter, which really came to a culmination, I think, in January when lots of social media outlets deplatformed President Trump and really limited his ability to send out messages on there following the craziness that happened at the Capitol. And so in response to that, lots of lawmakers, conservative Republicans are pushing for legislation that would try to counter these social media platforms and stop them from being

able to censor. Got it. So in terms of, you know, Section 230, which is something we hear a lot about at the federal level, how does this play into that? And how would it, you know, in terms of protecting big tech, the protections that we have already in place? So Section 230, when people talk about that, they're referring to a portion of federal code that basically provides liability protections to social media platforms and other platforms like that so that they can censor content, especially that is obscene in nature. So whenever there's community guidelines that many platforms have, and that's really protected under Section 230. And so there's been lots of talk about repealing Section 230 as one way around this, but Senator Hughes says that this gets

around Section 230 in a different way, in that the bill would essentially allow individuals who have been deplatformed or censored based on their viewpoint, not because of necessarily the content for other reasons, but solely based on their viewpoint, then they could file a lawsuit against this big tech company. And they could only, the only relief available to them under Senate Bill 12 would be attorney's fees and also being able to get back online, you know, requiring the social media company to allow them to have that platform to share the content that they were trying to share. Got it. So I think a lot of the discussion around this, both at the federal and the state level, has concerned, you know, conservative speech, right? And so what are we hearing in terms of criticisms against this

kind of legislation? What are the, you know, the for and against here, I guess is my question, because, you know, we're hearing a lot of debate among Republicans, some Republicans are for this kind of legislation, others are adamantly opposed. Where are we at in terms of even Democrats and their response to it? So I think, you know, especially among Republicans, and I think Democrats would probably kind of fall into the same kind of split, is that there are people who say that social media outlets are the new public square. They're the new town square. This is a new public space where people can share their ideas, their communications, and have that kind of ability to interact with other people. So they're saying that's where free speech should be protected.

Now, what big tech companies are, social media companies, and their representatives say, no, that whole public square thing is invalid. They point to a lawsuit that just happened in California between PragerU, which is like a conservative media, not media outlet, but media organization where they produce lots of videos and stuff about conservative issues. And they were suing YouTube because YouTube had essentially labeled a lot of their videos as adult content when they're saying, no, this isn't, we're just talking about an issue.

And in the court ruling in the Ninth Circuit Federal Court, the court came to the conclusion that essentially they were saying that YouTube is not a public square, it's a private company. And so this whole argument comes down to, are social media platforms a public square. It's a private company. And so, you know, this whole argument comes down to our social media platforms, a public square, are they a place where the first amendment should apply or does the first amendment protect them in being able to choose what's on their platform or what's not. And so I think that's really what the, the core of the argument is. Uh, and you know, that's going to be sorted out in courts, but right now it's

being sorted out in the legislature. That's where people are fighting. And so it'll be interesting to see if there are other Republican lawmakers who come out from that angle to attack this bill, or if there's a lot more conservatives who see the problem with social media censoring, and they try to come at it in support of the bill. So, yeah. I like it. Well, thank you for covering that for us. Bradley, we're coming to you.

The 2020 election was certainly not void of any conflict or controversy, particularly in regard to election security. We've started to see a lot of legislative proposals come forward to address those kinds of concerns, particularly on the Republican side. Tell us a little bit about seven election security-related bills that were filed this week. Yeah.

Oftentimes, you see a lot of these, the bills that really have a shot of getting through filed in the later points of the session and the period where they can file bills. And that's why we see, as I mentioned, those ERCOT bills filed at this point later in the session and the period where they can file bills. And that's why we see, as I mentioned, those ERCOT bills filed, um, at this point later in the session. Um, but also these election security bills, uh,

that I think all, you know, they have a pretty big backing already. Um, it's, they were all authored by, uh, Senator Paul Bettencourt and they had joint authors,

Brian Birdwell, Lois Kohlkost, Brandon Creighton, Bob Hall, and Charles Schwartner. So that's pretty good backing right off the bat for these bills. Some notable ones stuck out to me are there's one that's a voters must show proof of residency to vote, whether that's a driver's license, state ID, CCW, utility bill.

There's a few other options, but that would be a requirement in statute that there's a few other options but that would be you know a requirement in statute that you know there's a voter id uh mandate there and so you know that's something that conservatives clamor for and have been clamoring for quite often and this would this would uh cement that another one kind of is a reference to something that happened in other states, particularly like Pennsylvania and Georgia. It would prohibit mail ballot signature matching from being suspended. Every county has this thing called a ballot board, and they evaluate these mail-in ballots. They match the signature on the ballots with signature on the voter file. And so this would prohibit local officials from basically suspending that in the stretch of an

election. So that's more of a trying to head something off at the pass. Not really that happened here already, but trying to prevent something down the road. Another one, which will surely get a lot of attention, it requires county administrators to regularly inspect their voter rolls for accuracy and purge voters who are on the roll from it, prevent them from, you know, being registered, you know, whether that's someone has moved out of state or is, you know, illegal alien who happens to be registered. This would require them to kind of upkeep their voter roll. Those are three of the biggest, you know, another one would expedite legal challenges constantly, you know, their lawsuits during elections.

Another one would establish uniform voting hours for every county in the state. And so it's a lot of this effort comes down to trying to create more of a top-down approach, whereas Texas has more of a bottom-up, trying to establish more uniformity, continuity in the system. So these are examples of that. I like it. And these were filed by Senators Paul Bettencourt, Brian Birdwell, Lois Kohlkorst, Brandon Creighton, Bob Hall, and Charles Schwartner. Yep. Awesome.

Well, thank you for covering that for us. Isaiah, we're going to go straight to you. We've seen many different bills filed, specifically aiming to restrict abortion. And this week, we saw one particular bill come forward that had a very strong approach. Walk us through this proposal. Strong is a good word for it. It's very direct. It is a bill from Representative Brian Slayton in the state legislature that would be a total abortion ban. It is the Abolition of Abortion Act in its own text. And of the bills that we've seen aimed at abolishing abortion, it's probably the most direct because it's a total and immediate ban. And it builds in an exception for saving the life of the mother, but that's about it.

Second to this bill by Slayton would probably be the abortion trigger ban, as it's been known, filed by Angela Paxton in the Senate and Giovanni Capriglione in the House. And that's a ban that would kick in if Roe v. Wade were ever overturned. And third after them would be the Pre-Born Non-Discrimination Act, also recently filed, which would ban abortions based on race, sex, or ability. And proponents have called that the first step to a total ban. Got it. So tell us a little bit more about how Representative Slayton's bill would work. It makes an attempt to harmonize a couple of disparate points in Texas law. So in the Texas Penal Code, it starts off like all chapters of code with a section of definitions, one of which is the definition of the word individual. And that defines individuals, including the unborn, starting at the moment of fertilization. But then later on, you know, when it's talking about assault or murder on an individual,

pro-life advocates would say that the unborn should technically count, but the penal code does include an exception for lawful abortions, and that didn't even get added in until 2003, interestingly enough. But Slayton's bill would add a clause to the law that reads, a living human child, from the moment of fertilization on fusion of a human spermatozoon with a human ovum, is entitled to the same rights, powers, and privileges as are secured or granted by the laws of the state to any other human child. So, under that definition, laws against murder and assault and so forth in the penal code would be enforced with the exact same force of law against

the unborn as the born. I like it. Now, this bill specifically references a Supreme Court case. Tell us a little bit about that. It's called June Medical Services v. Russo, and it involved a Louisiana law very similar to the one that Texas passed that later blossomed into the Whole Woman's Health case, which requires abortionists to hold admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. And the court ruled against the law and a very split decision.

But Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a dissent that Slayton's book quotes. And the sentence that he quotes in the bill reads, the Constitution does not constrain the state's ability to regulate or even prohibit abortion. And more on the dissent, I would encourage you all to read it. We've got it linked along with the whole case and the combined opinions of all the justices and everything. Thomas goes into the history of the Roe decision that starts with a decision less than a decade prior that using the 14th Amendment to divine the same right to an abortion in the Constitution. So it's an interesting bit of legal history. And Thomas has, as always, a well-written bit of writing in his dissent on that.

So most of that is quoted in the article in big chunks. But our podcast is pressed for time. So we'll move on to other topics. It's all in the article. Certainly a wonderful piece. And it is worth noting this proposal has been filed in previous sessions by Representative Tony Tenderholt from North Texas. So certainly something that the legislature has seen before.

And last session, it was quite the hearing that was held in the Civil Jurisprudence Committee. So we'll see where it goes this session. And I'm sure we'll be hearing some, you know, some semblance of pro-life legislation and what gets the microphone will be very interesting to see in this legislature with the new speaker. Thank you for covering that for us. Hayden, let's talk about the border. In any new presidential term, there will always be, especially when there's a changing of hands within parties, some drama that goes on as different policies are enacted, particularly in the environment that we're in politically. Tell us a little bit about how Texas Democrats specifically have responded to the border crisis this week. Well, as you know, border security is generally something that is emphasized

by Republicans rather than Democrats, but not lately, because there have been bipartisan groups of people who have sounded the alarm about the activity at the border. Things have not been quiet down south, just to put it very mildly. We have seen record setting numbers of apprehensions and not, and again, this is our favorite word, not unprecedented numbers, but definitely a surge on the border. And virtually, there is debate about whether it's a crisis, but both sides are characterizing this as a crisis. The White House is the only institution I've seen that is saying, well, it's a challenge, but most people are calling it a crisis. And a few congressmen, well, more than a few, there were a Republican congressman and women last week who called for a reinstatement of the national emergency.

There were no Democrats included in that group, But at least two Democrats here in Texas, Representative Henry Cuellar, and another Vicente Gonzalez, stated on the letter to the administration that they wanted to meet with them to discuss possible solutions to what is occurring right now in terms of apprehensions of illegal alien family units and unaccompanied children. The single adult apprehensions, and we haven't published yet on border numbers, but we may do that soon. So I don't want to jump the gun here, but there have been a sharp increase. There have been sharp increases in the apprehension of children and families. However, single adult apprehensions have remained essentially the same. This week, Henry Cuyar said, our country is currently

unprepared to handle a surge in migrants in the middle of this pandemic. I urge the Biden administration to listen and work with the communities on the southern border who are dealing with this influx. And he represents Texas 28, which is a district that includes a lot of mileage of borderline and it extends up to the San Antonio area. Representative Gonzalez said, the number of unaccompanied minors that are arriving is staggering. Children under the age of five years old are being left on the riverbanks with nothing more than a phone number written on their clothing. He also said, it appears that the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement

has not adequately responded to the call to action, leaving children in border patrol custody for longer than 72 hours. The message in Central America seems to be that now is the time to come and cartels are profiting in the process. And Texas 15, his district includes less mileage of borderline than Quayar's, but it does include some and it also extends up to the San Antonio area. So Mackenzie, when a, and as you probably know this, but the Customs and Border Protection, they're not responsible for housing these children and families. They can't, they don't have the facilities to do that. What they are, what the

goal is to get those kids out of custody within three days and into DHS custody, but their resources right now are just being overwhelmed. And so there's bipartisan agreement that the resources are not there to handle the surge on the border at this time. I like it. Well, thank you for covering that so thoroughly for us. Certainly something we'll continue to watch. And I don't think that, you know, those discussions will be going away anytime soon or those apprehensions will be decreasing anytime soon. So thank you for covering that. Daniel, Congress is spending money again. Tell us a little bit more about what's going on there and what Congress passed this week.

Yes, Congress likes to spend money. Really? Yes. Oh, my gosh. We have seen trillions of dollars spent in the past year, and now we're seeing trillions more spent. More specifically, $1.9 trillion is the package that Congress passed on, let's see, Wednesday. It has gone through a very. And I'm pretty sure that's how it was in the Senate, too, with 50 opposition votes or 49. I think one Republican was absent. That was the yeah that's the catch um but republicans were opposed to this uh democrats were for it basically what the bill is it's uh very similar to the the cares act that was passed last year uh which is also about two trillion dollars and then uh kind of similar to the coronavirus coronavirus omnibus bill uh that passed in december uh that that also both of those bills contained checks to individuals, adults,

so people who filed taxes the year before. Most people received a check in the mail or a deposit to their bank account of some sort of $1,200 the first round and then $600 the second round. This one is actually going to be larger than both those at $1,400 for adults, which I believe the total amount that that takes up the bill is about $410 billion. So almost about a quarter of the bill is for that. And then there's another $360 billion for state and local governments. Those are really the two main larger chunks of cash that Congress is spending in these bills. Got it. So as you said, you know, Republicans, Democrats just basically voted along party lines here as the Texas delegation did as well.

You know, in terms of the fiscal impact, let's talk a little bit about how this will affect the national debt. So, you know, obviously there's that price tag of $1.9 trillion. Not all of that is going to be costing the country immediately. Some of that will go into effect later down the road in a few years. But over the next 10 years, it will certainly cost at least $1.9 trillion. However, the Committee for Responsible Federal Budget, which is kind of a budget hawk organization, nonpartisan, that looks over the spending that Congress does, they estimate that this could cost up to $4 trillion to the deficit over that 10-year period,

especially if Congress continues to spend more on the policies that were put into the bill this time, if those policies are expanded later on, which Congress often does, they put, once you get something in there, it's a lot easier to continue it than it is to cut it. And so if they continue with those expansions, then it could cost up to $4 trillion over the next 10 years. And that also includes inflation. So definitely adds to the deficit. I think Brad might know about it a little bit more. He doesn't have the mic right now, but if you follow him on Twitter,

at BradJ underscore Texas. At underscore TX, yes. He will retweet the national debt every day. Every day. So if you want to know how much is going to change, just keep an eye on his account and you'll see that debt continue to grow. It happens on the daily. It's like clockwork. Brad retweeting the national debt counter. Well, thanks for covering that for us and certainly something that we'll continue to see,

particularly in how those dollars are disseminated at the local and the state level here in Texas. So thank you for covering that. Isaiah, we're coming back to you on a story that you've been covering for weeks, if not months, well, months at this point, Planned Parenthood and Medicaid here in Texas. Something happened this week that we've kind of been waiting for, for a while. Walk us through the developments. Sure. So when you say I've been covering it for weeks, we should clarify that, um, not much has happened. It's basically been a volley back and forth for weeks that we've been keeping folks updated

on. Yeah. Until yesterday. Until yesterday. Well, Wednesday, I should say. Yes. On Wednesday of this week, a Travis County district court finalized the state's decision to cut Planned Parenthood from the Medicaid program.

And I say finalized with some restraint. For the past month, there has been a temporary restraining order that delayed the case, which has been renewed once for a total of, you know, like about a month. And so this decision has put it into that limbo. However, Planned Parenthood could always appeal the decision to a higher court. Certainly. So, you know, what's this court battle all about? Walk us through a little bit of where this started and, you know, particularly as it's ended for the most part now. Sure. So as I mentioned, I guess a few podcasts ago, when we were talking about this for the first time, a lot of us probably remember the videos that came out when I was in high school in 2015. You were so young. Look at you, you young gun.

I am quite young. And these 2015 videos, some later, showing what appears to be Planned Parenthood higher-ups negotiating the price of fetal remains. And so that prompted the Office of the Inspector General, the state, we'll just say the state of Texas, to eliminate Planned Parenthood from the Medicaid program. And then Planned Parenthood sued, and they won in 2017 at one court.

Then the state appealed, and they won at a higher court in 2020. And so they finally sent them notice of termination again in 2021. It was like the fourth notice of termination over the course of these few years. And Planned Parenthood asked for a grace period. Texas gave them 30 days. It was like the fourth notice of termination over the course of these few years. And Planned Parenthood asked for a grace period. Texas gave them 30 days. And at the end of those 30 days, they successfully, in a Travis County district court, argued that Texas did not give them a proper notice of termination. And so that was what prompted the restraining order afterwards that kept them on the program.

And that just ended. The judge They kept them on the program. And that just ended. The judge sided against them with the state. And so as of Wednesday, Planned Parenthood should be officially cut from the program unless they get another temporary injunction or restraining order pending their appeal to another court. Certainly. Well, thank you for covering the back and forth of that. Certainly quite the volley that we've seen over the last few weeks. Hayden, let's talk more about the border. The National Guard was sent to the border this week, but not even particularly to combat illegal immigration per se, but for a lot of different other things that are related to such instances. Walk us through a little bit of, you know, how this happened and what we're dealing with here. Well, absent what the governor considers to be a sufficient federal response to what's occurring on our southern border, Governor Greg Abbott announced this week that the Texas

Department of Public Safety would be deploying resources to the border, and the Texas National Guard would also be deploying personnel and resources. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick actually told Fox News this week that there were 500 National Guard troops and 1,000 DPS officers headed to the border. I'm not sure if those are complete numbers or if those are just additional resources that are being sent. But in light of what we discussed earlier, with regard to the overwhelmed border patrol agents, the state of Texas is supplementing those resources so that those federal agents can have what they need in order to do their jobs. Certainly. So real fast, before we move on to our fun topic for the day, I want to ask you a little bit more about the specifics of why they're being sent.

You know, what was named by the governor specifically as, you know, something that or as the items that he wants these, you know, these guards down there specifically to address or even just mitigate? Well, one of the things that is wrapped up in illegal immigration is, of course, drug smuggling and human trafficking. People who present at the border are not only people who are legitimately in need, who are trying to provide a better life for their children. There are certainly a number of people who fall into that category. And there are plenty of people who have legitimate asylum claims. However, when there is, when there are, illegal immigration doesn't just include people who overstay their visas, or come into the country for no good reason. It also includes people who are organized and who are actually promulgating drugs and bringing illegal narcotics into the state of Texas, and trafficking human beings into the state of Texas.

So the governor wants to make sure or he states, he stated in his press conference that he wanted to wanted to be sure that Border Patrol, as they are dealing with unaccompanied minors and family units, that they have the resources to continue to fight drug cartels and human traffickers. Because what happens is when border patrol agents are handling humanitarian issues, like children being left by themselves with nothing but phone numbers written on their clothing, they don't have the manpower to commit to enforcement. So they need that backup in order to make sure that drug cartels and human traffickers aren't falling through the cracks. And I won't get into this. I don't have all the details. But as we know, illegal immigration is tied to drug addiction, because when drug cartels and human traffickers are able to infiltrate our

border, that contributes to the drug addiction problem. So the the border resources are not just for deportations that isn't, he's not sending, he's not sending reinforcements to the border to just throw people over a wall. This is to ensure that organizations, criminal organizations, are not able to take advantage of this chaos and perpetrate crimes and illegal activity in addition to being in the country unauthorized. day-to-day operations when dealing with people coming across the border, the National Guard is acting almost as a backup in terms of enforcement, but they're not dealing necessarily with the agency rulemaking authority that the other, that the agents of, you know, customs and border patrol or et cetera. Yes. Border patrol is a federal responsibility. So the state of the state of Texas can't just take over border enforcement. That's not, that's not something that they can do,

but they can enforce the something that they can do. But they can enforce the law that is their task. They can enforce state law. And they can assist with federal authorities as as allowed and as requested. Perfect. Thank you so much for covering that for us. Gentlemen, let's talk about something that has been actually, you know, kind of blew up slack earlier this week. Holly and Kim are contract writers in different parts of the state. Kim up in the Tarrant County, North Texas area, and Holly in Harris County in Houston area. Both went to bat for their respective favorite authors. Or not even just favorite authors.

In fact, I will admit, I missed a lot of this debate and caught the tail end. But y'all, basically, Daniel, what was the deal? I don't remember how it started but kim is right okay okay so you think so basically kim is anti jane eyre and holly is pro jane eyre yes i think i think to put it in the most basic terms i don't know if kim would necessarily say that she she hates jane eyre she does not like it um yes whereas holly's slack name currently is quite literally jane eyre is a great book unless you're an idiot yes that is holly's slack name right now that's holly in a nutshell that absolutely is so what what else what else happened with this debate? That is a great question. I really don't know how we got onto it. I just know that it was very heated

debate about whether or not Jane Eyre is a good classic book or a great book. I went through a great books program in college and Jane Eyre was included in my reading and you know during that same semester that i read jane eyre i also read uh descartes and frankenstein and even uh carl marx's communist manifesto and i have to say that i preferred the latter over jane eyre oh my god Over Jane Eyre. Oh my gosh. Because even though Marx has incredibly outrageous ideas to put it in very basic, even not fully fitting terms, he at least gets straight to the point. Whereas when I read Jane Eyre, and granted, you know, this is in college when you're trying to juggle a whole bunch of different things. And I think I was taking another class that was also a little bit more challenging that semester. So there were probably some sections that I didn't read as thoughtfully as I should have. And maybe if I was reading this alongside Holly, I'd come away with a different perspective. But the big takeaway for me with Jane Eyre was every time she encounters a problem, she runs somewhere else.

Interesting. And so, yeah, I don't know. It was just – and it was also very – Dramatic? Those types of books. The drama, the English period drama is just – So are you then not a Jane Austen fan? No.

Okay. So you're just in that general camp of not – Okay. Okay. Got it. Are you a Jane Austen fan? Yes, very much so. I'm sure that doesn't surprise you.

Are you a Jane Austen fan, Isaiah? No, like Daniel, I've never read Jane Eyre. I don't think I've ever read Jane Austen. I've read the first two chapters of Jane Eyre. And then started last year during quarantine, did not get past those two chapters. Well, that period, like you mentioned, that English period drama the high drama it just it doesn't get like it doesn't interest me yeah you know you know throw in some vampires some zombies some explosions okay y'all are very well-read gentlemen the fact that you're you know just i feel like this is not doing y'all's

you know intellect and how well-read you just justice i understand it may not be your taste but it's not like you're looking for what is the abraham lincoln vampire slayer yeah is that what i'm talking like that's not art what that's high art interesting no i mean i mean it's it's more i think with reading especially with fiction i think you know there's a delineation between fiction and non-fiction when i was reading when you read plato and arist, that's a whole different thing than when you're reading Jane Eyre. But do you like Plato and Aristotle? I do. Do you enjoy reading it?

Yes, I enjoy reading it. I enjoy having some good ideas. And so when I'm reading a piece of fiction, it either needs to be enjoyable or it needs to present some ideas in a different way. And so comparing Jane Eyre with Frankenstein, it's both kind of that same time period. But Frankenstein is a whole lot more interesting in exploring ideas about humanity and questions about pain and suffering and so on. Maybe it answers those bigger questions that's i

think that's fair but i think there are a lot of you know even just human nature relational questions that are answered and it's not i mean jane austen in her you know in pride and prejudice is not solving you know the plight of man that's not what jane that's that's not what pride and prejudice is it's talking about a lot of just different period problems that aren't addressed in other pieces of fiction right and those kinds of literature those kinds of literature aren't necessarily i mean we're talking about very different things here that are tackling very different subjects yes with very different characters and storylines so i understand they're both fiction, same time period, but it's not like Jane Austen set out to say, here's the philosophy of man.

Okay, here I think is where maybe my delineation is, is when you're talking about Jane Eyre, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, that group of writers, they really come at these narratives from an emotional perspective, I think. Interesting. of writers they really come at these narratives from an emotional perspective i think interesting which i think is why it's a lot more compelling to women to women like yourself careful here daniel uh whereas i much prefer russian lit i would much rather read leo tolstoy interesting well i mean yeah because i think that instead of coming out from an emotional perspective they come at like very similar situations where it's a lot of human interactions and whatnot.

But I think the difference there is that they come at it from more of a rational perspective. I mean, of course, there's a whole lot of existential angst with Russian lit, but I think the perspective is a little bit more masculine in my liking. That makes sense. And that's why they're, you know, written largely for different audiences with very different kinds of writers. Bradley, you've been silent in all of this. Where do you? Fallon, what was the question? Jane Eyre.

Just Jane Eyre. I've never read it. Yay or nay. I'm with you. I mean, I read two chapters uh jane austin definitely no that was so definitive that made me laugh okay what kind of classic literature if any do you enjoy reading you read a lot you read a lot of non-fiction i do read a lot of non-fiction um i can tell you one that i hate With a burning passion of a million hellfires Wow, that's intense

It would be My Antonia That is one of these quote-unquote great books Great in the sense that a lot of people read it and find it important Not great in the sense that it's any good whatsoever What sparks this sense of intense hatred? It's just the worst book I've ever had. Brad, one thing you do is we ask you questions and you don't give us an answer. You just say it's bad.

Tell us why. It is. It's about this family on a Nebraska prairie in like Laura Ingalls times. Love me some Laura Ingalls. Anybody on board with Little House on the Prairie? I watched the TV show when I was little. Did you read any of the books? No. And it's just boring

as hell. Just like life on the prairie in Nebraska. It's apparently boring as hell. I imagine it was pretty exciting. You know the sections of Tolkien where he describes Everything that happened in this one tree That this adventurer walked by

It's like that with nothing of any interest happening So are you saying Tolkien doesn't have anything of any interest happening In those specific sections of prose? No, I'm saying he makes it somewhat interesting My Antonia Has these elongated happening in those specific no no i'm saying he makes it somewhat interesting uh my antonia has these elongated page-long descriptions of things that is not how old were you when you read this i was in high school okay freshman year got it okay yeah that's fair yeah it's terrible

got it i would also put uh scarlet letter isaiah and i talked about this yesterday it's down there no good of despair no good i did like the crucible though i thought that was a good book okay um Isaiah and I talked about this yesterday. It's down there. No good. A Hit of Despair as well. No good. I did like The Crucible, though. I thought that was a good book. Okay. Yeah, but I'm definitely more of a nonfiction reader. This reminded me of the time we were all at lunch and you asked us,

which circle of hell is your favorite from Dante's Inferno? Yes. I did pose that question. Those are the kinds of lunchtime discussions that happen at the Texan. Yeah. One fiction book I would recommend is Ender's Game. I love that. Oh, a classic.

I mean, not a classic. I wouldn't call that a great book, but it is a great book. It's kind of a, yeah, a new canon classic. It's the opposite of My Antonia. Interesting. Yeah, that's fair. You know, another great fiction book that I prefer is

the one that I just wrote. Oh my gosh. Wait, you wrote a book? Yeah. Can you pre-order it on Amazon? The answer is yes, because I have. Well, that's the non-fiction book that I wrote a part of. Oh, I see what you're talking about. I understand. If you go

to Amazon right now, now that you bring it up, look you look up a compass for rather you're welcome look up a compass for deep heaven uh diana gliver glier is the the editor that you'll see on there that is a book that i wrote a chapter for it's about c.s lewis's ransom trilogy uh which i don't think most people would classify that as a great book, but I think it is. There you go. Those three books. I like it.

Well, good stuff, team. Hayden is gracefully bowing out of this conversation. He does not want to talk about this for some reason. We'll have to dive into that next week, folks. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll catch you next week. Thank you all so much for listening. If you've been enjoying our podcast, it would be awesome if you would review us on iTunes. And if there's a guest you'd love to hear on our show, give us a shout on Twitter,

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