The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - March 19, 2021

Episode Date: March 19, 2021

On this week’s Weekly Roundup podcast, the reporting team covers state leaders battling over blackout electricity repricing, an Abbott-appointed PUC commissioner resigning, the governor’s press conference covering child trafficking prevention efforts at the border, election integrity bills filed in the legislature, border encounters breaking a 20-year record, a Texas congressman going after congressional earmarks, one bill filed to dismantle a state agency and another to abolish daylight saving time.

Howdy folks, Mackenzie Taylor here, Senior Editor at The Texan. On this week's Weekly Roundup podcast, our team covers state leaders battling over blackout electricity repricing, an Abbott-appointed PUC commissioner resigning, the governor's press conference covering child trafficking prevention efforts at the border, election integrity bills filed in the legislature, border encounters breaking a 20-year record, a Texas congressman going after congressional earmarks, one bill filed to dismantle the state agency, and another to abolish daylight saving time. Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoy this episode as the legislative session continues to heat up. Howdy folks, Mackenzie Taylor here with Daniel Friend, Hayden Sparks, and Brad Johnson.

We have a trio today. Isaiah is not in the office this week. Daniel, how do you feel having, you know, being on the fuzzy mic as you always are? Are you ready for this? Yeah, I am ready. Although you said trio, aren't there four of us here? Trio of reporters. Five of you can't have the person recording.

That's true. Michelle. Oh, Mish, yeah, attagirl. That's true, but a trio of y'all, of you boys. True. Yeah, true. Thank you. That's right, of you men. y'all, of you boys. True. Yeah, true. Thank you. That's right, of you men.

Of you men. Well, wonderful. Let's go ahead and get into the news. Bradley, we're going to start with you. One of the biggest stories of this month has been about ERCOT, the PUC, blackouts, outages after the winter storm. Walk us through what's been going on this week and kind of explain the political dynamics at play. Yeah. So we ended last week with some pressure being put on especially the House and most notably by the Lieutenant Governor to reprice. And the Lieutenant Governor is the President of the senate right um and so what repricing constitutes is there's a 32 hour

window that occurred during the um the the texas blackouts towards the end of the week during which load shedding or residential controlled blackouts had ceased and um but the price for electricity was still up at the cat the nine thousand dollar per megawatt hour cap and so that violate with it went against the puc the public utility commission's earlier order that week that stated um this uh this ordering of the price up to the cap should cease once load shedding, residential load shedding stopped. Um, now it continued into this week and, uh, Lieutenant Governor had, has not just kind of, but really made it his hobby horse.

And the Senate, um, in a, an interesting set of events on Monday pushed through an expedited process, a bill to reprice, to order the PUC to reprice. And so essentially the bill just states that the legislature is directing remaining PUC commissioner had remained opposed to it and still does, especially just doing it himself without the legislative directive, because he feels that they would get sued and lose. They doesn't have the unless there was a mistake that happened. He doesn't feel that they have the authority to do that. And so that was the first domino to fall this week. Then got sent to the House's court, and they have kind of just, they haven't killed it. It's still alive, but they've been taking their time. And so there was a House State Affairs Committee hearing on Tuesday, and they heard testimony from the IMM, the, wow, I'm blanking on what that stands for now, but it's from Potomac Economics as a representative of that.

You're so steeped in this. Yes. Independent Market Monitor. There we go. And she has testified before, but this was for her first time in front of the House committee. She was defending, you know, the push for repricing. And that was the group that came out and said, you know, we calculated this $16 billion in, you know, economic runoff that occurred during this 32-hour window that shouldn't have been because the price should have been lower

if left to market devices. Now that we don't know, that's their analysis, may or may not be the case. We don't know because it didn't happen. But then, actually I'll explain. So there's been a lot of figures thrown around,

16 billion, 4.2 billion $5 billion, all this stuff. The way it breaks down is the $16 billion is the overall number. The $4.2 billion is the direct amount of cash that changed hands, or just currency, money in general. It changed hands that would be affected by this repricing order. The rest has to do with a bunch of very, very complicated systems like hedging and all these other safeguards that occurred, but is not subject to whatever repricing directive. And then there's a $900 million overcharge for these things called ancillary services, which is generations that's explicitly set aside in case there's an emergency, and they trip on whenever it's triggered. And so there was a $900 million, according to the Potomac estimated overcharge,

because for a couple of different reasons, one of them was that these ancillary service generators were paid to generate, but then they couldn't for various reasons. One of them is that natural gas couldn't get to them. So it's all very complicated stuff. There's a lot of numbers being thrown around. The one to keep in mind for this specifically is the 4.2. And when you add the ancillary services, which is being considered separately, but this is the same kind of situation, you get 5.1. So, you know, there's a lot of confusion over that rightly so i myself was confused about it um but so real fast i have a question in terms of who repricing benefits i think there's been a lot of argument about that in terms of okay well do the custody you know the customers of these

companies is they is this a benefit for them would this be a benefit to banks would this benefit i mean walk us through a little bit of that before we get into the political dynamic. So ultimately, all of this would eventually trickle down to customers. Multiple people during the hearings stated that. Now, because it's so convoluted, you might not see or feel it directly. It may just happen without you even realizing it. Even over time, it may not be immediate. It may happen with a slightly increased bill or an extra fee that gets tacked on.

So that right there, the buck stops with the consumers. And so there's that concern. And in terms of the more direct impacts, there's been a lot of talk about how on one side you have generators, on another side you have co-ops and all this stuff. It's far more complicated than that. There are winners and losers on both sides of this. There's that would that would stand to lose a lot of money that emerged from this situation pretty well off because they hedged well. Then you have, you know, co-ops who like Brazos Cooperative, the largest one in the state that, you know, filed for bankruptcy. They're on the losing side. They would stand to benefit from this repricing.

Another one that stand to benefit is Vistra, one of the state's largest generators. They filed public comment advocating for the repricing. And so also there are banks that stand to lose and gain on this. The IMM stated specifically that retail electric providers, what you normally think of as your utility, the person you pay bills to, a large section of them would stand to benefit because they were the ones paying the price for the electricity rather than making it from generation and so it's uh it's very complicated on both sides it is um you know it's not it's not a black and white situation so in terms of

let's let's boil this down to the political dynamics get into a little bit of the drama here i mean so far this legislative session we have not seen too much uh you know legislative drama between this between state leaders right it's been very minimal and until now right tell us a little bit just 30,000 foot view of who's on what side and what the arguments have been because you know especially coming this the you know toward the end of this week it's going to get pretty hot yes so um i mentioned lieutenant governor dan patrick is very much in favor. He's the main one pushing the ball for repricing. That's put him at odds with the two other top elected officials in the state, the governor and the Speaker of the House. And so the governor, he made repricing an emergency item.

So he gave the legislature the ability to address this before other legislation. So that right there is a testament to his somewhat support of it. Right. But he also sided with the PUC commissioner, Arthur D'Andrea, in his assessment that he did not have this authority himself. Who is Abbott's appointee. Who is Abbott's appointee. And not only that. And former staffer.

Yes, former staffer. So that right there puts Patrick and Abbott at an opposition from one another. Then you have Speaker Dade Phelan. He had kind of been silent on it. It had been clear that the House was certainly not as gung-ho about this as the Senate. But he hadn't really put anything out until midway through this week. I think it was either Tuesday night or Wednesday. And he said that basically, first of all, he thinks the unintended consequences of repricing is basically too much to warrant to warrant doing it and so he warned about that but then he

also kind of reiterated the you know the legislature is the one that needs to provide the directive and so um fast forward to today and sb 2142 which is the bill, the repricing bill, was sent to House Committee on State Affairs. And, you know, that had come after Dan Patrick basically chided the House. Yeah. Not basically. He did on the dais saying that, you know, the Senate, I'm proud of you guys for putting people first. About big business. Big business. And the house put big business above the people right um feeling said that you know this that's not a fair characterization of our position here

and uh it's you know we're gonna continue we're gonna send this through the proper channels uh but they aren't gonna you know fast track it like the Senate did. Yeah, certainly. And that was an interesting portion too, because as you said, the arguments are very complicated. So we have the Senate making the argument for the consumer, right? The direct consumer. That's kind of the messaging. That's the messaging that they're sending out there, right? And then you have the House saying, just as you said earlier, hey, well, we're picking winners and losers here and it's pretty haphazard so those are kind of the two arguments that are going forward is the senate accusing the house of being pro-big business and anti-consumer and the house saying this is picking winners and losers we're free market republicans right

those are the messaging points on either end of the chamber and we have state leaders coming down on those lines as well yeah and one more thing was that kind of changed in i was in in the room and it seemed to change a lot of the the people's or at least cement their uh their opposition or at least hesitancy to reprice um the intercontinental exchange uh representative them, which is essentially New York Stock Exchange, but for this kind of energy type of trading. It's where a lot of the generators, the producers, they hedge on that market. And that already cleared. The transactions from that already cleared.

So there's no way to claw that money back. No definitive way. I'm sure you could get creative with some sort of back-end way but his his testimony was about how you know this could first of all it sets a precedent that nothing is ever final that the state can just order uh transactions that have already uh gone through uh order that them, basically. And that's a huge contract law problem. And then he said that the unintended consequences, it may affect something like cattle futures, something that is totally unrelated from this, but it has an indirect impact because this is a marketplace and every action has an equal and opposite reaction. And so, you know, that to me, that testimony really scared a lot of the House members and the ones that were against it. For example, Chairman Chris Patty of the State Affairs Committee, he was by far the one most pointed against the idea.

His line of questioning was by far the most pointed. And, you know, in my opinion that in my analysis, watching it happen, that testimony really cemented his opposition. Interesting. So one of the things the Lieutenant Governor called for was the resignation of the chair of the Public Utilities Commission. Walk us through that and what happened this week. Yeah, he had called for it back last week after aunt d'andrea appeared before the senate the who had just assumed the position right this is a very new chairman yes um he'd been on the on the committee on the commission but he was just a regular member but we already had a puc scapegoat be removed right from this

position and the other he was the last remaining commissioner on the board so he is just a you know the the one head of this board that's supposed to have three um so he was operating it and uh patrick went down and questioned him something very that very rarely happens questioned him on the the committee floor um about this issue and pressed him really hard and um eventually he you know called for his resignation because Patrick does not agree with DeAndrea's assessment of the ability for them to reprice. Fast forward to this week and there was a Texas Monthly article put out and it exposed a phone call that.

Oh, dear. Yes. It was on Tuesday night. Exposed a phone call D'Andrea had on March 9th with investors of Bank of America. And they were asking about the situation. Are you going to reprice? They're involved in this hedging process. And obviously, they stand to lose or gain

based on what the state does. And so they were asking about it. D'Andrea was answering questions and he said a couple of things that really do not look good. And for example, he said essentially that he went from being on a very hot seat to having one of the safest jobs in texas well that's kind of ironic considering what happened what ended up happening yes um

and he said he further said that abbott was not intending to appoint new pvc commissioners because quote at a time like this when i'm communicating all the time with the legislature it's easier just to be going through one person and i think objectively that's true because we saw earlier in the in the blackout the fact that the puc commissioners could not talk to each other because of open meetings laws yeah and so um you know it obviously looks bad but it resulted in D'Andrea resigning almost immediately. I mean, I call, I put it in Slack, and I didn't expect it to come back quickly. You were like, he's done. He's done.

Why don't I call you Nostradamus? And he, so, but he's still on the board. He is, his resignation will become effective once abbott names his replacement now that presents another interesting dynamic here because if that happens during the legislative session then patrick has a abbott is not able to wait um then you know he has power over all three positions uh the appointments so um you know that's adding to the dynamic there certainly and i think it is worth noting you know in the 80 you know the 86th

legislative session i didn't get my numbers correct there there was very much a sense of unity among the top leaders in the legislature with the governor the lieutenant governor and the speaker of the house it was we you know called the kumbaya session right we had you know huge pieces of legislation addressing property tax and school finance reform that came forward and was by and large just accepted by, you know, most state lawmakers and hailed as huge successes, Super Bowl session. And it's interesting that already we're seeing conflict, particularly between the governor and the governor who in previous legislative sessions would be kind of against

the speaker back when Joe Strauss, the speaker of the house, they would kind of be the ones teaming up and moving forward with with different legislative pieces whereas now there's and it's not you know the conflict is in some way muted right it's not like they're uh just slinging insults at each other but it's certainly pointed the most polite political brawl i've ever seen yeah because they're not they're not really they're butting heads over policy yes um they're not lobbing personal bombs at one certainly but it's interesting to see the lieutenant governor step up and say hey i'm going to be you know making a ruckus about this um particularly when it's an abbot appointee it's a very interesting dynamic so um well thank you for

covering that for us certainly something we will just be continuing to watch and i think think, you know, we thought we'd have, we thought we had our legislative agenda nailed down for the 87th. And hey, well, now we have something to add to the whole shebang here. Classic, classic. Hayden, we're coming to you. The border has also been a really big deal in Texas in the last few months, particularly since the Biden administration assumed the White House. Walk us through a presser that the governor was present for this week. Well, for a little bit of background, the federal government decided recently to lease the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas, which used to just be called the Dallas Convention Center, to house up to 3,015 to 17 year old boys who are from out of the country and do not have

sponsors or legal guardians to care for them. And what the US Department of Health and Human Services has had to do is essentially become a de facto foster care agency for some of these kids, because they have been brought here from Central America, or they have otherwise found themselves in the state of Texas, and don't have anyone to care for them. So that that's what's going on in Dallas. So Governor Abbott appeared. The original plan was for him to appear appear at the Convention Center, but he ended up appearing off site with the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, Colonel Steve McCraw, as well as the leader of his child sex trafficking prevention team, Andrea Sparks, and a representative of a private organization called Traffic 911, Christy Lopez, and they discussed some of the pretty grim facts that are facing our state and the Department of Health and Human Services federally, as it relates to child sex trafficking,

which Sparks said was essentially the way the border is right now. It's putting kids in a particular position of vulnerability because they are vulnerable to being abducted by traffickers. So what Governor Abbott has decided to do is to expand Operation Lone Star, which was his response to the border crisis, to include anti-human trafficking efforts. And what he hopes to do is interview the unaccompanied minors that are in federal custody. He's hoping that the federal government will allow state authorities to not interrogate them, but to be fact gatherers and to see if they can get more information about who these kids have come into contact with,

who might be after them or who might be trying to gain access to them. And the federal government is not exactly on the same page with the state in terms of at least the location of these miners, because Congressman August Pfluger said recently in the el paso sector that they transferred 700 unaccompanied minors to midland without even telling the sheriff so the the state and the federal government are definitely not on the same page and there's a shocker right of course and there's a lot of vitriol between Governor Abbott and President Biden for obvious political reasons. But between the blame and the crisis that is overwhelming our Border Patrol, I mean, it is primarily Border Patrol, but their responsibility is not to house and place unaccompanied minors with sponsors. That's just not their purview. so that they can forward the process of or advance the process of finding relatives or other sponsors to place these kids with,

which are often illegal aliens who are already residing in the United States. So that's what Governor Abbott has done to try to address the unaccompanied minor crisis. Certainly. And I think we'll continue to see this ball being tossed between the federal and the state government in terms of blame, right? The blame game will continue to be part of the political landscape here. And we're dealing with real consequences of a lot of people's lives. So it'll be interesting to see how that continues to be lost. And just for the record, Mackenzie, the administration has blamed President Trump. So this isn't a one-way street. There are accusations coming from both sides, and it's very much a debatable subject whose fault this is, if anyone's fault. because no one's saying that, I mean, Abbott did come pretty close to saying that Biden was aiding and abetting child traffickers with certain policies that are implemented by the administration,

which that is an extremely serious accusation. I mean, it's similar to what we've discussed before with comments about lifting mask mandates when you, I mean that that's as serious as it gets if you say that someone's assisting in in policies that might result in child abuse certainly and but the Biden administration has made the same exact accusation of Republicans and Trump that they left supposedly left the asylum system in shambles and they left the current administration with a mess to clean up so the accusations go both ways and of course voters will have to decide which one of those or voters will have to decide which position has merit and in the meantime border patrol is desperately trying to get these humanitarian issues under control so that they can focus on their job, which is to enforce border restrictions and to keep us safe from traffickers. Certainly. Hayden, thank you for covering that for us. Daniel, the 2020 elections certainly

brought election integrity to the forefront of a lot of policy discussions on both sides of the aisle. There have been proposals, huge proposals filed in both the House and the Senate. Walk us through what these proposals entail and why they are notable. Yes. So there have been several different bills that have been filed. Brad has kind of helped covered a lot of that. I was trying to help take some of his load off of his plate this week as he's covering a lot more ERCOT stuff, which was probably unexpected a couple months ago. Certainly. So I had the pleasure of digging through a couple of these huge election bills that have been filed. Now, while there are several that have been filed by different Republicans, these two, I think, are really the biggest ones. They have low bill numbers.

They have they are followed by Representative Briscoe Cain and Senator Brian Hughes, who are the chairman of the committees that these bills are going through. Yeah. So there are several indications that, you know, this is where they're probably going to pass through these committees. The chairman are bringing them through. Right. They're the chairman's bills. These are low bill numbers that have been prioritized by the House speaker and the lieutenant governor. So these are and they're both massive bills. Now, they're not as massive as, you know, a two trillion dollar spending package from the federal government. But for a state bill, it, they're both 27 pages long.

Now, interestingly, even though they're the same length, there's not a lot of overlap necessarily. On the surface, it looks like there is, and they cover a lot of the same issues, but they also take very different approaches. They change different parts of codes. They both focus on the election code primarily, but cover different things.

Got it. So tell us a little bit about the differences between these two. So the one that you have from Representative Briscoe Cain is House Bill 6. And that one, I think, kind of focuses more on the protections for poll watchers and kind of expanding those. And then also it has five different sections. So the first one is registration and conduct of elections. The primarily two things that happen in that section is that it expedites the requirements for deaths to be reported to a voter registrar.

Currently, I think it's a month after 10 days is a really weird time frame and now basically just shortens that to be like the day after like you have 24 hours to to notify this and then another thing is requiring election officers to keep records of spoiled ballots that's first section second section covers a lot more about the protections for poll watchers and expanding those protections, kind of giving them standing against any judges who might prohibit them from being able to carry out their responsibilities. You also have the next section, which focuses on assistance of voters. So this is really kind of increasing regulations for people who are assisting people with mail ballots, for instance, requiring different forms to be filled out and labeling the carrier envelopes for mail ballots to

indicate that there was assistance for the voter there, kind of to lock down on potential ballot harvesting schemes or people trying to persuade voters to vote one way or another. The next section focuses a little bit more broadly on just fraud and unlawful practices, and this is kind of where everything else goes in in the bill. Some of the big things, again,

it expands offenses related to vote harvesting. It also increases the penalty for voter assistants who lie in oaths that voter assistants have to take. And then the last section is focused on enforcement, which the main purpose of this section really is to require courts to prioritize voter fraud cases, especially before an election. So that's HB 6. That's the House version. That's the House version. That's the House version. The Senate version focuses on some of those things, but there's some key differences too. So for instance, it does kind of delve into the realm of poll watchers, but where Kaine's bill really focuses on kind of making sure that poll watchers can be at the polls and aren't interfered with.

The Senate bill from Hughes kind of expands it a little bit more. And there's currently a prohibition on recording in polling places. And that prohibition extends to poll watchers. So they can't record necessarily like the process of counting ballots and whatnot. And so Senate Bill 7 would actually kind of expand the rights of poll watchers that they would be able to record in case there's any voting malpractice going on. Now, they wouldn't be able to record any information that's on a voter's ballot. That's one thing that is very important to keep secure, and so they have an exclusion for that.

But other than that, poll watchers would be able to record. The other things that Senate Bill 7 does, it's a little bit broader, I think, in the terms of things that it does. It has four main sections. First one is voter registration, which kind of delves into the realm of going back to the requirements

for the registrar to keep track of who is registered to vote and kind of reforming that process to make sure that people who are not legal citizens necessarily or people who are not allowed to be voting are not registered to vote. So there's some more regulations there. The next main section is voting by mail, which focuses on mail ballots, obviously.

One of the key things in there is it would require the Secretary of State develop an online tracking tool for mail ballots. Uh, so people can go and figure out if their mail ballot has been delivered, uh, kind of like a UPS type thing to track your package. Interesting. Um, another thing is that it's similar to Kane's bill would require, um, people, um, who are assisting voters to disclose that on the mail ballot carrier form envelope. There's so many words, so many terms that they just don't come out of my mouth in the right order. Just so many words, Daniel. I was trying to prepare for this podcast, and one of the subtitles I first put was,

I can't even English today. Oh, Lord. Anyway, so those are the first two sections. Second and third, or third and fourth sections is election security, which is really the broad, broad things in there. A lot falls into that. And then enforcement, which kind of is, does it a little bit different than Cain's bill. One of the big things in that section is providing injunctive relief for poll watchers.

But in that broad section on election security, some of the things that have been talked about quite frequently is requiring voting locations to be located indoors to push back against this drive-through voting. So no temporary facility that would be for vehicles is allowed. It would also require a paper audit trail for voting results to make sure that even for machines that use electronic ballots, there is some kind of a paper record there that people can go back and count the votes in that method. And then also some of the things that it does is it establishes that regular voting hours cannot be earlier than 7 a.m. and not later than 7 p.m. And one of the things that a lot of Democrats have pushed back on, especially in urban areas,

is it would require countywide polling places to have approximately the same number of voting machines as each other countywide polling place in the county. So, you know, somewhere a public library would have to have the same number of voting machines as a church in a different neighborhood. Got it. So those are the big main policies in these two monster of bills. My gosh. Well, thanks for boiling it down for us.

Now, I assume this is receiving criticisms from the Democrat side of the aisle. What are they? Yes. So like I'm sure that you have seen this narrative being played out over the past few months, where you have many Republicans who are skeptical about the results of the election. You know, they're concerned about the integrity of the election and potentially voter fraud in different cases, large and small. And on the Democratic side, you have people pushing back against that. You say, no, our elections are secure. There was no mass voter fraud. You know, this help make sure that there is trust in the elections. And then you have Democrats

who are saying, well, by continuing to push this narrative, you're just, uh, in, uh, indoctrinating voters into thinking that, uh, Trump was actually the winner of the election. Right. Um, so that's politically where this, this is coming from. So earlier this week, Governor Greg Abbott had a press conference in Houston. He was with Representative Briscoe Cain and also Senator Paul Bettencourt, who has also filed a bunch of election bills. And Abbott was touting those, supporting those, uh, election reforms and calling for that. And then the, uh, Texas house democratic caucus had a press conference later that day in response

to this in which, you know, they're basically pushing back and saying, we don't need to focus on elections. This is a distraction from whether it's the winter crisis or other things. And so that was one of the main things that they were, the main rhetoric that they were using. Now, one of the most nuanced criticisms from the Democrats actually came from Senator Nathan Johnson, who was there, got to the press conference right out of a vote on the floor in the Senate and was able to make it to the press conference.

And he said things that he liked about SB seven and he said things that he didn't like. Uh, so some of the things that he did like was having that paper trail was having, um, uh, also, uh,

he said, uh, uh, system to keep track of mail ballots that, that UPS like system where you can track your mail ballot. He liked those provisions um but things that he didn't like was the the county-wide polling places all having the same number of voting machines or the requirement for uh vote by car assistance to sign sign a form

so uh he gave a little bit of nuanced argument. Argument. Yep. I can't word. I can't English. I can't word. I hate how that happens. Well, anyways, he gave us some nuanced arguments there.

You can read more about that in our article. The Texan.News. Yeah. That's it. Go check it out. Well, thanks for reading that so we don't have to. We appreciate your work. What a service.

Hayden, we're coming to you more border stuff this week there was a lot of conversations between federal officials and state again uh you know we're dealing with we're talking about different border apprehension records that uh were spoken about this week walk us through some of these you know some of these highlights well first i need to correct something i said moments ago, which was that CBP is trying to get kids into DHS custody, which is incorrect. They're trying to get kids into HHS custody, Department of Health and Human Services. And that's an important distinction because it's a misconception that Border Patrol is responsible for housing unaccompanied children and they're not their facilities are not designed for that so when i said dhs custody i meant hhs custody just wanted to clarify that but uh homeland security so this now we're talking about dhs homeland security secretary alejandro mayorkas said that border apprehensions or border encounters will probably break a 20-year record.

And while most of these apprehensions are still single adults, the current crisis or the crux of the current issue is the unaccompanied minors, which are coming from Central America. And of course, the debate that I highlighted earlier is whether or not that's because Trump has kept everything so clamped down that now the floodgates have been opened. Or is it because some of these policies like the deportation freeze that are encouraging this idea that our borders are now open and everyone should just come on. But what the problem one of the problems is, people are using child traffickers to transport children up into the interior of the U.S. And it is breaking records for enforcement encounters. So our current situation is on track to be as bad as it's been in 20 years.

Wow. Now, you know, you already kind of hit on this in an earlier segment, but we're still seeing, you know, current leadership kind of go to bat against the Trump administration and say, hey, this blame lies at their feet. And, you know, Republicans are simultaneously laying the blame at the Biden administration's feet. Yes. And, of course, there are always red herrings in discussions like this. So, we've heard arguments about, well, the Republicans, they're the same ones that incited the insurrection at the Capitol, which, of course, has nothing to do with this issue. But, and on the Republican side, we have, you know, back in 2013, 2012, you know, things going back years that, again, may be related to the current crisis, but really are not directly relevant to what's going on right now. So I think a point of grief that has been mentioned before by Border Patrol officials and people who have experience in this is that this is such a highly politicized issue that doesn't these political back and forths don't necessarily reflect real policy proposals it's just who's at fault for what we all agree

is a horrible situation as it relates to child trafficking so everyone agrees that this is terrible but of course in any kind of high emotion issue, there are plenty of blame games to be played on this issue. Certainly. Well, thanks for following that for us. Brad, let's talk some pork. So congressional earmarks. You know, Texas member of Congress has come out this week with a letter saying, hey, let's not reinstate these. Walk us through those details.

Yeah. So obviously the Democrats took the House and the Senate and they control them both right now and they're starting the appropriations process and they decided to reinstate the process known as legislative earmarks. And what that is, is basically carve outs within appropriations for projects back in districts. For example, if there's a bridge that you need to rebuild or renovate, that's a method in the past that congressional members have been able to basically slide funds toward. It was done away with when Republicans took over the House after the Tea Party wave. And it has been outside ever since. It hasn't been used. But congressional Democrats readopted it, and the House Republicans are more divided on it, but they voted in a secret ballot to embrace it in their internal party rules. And it was a close vote.

It was 102 to 84, but they're obviously more divided on the question. Now, where Rep. Chip Roy plays in here is that he was against it in the first place. I guarantee you he was one of those no votes. But he circulated this letter that it was basically a pledge that I will not seek out legislative pork for my district. And I think it was 17 other members signed on to that as well, notably no other Texas Republicans. That doesn't mean that some of those Republicans weren't ones that voted against it in the secret ballot.

I would bet you some did. We just don't know because it was, like I said, a secret ballot. And so I would guess that more representatives will sign this letter as things go on. Now, the arguments behind earmarks, as I mentioned, people who support them find it to be a way that they can help their districts out with whatever, especially infrastructure projects, things like that. Now, people like Chip Roy, who are against it, see it as a way for congressional members to grease the palms of their special interest groups back in their district. And so there's really no two squaring those opinions. You know, they're going to butt heads constantly and it's either a for or against thing. And so that's where it stands right now. What kind of support have we seen for it after he released it? Well, I reached out to both Texas senators and Senator Ted Cruz said he was emphatically against it. And Senator Cornyn has not gotten back.

Against the practice. Against the practice. Against the practice. Not against Roy's. Right, right. Yes. Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, said that he doesn't expect many of the House or Senate Republicans to go along with it to utilize the practice. There may be a few, but he doesn't think there are many. Nikki Haley, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and former South Carolina governor, applauded the letter and asked why isn't every member of Congress signing this.

And so the people who are – the issue itself is not one that lends itself to good PR. Certainly. And so the people that are for this are going to do it quietly because they don't want to be put in the spotlight. Yeah. And so that is why if you look on social media media you see an imbalance of the opinions on this thing but there are those that are supportive of it and will utilize it and will start doing so silently well thanks for covering that for us we're going to stick with you this week a bill was filed in the texas house um for the elimination of an agency that has been at the forefront of a lot

of coronavirus restriction and enforcement. Walk us through that. So the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission was kind of the tip of the spear for the state's business shutdowns of last or revenues made by food versus alcohol sales. If you were above that, then you above the 51%, then you were shut down for a long period of time and subject to harsher restrictions than if you're classified as a restaurant. The TABC was in charge of enforcing that and they did it quite a bit. They executed multiple sting operations to catch businesses in violation. You know, it was quite a theme of the summer last year. Well, Representative Mays Middleton, he filed a bill to abolish the tabc um it would put whatever uh of the responsibilities that

tabc currently has it would put it under the department of licensing um and so that would it not while the whole tabc if this passed, would literally be gone. It would not be gone in all respects because its functions would still exist. It would just be put under another umbrella. But Middleton, he remains pretty upset at the TABC for its role in last year, saying that TABC should facilitate the operations of small businesses, not strive to punish them and shut them down. It did not fulfill its mission to help small businesses and should be abolished. Pretty simple. I asked the TABC spokesman. They cannot comment on pending legislation, but they said our focus has been and continues to be providing outstanding customer service and promoting the the health and safety of texans so i'm not sure how much of a chance this bill has um but it is something to watch i think

it's fair to say that the alcoholic beverage lobby has a very prominent and powerful place in austin and it would be hard pressed for something like this to pass definitely true especially when you have another alcohol related piece of legislation beer to go that will likely that has let leadership's blessing. Yes, it's going to get the red carpet rolled out for it. Certainly. There's already political capital being utilized in that regard. Thank you for covering that for us. An interesting proposal.

Nonetheless, we'll see where it goes. Daniel daylight saving time has been something that a lot of Texans care about. I remember back when I worked in the legislature, I was shocked to find so many advocates for the abolishment of daylight savings come into the office. I mean, there were all sorts of folks who care very deeply about this and are even emotional about this issue. And I'm just curious to know, hey, where is it this session? Well, there have been several lawmakers who have filed some constitutional amendments that would, if supported by vote either for going to the standard time year-round, which is the shorter evenings, or go to a daylight savings time year-round, which would be the longer evenings, what we're currently in. Now, you can automatically, the federal government, under the Uniform Time Act that passed in 1966, allowed states to exempt themselves from the daylight savings program. However, they don't allow states to exempt themselves or, I guess, go full in on daylight savings and do that year round. So if those constitutional amendments pass, they would be contingent on Congress also making some way for states to move to a daylight

savings year round program. So that's where we're at right now. Those bills, I believe, have been referred to various committees in the Senate and House. Whether they'll get hearings, whether they'll make any progress compared to previous years, that's yet to be seen. I wouldn't expect it to be very much different than previous years, but you never know. You never know. This session could be the session. Yeah.

I like it. Well, thank you for covering that for us. Boys, let's talk. We oftentimes, you know, like to bring up stories that our writers and other parts of the state have been covering this, you know, throughout the week. I want to make sure we do that this week. There are really important stories about Kim and Holly. Kim up in North Texas and Holly in the Harris County area have covered for us. Daniel, I know there was one story that stood out to you from Kim. Walk us through what happened with Senate Bill 25. So one of the things that she's been following quite a lot is kind of how nursing homes have

been affected during the coronavirus pandemic and the lockdowns and how many people in nursing homes have been restricted from being able to have visitors. And so there have been some lawmakers to introduce some legislation that would kind of address this and allow people in nursing homes or long-term care facilities to designate a primary caregiver, you know, a family member or loved one to be their caregiver and be able to visit them in times of lockdowns like we just saw. And so one of those proposals was Senate Bill 25 and the corresponding Senate Joint Resolution 1929? I believe so, yes.

One of those numbers. And that would basically establish it as a constitutional amendment that protects rights for people in these long-term care facilities to have visitors. And this was just passed by the Senate unanimously on Wednesday. It was the first bill besides the repricing bill that they passed earlier in the week to pass this session, first constitutional amendment that they've passed. But of course, it needs to be passed by the House as well. So we'll see if they take that up. Certainly.

And, you know, Senator Kulkors, the author of the bill, on the floor of the Senate giving a very impassioned defense of the legislation, and I think a lot of senators voiced support and gratitude to her for filing the legislation and carrying it through the process. It'll be interesting to see where that goes. Definitely been an issue that a lot of Texans have, you know, concerns about and has been a focal point of the governor's coronavirus response. Brad, I think there is a Houston piece from Holly that you want to highlight. Yeah. So it's titled Suspect and Murder of Houston Police Officer

Released on Bond as Departing Police Chiefs Announce His Harris County Judges. So first of all i recommend you go read it uh that will give you a far better idea of of what the story is about than i can convey shortly but um it's essentially about the use of bonds in these um especially urban areas we've seen austin harris county especially Houston, Harris County, especially, you know, giving priority bonds, very low bonds to these very violent offenders. And, you know, they get let out on the streets and they hurt people. and someone was arrested in charge with Robert Solis was arrested in charge of the murder of a police officer and he was let out on $100 bond before that happened for carrying a handgun in a motor vehicle obviously a much you know less severe offense than murder um but he uh you know he got let out

and he's a repeat offender someone with a history and these municipal judges are oftentimes prioritizing that for people they deem indigent and um you know can result in very bad situations for example the uh the freebirds um stabbing that happened in austin uh you know, can result in very bad situations. For example, the, uh, the free birds, um, stabbing that happened in Austin, uh, you know, a couple months ago last year. And, uh, you know, he was let out on a bond for, um, multiple offenses and ended up killing multiple people or killing, I think it was one person stabbing too. Um, you know, this is something that people really need to pay attention to. And Holly's done a great job in Harris County of monitoring this. Certainly. I love it. Well, Holly is a rock star. Speaking of Holly Hayden, there was a charter school proposal that Holly wrote about

this week. And I think that is the piece that you want to highlight. Yes. And I wish Holly was here to discuss it because she knows a lot more about it than I do. But in essence, what Senator Betancourt and Representative Harold Dutton would like to do is protect charter schools from being treated differently than other types of public schools and protect them from municipal local level governments interfering with the ability of charter schools to operate which as i understand it function based on taxpayer dollars but not state or not local tax public school tax revenue pardon me i'm in the same boat with daniel having trouble with english today apparently so i would recommend that you go read holly's piece because she does a great job summarizing

charter schools and the dynamic with the new legislation. Absolutely. And certainly interesting to watch the charter school debate take place in a bipartisan way with these proposals with the representative and the senator both being, you know, of opposing parties and the public school lobby and interest groups and lobby is a strong word. There's only so much the public schools can lobby for, but it's, you know, very anti-charter school in a lot of different ways. And so finding that balance, this legislative session with new leadership in the House will be very interesting to see both of the new leadership in the Public Education Committee and at the helm of the entire chamber. gentlemen we have a very important fun topic today i think we've heard of a certain movie star who resides in austin floating a potential run for governor i don't musk exactly yes movie star elon musk the uh oscar nominated elon musk can you imagine elon musk as an actor i feel like he was probably in sharknado or something that would be very on brand yeah him and joe rogan um well matthew mcconaughey has been floating this i know holly hansen our houston reporter That would be very on brand. Yeah, him and Joe Rogan.

Well, Matthew McConaughey has been floating this. I know Holly Hanson, our Houston reporter, will be so grateful that we are mentioning his name on our podcast. It's of her, you know, it's of utmost importance to her. She's definitely not going to stop listening at this point. But no, Matthew McConaughey has kind of gone back and forth and saying, hey, I might run for governor, might be interested. Hey, I'm not. You know, there's been some different things he's said on the record, even with Al Roker in front of the Texas Capitol. I think it would be interesting if he ran for mayor of Austin. Mayor of Austin?

That would be fascinating. That would be more interesting than governor. I think we've established people like to vote for celebrities. So I think there is a very decent chance he could get elected to anything you ran for in Texas. Well, what is his position with UT? It's the minister of,

of morale or minister of what? Minister of culture. Culture. That's right. Yeah. That's exactly right. Minister of culture. Yeah.

Wow. No, that's really real. I think a film professor. I knew that. I think I wrote on that actually. Yeah. I think you did.

I really feel like Michelle should have a mic for this. I don't know why she's giggling so much over there. She's thinking maybe this is a. Yeah, I think you did. I really feel like Michelle should have a mic for this conversation. I don't know why she's giggling so much over there. She's thinking maybe this is a Harry Potter reference. There you go. That's what it was. Yeah. No, it's real.

He's like the minister of culture at UT. This is not some... The minister of culture? I'm serious. Michelle's mind is blown. Regardless, he might be running for governor. He might not be. He basically told Al Roker, you know, leadership position.

I'm trying to figure out what would be best where i could best you know be utilized and and make change so who knows maybe we'll have governor mcconaughey in future years on that note i want to know y'all's favorite matthew mcconaughey movie daniel all right all right all right uh to be honest i haven't now i've probably seen more than some people sitting at this table but i have not seen too many matthew mcconaughey movies um but out of the ones that i have seen and you were giving me some grief about this yesterday but my favorite is sahara oh my gosh it's a good one and it's a good movie it's just so funny of all the movies that matthew mcconaughey has been in i feel like it is so random it is just so random it's a good movie. It's just so funny. Of all the movies that Matthew McConaughey has been in, I feel like it is so random.

It is. It's so random. It's like the Redneck National Treasure before National Treasure. That's kind of fair. It is. It's a fun movie. It is fun. But of all his movies, that's the one you'd say.

Yeah. Okay. I like it. That's so weird. Brad, what is yours? I have a tie for favorite movie of his. It's between Free State of Jones and We Are Marshall. Okay.

Both those are very, very good. But my favorite Matthew McConaughey production is the first season of True Detective. Interesting. It is one of the best seasons of television I've ever seen. My, I prefer Woody Harrelson. He's one of my favorite, uh,

actors, but McConaughey's performance is amazing too. It's just fantastic. Interesting. I like it. I don't know. I didn't even know he was in true detective. It tells you how much I know.

Hayden, uh, do you have an opinion on this or do you, do you not? I feel like you do not have an opinion on this. We've talked, you and I are oftentimes the folks in the office who've not seen the movies that everyone else has that's true it sounds like you need to sit through a couple classes

with the minister of culture it's really it's really unfortunate because you know these these guys start conversations and i just sit there and just think about how uncultured i am and it's pretty sad it's tragic earlier today something funny happened we daniel and i exposed how long we've been working together because he knew what movie reference i was going to make before i made it oh yeah my word yeah it's like an old married couple kind of situation that's pretty classic i need to get oh yeah daniel what are you gonna say i mean I just there's some people who wouldn't expect it

kind of like how they don't expect the Spanish Inquisition wow no one ever expects the Spanish Inquisition yeah Michelle and I are in cahoots

as far as our exacerbation with you both I want to give a shout out to Matthew McConaughey as the leading man in romantic comedies The Wedding Planner is one of the best

romantic comedies ever with Jennifer Lopez it's phenomenal How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days a classic that's a good one man and romantic comedies uh the wedding planner is one of the best romantic comedies ever with jennifer lopez it's phenomenal um how to lose a guy in 10 days a classic that's a good one yeah such a classic i also think interstellar is a classic i think that's a great movie it was awesome yeah that is the other one that i've seen there you go i like it um well good stuff gentlemen thank you for joining us on this podcast. I know you're obligated, but I still appreciate your time. You're quite welcome. You're so not welcome.

Oh, Lord in heaven. I think you are welcome. That response encapsulates the personalities of these three boys quite well. Folks, thank you so much for listening. We will catch you next week. Thank you all so much for listening. We will 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,

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