The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - May 12, 2023

Episode Date: May 12, 2023

Get a FREE “Fake News Stops Here” mug when you buy an annual subscription to The Texan: https://go.thetexan.news/mug-fake-news-stops-here-2022/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=weekly_roundup The Texan’s Weekly Roundup brings you the latest news in Texas politics, breaking down the top stories of the week with our team of reporters who give you the facts so you can form your own opinion. Enjoy what you hear? Be sure to subscribe and leave a review! Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast. This week on The Texan’s Weekly Roundup, the team discusses: A midnight deadline looming in the Texas HouseRepublicans attempting to salvage a border protection unit bill lost to point of orderThe Texas House making sweeping changes to the Senate’s school choice planA bill raising the age to purchase certain rifles approved in a House CommitteeA House chairman halting the consideration of Senate bills alleging legislative deadlockA newly amended version of the bill to prevent children’s exposure to sexualized performancesDaniel Perry sentenced to 25 years in prison after the jury rejects his self-defense claimThe Texas House voting to expel one of their colleagues just one day after his resignationThe COVID-era Title 42 order authorizing rapid expulsions of illegal immigrants expiringBorder Cities issuing disaster declarations over the border surge Constitutional amendments for casinos and sports wagering clear their first hurdles Allegations that ERCOT illegally allowed a company with ties to the CCP access to the power grid

Happy Friday, folks. Senior Editor Mackenzie DeLulo here, and welcome back to the Texans Weekly Roundup podcast. This week, the team discusses a midnight deadline looming in the Texas House. Republicans attempting to salvage a Border Protection Unit bill lost to point of order. The Texas House making sweeping changes to the Senate's school choice plan. A bill raising the age to purchase certain rifles approved in the House Committee. A House chairman halting the consideration of Senate bills. A bill raising the age to purchase certain rifles approved in the House committee. A House chairman halting the consideration of Senate bills. A newly amended version of the bill to prevent children's exposure to sexualized performances.

Daniel Perry sentenced to 25 years in prison after the jury rejected his self-defense claim. The Texas House voting to expel one of their colleagues just one day after his resignation. The COVID-era Title 42 order authorizing rapid expulsions of illegal immigrants expiring. Border cities issuing disaster declarations over the border surge. Constitutional amendments for casinos and sports wagering clearing their first hurdles. And allegations that ERCOT illegally allowed a company with ties to the CCP access to the power grid. As always, if you have questions for our team, DM us on Twitter or email us at editor at thetexan.news. We'd love to answer your questions on a future podcast.

Thanks for listening and enjoy this episode. Well, howdy folks. Mackenzie here with Brad, with Cameron, with Matt and with Hayden and Daniel. Daniel's hovering in this office with a camera. We're trying to act like nothing's happening. Even though many things are happening right now. Both in the legislature and in this office, in this room. I hope that people heard that camera click.

Actually, Mac, I think I owe you an apology. Oh, no. Because when we were coming back from lunch, when Seth came down here, which was a lot of fun, I pointed out to everyone in the car how badly you had parked. And I just want to say that I really should have kept that to myself

and should not have broadcasted that to a whole audience. I mean, the car was in front of everybody's eyeballs. It was, but I should have just contained my shock okay even though it was parked very badly even though i stand by what i said yeah i don't know that um our parking garage is the best for parking period there are a lot of concrete poles there are do you agree cameron absolutely too many concrete poles and then that alleyway to get into yes there's broken glass

everywhere broken glass and the the asphalt is just broken and so every time yeah and i got this tiny little car i'm like i'm gonna pop a tire one day speaking of a flat tire every time i turn left into the parking garage to get up to the little security thing where you scan the badge and the gate opens i never do the turn wide enough and i always run it over so if i like the curb if max fault was parking crooked i just run over things so yeah that curb that that that divides the entrance and the exit yeah so i don't like that i don't like that thing either um well but our new office is awesome we're complaining about it but it really is great our office is awesome i love it so much it's just awesome we just can't drive apparently it's our fault okay well speaking of a lot of things happen hayden first of all

thank you for your apology that That's very nice. Okay. Yeah. I will not add that to the grievance sheet as I could have. Thank you. You're welcome. But there's a lot going on in the legislature as well. And it is literally the week that everything decides to start moving and or everything decides that it's moment to be controversial. So, Brad, let's go ahead and start with you. Today we're recording on Thursday. The House has reached an important deadline in the sessions, particularly today. Tell us about this. So today, Thursday, what is this? May 11th is the second reading deadline in the house for house bills, meaning any bill that has not passed initially in the house by midnight. Does that count as Friday morning or Thursday night? Midnight tonight.

Midnight tonight is dead for the session. I will not advance. And there's no, unless you're in the Senate, you can suspend all the rules, I guess. The Senate rules, yeah. Senate rules is an oxymoron It's kind of like Calvin Ball From Calvin and Hobbes

It's this game that Calvin invents And he invents All the rules as he goes along Is that Dan Patrick? Makes him up This is a good day for Daniel to take pictures Because of all the faces that McKenzie is making at you right now. In the first three minutes of recording.

You House reporters are just jealous of the Senate. That's right. Yeah, I'm so jealous of not being able to get on the floor. Anyway, so this is the deadline. Friday is the third reading deadline, corresponding third reading deadline. There's no Senate bill deadline in the House until May 20th, I believe, or 23rd. It's later. There's plenty of time to move Senate bills through the House. Earlier this week, we had the House committee deadline.

Bills could not be passed out of House's committee after that. That's also kind of up in the air because that's more of a guideline than anything. But anyway, this is an important deadline. We're going to see a lot of stuff die at midnight tonight as we normally do. The calendars committee set an eight-page Thursday calendar,

most of which is likely to die as over 100 bills on Wednesday's calendar was pushed to Thursday morning. Rather than go until 2, 3 a.m., they adjourned. And all that stuff will be pushed to today. There's been a lot of time wasting or chubbing, as we call in the legislative world. Basically, it's anything from talking for as much as you can during consideration of a bill to calling as many points of order as you possibly can.

Offering amendments that won't go anywhere. Offering amendments, anything that can waste time. That way you push more things beyond that midnight deadline. And especially House Democrats have been pretty effective so far at that, or they've been doing it quite a bit. So that's strung things out a lot. A few notable bills that are on Thursday's calendar that are probably going to die. A couple of Representative Ellen Trux Claire's Austin Energy-aimed bills.

Representative Nate Schatzlein's legislation that'd create a civil liability provision for obscenity and require porn sites to employ age verification and representative richard hayes's proposal to scrap the state's ban on manufacturing or ownership of short barrel firearms all those are at the very least at risk and if not dead already so it'll be interesting to see how things play out tonight. And then again on Friday. But on Friday, we have SB 14, which we'll get into. So that's going to take a lot of time as well. Absolutely. Arguably, my favorite day of the legislative session each, you know, every two years is today, the deadline day. It's so fun to watch because you're literally, it's not something

where you can go until 2 or 3 a.m. on budget night where you have unlimited time to get through a crap ton of different things it's literally midnight you know legislators are watching the clock and as it counts down like the last minute before it becomes midnight they're all up there looking at the clock counting down like you're like you know antsy and rowdy and it's very fun to watch and then the obligatory joke from representative joe moody that it's not midnight yet in El Paso. Oh, I forgot about that. That's exactly right. It'll be fun.

Well, Brad, thanks for your coverage. Hayden, we're coming to you. Republicans in the House lost their main border security bill this week that would have created a statewide border protection unit. How did Democrats defeat the bill. Representative Matt Schaefer carried House Bill 20, which was Speaker Dade Phelan's main border security priority legislation. It would have invoked the invasion clauses of the U.S. and Texas constitutions to declare an invasion by criminal traffickers and illegal immigrants. It also would have created a statewide border protection unit and employed the resources of the state to repel illegal immigrants observed crossing the border illegally. There are many deadlines this week, and one of the deadlines was at Tuesday, 10 p.m., for a calendars committee to set the calendars for the rest of this week. And after that time, Representative

Rafael Anchia raised a point of order against the bill on the ground that the bill caption was misleading and it did not give proper notice to the public of the subject matter of the bill and the bill contained multiple subjects. The point of order was successful. Speaker Phelan sustained the point of order, meaning he dealt the fatal blow to his own priority legislation, which is ironic in and of itself. We haven't talked about points of order extensively, but for those unfamiliar with the process, a point of order is more or less a motion that the rules have been violated and the speaker should take some kind of action to correct that. It can be anything from the room is too loud to you're breaking the constitution.

But usually it's something that's called on a bill that alleges that something in the bill is running afoul of the rules. It is a technical allegation of breaking the chamber's rules, state law, or the state constitution. Unfortunately, when these points of order are called, that means that the chamber, if it is sustained, never gets around to discussing the merit of the policy or the substance of what is being proposed. So Democrats defeated the bill, HB20, by leveling points of order against the bill, most of which were either withdrawn or overruled. But ultimately, Anchia's point of order was sustained and the bill was sent back to committee after it was too late for it to be placed in the calendar for floor consideration. Republicans later attempted to resurrect portions of the bill. Were they successful?

Later that night, Representative Guillen accepted amendments to his bill that would salvage portions of the Border Protection Unit, though there were limitations. Some of the interest groups who were involved in seeking to pass HB20 said that the new version is toothless and it doesn't. In fact, Texans for Strong Borders, one of the groups that has been very gung-ho about supporting this bill, said and it doesn't. In fact, Texans for Strong Borders, one of the groups that has been very gung ho about supporting this bill, said that it wouldn't change the enforcement paradigm at all. And at the end of the day, a lot of this is just shuffling resources and providing for grant programs for border security infrastructure, which was the main point of Gann's bill to

start with. But the new border protection units and probably the most controversial provision as far as conservatives are concerned is the fact that it now requires the approval of the commissioner's court. And that would render the border protection unit ineffective in counties that didn't approve it. And many counties on the border are democratic jurisdictions. So this legislation was touted by Speaker Phelan in February, HB20, as a way to challenge the federal government on this issue. But it doesn't seem that this new version of the Border Protection Unit would necessarily do that. I know that there was one amendment in particular offered by Republican Representative Tony Tenderholt that had a lot of hubbub surrounding it. Was that particularly the one that was trying to strip that county commissioner's portion from the bill?

Tenderholt wanted to remove that requirement that commissioner's courts approve the operation of the border protection unit in their county. And it was not successful. So that amendment was not added to HB 7. What could this mean at large for border security? Well, Operation Lone Star has been Governor Abbott's main border security project for the past more than two years now. The state of Texas has spent billions of dollars on it, and he will probably continue to use his executive authority. The new version of the proposal that was tacked on to Ghan's bill

via amendments, as I understand it, does not mention the Article I, Section 10 powers, the invasion clauses. And that was really the brick and mortar of HB20, was declaring an invasion and dramatically escalating the state's response. And I'll mention this here. One of the reasons, and I was having to overhear bits and pieces of what the parliamentarian was saying, but Speaker Phelan did say when he made his decision that HB 20 would have constituted a declaration of war. So that topic should have been included in the caption and it wasn't. And that also, I believe, if I recall correctly, that was the reason it was given. It was said to be two subjects because it was both enacting this border protection unit and declaring a war by invoking these invasion clauses. that goes beyond self-defense, which is what Schaefer contended was the purpose of the bill.

It had to be stricken and it couldn't be debated. So what does this mean for border security? Governor Abbott will continue to have to use his executive power to confront illegal immigration. Hayden, thank you for your coverage. Cameron, coming to you, man, just a myriad of big issues this week. School choice has been a central, if not the central issue in Texas, this legislative session. And the Senate's original plan has now received a huge makeover in the House. Tell us about what's new. Yes. So Senate Bill 8, authored by Brandon Creighton in the Senate and has been dire, a much discussion this session. And the House Committee on Public Education made some big changes. So let me go through some of those details. First, eligible students in the original plan would have received $8,000. And the new House

plan now has a tiered system with new qualifications. So in the House plan, a student is eligible if they are economically disadvantaged, have a disability, were previously enrolled in a public school for at least 90% of the previous year, are enrolling in kindergarten or first grade for the first time, or have recently attended a school that received a performance rating of D or lower. And the tiered aspect comes in with how the funds are allocated. So if a child has both low income and a disability, they will be allocated $10,500. If they are either just low income or just a special needs student, they get $9,000. And then all other eligible students get $7,500. So this is a significant change from the Senate's plan that had also a special carve

out for rural districts, which would have sent $10,000 to a rural school district for each student that decided to leave. Also, the House plan is going to eliminate the STAR test and replace it with a college readiness assessment called the Texas Success Initiative Assessment. And then another big change from the Senate's plan was the stripping out of a provision that would have prohibited the State Board of Education from instituting any sexual orientation or gender identity curriculum. Again, that's been stripped out of the House plan. So very significant changes in the substitute from the House.

What happened, particularly with the committee hearing, because something on Wednesday happened. I think folks were expecting the bill to be voted out of committee. Yes. And I think Brad could speak to this. I wasn't listening. Say that again. What happened with the House floor vote to get SBA into the committee? Oh, yeah.

So on, what was last night? Wednesday night? Wednesday night. Chairman Brad Buckley, public education chairman, called a motion to allow that committee to meet in a formal meeting, which is generally just them getting together anywhere to vote on vote legislation out of the body. So he tried to make that motion. Normally it goes unopposed. I can't recall a motion like that ever being rejected, but the, um, uh, it was opposed. This one was opposed specifically by representative Ernest Bales, who is a, uh, an opponent of school choice legislation, a real Republican, real Republican from shepherd. Andard. And he objected and said that the committee sub should get another public hearing since it is different legislation.

It is substantially different. Substantially different. An 80 page bill. And Buckley's argument was that we already sat through 16 hours of testimony on this topic. And they did on different bills. So this was the argument. It was left to the House to decide if they would allow this meeting to happen

and then presumably vote the committee sub for SB8 out. And it went down. Members voted not to allow the committee to meet. I think the vote was 65, 75, or 76. It was about a 10 vote difference roughly. There were Republicans. I didn't count, but there were at least maybe like a dozen Republicans that joined Democrats in voting against that. And just another interesting test vote in the House on school choice. Yeah. And what came through after that as well is, according to a notice, it will be only allowing invite testimony on Monday.

So they are going to have a public hearing. They are going to have a hearing, but it's invite only. So we'll keep following this, see what happens. This is such a huge issue here in Texas and keeps changing. So we'll stay on top of it. Absolutely. Cameron, thank you so much. Matthew, coming to you, calls for gun control were already very loud this session. This past week, those calls escalated after the mass shooting at the Allen, Texas mall. In response, two Republican lawmakers changed their positions on a proposal to raise the age to purchase certain rifles. Give us the details.

House Bill 2744 by Democrat Representative Tracy King would amend Texas law to prohibit those under 21 years of age from purchasing semi-automatic rifles with detachable magazines in caliber greater than 22. In laying out the legislation for the House Select Committee on Community Safety, Representative Guillen announced that Representative Terry Canales, a member of the committee, proposed a committee substitute that would allow the transfer of rifles to those under 21 in certain circumstances, but did not elaborate on the changes. And I tried to get a committee substitute and was never able to get a copy of it. With the committee substitute receiving unanimous support, the bill then passed along eight to five with two Republicans, Sam Harless of Spring and Justin Holland of Rockwell, joining the Democrats to move the bill out of committee and forward. This was a surprise change because just an hour or two before the committee met,

Rep. Guillen announced that the votes weren't there. It was a deadline day to move bills out of committee. And then just right before he announced that the committee would be meeting and brought the bill forward because obviously those two members changed their positions on the bill. The bill then, as all legislation does, goes to a calendars committee. And while the gun control activists had a temporary victory, that's what it was. It was short-lived with the bill not being set by calendars. So it is essentially dead. It was an interesting development on that front. We've seen a number of gun proposals come along this legislative session.

Brad mentioned earlier there's a gun rights bill that was finally set today that's kind of sort of maybe not going to survive. Probably dead, yeah. Probably dead. And if I recall, it's pretty far down the calendar. Oh, yeah. So, yeah. That's not a very safe place to be if you're a Bill. Yeah, on today of all days. So, it's kind of been interesting to see what's happened during the course of the session with both pro-gun and gun restrictive measures.

You know, with this last one just receiving a sudden boost of support in wake of that awful tragedy. So we'll keep our eyes today and see if anything else moves forward. But we'll be also doing a roundup story on what happened with all the major gun legislation this session. Absolutely. And this is one session removed, just so folks can remember from the passage of constitutional carry in the House as well. So fascinating, Matt. Thank you so much. Bradley, going back to you, as happens every legislative session, tensions are flaring. I think yesterday I texted you and Hayden and I said, is it as tense? And like, I don't know what the other word I said was, but is it as tense on the House floor as it seems to be from the video feed? And

y'all were like, yes. Patience was wearing thin in that room for sure. It was a rough day and it started that way. I feel like usually it's like that after maybe 8 p.m. and this was like noon. Yeah. But regardless, tensions are flaring in, particularly not just in the House, but between the House and the Senate as the two chambers jockey over progress. How did that escalate this week? So Representative Terry Canales, chair of the Transportation Committee, held about a 10-minute committee meeting on Wednesday morning. Days are already together. On Wednesday morning. Even for a more expedited and less controversial committee, that is quite quick. The reason it went so fast is, well, they heard one bill from President Eddie Morales,

and then Canales announced that it wasn't his intention to vote 10 Senate bills out of committee that morning. But then he ripped up the voting cards for all 10. And he then said that he would not be bringing any more Senate bills up for consideration or for a vote in his committee until more House bills start to move in the Senate. And so we saw this kind of happened last session. There was a point later in May than we are currently where the House recessed for two days in protest of specifically bills on their health care and criminal justice reform priority slates not moving in the Senate. And they recessed in protest of that. And some things started to move. Not everything did, but they

seem to be happy enough with that. So this is about a similar issue, it seems. Canalis said during the committee, members, it told me to have this conversation we're about to have today. Anybody who's been a member knows how hard it is to get a bill heard, sent out of calendars, voted on the House floor, and then sent to the Senate. The reality is our bills don't seem to be as great in importance in the Senate as they are to us, and the work that we put in doesn't seem to be respected in the manner that I would like to be respected and that I would like my colleagues to be respected, he then said. Quoted Representative Synchronia Thompson from last session during that fight that I mentioned.

And it said, if the Senate doesn't respect us, they will expect us. So really laying down the line on this specific issue at the moment. On the flip side, the Senate has been critical, especially Lieutenant Governor Patrick, of the House's movement on stuff, criticizing them for taking longer. There are very much different dynamics at play in either chamber. But, you know, we saw HB 20 die in a point of order on almost not exactly the last day, but almost the last day that a bill could be brought up because there was no time left to take it back to committee and fix the issue. So they had to try and this, so they had to amend a different border bill with the, the HB 20 language.

So both sides are, have their arguments and they're definitely making them heard. But this is where the Senate has kind of made the house. It's punching bag. Now, now the house is kind of returning serve on this. Absolutely. So give us a rundown of actually what the statistics say,

what the numbers say about which chamber has passed how many bills. Yeah, so in raw numbers, not specific to priorities, I do list in the piece a breakdown of some of the priorities and the progress of those. But as of May 9th, the House has passed 1,343 bills or resolutions, of which 206 have been heard in committee and 29 had been passed entirely. On the flip side, the Senate had passed 771 bills or resolutions, House bills, resolutions, with 416 having been heard in committee and 159 passed.

So the House is pointing to those numbers and saying we're passing a lot more than you are. We're moving your legislation. Why aren't you moving ours? This is not really an argument that is going to be settled. Like they're just going to continue to butt heads until they either both give in or someone gives in and you know there's always the the looming deadlines that i was talking about so after this set of deadlines we have another one and then we have sine die we're the ultimate deadline where everything is dead after that so uh it'll be interesting to see how this

develops but you usually last session they both started passing things once there really was no point of return. So that'll probably happen again, but you never know. And the Senate's argument would be, of course, we're passing the big bills. We're passing school choice, child gender modification, these big priority bills, either for the Texas GOP or for the Senate. We're passing ours. Yeah. So maybe that's, you know, not as important as passing these other local consent bills or whatever the House is working on. So.

And, you know, the Senate passed its slate of 30 priorities, almost all of it. There were a couple that the House versions are the blessed ones that are moving. So that throws off the numbers a bit. But by, I think, April 22nd, Dan Patrick put out a statement saying all of our 30 bill slate, priority bill slate is passed. Just typical. This is what

Dan Patrick does every session. Yes. And it's not going to stop. The fight's going to keep happening as the pressure mounts. But the House has passed almost twice as many bills It's not going to stop. You know, it's going to keep the fight's going to keep happening. Yeah. As the pressure mounts. But the House has passed almost twice as many bills as the number that they're referring to. Both sides have their stats they're going to point to. And there's really going to be no agreement.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Bradley. Cameron, coming back to you. Another big bill, a newly amended version of what has been called a drag ban, was revealed in the Texas House. Tell us about the updates on this. Yeah. So Senate Bill 12 was introduced by Brian Hughes, and the bill had originally intended to restrict certain sexually oriented performances from being exposed to children. And under that definition in the original bill included performances where a male performer exhibiting as a female or a female performer exhibiting as a male.

But now it has been updated to remove that language that includes the mention of what could be considered a drag performance. And the House version now is focused on performances that would be appealing to the prurient interest in sex. What was that word again? Prurient. Am I saying that right, Brad? That's how I heard it about 50 times in a committee meeting yesterday. I call this has been labeled a drag ban is not just because of the language that was in the original bill, but also in the Senate committee hearing when Hughes was laying it out. He said drag shows are sexually explicit and expose children to issues of sexuality and identity that should be reserved for adults. And so that was the original intention that I understood listening to the testimony in the Senate. But now in the House, it has been stripped

back and changed just a bit. So what does this mean going forward for the bill? Yeah. So the new version, like I was saying, it kind of broadens and narrows the intention of the bill by moving it into a bit of a ambiguous territory of what would be legally allowable. Because I was looking at the Texas statute that defines obscene material. And what it says is the average person applying contemporary community standards would find patently offensive, and that is representative of normal or perverted in that taken as a whole lacks serious literary, artistic, political, and scientific value. That is all under what would be obscene in a Texas statute. And what's interesting is because supporters of drag shows have defined them as being political acts or artistic performances, the questions now will surround the future legality of these types of activities because they're being labeled as such artistic performances. They could be performed in front of, let's say, children, and they meet a contemporary

community standard. And so these ambiguous definitions are really what are going to set the precedent moving forward when these are brought into, uh, courts, especially here in Texas, it will be, that's where these definitions will become more concrete and understood. So it received a long, uh, public testimony in the house committee on state affairs, uh, before it was put on pause, when they went to the floor and it was left pending late last night. So we'll keep following up and we'll report more when we have more information. Awesome. Cameron, as always, thank you.

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Hayden, hello. Are you ready to chat? Yes. Okay, great. The high profile prosecution of Daniel Perry came to a close this week. How many years will he spend in prison? Hopefully I can follow the example of the judge in this case and keep my comments brief. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison for murder in the first degree. The state had recommended a sentence of at least 25 years, and the defense had asked for 10 years in prison. Daniel Perry, if you're unfamiliar with the case, is an army sergeant who was charged with murdering an Air Force veteran who was protesting police violence in downtown Austin in 2020. Perry was convicted after the jury deliberated for 17 hours and rejected his claim

of self-defense. The trial lasted for two weeks. The jury heard from dozens of witnesses, and this case has been politically charged from the beginning because of the nature of the demonstrations and Perry's social media comments about those demonstrations being published in the media and shown to the jury at trial. But this case has come to a close. The defense team said that they will be appealing the trial and the verdict. They had accused the jury of misconduct. One of the alternate jurors, according to the defense, had participated in deliberations and another juror had done outside research, according to the defense, but the judge

rejected those claims and denied the motion for a new trial. So the next recourse for Perry is to appeal the verdict. However, Governor Abbott said after the verdict within 24 hours that he would grant Perry a pardon if the State Board of Pardons and Paroles recommended it. So this case has been an extraordinary case from the beginning. It is one, the first time I have covered a murder case gavel to gavel. We were in the courtroom for almost the entirety of the proceedings, and it is the ending to an extremely emotional case. Yeah, and there was a very emotional sentencing hearing prior to the judge making his decision. What stood out about that proceeding? Several family members of Foster and others allocuted, which is, in essence, they gave a formal speech as a conclusion to the case.

And the nature of the allocution was describing the impact that Foster's death had on the family members. And they, of course, had a lot to say about missing their loved one. And they had criticisms of Perry. They said that he had dishonored his oath to the Constitution. And the sentencing hearing was the defense seeking to present evidence that he had that in part because he had Asperger's syndrome that that contributed to what happened that night. self-defense claim from the beginning that the court, the jury rejected on the ground. And what the state argued was that Perry had provoked this killing. At the sentencing hearing, the prosecution argued that he knew what he was doing and that the defense testimony only gave credence to the fact that he was a danger to society and that he should be given a sentence of at least 25 years. And Brown did follow that recommendation. So politics have been intertwined with this tragedy from the very

beginning. What could be Governor Abbott's response to this decision? As I mentioned, Governor Abbott offered him a pardon. I don't think I'll ever cover another case where both the governor and the lieutenant governor offer the defendant a pardon within 24 hours of conviction. This is extremely rare. I don't know if it's ever happened before, but after that happened, there were social media posts released that even the defense agreed were repugnant. And those were part of the sentencing hearing the other day. But the Texas Board of Bardens and Paroles has not made a decision yet. They could deny a pardon, and then Governor Abbott would not have to make the decision if the board denies the pardon.

But Abbott has already promised that he would approve it if the board does recommend it. Hayden, as always, thank you for your coverage. Bradley, for the first time in nearly a century, a member of the legislature was expelled from the body. This happened earlier this week. It feels like two years ago at this point in the week, but it was regardless a huge story. It was the story. It was story um of the week so tell us about it so on tuesday the texas house voted 147 to zero to expel representative brian slayton a republican from royce city from the body after a lengthy investigation found he had engaged in a sexual relationship with his 19 year old staff, supplied her with alcohol, and tried to obstruct the exposure

of the affair and the investigation into it. Representative Andrew Murr, chair of the General Investigating Committee, said when laying out the resolution, expulsion is rare because in most instances a member resigns before the process gets this far. The last time this expulsion happened was in 1927 and um uh a couple members were expelled on allegations of bribery uh i read a bit more into it it sounded like they took about a thousand dollars from some group of optometrists to kill legislation and uh got exposed and got expelled. But this week, Phelan said after the expulsion vote, Mr. Slayton's predatory behavior merits such a consequence.

I am proud of my colleagues for holding each of us accountable. What was the buildup to this decision? So in early April, a complaint was filed with the committee by an anonymous staffer informing the committee about the sexual interaction. Eventually, that news broke. Slayton's attorney released a statement saying the allegations were false. The investigation continued. Over the course of the next few weeks, the committee issued subpoenas.

They hired an investigator, a former judge out of Houston, I believe, and she took the lead on interviews, interrogations, and the investigation overall. Submitted her findings to the committee, and then the committee put a report together on Saturday this week, this past weekend, with Slayton in the chamber. The committee took, Murr went to the front mic, announced that the committee would be releasing its report, handed out the report, copies of the report to every member. And then for probably 20 minutes or so, the body stood at ease all members read the report with Slayton sitting in the body and he I'm sorry he was sitting there on Saturday yep okay yep and I did not realize that he was on the floor when that happened yep and so they ran they also gave a brief overview of the findings of the reports

and they announced murr announced his intention to bring an expulsion resolution before the body on tuesday on monday slayton issued his letter of resignation to the house and the governor in response to that murr said he would still bring the expulsion resolution. And he pointed to a Texas Attorney General opinion from 1947 that basically said that a resignation does not remove, that the person is still a state official. Holdover status. Holdover status. Thank you. The person is still a state official until their successor is named in a after a special election. Now, that doesn't hold. That's not the case.

If a member is expelled. Now, the seat is vacant. There is no representative for House District two. And so they held the vote and it was unanimous. This week, later this week, the General Investigating Committee met a couple of times. And it sounded like I think they issued subpoenas in item A. Item B was the Slayton investigation. Item A is likely the one we reported on before about Jolanda Jones, the accusations by her staffers.

No telling on when the findings are going to come out on that, but that means they're probably doing interviews and getting both sides of the story on on what happened there but a pretty busy session for general investigating which um i don't there was nothing not this level of um attention paid to it last session there was a couple things they investigated but nothing like this back on uh slayton and filling his seat ordinarily when there becomes a vacancy or resignation in the legislature, the governor has to call a special election. But I think, and I won't blame you if you're not familiar with the nuance, but if it happens within so many days of the end of the general session, could you elaborate on that? Yes, I can. So there is a an expedited special election provision. The expulsion vote happened after the window.

Yeah. So it has to you can have an expedited the governor. Regardless, the governor has to call a special if the expulsion, if the vacancy occurs within 25 days of sine die, then you can't have an expedited special election. So now they're just going to have to have an election at whatever point the governor orders it, the resignation was issued, and the expulsion vote happened, it is not within that 25-day window to hold an expedited special election. So that seat's going to sit vacant for the rest of the session. There you go. Thanks for bringing that up, Matthew and Brad. Thanks for your coverage. As if the week could not get crazier, Hayden, a major pandemic era policy that allowed for rapid expulsion of illegal aliens ends today on Thursday. What could that mean for border security? Title 42 has been in place for more than three years. It was the public health order that President Trump issued at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic that allowed for rapid expulsion of illegal immigrants who crossed the border unlawfully.

And it also was justified by the statute that is in place to prevent the introduction of diseases into the U.S. during a time such as a pandemic. It was the subject of a lengthy court battle, and it went back and forth with federal judges issuing injunctions that it had to remain in place and then issuing other injunctions that it had to be ended. Ultimately, the Biden administration defended it as a public health necessity, but it went all the way to the Supreme Court, and the Biden administration told the court that it would be a moot point when the COVID-19 emergencies ended today, being Thursday. At the end of Thursday, consequently, the order will no longer be in place and the federal government will need to use the Title VIII authorities to enforce

border security. Wow. Well, thank you for your coverage. And folks, I'd encourage you to go read Hayden's piece at the Texan as well for more information. There'll be a lot of coverage about that whole thing. Anything else to add, Hayden, on that issue? Well, I broke my promise last time to be brief, so I'll keep my promise this time. There you go. Hayden, thank you. Matthew, speaking of the border, the crisis at the southern border continues to get worse. You've reported on what three border cities are doing in response to the growing surge of aliens crossing the border. Give us some details. Since Hayden was brief, I'll be long winded. So as Hayden explained with the title in the title 42 this week, I'll let a little bit of

my West Texas come out there. I love it. I love it. Just a little. Yeah, just a little. So subtle. I've been working on it. I'm getting better. It's prompted tens of thousands of people to flood Texas's southern border with Mexico each day. And with both law enforcement communities overwhelmed, several cities have issued disaster declarations. Those include El Paso, Laredo, and Brownsville, all issuing disaster declarations that must be renewed every seven days. As I've been seeing it, they have been renewing them. They're citing the surge of people that have unlawfully crossed the border. For example, Governor Abbott said this week we're seeing roughly 13,000 people per day and are expected to have 1.3 million this year. Both the state of Texas and the federal government have directed additional resources to secure the border,

including state and national guard troops. But with thousands of people already surging on the border, there was also a report that some 80,000 Venezuelans were on their way north towards the border. Border communities like El Paso are trying to ensure sufficient resources are in place to help accommodate the growing need for humanitarian support. And I don't know if you have looked on Twitter, news, et cetera, et cetera, but there are just images and videos of these communities showing some pretty horrendous situations. People living in cardboard boxes, you know, a lot of the local charities, et cetera, are saying they're beyond capacity. I'm actually working on a story

potentially about the different food banks that were already stressed as it was that are telling me about the additional strain on their resources that they're having. And so it's just it's definitely not a good situation. Yeah, there's a lot of stress down there. I almost just called you Hayden because I'm going to Hayden next. I'm so sorry, Matthew. Thank you so much for your reporting. And Hayden, there is a major victory this week for pro-gambling interests at the Capitol.

Are Texans getting any closer to voting on bringing commercial casinos to the state? For a couple of years, we have been covering this issue because the out-of-state interests have been pouring millions of dollars into Texas elections and hiring dozens of lobbyists for this legislative session as they did last legislative session. And the casino bill that is backed by Las Vegas Sands and other groups made it way further than it did last time. And that is to a debate on the House floor where it was given initial passage with 92 votes in favor. Of course, on third reading, it will need to receive 100 votes because constitutional amendments require a two-thirds vote of each chamber and then a majority vote of Texas voters. This bill would

license up to nine casinos in Texas, and it has myriad requirements for minimum investment, and it uses the framework that is already in place for Texas horse racing. Charlie Guerin, the proponent of the legislation, the real main point that he's been hammering is that it should be put to the voters for a decision. And if you've monitored politics for any period of time, one fallacy that is very common in politics on both sides of the aisle and across the spectrum is the bandwagon fallacy or appeal to majoritarian sentiments. It was one of my favorite fallacies in high school debate and when I was teaching high school debate. But it's this idea that something should be put to a popular vote and that that adds merit to the policy. And most politicians use that argument at some point. That is something that has been especially true in the casino debate because it is an issue that requires

a constitutional amendment. And while the House has moved this forward a little bit, if it can't receive 100 votes, it won't pass out of the House. But even if it does pass out of the House, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick has already said that he will not consider it because it has such meager support among Senate Republicans. And he does not want Democrats to drive the policy agenda. But to Guerin's credit and the credit of other proponents, they didn't just rely on this bandwagon fallacy of the people supported, even though a majority do. They said there could be tax benefits. The state could benefit from the tax revenue that is flowing out of state. And he contended that this will add thousands of jobs and it will provide an economic stimulus to the major metropolitan areas that would benefit from these casinos.

There was also a big debate over sports betting legislation. Where did that constitutional amendment end up? Representative Jeff Leach is the one who really pushed the sports wagering legislation. He argued that it's not an expansion of gambling because people are already doing this illegally. This bill would just create a regulatory framework. And then all the arguments against casinos were also applied to sports wagering, that it will result in people gambling away their savings. Matt Shaheen said about casinos that it will result in increased domestic violence and there will be many other social problems. Many of those arguments were applied to sportswear during just the general stock arguments against

expanding gambling, that it's a bad example for youth, that it will result in decay on the family. But Leach came back and said that we need a legal framework to protect people who are already engaging in this activity. And it just doesn't make sense to continue to keep this illegal when so many other states have decided that it's good policy to legalize it and create a regulatory framework for this. And Leach even said President Trump supports it. It was a big argument that he made a couple of times. Not a big argument. He mentioned it multiple times on the floor. He did.

And he mentioned it in a committee. So it was something that he rested his case on to a great degree was that there is support for this from President Trump and other conservative groups. There you go. Hayden, thanks for your coverage. Matthew, coming to you, Chinese billionaire Sun guanqi did i say that right uh i believe you did wow okay well thanks to you has spurred controversy with the purchase of a roughly four or excuse me 140 000 acre ranch in valverde county texas and has now and now a proposal to build 46 wind turbines on that land is generating a lot of new controversy

with two ranchers saying the move violates Texas law. Give us some details. Attorney Dallas Barrington filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Ward Walker 7 Oaks Ranch and the Cole Ranch against the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or more commonly known as ERCOT, everybody's favorite, alleging the electric regulator violated the Lone Star Infrastructure Protection Act by not revoking authorization for the wind farm to proceed and eventually be connected to the Texas power grid. The purchase of the ranch by Quan Chi drew concern from state leaders in 2021, noting

his past status as an officer in the Chinese Communist Party Army, his close ties with CCP leaders today, and that his businesses reportedly count Chinese Communist Party government and military officials among its employees. Now, the legislature has reacted in this because of this and in other similar circumstances with two different proposals. One, as we just mentioned, passed into law last session that prohibits entities with connections to foreign enemy powers or hostile powers like China, Iran, North Korea, Russia from gaining access to our state's critical infrastructure. And that includes the Texas power grid, thus the windmills. That was legislation by Donna Campbell, Senator Donna Campbell last session. This session, we have legislation by Lois Kulquas that many of you have probably heard about banning people affiliated with those countries from owning Texas land.

Now, despite this law, ERCOT has allowed this wind farm proposal to proceed. They're saying that it raises a national security issue with connection to the power grid. And environmentalists say these 46, 700 foot tall windmills can affect the monarch butterfly, local bats and birds and environmental concerns that are being raised from it. So we'll follow that lawsuit there in Val Verde County and see how that goes. Absolutely. Matt, thanks for your coverage. The butterflies. Butterflies. That's right. race from it so we'll follow that lawsuit there in valverde county and see how that goes absolutely matt thanks for your coverage the butterflies butterflies that's right okay let's move on to the tweetery section here gentlemen brad oh nope somebody else hayden i do want to say i don't think i've seen brad aggressively point like that yeah he didn't just say can you go to somebody

else he just aggressively pointed elsewhere well i was trying not to break the fourth wall, but it's happening. I just took a sledgehammer to it. Oh, my lanta. Hayden, what do you got? So we talked about points of order and somebody posted this picture and it's a it's zoomed in on Speaker Phelan and the parliamentarian Hugh Brady sitting next to him. And the way he's holding his phone, it looks like he's playing on his phone. And the caption is when you have a point of order to sustain, but you're about to hit the next level of Candy Crush. And it just hit me really funny because Hugh Brady, the parliamentarian, is the opposite of that. If you see him on the floor, he's working. He's hashing out something with a member or he's

writing a reasoning for a point of order or a decision. And so just this contrast of him on his phone and it just looks like he's wasting time playing games on his phone, but that's probably the opposite of what he was doing so it just hit me really funny the other day when there was a lot of chubbing and points of order being used i heard him say uh there was a string of like multiple unsuccessful points of order that were clearly just meant to waste time and he goes uh can you guys wait 30 minutes for the next one so i can eat my hamburger i he's he seems like he keeps a good sense of humor because you have to when you have a group of 25 lawmakers many of them attorneys are barking in your ear trying to get you to

nudge you one way or the other that reminds me when the hb20 debate was going on hayden tweeted at one point there was a multiple there were multiple points of order that were called on hb20 and at one point hayden took a photo of the scrum at the front mic and said uh you know the parliamentarian is going back and forth with schaefer reminder colon schaefer is an attorney and it made me laughing so hard seeing that I meant to mention that to you like the last three days and Brady is a law professor at UT Austin so and Schaefer is a brilliant attorney as well so it was I was enjoying being a fly on the wall almost standing at the edge of the press press box listening to those two men hash out this very huge legal question of what constitutes an

invasion yeah yeah matt was kind of poo-pooing the the house earlier and you can't do that in the senate you can't listen into the parliamentarian argue with with members about a point of order it's pretty i did have a really good idea though uh i want to get one of those directional listening microphone you know you've mentioned that before before, but the where you can hear somebody talking a lot, that would be hilarious. I'm sure the Senate would really love that. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure the Senate gallery quickly be their favorite. Yeah. Quickly. I'm sure Lieutenant Governor might have some interesting words for you, sir. No. And the parliamentarian, we have so many things that we could explain to people about how the legislature works, but the parliamentarian, essentially the person who sits at the at the speaker's dais and is the one helping decipher

whether points of order are you know well taken and sustained or whether they're actually just you know not worth anything happening with basically policing the house rules yeah and there are multiple parliamentarians too sharon carter i think is the other one and there may be others on staff but those are usually the two that are a couple of assistants. Yeah. Those are the Sharon Carter and Hugh Brady are the ones sitting next to him. And they advise the speaker like an attorney advises a client. Yeah, absolutely. And the speaker has generally chosen to take the advice of the parliamentarians. Well, because, and I don't know what the consequences could be, but if the parliamentarian advises a certain way and that's a sound legal decision and the speaker goes against it, then they

could be setting up themselves to lose in a federal lawsuit. Yeah. But we have seen that happen before as well with past speakers and their parliamentarians. And it was much more politicized in terms of the decisions that were made for different bills so um fascinating very fascinating stuff but hey thank you for that okay matthew what do you find on twitter hey mckenzie hello oh dear i know i know where this is going because i saw it on the docket and i should have waited for you for last i'm coming back to you brad are you available now i am available okay i don't want to get pointed at again don't be too hard on her because i already wrecked her over the coals on her parking nothing to do with okay max so um that's nice

the wall street journal ran a piece here's just the the social copy tucker carlson announced he would launch a new show on twitter putting him on a potential collision course with fox news which ousted him last month while keeping him under contract. That's not what I'm bringing it up for, but there's a quote from a guy I know in the legislative sphere. He's an attorney. I think he used to work for the PUC. But anyway, he quote tweeted this.

He was in my fantasy football league. That's how I know. And he quote Relevance. Yeah. He quote tweeted a snippet from the article that said, Twitter responded to an emailed request for comments with an auto reply of a poop emoji. That's Twitter's official reply to a media request.

That was hilarious. Oh, I got it. Okay. That's pretty funny. Yes. Did you though, mate? Did I what? Did you get it?

I did get it. Yes. Delayed reaction. I did get it. Yeah. Yes. I also just don't know if everyone thought it was as funny as you did. All right.

Maybe you're not. all right just skip me on the twittery because i got raked over the coals for my gladiator one yet last week and now this so no i like i like it up with the grievance sheet yeah that's right i like that twittery because it's showing that

elon musk is actually doing something changing the culture he's throwing pies He's throwing pies. He's throwing pies. You know, he's throwing pies. If nothing else, he's throwing pies. He's shaking things up. He's shaking things up.

Brad is so happy with himself about that one. Oh, my gosh. That's exactly right. That's the first thing that came to mind when I heard him say throwing pies as well. Let's move off of the topic. Cameron, what did you see on Twitter this week? Well, I tried to bring some good news and there's well there's always just crazy stuff going on so like what's something nice that i can bring to the tweeter here i love that so much um i saw

that there's going to be six new state parks opening up over the next 12 to 15 years. In Texas? In Texas. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So everywhere from Fort Worth to Houston, Del Rio, La Vaca, Port La Vaca. So I thought that was really cool because I love being outside. I love going for runs and ride my bike, going on hikes. So more state parks,

I'm happy with that. And Texas doesn't have a lot of state parks, do we? Because I don't know. Something like 95% of the state is privately owned land. So there's not much to work with as far as state parks go. Well, it makes a lot of sense. Well, cause back, back in California, I lived right next to, uh, the American river out there and there was hundreds of miles of paved bike trail. And so you could just go out there and ride your road by a gopher run center, be thousands of people out there. And, um, I thought it'd be really cool. Bring something like that here to Texas.

I'm looking forward to it. That's exciting. Well, thank you, Cameron, Matthew. Okay. That was very pleasant.

That was a very, you followed through on your, your promise to bring good news. It made me feel very relaxed. Now I'm concerned about this next part. Matthew, why don't you go ahead and go? You went Hayden.

You went first. Yeah, okay. You're really avoiding this, aren't you? No. I just wanted you to go last. Oh, okay. Give me some space to run, my friend. I have a question for you now.

Yes, sir. What did the space alien say to the news reporter? I don't know, Matthew. No comment. Oh my gosh. Why was the reporter inspecting the ice cream?

Is this a tweet you saw or is this just you telling us jokes? There's no link here. You just wrote this. No, I stumbled across them earlier this week. They were fantastic. I'll put them all together in a tweet and link it to it there you go okay i'm sorry what was the other one why was the reporter inspecting the ice cream you know i don't know well he was looking for the scoop oh my gosh i have one last one and then and then this pain hold on hold on i need to brace myself.

We need a break in between ones. Okay, go. We're ready. My friend told me he's fed up with me talking like a news reporter. More on that story later. Hold on. That went right over my head. You're going to have to explain it. A friend of mine told me he's tired of me talking like a news reporter.

More on that story later. More on that story later. Oh. I was just saying, like, I'll take a break for now. Right? We need to put this Twittery section out of his misery. Take it out of the bag and shoot it.

With one of Richard Hayes' short burial rifles. That was a joke that probably went over a lot of people's heads. People, what if we... Okay, this is something I thought of because it was mentioned to me by a friend this weekend who listens to our podcast. Shout out Sarah Sloan. What if we started recording our

podcast in video format? What do you think would be the worst part of that? Let's not. Let's not do that. I am 100% on board. We need to... Cameron. Cameron.

Film, clip, YouTube. We could even do it live. I'm so down for that. Mr. Speaker. The gentleman yield for some questions? I will yield for him. He yields. I move the previous question.

I don't know. I think we could get ourselves in trouble because we're goofy people. Any other thoughts? I like people not being able to see our facial expressions so that we can communicate. Well, think about how many times you and I looked at each other and giggled this podcast and it was not audible. I need to be able to make faces without people knowing.

Yeah. Well, then you can set the camera up behind you that way. People don't want to stare at the back of my head. I don't know. The back of your head is ridiculous. Anybody know that? The back of your head is ridiculous anybody know that the back of your head is ridiculous it's a it's a it's a youtube video where this i'll show it to you hayden okay it's a reference i'm not calling your head ridiculous well i got that okay great

well this has been successful I didn't get the reference. You have a vote for me. Okay, I like it. Brad, you or me? I am not opposed or supportive. You're present, not vote. I am Switzerland on this question. My land's at Matthew. I think we should leave it to the readers to decide.

Oh, that's dangerous. Email, tweet, reach out. You're committing the same fallacy I was talking about earlier. What's that? The appeal to popularity. Mob rule fallacy. Twitter poll. Coming soon.

That's right. There you go. Well, folks, thanks for listening. We don't have time for a fun topic, so that was our 30-second fun topic. I'm not sure how fun it was, but it was a topic at least. Thank you. Folks, we appreciate listening on this, especially on this crazy, busy week. We always call, we always have crazy, busy weeks, but this week is, I think by far the craziest obsession so far and of the year. So folks, we appreciate you tuning in for all the news and scoops. Gentlemen, do you have something to say

to the class? I was just reading a headline from The Spectator about the Finland Prime Minister's divorce. And it said, Santa Marin's marriage is finished. That's so random. With two N's. Finland. Yeah, I get it.

Were we not tortured enough? I was happy to just laugh on my own. Okay, folks. Well, thank you for listening to us and we will catch you next week. Were we not tortured enough? I was happy to just laugh on my own. Okay, folks. Well, thank you for listening to us and we will catch you next week. Thank you to everyone for listening. If you enjoy our show, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts,

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