The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - May 13, 2022

Episode Date: May 13, 2022

This week on The Texan’s “Weekly Roundup,” the team discusses the conservative trend in last weekend’s school board races, the results of over 200 bond proposals on ballots, a San Antonio school official pressuring employees to vote for a bond, Gov. Greg Abbott inching closer to support for school vouchers, developments in Texas’ social media censorship law, the attorney general joining support for an out-of-state law outlawing child gender transition, Allen West reentering the political fray, Austin’s light rail project drastically increasing in cost, Dallas police indictments, and Austin voters approving a new ordinance dealing with marijuana.

Happy Friday, folks. Senior Editor Mackenzie Taylor here on the Texans Weekly Roundup podcast. This week, the team discusses the conservative trend in last weekend's school board races. The results of the over 200 bond proposals on ballots. A San Antonio school official pressuring employees to vote for a bond. Governor Abbott inching closer to support for school vouchers. Developments in Texas' social media censorship law. The Attorney General joined in support for an out-of-ments in Texas's social media censorship law. The Attorney General joining support for an out-of-state law outlawing child gender transition.

Allen West re-entering the political fray. Austin's light rail project drastically increasing in cost. Dallas police indictments. And Austin voters approving a new ordinance dealing with marijuana. Plus, we announce new team members and plot some friendly office initiation. If you have questions for our team, DM us on Twitter or email us at editor at the texan.news. We'd love to answer your questions on a future podcast. Thanks for listening and

enjoy this episode. Howdy, folks. Mackenzie Taylor here with Brad Johnson, Isaiah Mitchell, Daniel Friend, and Hayden Sparks. Y'all are sitting in a different order this week, and it almost messed me up. I almost just went in my old order. But now I don't even remember where I was. I didn't even know you had an order. Well, y'all always sit in the same seat, and so just by definition. She always goes around the table. Yeah, sometimes she starts one way, sometimes she starts the other way.

Really? Yeah. I feel like I'm always clockwise. No, I think I called you out for it once and then you did something different the next time wow well daniel rearranged the whole room for a slow fuse pun and my brain's never recovered so i frankly don't remember how he said oh well it wasn't just for a pun that i did that it wasn't no it's like i rearranged the room so that i could use the room because i was making a video that i'm going to be sharing in a week what's the twitter account again it's called the testimony of cal oh i think everyone

go follow you think yeah because after how many words you've written you should probably have it down no see i've made a bunch of different social media accounts and like on facebook on instagram you can have longer handles so i was able to fit the entire title in there when i went to twitter it was had to be shorter so it's it's not the full length of the title of the book okay yeah that makes more sense well keep an eye out for folks, folks. Video coming soon. Wonderful. Gentlemen, I do want to make note here. Isaiah was, earlier this week, a pining about,

because usually, Isaiah's a very low maintenance coffee drinker. We have a big thing of Folgers. He's the one in the office who will usually make a pot of coffee. Do you drink the whole pot of coffee yourself? Yeah. I do it at odd times too. It's like. Like last night, the coffee grinder came in.

It was 4.55 p.m. And he was like, I got to make a coffee. I got to make a pot. Like you're technically able to leave in five minutes and go home. And also, I mean, I drink coffee late. So what am I talking about? I've brewed coffee very late before. How did you sleep night pretty well it doesn't affect you if you like how late do you have to drink coffee in order for it to affect you i don't know um i guess i don't feel its

effects that strongly yeah yeah it'll make you jittery okay if i drink a whole lot of it but that's about it but if you like a cup at five, you're fine. Yeah. Or a pot at five. I guess you probably didn't drink the entire pot. It wasn't that big, but I mean, it wasn't like to the brim. Okay. Yeah. Interesting.

Don't make it sound like I just take it out and just chug the. I mean, I wouldn't put it past you. The grave. However you say it. I've never heard that word spoken. Carafe. Oh, okay. Yeah.

Apples, oranges. year the grave however you say it i've never heard that word craft oh okay yeah apples oranges can you taste a difference between like the coffee you just brewed and folgers yeah okay which do you prefer i think i like this one better actually oh nice from sons in fort worth it's pretty good stuff and daniel's not a coffee drinker hayden likes to hug his coffee we just talked about that hayden will hug his coffee mug to his chest and enjoy his time. And he has no mic in front of him, so he's unable to say anything about this. And Brad orders. As usual. My usual.

They name it the Brad on the menu. I thought I went fast enough where I could get my words in before anybody else and set the narrative as a truthful one. And Daniel still managed to get his words in. I don't know what you're talking about. The nice lady at Sweetwater's asked me if I want my usual. Does she know your name? No. Well, she knows when I put my phone number in and then it pops up on her.

But she does recognize me for what I usually get or always on her but she does not recognize me for uh what i usually get or always get so but she does know my name does she know oh yes she does that you want x drink what is what is the drink i order brad it's a latte what is it you literally can't get around this i always order an oat milk vanilla latte and i it's my usual i've gotten it for years brad i he was like what are you getting one day and i was like i'm getting an oat milk vanilla latte and he's like okay we'll get me one and so i did and now he claims that it's his usual and it dry and it is now but it drives me crazy but i've been drinking lattes well before i started but it's not just a latte. It's an oat milk and a latte. Oh my gosh. All right. Tomato. The fact that it has vanilla in it is why

I get it. I don't give a crap about the oat milk. Oh, well then why would you not? But it's more expensive. You know, I must point out right before we began this podcast, Mac told us, let's keep our segments pithy and tight. It had been a few weeks until we, or since we bickered on the podcast so i think we had to get that in that's true it was we had to get it out of our system for the bickering that's why they're here like yeah two of our listeners come for the bickering the rest actually come for the news but some people do enjoy it which i cannot understand well on that note isaiah we are going to go ahead and jump in the news thank you you for calling me out in my hypocrisy. So let's talk about the elections this last weekend.

A lot of eyes are watching Texas school board races specifically. Politically, how did they turn out? It's always a little hard to define a statewide trend in school board races because we've got around a thousand of them in Texas. Sheesh. And they've got their own election rules. They don't all have elections on the same day. And so the system is just real decentralized and just vast. But there was definitely an undeniable pattern among a lot of high profile school districts where candidates that focused a lot on fiscal thrift, transparency

and less political academics did a lot better than candidates who focused on what you might call the usual classics among that sphere like diversity measures funding hikes and either like getting rid of accountability measures like standardized tests altogether or unlinking them from the way we would gauge the performance of teachers or schools would that be like in in today and i'm asking this, is that what you would consider like the classic tenants of school board races now, even more so than the things that people who ran their races on and won this cycle might typically espouse? Yes. And the reason why is that those latter interests that I mentioned are typically the concerns of teacher and school board unions.

So got it. I see what you're saying. Yeah. And so we can generally, so we don't have to go over these same topics every time we talk about the candidates. We can just colloquially call these conservatives and more establishment candidates, if you want to put it that way, since they generally do share the concerns of TASB and the AFT and the NEA and so forth.

Yeah. The establishments of the Texas public education system, basically. That's a good way to put it, for the most part. Okay, thank you. I just wasn't quite sure. So talk about the pattern. Where do we see this? What all did we see in terms of which school districts came out in this kind of result?

Some people have written on the fact that there was a lot of heightened fundraising for this particular cycle for particular places and um there were certainly there's certainly like bigger and more prominent attention devoted to particular districts like brad wrote an article talking about how there are a lot of republicans from state or federal offices that were paying attention to school boards in their districts that they represent, like Chip Roy kind of waded into that topic. Gary Gates, we'll get into him. Texas GOP Chairman Matt Rinaldi endorsed three candidates in the Spring Branch ISD board elections. All three of them won. The state GOP also endorsed Scott Bowen, an incumbent trustee and self-described conservative on the Clear Creek ISD school board, who also won his race. In Grave on Collierville ISD.

Similar deal. These two candidates who both campaigned on the goal of deep politicizing the classroom, picked up both school board seats on the ballot, had a lot of support from Rinaldi and other people in the same crowd. State Rep. Gary Gates endorsed a couple of candidates on the Forbidden ISD board. This is really notable. One of them, they both won and they were the only two races on the ballot. One of those races that the challenger won, he ousted the incumbent trustee, Jim Bryce,

who also heads the Texas Association of School Boards. So a bit of a symbolic victory there. Yeah. And Richardson ISD incumbent trustee, Aaron Lind. Again, another, I say symbolic as regards to like it really symbolizes particular topics that are at play here this particular trustee is a staunch opponent of vouchers and school choice he actually took last place in a three-way race for his seat and so there's a runoff that district does have runoffs again they all got different rules not

all of them do so a lot of these races that I've heard even the ones that I've already mentioned we've got winners with like 46 47 percent because you know it's just whoever gets the most votes wins in some places and other places do have that 50 cutoff rule that can lead to a runoff there is a group called the lake travis families pack advocating transparency and parental involvement in that district all three candidates that they endorsed won their races for the lake travis isd school board uh chip roy whom we mentioned earlier all three candidates that they endorsed won their races for the Lake Travis ISD school board. Chip Roy, who we mentioned earlier, the candidates that he endorsed were for the two seats on the ballot in Dripping Springs ISD. Both won their elections.

And obviously, critical race theory was a big topic in this race. It has been in Texas at least since the legislature addressed it and before that, because it motivated the legislature to address it, right? Yeah. And so we've, there's a longer definition to that in the article that I hope will suffice. But however you want to define it, there were candidates who were outspoken opponents of critical race theory that did very well in their races. One of them is Marvin Lowe, a realtor, and an outspoken opponent of critical race theory. I say outspoken because it's pretty explicit on his website. He defeated an incumbent trustee, Natalie Hebert, endorsed by the Dallas Morning News for a place on the Frisco ISD board.

And there was another candidate for the same board, Stephanie Elad, also with a platform explicitly opposing critical race theory who won her spot place three there's a group called the 1776 project pack um with the same concerns especially with regard to crt but also with a lot of other topics like school choice and so forth um they endorsed a raft of candidates all of all but one of whom won their races and uh the candidates that they endorsed were running in Keller ISD, in Mansfield ISD, South Lake Carroll ISD, a district that is weathered particularly tumultuous controversy over its own diversity measures. It's gotten a lot of national attention for it, especially thanks to NBC and some others. But candidates who oppose that diversity plan are still maintaining their gains on the school board. So those are just just a few

yeah absolutely and it's hard like you said to distill all these races down to one trend but i think the the really the thread you're pointing out here is where republicans you know higher elected republicans did get involved and cited these concerns, these candidates did win largely. That's kind of what we saw. So, like you said, many candidates, hundreds of ISDs. It's hard to really distill it down. But in terms of the trends we saw where elected Republicans did get involved in races and cited these concerns, parents and constituents responded.

And they might have had a substantial effect we saw i was watching the dripping springs race and chip roy's two candidates uh were behind after early voting and they were behind it while the numbers were low the percentage differences were pretty substantial but then once the election day results rolled in, they pulled ahead. Interesting. I think Roy announced his endorsement like a week and a half before the election. So, to me, that showed something. You got to assume. It was also really interesting that in that race in particular, I saw the numbers on that.

And the breakdown between absentee voting versus in-person early voting, the absentee definitely favored the two candidates that he had not endorsed, whereas the in-person definitely favored the ones that he did. So there was an interesting difference there, too. Absolutely. Well, thank you, Isaiah, for boiling that down for us. Brad, let's pivot to bonds here. That was the other really big portion of the local elections that happened on Saturday. And for those who have not checked out, go to thetexan.news and check out our election tracker for a lot of notable races in the state. But let's talk about the over 200 local government bond proposals that were on the ballots across Texas.

What are some notable results? So the six most expensive propositions, including four ISDs, $1.3 billion proposition, passed largely with comfortable margins. These things usually pass. And so that's not surprising. Basically, when you go into these elections, you expect them to pass because they're school bonds and people love voting for things that increase funding for their schools, for their children.

Historically. Historically, yeah. So the first six were all chalk. And then the next three most expensive school bonds, though, all failed. Those were Sheldon, Little Elm, and Granbury ISDs. All substantial expenditures. Now, of the 16 propositions itemized for athletic stadiums some of them were to build a new stadium some of them were to renovate existing stadiums for expansion and

whatnot only four passed and they were all at um relatively small population school districts another notable one that i've written on before was the cameron county arena levy that failed by 55 votes last november and the commissioners put it back up for a vote this may and it failed by a larger margin 209 votes so um while most of these things pass and we won't know until the the breakdown um on the past fail rate to these and the amount of debt actually approved until the bond reboard puts out all their their tallies. They keep track of it. They'll probably come out next week. But some notable ones went down and kind of a continued trend from what I'd say I mentioned in November last year. It was the first time in 10 years that

more school bonds were rejected than passed. So maybe this trend is kind of starting to turn a little bit, but we'll see. And we'll see once the bond review board puts the results out. And Cameron County specifically being a very interesting instance of this happening. Brad, thank you for covering that for us. Isaiah, speaking of bonds, we saw a little controversy at a San Antonio school district over its bond election this week. What happened? Well, there's a school choice activist named Corey DeAngelis who got this scoop on a particular story in Northside ISD in San Antonio. He obtained district communications from a principal of a school in the district, unnamed in the screenshots that he shared.

But in the message, the principal explicitly asked employees to vote for the bond, to just respond on the ballot, and says the district will monitor whether or not employees vote. And we'll soon get to why you oofed at that, because the law has something to say about it. But there is, just so that we can get the interpretations out of the way, the message says word for word, thank you for supporting the NIST bond 2022. As per Dr. Woods, all employees will be expected to vote for this year's bond. So now the message continues asking students, excuse me, employees to get out and vote. And so the bulk of the message is devoted

to encouraging voting on its own, you know, in a nonpartisan way. Well, in this case, it's partisan, not part of it in a way that doesn't affect support or opposition to this particular measure. You know, so he says that we will expect all employees to vote and it's unacceptable that only 7% of employees voted for the last bond and so forth. However, it also says central office will be monitoring campus percentages for employee voting stats in the next week to come and we'll be expecting all employees to vote. So they are keeping an eye on the voting activity of their employees in the district. Yeah, absolutely. So what could be the legal consequences of pressuring employees to vote for this bond?

Well, as you oofed, the election code in Texas says that it is, and public employees cannot spend or authorize public funds on political advertising. And the definition of political advertising includes a communication supporting or opposing a measure. My pause there was an ellipsis that includes some other things you could support or oppose, like candidates, for example. That's the most obvious one. But a measure, like a bond, is also explicitly included in the Texas Election Code as a political action that is forbidden to spend money, public money, to support or oppose in messaging. So there's that. And the Election Code says that this is a misdemeanor crime. So Governor Greg Abbott actually weighed in

on social media and said, I have spoken with Texas Education Commissioner Mike Marath about this. He confirms that if these posts are verified, then it is likely a crime. And he then promised that Morath with the TEA and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton would both investigate. Wow. Well, thanks for covering that for us. We'll keep an eye. I know that the activist you talked about, Corey DeAngelis, did put out a website for specifically Texas public school employees to report corruption. I think it's like corruptiononline.com or something. So it'll be interesting to see if more instances are reported by his group. Thank you for following that for us. Brad, while Governor Abbott has previously made comments in support of school choice in some

fashion, specifically talking about the 88th legislative session to come in 2023. This week he came out more clear than ever on what particularly he would support. What did he say? So at a campaign event in San Antonio, Abbott told a crowd of supporters, empowering the parent means giving them the ability to send their child to any public charter or private school with state funding following the student that's about as explicit about a voucher-like program that he of a statement that he has made since the earlier days of his governorship he's he's talked about it before but recently this has not

really been an issue that factors into the governor's rhetoric until earlier this year when he said in january that he expects a larger push for school choice during this coming legislative session than ever before. So there's that. He did say on a radio show with Chris Salcedo earlier this week that he supports this for those three options, public, charter, private, or any other alternative form of schooling. So there were questions after he said this about homeschool, and he hasn't explicitly said that,

but he did say any other form. So likely that extends to homeschooling as well. So the governor hasn't said homeschooling. He hasn't said vouchers. He hasn't specifically said what these potential reforms could be or what support could be but the inferences have been made and we'll see basically what he what he comes forward with later on and how ardent he is especially once the legislature's in session what were the reactions to this so conservative activists organizations and officials all came out applauding the governor

for the statement dan patrick put out a statement the next morning lauding it lauding the comments and reiterating his own support for the issue um basically the um across the board among conservatives and conservative elected officials they all were very much in support now abbott's opponent beto o'rourke has since keyed in on this issue as one separating two candidates he said shortly after abbott's comments on tuesday monday night it was he said abbott is for defunding our public schools i'm for fully funding our kids classrooms and fully supporting parents teachers and students. Yeah absolutely. It'll be interesting to see particularly once the primaries are over and this runoff is done how much more we hear about this issue. How much staying power does it have.

Yes absolutely. So what is the environment like in the legislature on this issue for next session speaking of which? Yeah so unlike the abortion issue which almost exclusively does fall along party lines this does not um republicans democrats are generally divided on the issue though to varying degrees um with patrick's support for the issue he's likely to marshal votes for it in the senate as he has done with other more social conservative type issues. He controls the Senate with an iron fist, whereas the House is more up to the members what they do. The Speaker is less controlling than the Lieutenant Governor is of his chamber. So that means the House is where its future is more spotty. In a radio interview a couple weeks ago, Speaker Dade Phelan said that a test vote on vouchers was held during the 2021 budget debate as an amendment, and it only received between 40 and 45 members in support.

So, that's a long way to go to get from there to passing level in the 150 member legislature or member body. But if the governor pushes the envelope on this, you can expect that number to grow. But who knows if that'll be enough? There are a lot of especially rural Republicans, or at least I wouldn't say a lot, but a sizable number of rural Republicans that are not in support of this. And either they've been out there openly against this, like representative Glenn Rogers, or they've been silent on the issue. So,

um, we don't know how it's going to turn out. Um, that was an 83 currently Republicans roughly in the house. I think it might be up to 85 now. Um, so, but you know,

the Republican party is not united on this issue and so uh we'll see if they can next session get to the margin they need to pass this thing in whatever form they put up yeah this thing being the uh the big question yeah and we don't know what it'll be um it might be a voucher program i heard van skin uh at the te Public Policy Foundation suggested something like education savings account, similar to what they do with health care. Yeah. But in practicality, we're talking about vouchers here. Yeah. In some way, shape or form, the money following the student.

That's kind of the final form of school choice. There are variations. There are pro school choice pieces of legislation or just policies that can be put forward that fall within that category. But vouchers are kind of the full form there, the taxpayer money following the student, just like you were talking about. Very good stuff. Thank you, Bradley. Daniel, the Fifth Circuit just weighed in on a bill passed by the legislature last year targeting social media censorship. What did they say? So this appeal was brought to the Fifth Circuit by Attorney General Ken Paxton. After a lawsuit in December, a lower court actually issued an injunction preventing Texas' new anti-social media censorship bill from going into effect. So the Fifth Circuit, they didn't really give any opinion on this, but they did issue an order in a two to one decision saying that the law can go into effect.

They basically put a stay on a stay. So essentially, they're saying that the law can go into effect while the case continues at the lower court. So there is still the trial being decided in the trial court of whether or not this law is constitutional. Got it. So what were the reactions of these parties involved? So the two big parties involved would be Attorney General Ken Paxton on the one hand, and also on the other hand, you have Net Choice, which is an organization that lobbies for big tech organizations like Facebook and Twitter and different social media companies like that. So on the one hand, you had Paxton who praised the order.

Naturally, he said, quote, my office just secured another big win against big tech. HB 20 is back in effect. The Fifth Circuit made the right call here, and I look forward to continuing to defend the constitutionality of HB 20. Also, Governor Greg Abbott, who had pushed this legislation during the legislative session last year, called it a big win for free speech in Texas. Now, on the other hand, NetChoice, obviously in opposition to HB20, kind of condemned this order. They called it unprecedented. Carl Szabo, I don't know if I'm pronouncing his name right, but he's the vice president and general counsel of NetChoice, said in a statement, quote, In an unusual and unfortunate move, a split two-to-one Fifth Circuit panel lifted the injunction without ruling on the merits and without issuing an opinion on explaining the

order. He said, because HB20 is constitutionally rotten through and through, we are weighing our options and plan to appeal the order immediately. What are next steps? So, like the vice president and general counsel of of Net Choice said, they are planning on appealing this to the Supreme Court. So, we can expect this case to go up to them pretty quickly. Now, whether the Supreme Court acts on it quickly or not, that's another matter altogether. And in the meantime, the case is also going back down to the lower court where they will continue ruling on the or weighing the decision about

whether or not it's constitutional. On that, you have on the one hand, the attorney general in the state of Texas basically arguing that this is a bill that protects the free speech of individuals, whereas on the other hand, the people who are attacking this law say that it's a violation of free speech on the companies. So the First Amendment is at the debate, at the center of the debate here. Very good. Thank you, Daniel. Isaiah, coming back to you, Attorney General Ken Paxton has joined a lot of lawsuits in other states and even has sued other states, but I digress. This week, he announced a pretty notable lawsuit earlier this week in Alabama. What's the case about? So the case is a constitutional challenge to a state law that took effect in Alabama just this week that outlaws child gender transition.

It is reportedly the first law of its kind to take effect anywhere in the U.S. I heard that Arkansas passed a similar law that wasn't joined, but I heard that from an article that said Texas passed a law that wasn't joined, which did not happen. So I didn't look too deeply into Arkansas's legislation. I did do a deep dive into this one. We can get into that later. But it's reportedly the first law of its kind to take effect anywhere in the U.S. Paxton joined a lot of other state attorneys general in an amicus brief in support of the law in this case. And among other arguments, which is interesting, the brief compares the current medical trend in support of what they would call what they would term gender affirming care to the opioid academic. And so I'll try and

find some of their quotes here. But yeah, I'll just read from it. He says, we've been here before. Not many years ago, pain management was advocated as a fundamental human right. With some physicians dismissing as opioid phobic, other physicians concerned that raising pain treatment to a patient's rights issue could lead to over-reliance on opioids. Experts created new consensus-based standards and assured doctors that prescribing more opioids was largely risk-free. And so that's a quote from the brief. Continuing, it says, the U.S. opioid epidemic, with its continuing fallout for millions of shattered lives, was a tragic result. And that goes on to cite several academic studies that find no net benefit in medical transition for kids. Got it. Now, state lawmakers in Texas have proposed similar legislation, particularly last year. It was a very hot topic. How is

Alabama's law different? So there were different proposals in Texas, but the one that got the farthest was a bill by State Rep. Matt Krause that would have directed the Texas Medical Board to strip licenses from doctors that perform these procedures. And when I say these procedures, I mean administering or prescribing puberty blockers or opposite sex hormones, removing healthy body tissue, such as mastectomies, or surgically removing or constructing new genitalia, and all these for the purposes of aiding a gender transition and not addressing a medically verifiable sex disorder in children. There's an exception for that in Texas legislation that was proposed, and the same exception

exists in the Alabama law that's effective now. Alabama's law, however, uses a far more direct mode of enforcement. It just makes it a felony to perform these procedures. So the TMB would be the enforcement arm here in Texas in the bill that didn't get passed. And in Alabama, it's just a new crime. It also says, interestingly, that public school employees may not withhold information about a child's perception of his or her sex from the child's parent. And they also can't coerce or encourage the child to withhold that information from the parent. That's something that was absent from, I want to say, any of the proposals in the Texas legislature from last year.

But that section in the Alabama law does not describe a penalty. So I'm not quite sure about that one. It might be district law. I don't know. But that's an interesting line that didn't appear in any of the Texas bills. How has Paxton been involved in this issue up till now? So Krause, if you'll recall, was the lawmaker that submitted an official opinion request to Paxton. This was after the session, after the legislation failed in Texas.

And after Greg Abbott directed the Texas Department of Family Protective Services to treat genital surgeries in particular as child abuse, saying that they were already considered child abuse under existing unchanged Texas law. And the DFPS is the agency that, you know, controls foster care, investigates child abuse, that kind of thing. That's their gig. So after that, Matt Krause asked Paxton at an official request that, you know, giving Paxton a deadline, if the same might be said of puberty blockers, mastectomies, other procedures to aid a child gender transition, if those might also be considered abuse under Texas law.

And ostensibly, well, much of this is speculation, but Paxton took a little while. And in that period, while he was taking a little while to digest and then eventually produce this opinion from his office, he kind of edged closer to, there are some public facing gestures like, you know, one that I've got the top of mind right now is when he sent a bit of a confusing letter to DFPS claiming, insinuating that the agency already had the statutory authority without an official opinion from him to investigate and prosecute these procedures as child abuse under existing law. And we've got an article about that that kind of unweaves that request to the DFPS, or that letter to the DFPS, if you want to go back and look at that one. But eventually, Paxton did produce an opinion that said child abuse, as it's defined in Texas law, does include all of these procedures, especially those that sterilize the child,

in effect. And that triggered the DFPS investigating and prosecuting these procedures, but they're currently blocked from doing that by a court order. Yeah. Well, thank you for unweaving that for us zay daniel we're coming back to you um alan west was previously the texas gop chairman and then he launched a campaign for governor against governor abbott um now he's back in the news for something else what is going on there is a current board member of the national rifle association and several former board members of the group of of which Allen West is also a former board member. But this group of individuals have launched a draft campaign to nominate Allen West to be the next head of the NRA. I couldn't figure out why the head of the NRA is the executive vice

president, not the vice, just executive president, but it's the executive vice president, head of the NRA, that they want to nominate him for. And that would be kind of a challenge to the current NRA head, Wayne LaPierre. So that is something that he had been drafted to do. People were pushing for him to do. Last week, he said that he was praying about it and considering whether or not that was something that he wanted to do. And this week, he came out with a statement saying that he would accept the nomination and try and pursue that. He said, quote, as now known, several individuals came to me via email last week requesting I consider allowing them to nominate me for EVP of the NRA. I have humbly consented because progressive socialist love seeks to eradicate our Second Amendment. Right. We haven't heard about the progressive socialist left in a little while yeah it's been it's been

like what uh three months or something two months anyway that's like his coin phrase it's just we've missed it we've missed it around here um so yeah you've kind of alluded to it but tell us a little bit about the background context for this draft campaign. Yes. So a little bit of context. I know that we published an article. It's been a while ago since we published this. Man, I've been working here for a long time. Goodness. But the NRA was, it was originally chartered in New York. It's headquartered in Virginia. But then there was talk about moving it to Texas. They actually tried filing bankruptcy in a Texas court. That filing was tossed out by a judge. But essentially, they're trying to recharter their organization, get out of New York. But they're caught up in a legal battle there with

the New York Attorney General, who has been going on the warpath against them. And so lots of this legal battle between the organization and New York has now led to a point where people are concerned that the court is actually going to force Lapeer out of his position. And so the argument from the people who are campaigning, uh, for this, uh, I don't know. I don't, I don't want to get into all the details because i don't know particularly other sides i think they're coming from more of a uh more of a grassroots conservative trying to pull the nra more to the right um but they are also concerned that the court is going to force lapierre out of position and so they want to get ahead of that and just say hey either the court is going to force us to get rid of lapierre or we can choose someone on our own. Let's just choose someone on our own now. There was an effort to try and elect someone, I think, in the last time that there was an election, but that failed. So they're trying

to get in this time. There will be a meeting in Houston later at the end of May when the board will meet and decide whether or not they want to elect someone new. Got it. Thank you for following that. Bradley, the designers of the $7.1 billion light rail project here in Austin have revised their cost estimates. Surprise, surprise. What did they say? For the first phase of the project, which is building two light rail lines along with a tunnel station downtown, project costs to increase 77% from their original estimate.

Yeah. And that is a, in real dollar terms, that is going from $5.8 billion to now $10.3 billion, almost double. That is just the first phase. There are other phases to this, although are the the biggest undertakings um those i mean light rail is obviously you got to build the entire track and all this stuff like it's costly uh and then part of it is building a tunnel underground so um it's going to be incredibly uh intensive and probably take

i think the time span is like 10-15 years they expect to get all these phases done but that is just the first one so um the other ones may increase down the line as well yeah absolutely so what are the reasons for these increased costs so they gave three uh said inflation is driving up the cost of materials and labor um that obviously inflation affects everything it goes into everything that you every time you pay money you see inflation infecting it so um this obviously pertains to that the other one is rising property values that will increase significantly the amount of money the city has to pay for purchasing property from private owners in order to build this project across its its planned boundaries and then the third is the tunnel that they planned first they wanted to do a bridge across the river

then for various other reasons they could realize they couldn't do that something one of them was something about utility lines they couldn't avoid so they decided a tunnel under the river connecting south congress and north congress but then they realized that they have to the tunnel can't just go right under the river and pop back up they have to extend it like a mile down the down congress because um of the capital corridor regulations which is what if you're driving down congress in downtown austin you can see the state capitol from basically anywhere you can see it across the it's gorgeous it's a great view and that is statutorily protected by the state government and so oh by the state government yeah it's in state code interesting yeah so they realize that i'm sure the city plays into it as well but it's

not just local zoning it's state code interesting and so uh they realized that would be obstructed in some fashion by these other plans and so now what they have to do is build an even longer tunnel uh about a mile north of the river uh on south congress that way that's not obstructed that way that they can adhere to those regulations and so um that's something the builders should have realized yeah or the designers should have realized uh but they didn't and so we see the cost increase. Yeah, absolutely. So what does this mean for taxpayers? In 2020, voters approved by a wide margin, a 20% city tax rate increase to pay for a portion of the project's costs, about 5.4 billion. Now the original estimated cost was 7.1 billion. And the city had planned on bringing, still does plan on bringing in federal funding to pay for the rest.

But that was just a guess like there was none lined up and there still isn't any lined up. So now they'll either have to increase the amount of federal funding they bring in to compensate for the cost increase or they'll have to down the road ask taxpayers for more. I suppose the third option is for the entire project to be scrapped, but I highly doubt that will happen. Local projects are very rarely scrapped. Yes, even if it takes three decades for them to complete it. And each new administration inherits it. Just because they apply for this funding does not mean they'll get it.

Like back in Cincinnati, they had this streetcar plan and it was supposed to connect the uc campus to downtown to um i think the xavier campus uh what they have now is uh basically just a downtown streetcar that nobody rides because all the federal funding fell through so there's no guarantee that they get this that doesn't mean they won't but this is not a sure thing absolutely well and think about how difficult it is to get your um your kitchen and your home remodeled and all the different you know snags that you may run into and installations think about how much more that's amplified when you have a project of this magnitude and unforeseen costs that come up and different contractors that may bid you uh you know something

much higher than another it's very complicated and not to mention that government doesn't always uh use its funds in the most uh you know prudent way and also well when when this was planned this has been in development for a while when this was planned it was 2020 so the pandemic was already happening and that's a while we all could have foreseen some sort of cost problems because of the the pandemic throwing a wrench into the supply chain and whatnot which is absolutely driving up costs but also the government the federal government is spending money like crazy printing money they already have so the fact the idea that this wasn't approved in 2019 when the economy was in great shape yeah this they had to have known that they were going to run into problems like this but here we are here we are thank you bradley hayden we're going to come to you you wrote about a

couple of dallas police indictments this week who are the police officers in question and what are they accused of i always like to put things in their political contexts. So I will mention that criminal district attorney John Cruzot is in a general election campaign against former state district judge Faith Johnson, a Republican who was also the criminal district attorney in Dallas County. Cruzot being a Democrat, correct? Correct. Cruzot is a Democrat and he defeated Faith Johnson in the last general election for DA in 2018. But the current indictments that were handed down recently were against two, one former police officer and a current police officer in the Dallas Police Department.

Both of them were or are senior corporals and have been charged with multiple felonies that could put them away for a life. Melvin Williams was fired by the department earlier this year on an unrelated incident. He was accused of assaulting someone last summer and was fired as a result of that accusation. But both Melvin Williams and the other defendant in this case, the current Senior Corporal Ryan Mabry, who's 36 years old, are charged with multiple counts of aggravated assault by a public servant and counts of deadly conduct as well. The accusations stem from injuries that were sustained by demonstrators in the summer of 2020 during the race riots that took place downtown. There are

also accusations based on injuries that were said to have been sustained by unknown individuals. In other words, the people who are said to be victims have not come forward or have not otherwise been identified. They are looking at, Mabry is looking at six counts of aggravated assault by a public servant and two counts of deadly conduct. Williams is looking at, I believe, four counts of aggravated assault by a public servant and two counts of deadly conduct. They also both face misdemeanor counts of official

oppression no in addition sorry one more go for it uh the grand jury just a reminder grand juries do not convict people they issue a no bill or true bill on indictments they also issued an indictment for officer joe privet in the Garland Police Department of one count of aggravated assault by a public servant. But that is the complete list of indictments that were announced by Cruz's office. Wow. Now, how did Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia respond to all of this? Of course, two of the people here are either currently or were associated with DPD. Chief Eddie Garcia really took the posture that most police chiefs are going to take in a situation like this. And he encouraged the public to wait on the jury's verdicts in these cases and reminded the public that there were hundreds of officers who acted professionally

and were not indicted. But he also encouraged people in these cases to await the jury's verdict and not to rush to judgment. He stated, quote, I'm not quite sure if there was criminal intent, end quote. He also stated that DPD is not necessarily going to make any major policy changes as a result of these indictments. In fact, he stated in a way the opposite. He said, quote, the goals are to defend our protesters, to protect our officers, and to ensure the city doesn't burn. Those are the goals that will always be the goals. The tactics, what a professional police department will do is look at the tactics used and maybe modify some tactics, which this department already has done. But those goals will never change. And this city needs to know that this police department's goals will never change, end quote. Garcia defended his officers as most police chiefs would do in this situation, and he also disagreed with the grand jury's characterization of the 40 millimeter launchers as deadly weapons because they were used to propel less than lethal rounds of ammunition

at these protesters. I do want to mention the complaining witnesses in the counts against both Mabry and Williams are David McKee and Brandon Sines. They do not include the two unknown individuals. These are the names on the indictments. And anytime I talk about criminal charges, I try not to give a summary of what happened because that's for the jury to sort out. And it's, of course, in dispute what happened on May 30th, 2020. So when these cases go to trial, it will be for a jury to decide whether whatever happened rises to a level of criminal conduct. And these charges were filed previously, but Cruzot's office did not file this many counts against them. The grand jury indicted them with more charges than they were originally arrested for and booked in the Dallas

County Jail. At this stage, it will be up to Cruz's office to prosecute them and for a jury to make a decision. Well, Hayden, thank you for boiling that down for us. Brad, I really, before we get into some other segments of the pod, I really quickly want you to talk about this citywide vote with Austin approving an ordinance specifically dealing with marijuana. Tell us about what happened and what police had to say. Yeah. So voters approved overwhelmingly an ordinance that does two things. First of all, it prohibits the austin police department from enforcing misdemeanor marijuana possession offenses so that means uh people possessing some uh marijuana below a level of marijuana below four ounces uh will no longer be cited or

arrested per a new directive from the council um The other provision is prohibits police from issuing or carrying out no-knock warrants. This is where they approach a suspect's house and they don't announce themselves before they enter. Those aren't used very often, and usually it's used that way they don't alert a potentially dangerous subject or suspect. But now that is no longer going to be. Those prohibitions are in the city charter now. Very cool. Well, thank you for covering that for us. And police basically said, like, this won't change that much of what they're already doing.

Yeah, they said they already don't really rest for that level of possession uh because there are resources already stretched thin enough well remember that list that they put out like a few months ago of like all these offenses and saying well we won't really do much about these things and like theft i think was on the list too the low level thefts yes yes yes um there's something like that in dallas too right remember i don't know that's unimportant there was a policy like that they he they're not prosecuting lower level marijuana offenses i can't remember if it's two ounces or four ounces but they're but that wasn't a county-wide vote so much as it was a policy that the new da's administration put in place that's the reason it won't change much because if the da is not going to charge then why arrest yeah so kind of the same thing that happened with

the homeless stuff only that was also a city policy passed by the council and then as for no knock warrants they said they've only done like an average of three the last few years so average of three each year the last few years and it's usually it's only used for like murder suspects wow yeah yeah there you go they say it won't change much well thank you bradley for covering that gentlemen we're gonna pivot to some tweetery um talk through some tweetery i thought that was a that was better than just saying other words um and talk through what we're seeing on Twitter this week. Daniel, I'm going to start with you.

What did you happen to see that caught your eye on Twitter this week? There was an article that was published by the Associated Press. And it was about Elon Musk, which seems like a thing that I've been talking about a lot lately on this segment. Would you like to talk about Elon? I mean, it's Twitter, right? So I was going to go with another tweet,

but then apparently everybody wanted to talk about that one. So I went back to Elon. Uh, but this is less about Elon Musk and more about the Associated Press tweet. Uh, they had an article. The article was titled Elon Musk and neurotic visionary revels in contradiction. And it was really the social copy that just got me here because it's so

confusing. It makes no sense. I'm just going to read it word for word. It says Elon Musk boasts that he's acquiring Twitter to defend freedom of speech, but he has long used the platform to attack those who disagree with him. I don't know who wrote that but i don't think that they have an operational understanding of free speech yeah or just like a basic understanding of the first amendment of the historical context of it like the reason for the First Amendment was for using a platform to disagree with people.

Yeah. So, it was very confusing about what they were trying to get at there. That's not really a contradiction if they're trying to point one out. Now, the article itself, I also didn't really understand where the contradiction was.

Now, is he an erratic visionary that is a fair description i think but probably yeah yeah but regardless such a weird tweet well and musk has come out and said i will allow people who disagree like i'm not going to boot people off my platform because they disagree with me now if at some point he pivots from that position and we start to see you know him engaged in the same kind of quote-unquote censorship that he's accused twitter of in the past then that's a conversation but criticism is not the stifling of free speech and he has some interesting nuanced comments about what he would do like he said he would allow trump back on platform trump has said that he's not going to come back to twitter oh i didn't know that. That's interesting.

Yeah. And then the other interesting thing is that Elon Musk said that he doesn't agree that there should be a permanent ban. But he said, you know, maybe there's a situation for a, quote, timeout of, you know, temporary temporarily suspending people. Or he said that in some instances there are cases for permanent bans if you're just like a spammer or something like that um so it's a little bit more nuanced but we talked a lot about bots and those kinds of things of you know trying to make twitter a little less spammy so which him talking about bots is interesting too yeah again it's very interesting well thank you daniel um is, what do you have that

caught your eye this week? Let me remember because I forgot. No, it deals with something a little bit more related to what we read about. Ted Cruz put out a statement, not really exclusive to Twitter, but that's where I saw it, where he praised Governor Greg Abbott's newfound embrace of vouchers on Monday. He said, I have long urged Texas to stand with children and against the special interests that are trying to deny Texans the freedom to decide how education dollars are spent, such and such. I'm glad my friend Governor Abbott is so fervently supporting school choice. And Brad can probably speak to this a little bit more specifically than I can. But is it unreasonable? I wonder if I mean, this isn't a question I expected to be here to answer, you know, right.

But I wonder, like, is it unreasonable to think that there is political pressure behind the statement of Ted's, you know, to support the governor, to show support for the governor? Not that Ted himself is acting on pressure, but that he is exerting pressure with this statement. Because Abbott's wording, Cruz's wording is stronger than Abbott's wording. And so by, I think Cruz is framing it a little bit more solidly than Abbott did. You know, Governor Abbott is fervently supporting school choice. Yeah. That's not the kind of word choice that Abbott used, right? I mean. Certainly not up until this week.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's interesting. It's like Cruz is kind of solidifying that position. It's like, okay, we're sticking here now. Oh, yeah, yeah. He's fervently supporting school choice, you know, and it's almost like something for the record flag yes and again this i'm wondering is is it just like in the clouds prognostication to say that's what's going on here or is this just

like good job greg abbott yeah but something interesting too um that's a little bit more concrete is that school choice has been maybe the biggest wedge issue between these two politicians with regards to who they endorse and texas house races absolutely especially this cycle absolutely yeah and cruz has made it his most important issue yeah uh state on the state level at least and as you mentioned like their the endorsements, this is the only, maybe not the only issue, but if there's a difference between two candidates on school choice, Cruz is going to endorse the one that supports in these races. And he's made that very clear. Yeah. And while Abbott's endorsements, meanwhile, are more of a mixed bag, there are some, like he endorsed President Glenn Rogers, who I mentioned earlier, who was vehemently against school choice legislation.

He came out with a whole editorial on it, criticizing it. Then others have been silent on the issue. I've actually, I heard back from a couple people of endorsements today. And they said that they, one of them, Patrick Gersky in HG23, said he supports the governor's statement that he made this week. Others have been more silent on it than there were some that were endorsed

by the American Federation of Teachers. While they themselves were silent on the issue, this group is not in support of that. And they also rejected the endorsement after they got it. So it's just, it's not as clear-cut as what cruz is is doing and saying out there um it's like i said more of a mixed bag but you're right this is a big wedge issue for these guys yeah and you're totally right it's interesting watching um cruise almost solidify okay yes abbott you did say this like yeah it's just more statements on the record

that kind of put abbott in this corner of like okay you've come out in this much support so far what will the legislature actually do what will you put your weight behind behind the scenes when you know push comes to shove it seems to be a nudge off the fence yeah or maybe not who knows well and that's the thing statewide elected officials don't legislate, but they can push things behind the scenes. The legislature at large, behind the scenes, and sometimes even publicly, know exactly what their leaders want. And so that's where it'll come down to, okay, what do they actually put pen to paper in terms of actual proposals? And next year, the governor will lay out his uh was it emergency items yeah and i think at this point we'll likely see school choice legislation school

choice is not on that in some and that's where he'll shape the conversation and his words are chosen so carefully so pay attention folks of what how ardent his support actually is when when the legislature continues. And that's when we'll see what legislation will actually take the shape of. Exactly. Whether it is a full-on voucher program or if it's kind of a hybrid system, something like that. We'll see. And there is usually a legislature that's knighted by the governor as, okay, you'll carry the proposal that I support.

He'll call legislators behind the scenes, say, support this one. Other legislators will file other options that could potentially be more bold, less bold, whatever that might be. And it's interesting to watch what shape it takes and with amendments, what it gets to the floor in the committee process, what the discussion becomes publicly, and if that can kind of deviate from the governor's plan. So it'll be interesting brad um talk to us about what you saw this week so mine is it's not exactly related to elon musk but he's a big inventor so it's sort of related to that but i saw this video of this space-saving furniture folding concept.

Oh, my gosh. And it basically looks like what you see in a dorm room with your wardrobe and whatnot, how they have doors that kind of fold into each other or into the furniture. Yeah. But it just reminded me, we see these constantly uh these technological developments that are supposed to be groundbreaking but really they're just reinventing something that's already been in existence and yeah they might have a cool twist on something but this is not i'm watching this video right now the guy's just opening a folding door on some like makeshift office space and it like slides into itself to save space

it's a closet yes it's a closet yes thank you that's exactly what we've got one right here and i just these all these people act like they're reinventing the wheel and this is some groundbreaking technological advancement that's going to save the human race and it's just not i don't understand why you would choose to talk about this on a podcast when when listeners can't see what you're talking about i don't mean to rake you over the coals but i'm going to write you over the it happened already you didn't stop me so i don't really know where you're going with this oh my gosh well you know it look it does look like a like a fancy ikea installation i'll give

you that yeah but it doesn't have to be this there's so many other examples of this kind of thing that's true it's just you reinvented the door okay Okay. Good job. That's good. I understand. I'm not going to rake you with coals anymore than I already have. Thank you, Bradley. That doesn't mean for the rest of the day. That just means for the rest of the podcast. That just means for this particular episode that we're talking about. For the next couple of minutes.

Not even for you. Two minutes is your time limit. Until the next raking over the coals might happen. I'll enjoy the two minutes while it lasts. I really haven't done this in a while, though. It's been a hot minute. Yeah. Okay.

However you define a hot minute, sure. That's true. That's true. Hayden, what do you got for us? Speaking of free speech, the Heritage Foundation highlighted an interesting quote from Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky regarding the Disinformation Governance Board. Paul said, quote, do you think the American people are so stupid they need the government to tell them what the truth is? End

quote. I presume he directed that remark towards Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, but it goes to an interesting, I won't say interesting, I will say a wrong definition of freedom of speech that is emerging, and that is the ability for the left to say what it wants without being criticized and the need for the right to be perpetually, quote, fact checked by whatever institution or elite happens to be in charge. And of course, the disinformation governance board has been criticized for being linked to Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter. And I don't think it's any secret that there's definitely a slant to a lot of the fact checking. And people fact-checking and people in heated debates make false claims on both sides. And the objection of the Disinformation Governance Board has been that it will turn into an entity that surveils and monitors Americans and whether that institution is used by a Republican or a Democratic president to censor the beliefs of americans it would be chilling to the free speech rights of people on both the left and the right

i thought that was an interesting perspective from senator paul yeah absolutely this whole free speech argument is going to be something that goes on for i mean it's talked about all the time but particularly with the acquisition of Twitter will be in it, you know, continue to be talked about. Very good. Thank you, Hayden. Well, I'm going to chat real fast about something that I think three of us at this table wanted to talk about. So please chime in, boys. But this all started, we're talking about vouchers, school choice so much lately, just in Texas politics, and Gene Wu, a Democrat state representative from Houston took to Twitter this week and I believe this is the tweet that started it all correct me

if I'm wrong gentlemen but tweet from Gene Wu hey Republicans push for vouchers push as hard as you can make it a litmus test for Republican candidates running for office trust me they're they're I think I don't know they're no easily foreseeable consequences that will bite you in the ass for taking the stance i promise very ardent words from gene wu quite ardent very ardent words staking his flag as it were yeah as it were twice this time yeah um brian harrison a newly elected republican um state representative quote tweeted gene i won my let my i won my seat campaigning for school choice in a rural district by 11 points texas gop voters support it nine to one

you went to private school please explain why you want to keep poor kids in failing schools from the opportunity you had. What do you tell their parents? And really, there are like this is this whole conversation is like just a spider web of different replies from, you know, different pundits or elected officials in Texas. But it's fascinating watching this back and forth and kind of seeing where people are landing on this. And Jinwoo really has dug in on this argument.

And later on, he said, I went to a private school for high school. My family would have loved to have money back, but they didn't need it. I would love to get $12,000 of state money for my kids in private school, but that doesn't seem fair in the least bit. Very interesting. And, you know, we talked about this before of like the rural versus urban conversation. And, you know, Wu certainly is in a more urban area of Texas. And interesting to watch a rural Republican and an urban Democrat kind of go at this from these two different angles. I mean, in GOP chair, Matt Rinaldi jumped in on this too.

And I did not see the tweet from Wu before it was deleted. Rinaldi claims that he criticized Rinaldi then for going to public school and then deleted it. Like there's just, it's a messy conversation and dialogue that's happening on Twitter. And I think this is just foreshadowing what we'll see in the legislature in 2023. Yeah. And a couple of interesting things. I remember there was one significant vote on a bill that had to do with homeschoolers playing in UIL sports. And Wu ended up voting for that bill against a lot of his other colleagues who would also oppose school choice. And like you pointed out, there are Democrats who like school choice there are democrats who don't same with republicans and that you know it cuts through party lines it's

often correlated with like what kind of places they represent yeah um but like we were shown a willingness to kind of break ranks with others in that camp in his own party on education topics like here and there but not on this one second thing thing is also that he seems to, he, I mean, you, you read one tweet, but there's like, it's been going on. It's like dozens of tweets. Yeah. A lot. And he is several times tied it to,

he has threatened or warned of political pressure force it like supporting vouchers and saying like all your, your school board members are going to campaign against you and things like that. And so like, he's arguing that it is a losing issue for voters in the upcoming election cycle yeah it'll be interesting to see if that's the case to see if that's the case yeah yeah well republican primary voters overwhelmingly support it but in general elections it's far more nuanced so very interesting um i see the tweet here daniel just found it uh from gene woo that was um screenshot by matt

rinaldi i'm sorry you could figure out or you could i assume it means he means couldn't i'm sorry you couldn't figure out how to read the rest of the thread do you want to blame that on your public school education too spicy words spicy spicy okay twitter always has just the most nuanced disagreements intellectual yes it's really uh always sophisticated conversations points yeah yeah uh civil dialogue always happens on twitter really is the uh the bedrock of all um intellectual discussion yes of democracy a lot of ardent words on twitter okay i've said ardent like three times on this podcast apparently that's my new word i've just chosen to use every other um in every other instance also insulting your opponent's literacy in a tweet that ignores apostrophes

and says could instead of couldn't when i assume you mean to say couldn't so it is bold but maybe that's why he deleted i want to see a generous interpretation of it but i i can't i think the posturing t is is gone yeah um okay gentlemen well real fast before we wrap up here i do want to say we are adding two new team members to our squad here at the texan matt stringer out in west tex Texas is going to be covering what's happening out there for us in large part, as well as just other beats that he's able to. So welcome to the team, Matt. And next week, we have an assistant editor starting as well, Rob Lausius. I do want to give you guys real fast, just an opportunity to talk about how you plan to haze these new

additions now matt particularly will not be subject to as much scrutiny or hazing because he is in west texas yes it may be different um some psychological warfare may be waged but it is not the same as poor rob will have to deal with once he is actually here um what kind of plan i do want to you know we can talk about it here and then we'll see if he listens to this podcast and we'll know based on how prepared he is come tuesday morning so what are we planning i know you boys have already talked about well we're gonna take him out to lunch and leave him with the check oh yeah so that's gonna be a classic daniel smile right now he has no mic but he looks so pleased yes absolutely a classic what else what else are we planning don't be shy I've been a part of these conversations to find whatever

his grammatical white whale is and either misspell it or make that error in every single one of my drafts as it were edits as it were yeah so um As it were. So that's my plan. I'm going to call him Bob for the first three weeks that he works here. Oh, that really got me. And make him correct me over and over until finally I stop. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Sorry, Ray. It'll take me a little bit.

And then just start calling him Robert after that. Robert. Just really seriously, Robert. That's awesome. You can just kind of say it a little bit wrong, like Robert. Robert. that. Robert. Just really seriously, Robert. That's awesome. Or you can just kind of say it a little bit wrong, like Robert. Roberto? Yeah. Call him that. Start calling him Beto. I think I would

you like prop, you prop the door open a little bit and prop a bucket of water on top of it. And then when he walks in, you steal his wallet. And run away oh man i know some conversations have happened after the water has fallen on him or is that just totally separate i haven't worked out what the water will do what is the uh order or the the dress code situation that y'all have talked about oh we're gonna discuss this publicly no no we're not we're not giving this one away yeah we can't

give that one away because if he if he listens then that's literally what i've been trying to get you guys to talk about this entire time oh really that was that in particular well because i knew about that one okay well this bucket on the top of the door thing is not going to happen i was scrambling for an alternative to the dress code thing because i thought we can't spoil it before he gets here oh i don't think he'll. Okay. Well, alright. We were tossing around ideas of like finding a way to scare him into thinking that we wear suits here every day. And if you're listening, we're wearing suits right now, Rob.

But if he comes here without a suit, we would suggest to him something like, oh, by the way, you've got like 20 minutes before Gunna gets here to change into your suit. If you want to sit like the bathrooms back there, whenever you want to change, you know. So we usually start at like 830, by the way. That's when our workday starts. But, you know, it's your first day. So things like that we can say to him. That's pretty good.

I enjoy that. Isaiah has this very uh very thought out there are many uh in this conversation i was surprised it is on the calendar wear a suit on the first day that rob starts here really oh my gosh maybe it's on my calendar i don't see it he just reminded himself i put it on my calendar and i set an alert so that i would remember to dress to the nines on his first day. You did do that when you first started working here. Hayden was very dressed to the nines when he first started working here. May 17th. 17th.

That's in several days. That's five days from now. I believe that's if they haven't changed the math yet, I believe that's what 17 minus 12 is and today's the 12th. That's very good. I was thinking, though, since we do want to take him out to lunch, maybe not leave him with a check. Maybe leave him with a check.

I don't know. We'll decide. We'll see. Like, if we're in a suit, then we probably couldn't go to Ironworks Barbecue, which would, I mean, we could. I just have to be more careful eating. Yeah. But I, you know, I don't want to get my suit dirty. I think we should let Rob decide where to eat.

That's fair. Yeah. Although we'll have to come up with options because there is always indecision about where do we go. Well, also he doesn't know the places in Austin. That's also very true. We could say barbecue, Mexican tacos, something, you know, go from there. Still though, there's lots of messy options.

Yeah. And Ironworks is a classic for you. You boys all over. And I've never been, I've never been to Ironworks. Yeah. I don't think I've been there either. Have we gone? Yes.

Which you feel better Hayden. Cause I, there was once when y'all went and I don't remember why and I couldn't, I couldn't go. There were multiple times when y'all went and I couldn't go. Yeah. I think I, I think, yeah, I've been there because I think we all went as a group, but Mac wasn't go. There were multiple times when y'all went and I couldn't go. Yeah. I think I, I think, yeah,

I've been there because I think we all went as a group, but Mac wasn't there. Yeah. Anyways. Wonderful. Um, well, gentlemen,

thank you so much. You guys are awesome folks. We will catch you next week. Thank you for listening. Thank you all so much for listening. If you've been enjoying our podcast, it would be awesome. If you would review us on iTunes. And if there's a guest you'd love to hear on our show, give us a shout on Twitter.

Tweet at The Texan News. We're so proud to have you standing with us as we seek to provide real journalism in an age of disinformation. We're paid for exclusively by readers like you, so it's important we all do our part to support The Texan by subscribing and telling your friends about us. God bless you, and God bless Texas.