The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - May 17, 2024

Episode Date: May 17, 2024

Show off your Lone Star spirit with a free "Remember the Alamo" hat with an annual subscription to The Texan: https://thetexan.news/subscribe/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, the team discusses:A meeting between Phelan and House Democrats resurfacing over the 2021 quorum breakThe Senate Subcommittee on Higher Education hearing about campus protests and DEICongress passing legislation co-authored by Sen. Ted Cruz reauthorizing the FAARobert F. Kennedy Jr. announcing he has enough signatures to run on the ballot in TexasGOP Legislation to Exclude Noncitizens from Census Draws Opposition from Texas DemocratsThe Austin Police Department releasing its plan for the next five yearsA Galveston bridge’s partial collapse after being struck by a bargeFederal Government Challenges Texas' Ownership of Fronton Island in Rio GrandeA select Texas House committee’s proposals to combat the federal government’s pause on new liquefied natural gas exportsA new partnership between the University of Austin and Capital Factory

RFK, the notorious RFK, junior, you're right, you're right, sorry, nicknamed Brain Worm. He held a rally in Austin to announce he will be on the ballot in Texas. How was that? Well, just so we don't leave that Brain Worm comment just hanging, there was a story that his brain, essentially there was a worm that ate part of his brain. Hello, everybody. Senior reporter Brad Johnson with The Texan back for another episode of the Weekly Roundup. I'm here with Daniel Friend, who is joining us after a long hiatus. What is your title now?

My title, I tell people that I'm the marketing and media manager, but when I'm describing my job to people, I say, you know what reporters do in a newsroom? And they're like, yeah. And then I say, I do everything except that. Well, you are doing some writing again, you know. Yeah, I know I am. You're a congressional news writer at 40.

And also here with Cameron Abramsrams i'm here welcome well i should say welcome to myself because i've been gone for yeah two weeks now and what did i miss i miss anything something there's i missed something sitting on the table right there well we grew this in your absence because well it just grew up by itself yeah it just popped up but we've been watering it taking taking care of it, because in your absence, we needed someone to carry the torch of just beautiful hair follicles. George Washington's grown out of fro. It is a George Washington chia pet. That welcomed me back when I

got here on Monday. You have not watered it though. No, you've been the one taking care of it. He came in on the weekends to water it. That's how committed I was. Seriously? Yes. It looks like his hairline is receding already

in the front. I can relate to that. But anything else I missed over the two weeks? It seemed like a pretty crazy string of – Yeah, there was the Henry Cuellar developments. Yeah. That was pretty big. And those were dropping on Fridays too. The old Friday news dump.

The Friday news dump. The Friday news dump. And then big news with the passing of the anti-Semitism bill in Congress. That caused a big stir online. Those were two big things that I covered because the protests were still going on. And I'm a bit scatterbrained over those past two weeks just because I was picking up so many stories. It's hard to pinpoint. Yeah. Just a few.

What do you think, Daniel? What's some things that broke? I feel like that was the big news. I think you did pick a good time to just take a hiatus and go off for a couple weeks, explore Turkey. Yeah, it was sort of a hiatus. I was still tweeting while gone and crap for that. Yeah, we were making fun of you the whole time of like, he's off, but he's still tweeting and slacking. Texting.

My roommate who went on the trip with me has apparently many photos of me while we're on vacation on my phone tweeting. So it's a drug. I can't get away from it. But that's the news. That's the breaks. Speaking of the news, let's get into it. Cameron, there was a Senate interim hearing. There was.

Pretty notable one. Higher education. Yep. Chairman Brennan Creighton held it. Talk about various things. Yep. Give us the rundown. What happened?

Yeah, they were talking about campus free speech. They're talking about anti-Semitism that's been going on on campus because of these Palestine protests and the concerns around that. And they also talked about the ban on DEI offices and sort of the monitoring and updates on that and so the first thing they they covered in this interim subcommittee hearing was the campus protests and there was one individual who gave public testimony who was actually a UT Austin student who was representing Longhorn students for Israel. And he talked a lot about how shocked he was by a lot of the rhetoric that's been occurring in these protests. And actually, Creighton led off the session that

they were having, talking about some of those things in terms of when protesters chant, globalize the Infitada or from the river to the sea. Creighton has said that sort of is mirroring the similar rhetoric that had fueled the October 7th attack on Israel. So lots of concern going around at the beginning of this hearing about some of these chants. And there was also an individual there from the Anti-Defamation League. Sorry, couldn't get that out. Anti-Defamation League. And there was also someone from the UT Law School who talked about what are these limits to free speech? Because something that I've written about quite a bit in my newsletter

redacted is here in Texas, you know, we do have laws that are related to anti-Semitism and with Abbott's executive order specifically talking to anti-Semitism on college campuses. And when it comes to free speech, incitements of violence or true threats of violence, those are not allowed already. So just sort of reiterating those things in this hearing was probably, you know, important to bring up and interesting for people who might not be aware of what are the limits to some things within free speech. The committee meeting then moved on to the DEI offices, and this has been a huge issue in the legislature. They actually passed SB 17 during the 88th legislature where it bans these DEI offices on campuses. And we've seen places like UT Austin actually close one of their like DEI adjacent type offices called the Division of Campus and Community Engagement. And at this subcommittee hearing, we had UT System Chancellor James Milliken and Texas A&M System's Chancellor John Sharp, who provided updates.

And Milliken, like I mentioned for the UT System, said there's been 311 full-time and part-time positions that were eliminated in addition to 21 DEI offices closing. And then Sharp from the Texas A&M system said 27 full-time positions have been impacted, and then eight full-time employees have been separated from the university system. So he also added that across the A&M system, they only had 114 positions that dealt with DEI, and most of those were part-time. So updates on DEI office closures and sort of the monitoring of the implementation of SB 17, addressing anti-Semitism and free speech on campus was really the focus of this subcommittee hearing, and I'm sure in the upcoming

legislative session, we're going to see continual action on both the DEI aspect of this hearing and the anti-Semitism action. So just something for people to keep their eye on. Yeah, interim charges always provide a glimpse into usually what we're going to see come down the pike in the next session. And sometimes there's other messages hidden in them. We'll talk about that later. But, yeah, they're fascinating to watch, especially during this time when there's nothing really to watch other than the campaigns. But legislatively, nothing's happening. Well, I didn't see on the docket, but they also held a committee hearing

on squatting. Yes, that was an interesting. That was a very interesting hearing because there was a woman who was giving testimony in that hearing about a squatter on one of her properties. And she had a really funny line at one point because she was a great storyteller. And her story was incredibly sad just about how she couldn't move back into this house. She tried contacting police. They weren't helping. But at one point she said she was talking to the police. And they were like, ma'am, is this a domestic dispute? And she's like,

I know I'm not in my prime, but I don't date crackheads yet. An all-time text ledge quote. Yeah. But the issue of squatting, I think, is really interesting. Property rights is such an important issue, especially here in Texas. And we've seen across the country different states have been impacted by swatters. And it's caused quite a stir online. And so addressing it here in Texas, I think, is really important. And at least we're seeing progress on that issue. Yeah, we'll keep following it.

Thank you, Cameron. I'll touch on a piece that I wrote this week. So at a press conference in Houston over the weekend, there was a comment made that sparked relitigation of the 2021 quorum break and meetings that happened therein. While campaigning for Lauren Ashley Simmons, she is challenging Representative Sean Thierry, Democrat in Houston. That is an interesting race to watch. And it's not just the Republicans that are in the midst of an ideological fight. Democrats are as well. It's just less pronounced because there's fewer of them, I'd say, in the state. And they're the minority party. So minority parties usually stick together. Look at Republicans

for the last, until they took the majority back in the House, look at Republicans in Congress for the last few years. So this though occurred when – at this rally when Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett who used to be in the Texas House, she kind of dropped a grenade on the political sphere when she mentioned a meeting between Speaker Dade Phelan and House Democrats before the latter broke quorum the first time in 2021. During the discussion, she said that State Rep. Sean Therry asked Phelan whether Democrats would keep their committee positions should they break quorum. Therry denied this

accusation. It's important to point out. She said, I don, I don't I don't know who's right, who's wrong on this. But the accusation was made and answered by theory. So but that itself took on a life of its own, especially members who are very much not in favor of Speaker Phelan jumped on it and criticized him for having a meeting with Democrats back then. You know, it's important to note, this is not new information that a meeting happened. We knew a meeting happened between Phelan and Democrats before the first quorum break, which was also, that's also important context. There was two quorum breaks. The first one was the walkout, and that occurred on sine die eve, I believe, right at a deadline. You know, you have to get conference committee reports through. Otherwise, it dies. You can't pass really anything on sine die, I believe. But actually, it may be.

Weren't there a few bills that they were trying to kill, too? It wasn't just – there was the election bill. I think that was a few bills that they were trying to kill too? It wasn't just, there was the election bill. I think that was the main one that they were trying to kill. And then I think there was like something like SB 14 related. SB 14, that was the municipal regulations. Basically what turned into the Death Star bill. Okay. Death Star bill is much broader.

Yeah. But this was like trying to preempt certain employment regulations. But it was SB 14, yes. Not the new SB 14. Okay, okay. Not gender modification. So during this, Phelan was trying to prevent a quorum break. Democrats were considering the option as a way to stop the election bill.

As I said, knowledge of this meeting was not new. The only potentially new insight here was whether committee positions were discussed. At the time, Phelan told CBS Austin back in 21, in the meeting, he told Democratic members, I'm not going to lock the doors.

I'm not going to arrest anybody, even though I have that authority, but we will take up election integrity at some point in time. It is an emergency item of the governor's and we can do it tonight or we can do it in a special session. They did it in a special session after another quorum break later in the summer in July. But yeah, so that's how things happened back then. as punishment did, did follow, you know, certain individuals think it wasn't enough, you know,

fair arguments to make on all sides of this. Right. But there was punishment. For example, Speaker Pro Tem Joe Moody, then Speaker Pro Tem had that removed. Arrest warrants were put out first for Philip Cortez and then for 52 other members.

And then in the 2023 session, we saw three of the main quorum breakers lose their committee chairmanships. Chris Turner was one. I believe Sinfronia Thompson was another. I'm blanking on the third. But then we saw the number of Democratic committee chairs drop from 13 to eight. So not zero like some in the party would like, but it did drop. So that's how things went. But here, this kind of spurred up discussion of what happened again. We saw members such as Tony Tenderholt, he hit the speaker over the meeting and said, quote, Dade Phelan cut a deal with Democrats to say they wouldn't lose chairmanships if they fled, breaking quorum the state to stop voter integrity.

Other members such as Nate Schatzlein and Brian Harrison, they're all kind of in the same group right now, the Contract for Texas group. They also hit Phelan over the meeting. You know, the speaker, I don't think he addressed it himself, but his defender said, you know, this is a new information. And that's true so long as committee chairmanships wasn't discussed. But also, that's also kind of moot because the speaker, as he argues, and I'm sure there's some that would disagree with this interpretation of the rules,

has no authority to remove chairmanships. And that's why we saw Joe Moody lose his pro tem position, but not any chairmen lose theirs. And that traced back to a rules change in 1993 when Pete Laney first took the gavel. And that removed language that specifically said chairmen serve at the pleasure of the speaker. And from my understanding back then, that was an effort to give members more power, to take power away from the speaker. That way, the speaker cannot use that as a hammer against them.

So that's been in the rules ever since. Nobody has tried to strip that. But that language did exist for Moody, which is why the speaker then revoked that. So this was a lot of brouhaha for a lot of nothing, I'd say, generally. Nothing really new. Just the typical fight over the speakership, the Texas house, Dade Phelan himself as speaker. So just another chapter, I'd say, in how this has been going so long.

I think one of the most amusing things that I saw in it, because there was lots of mudslinging back and forth every which way. And it was kind of interesting because, like you said, mostly it's just like Republicans fighting. That's what we usually see. But there's like Democrats and Republicans and moderates and the contract with the Texas folks. But I think Representative Terry Canales, I think, was the one that had a tweet that I thought was just really interesting where he was pointing out, oh, so like all these contract with Texas people who are arguing for less power in the speakership are saying there should have been a rule to give him more power, which is a fair point. Yeah, it is. Yeah, no, I just – the back and forth. There's arguments to be made every which way, but fascinating stuff.

And the arguments are being made constantly. And they will continue being made. Yeah. Yeah, generally it's just the same old, same old that we've been seeing in this GOP internal war, essentially. So, all right, we'll move on from there. Daniel, coming over to you on the FAA reauthorization bill. What is the significance of this passing from a Texas angle? Yeah, yeah.

Well, actually, what is it, first of all? I don't even. The FAA. So, I mean, if people are covering all of Brad's Texas stuff, you know, we have like the agencies here in Texas that kind of sunset. Congress does kind of a similar thing. It's not like a statutory the agency will sunset itself. Maybe there are some provisions like that, but this is mainly just like Congress has to keep funding them. Otherwise they won't have any money. They can't do their job of what their responsibilities are. And so the FAA,

it's reauthorized every few years. The FAA reauthorization bill came up this year. It was actually up last year. They gave a temporary extension of the reauthorization for, I think, like nine months or something. And so they extended it, and the deadline was just a couple weeks ago. And the notable thing from Texas, there's two really key things here from Texas from that perspective. Um, the first one is this was a bill that was largely negotiated by Senator Ted Cruz. Um, he is the ranking chairman on the Senate commerce committee ranking ranking member, not the chairman he's in the minority, um, but ranking member on the Senate commerce committee.

So he was working with the chairman of that committee, the Democrat, to negotiate this bill, the reauthorization language. I think from what I've seen, different reporting on it, a lot of other senators kind of see this as him trying to brush up his bipartisanship accolades. A lot of people see Ted Cruz as the 2016 Ted Cruz, the bomb thrower, the Tea Party Ted Cruz. And on this one, they're like, he's really changed his tone a lot. And he's working across the aisle to get stuff done. It passed the Senate with 88 votes. There were four senators who voted against it. So huge bipartisan win, lots of agreement on it. So that's just notable from a campaign perspective and kind of how he's posturing himself, at least how people in the Senate who watch that closely have kind of looked at the situation. And then the other fascinating thing with that is also Colin Allred, his Senate opponent, or he's currently in the House of Representatives.

He's also on the Transportation Committee, also is touting this as a big win. So it's kind of an ironic situation where they're both like, yes, we passed this bipartisan bill. I think Cruz's role was a little bit larger given that he was the ranking member in the Senate. But nonetheless, Allred is on the Transportation Committee, no was the ranking member in the Senate. But nonetheless, Allred is on the Transportation Committee, no doubt had some say in the negotiations that were happening on the House side of things. But both of them were praising it, supporting it. So that's the first interesting aspect from a Texas angle. The second thing that a lot of Texas folks are really excited about is the, it seems so small and like a bill that has a vast scope of flights across the United States. But the thing that was like the most

contentious thing that was what was getting it delayed over and over again is flights that go in and out of the D.C. airport. So D.C. has their airport that's the Ronald Reagan National Airport that's right across the river from the Capitol. And so it's like the closest thing. If members want to get to the hill really fast, they fly into that airport. Otherwise, they have to fly in one that's like 45 minutes away, like a little bit further away. And so there's huge debate over do we expand the amount of flights that can go in and out of the DCA airport, the direct flights that can go in and out of it.

The people who are representing close to the capital, close to DC, they take the position of, no, we need to like prioritize safety. You know, there's all these different plane crashes that could potentially happen and stuff. And so we don't want to like make it tight on the runway and there's safety concerns that they're arguing. Everybody else is like, we want to get in and out of DC fast. Like, come on, let's, let's have more flights. Let's do it. They also make the free market argument of like, why should we be restricting things? Let the free market decide. So that's kind of the positions that are taken.

And so there was huge negotiation over that. And at the end of the day, they did decide in the final bill that passed to open up five more slots for direct flights to, uh, DC. I'm not exactly sure. I didn't dive too much into the mechanics of how that works. It's not like a specifically on the bill of these are the five flights that are going to happen. Um, but it was negotiated such that it's basically ensured that there will be a direct flight from San Antonio to DC, which there hasn't been before. So all of the DC area representatives, you know, you got Joaquin Castro and Chip Roy,

both touting this as a huge win because they're like, hey, San Antonio airport, we get a direct flight to DC. This is great. So it passed with unanimous support from the Texas delegation in the house. And they're all excited about having a direct flight to D.C. Interesting. Yeah. All over a direct flight. Yeah. Like a direct flight is where you'd think, oh, it would be like spending or different like there's stuff going on with Boeing.

It's like, no, we're arguing about direct flights to DC. Well, it's interesting. It's an issue that has to be delegated or argued and debated by elected officials. Like, why is that an issue that has to be argued? And I think there are like a, I think there might be a few different airports where Congress does directly regulate like the number of flights that can happen. And the D.C. airport is one of them. And they want to keep that because all the members go to D.C. I understand if they're going to be debating safety issues or counterterrorism issues related to airplanes or whatever it is. But where flights can go?

That seems a bit odd to me. And then, of course, you get the airplane lobbyists weighing in as well because you have different airlines that are in control of the flights going out of D.C. versus Dulles International Airport, like the competing one. So I think it's – I don't remember which airline is out of Dulles, but they're opposed to the expansion because they want people flying to Dulles. So, yeah, fascinating stuff.

Lobbyists always in there. Mm-hmm. It's the legislature, of course, that's always lobbying. Death taxes and lobbyists. Yeah, because money. We hit it all? Hit it all there? Yeah. Okay, cool. Thank money. Yeah. We hit it all? Hit it all there? Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Cool. Thank you, Daniel. Cameron, over to you. RFK, the notorious RFK. Junior. Junior, you're right.

You're right. Sorry. Nicknamed Brain Worm. He held a rally in Austin to announce he will be on the ballot in Texas. How was that? Well, just so we don't leave that brain worm comment just hanging. There was a story that his brain, essentially there was a worm that ate part of his brain.

This is a real story that was out there last week. Brad's just not saying that. It's a real story that was out there last week. He's not, Brad's just not saying that. It's a real story. People can type in RFK Junior Brain Worm and they can read about it. Wild, wild stuff. But yes, back to the story. He came here to Austin to hold a rally because he had collected the necessary number of signatures for ballot access as an independent candidate for president. And so

for independent candidates, they need to submit an application with 113,151 signatures. But RFK, yeah, it's a lot. And I couldn't track down how they landed on that number, by the way i did some searching i couldn't find it but um but rfk he turned in um over 245 000 signatures i think it's a sorry to cut in but i think it's a it's a percentage of turnout right from the previous cycle it's a percentage of something percentage or something okay because it was the same thing with the te the Texas guys having to get signatures for the ballot. Right, right. Yeah, anyway. But yeah, he turned in over 245,000 signatures.

And during the rallies, called it a historic day. He said in regard to the number of signatures that it was the most in the history of Texas and the history of our country. That's what he said. And at the time, he had access in 14 states, but day of recording today is May 16th. There is actually a email that was sent out that his campaign ballot access campaign has been fully funded and he's has secured access in all 50 states in terms of the number of signatures so it seems like RFK is going to be on the ballot nationwide here and what's interesting Daniel wrote a bit about

RFK's impact on down ballot votes in his newsletter. But in a recent poll by the Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation, in a five-way presidential race, 9% of those polls said they intended to vote for Kennedy. So, you know, 9%, that's a significant number. And just so people understand, Kennedy is running as an independent. He initially launched his campaign as a Democrat,

but soon announced he'd be running as an independent a few months after that. He's a former environmental lawyer. He's been a staunch climate change activist. He's held a wide range of different policy positions. At one point, at one point during this campaign, he's been on a lot of podcasts. You know, he's kind of been doing this circuit like a lot of people are now, trying to get his name ID up. Has he been on Rogan yet? Of course. Oh, okay. Is that where the brain worm thing came up? I'm trying to get his name ID up. Has he been on Rogan yet?

Of course. Oh, okay. Is that where the brain worm thing came up? I don't think so. But on a recent podcast, because I wanted to let our readers know some of his policy positions when it comes to abortion. He said on what podcast was it? I believe it was, I don't remember the name of the actual podcast, but they were talking about restrictions on abortion. He said he would be fine even if it's full term. When it comes to Second Amendment rights, Kennedy said, I'm not going to take anyone's guns away. He said that during a town hall.

But back in 2018, I thought it was interesting. I sort of dug back into this. He actually called the NRA a terror group. So just interesting policy positions. He's been against the COVID-19 vaccine. He's been against a lot of vaccines. That's sort of how he made his name. So might be something that I'll continue writing about. If he, you know, it does appear he's going to be taking a percentage of the presidential vote, could have an impact. But just something for people to keep their eye on. Do we think odds are he takes more from Trump's vote or more from Biden's vote?

What do you guys think? I say he takes more from Biden. I think I would agree with that. He has some controversial opinions like on vaccines that I think would turn away a lot of Democrats. But I think overall, when you look at issues like abortion, climate change, different things like that, I think he appeals more to Democrats, also more old time Democrats who like the Kennedy name. Yeah. Well, there's lots of Democrats that, at least if I'm reading the tea leaves, that are upset with how Biden has been governing a lot of issues, especially with the Israel-Palestine conflict. And Democrats who are fed up with Biden, but they're still anti-Trump, they will cast a counter vote for RFK.

Do you know what RFK, has he taken a position on Israel-Gaza? I haven't paid attention to that. I've listened to some conversations he's had about it. He really hasn't given a strong stance on it. Okay. It's interesting because

he kind of tries to walk the line, like, oh, not calling for a ceasefire, but trying to initiate. He would initiate sort of diplomatic efforts to come to some sort of solution. Sounds a lot like Biden. Yeah, but, you know, it's such a complicated issue that if anyone gives a firm opinion on it, it's going to make a certain percentage of people upset. And so it's hard to get any straight answer out of anyone on that issue. Okay. Well, moving on to the next one, Daniel covering for Matt here, the U.S. House passed legislation to exclude non-citizens from the census. Tell us about what that would do.

Yeah. Yeah. First, I'm going to give a little plug for Matt. We kind of called an audible on being on podcast and there were different stories that I could cover. And so I opted to cover more of the congressional stuff, which I'm more familiar with. But you know, you should really subscribe to the Texan so that you can go read all the articles that Matt covered. He covered a lot more stuff dealing with the border and different issues in West Texas and whatnot. So go check out The Texan. Subscribe. If you get a Patriot subscription, you'll get a free Yeti mug with a Texan on it. Really?

Yeah. That makes it worth it. Yeah. There you have the marketing manager doing some marketing. That's really why I'm on the podcast. It wasn't because I just wanted to be here for fun. It beats me having to do it, so welcome. Yeah, so all that to say, now switching to the story that I did cover

that I was actually familiar with and can talk about because with my newsletter I've been covering Congress. One of the bills that they passed, the House of Representatives passed last week. I think it was on Thursday or Friday. They passed legislation that would essentially exclude noncitizens from the census. I'll get into a little bit more of the nitty-gritty on that. But just to give a brief overview of the census, besides the fact that I despise the Census Bureau because I think they're incompetent after the last census. That's my opinion, by the way. The census is used for,

there's two main purposes that people point to the census. First, it's used for apportionment and redistricting. So it tallies up how many residents are in a state so that we decide how many people they get to represent them in Congress. So a high-population state like Texas obviously gets more members of Congress than Rhode Island. Second, the other thing that the census is used for is basically tallying up the number of the population so that then when Congress passes different bills related to funding grants, sending money to states that kind of have some metric that they can use to say, okay, this is how much we're going to allot to Texas, Massachusetts, whatever state it may be based on population. So it's used for those two different things. And under current

law, the census just goes out there and accounts all residents. It doesn't matter if you're a citizen or a non-citizen. Basically, the undergirding principle of the census has been that the number, members are representing the population of people residing in a state, not necessarily the citizens. So you could have lots of non-citizens, and I say non-citizen because it could be legal or illegal people here. It could be people legally residing in the state with a visa that they got properly, or they could potentially also calculate people who are residing here illegally. They're still counted as a resident under law. And so that's kind of what's used to do that, and the census doesn't have a clear box that they check of, are you a citizen? Are you not a citizen? And so what this would do do that. And the census doesn't have a clear box that they check of, are you a

citizen? Are you not a citizen? And so what this would do, this legislation that the Republicans passed because they're concerned, hey, maybe we shouldn't count illegal immigrants or non-citizens to be included in the count for specifically the apportionment and redistricting part of the census. And so they are saying, hey, let this bill basically put redistricting part of the census. And so they are saying, hey, this bill would basically put a checkbox on the census form. Are you a citizen? Are you not? You'd check that. And then from my understanding of the bill, looking at it,

that would just apply to the apportionment part of it. So then it would exclude non-citizens from the apportionment. I'm guessing, I haven't gone into the nuance, like looked into it, but I think they would still be counted, non-citizens and citizens, would be counted for the money part of it. Well, I remember last, not last year, it seems just like last year. The redistricting, when that happened, I remember a lot of talk about Texas actually getting undercounted because of illegal immigrants in the states. I assume because they weren't counted enough, right?

Yeah. So states have taken different positions on it. Like, I mean, Republicans are more, hey, we shouldn't count illegal immigrants in the census. Democrats are more like, hey, let's get our numbers up. And so states like California did a more aggressive job of pushing people to actually fill out the census. If you're a resident in the state, go fill out the census. They emphasize to immigrants, your immigration status doesn't really matter.

Just fill it out. So then they get bigger numbers. And they still lost seats, right? Yeah. So there's a lot of many people are moving out of the state so there's lots of democrats in texas who are like hey like we should like if we want to boost federal funding for texas if we want to get more people in the state like let's push it more and texas just wasn't as aggressive and trying to help out the census Bureau in pushing that. If I remember estimates correctly, Texas could have gained five congressional seats, four or five, more than what we did, which was three, right? I think we gained two.

We gained two. Yeah. Maybe it was three or four. I think it was three or four. Okay. They were estimating. Yeah, that was just, I don't know if those numbers are correct, but there was estimates, there was guesses that that was.

If they had adequately counted all illegal immigrants, then that's what we would have gotten. I'm guessing it would be three. That's just my guess. Three. What's been some of the reactions to this? Because I can see, obviously, some people wanting to count and some people not wanting to count illegal immigrants. So has there been people that have spoken out against it or spoken for it? I mean, I think it really comes down along party lines, and that's how Congress voted. It was along party lines.

So Republicans are, no, we shouldn't count illegal immigrants. Democrats are like, yes, we should count everyone. I think the nuance in the legislation is because you have three different groups here, and it's dividing it into two. You have, in reality, you have citizens who are here that are citizens. You have non-citizens who are here legally, and then you have non-citizens who are here legally, and then you have non-citizens who are here illegally. And I think a Democrat would argue, you know, if we're trying to exclude all non-citizens, then you're excluding non-citizens who are here legally and illegally. And we should count the

ones that are here legally, even if they might differ on the other aspect of counting them illegally. So yeah, there's just some, and you can get into the weeds. And, of course, Republicans don't want to get into that nuance because they want to make it about illegal immigration too. Interesting. So many threads. Yeah. Cameron, coming to you next.

All right. The Austin Police Department released a new five-year plan. You went through it all. How long did that take you, first of all? It didn't take that long. Okay. What was in it? What did you went through it all how long did it take you first of all it didn't take that long okay well what was it what'd you find it yeah well um yeah this is a new five-year strategic plan they came out with where they said they're going to try and make austin the safest city in america so i was like all right let's dig into it see what's going on here because you know coming

into um this report i kind of already understood um there's been some staffing issues you know we've been reporting on that so i wanted to see like what are they going to be doing to address that and first off they said that there's 2,152 people on staff and 1,458 of which are sworn officers. And like we were just mentioning, APD has ongoing issues related to law enforcement officers departing the profession or leaving for other departments. We actually saw City of Austin suspend its partnership with the Texas Department of Public Safety, which was initially established to help the city's issues with police department staffing. Michael Bullock, who's the Austin Police Association president, he's been vocal about APD's, quote, staffing woes,

as recently as February. And he actually wrote on social media at one point there was an occurrence on February 15th where the APD downtown day shift had only six officers and four got pulled to guard city council members. So really exemplified there that there's issues with the staffing and he actually explained in an interview to Fox News that there's about 700, 800 officers below what the city's own studies have previously recommended. So APD said they're going to be introducing a brand new program called the Reserve Officers Program, and it'll actually allow

retired officers to continue to serve in support roles and then also during special events. So there wasn't anything directly saying, oh, we're going to target these specific groups, these certain outreach programs. We want to get to these certain numbers. But they did say they're going to be introducing this brand-new program. When it comes to addressing crime in the city, you know, something we all worry about, they are going to be introducing what they call alternative strategies, which include utilizing their resource intensive service calls unit, which provides direct and efficient support for calls for services, which require additional time and expertise. And they're also going to be

implementing a collective sex crimes response model and reintroducing comp stat, which is essentially a police performance and organizational data collection system. So sort of providing an alternative service with this intensive service calls unit, and then also tracking performance internally of police and staff. So just some interesting tidbits that I came across there. And, you know, we've reported on as well. I wrote a story of maybe a month and a half ago now about a report of rising homicide rates here in Austin. And, you know, the national homicide rate in 2021 was 33% higher than in 2019, but in Austin it was 142% higher than expected. So we've seen crime rising.

I actually reported on opioid overdoses, like over 50 opioid overdoses that were having to be addressed by EMS and APD that happened just a week and a half, two weeks ago. So lots of things going on in Austin. We have rising population. We have a lot of people coming in and out. So APD is an important service that is provided in the city to help people feel comfortable. And hopefully this new strategic plan will help address some of those concerns people have. It's been something they've been trying to make headway on for a while. The staffing problem was a thing before COVID.

And then during COVID, it really sped up. You know, the $150 million cut from APD, which included either 250, 150 or 250, the elimination of 150 or 250 sworn officer positions that have not been restored. It's a lot. And that's on top of the deficit in staffing that they already had. You know, a big part of it is, and I've covered this a lot before, that officers either don't want to come here from other places because, yeah, the pay is quite good and the retirement benefits are pretty good. But dealing with investigations, the posture of city council towards the department, you know, we've had the whole the Office of Police Oversight, a lot of issues with that. And, you know, how activist it had become under the former, the now former head of that office. There's just this thing has been boiling for a while. And, you know, crime's getting worse.

Still, it's a relatively safe city. The amount of homicides is a lot lower than you see in even Houston. But take an extreme example of Chicago, you know. But that doesn't mean it's not getting worse. And it is getting worse. It has been over the last handful of years. So this is a massive issue. And I don't know if, frankly, I don't know if they'll ever be able to really ride the ship on this just because it's been going on for so long. They've been trying so many different things. You know, they brought in DPS to supplement. And I think DPS is still supplementing in some kind of backdoor way.

But the explicit partnership they had was nixed last year. So just like roadblock after roadblock for them trying to figure this out. And on top of that, the labor contract situation. And they still don't have a new contract. And I think I saw that discussions are picking back up and maybe that gets somewhere. But, yeah, it's just been one thing after another in this. Yeah, I have lots of thoughts on the issue. Maybe we can get into it on our Send Me Some Stuff podcast.

Yeah, let's do that. Where we have a chance to talk a little more in depth. But, yeah, it's an important issue and something I've kept my eye on, even though it's an issue you've been covering a lot, when I get a chance to write about it, you know, I think it's important for people to pay attention to. Yeah. Okay, I'll hit one of mine really quick um the pelican island bridge

um causeway in gallaston connecting pelican island and gallaston island was hit by a barge on wednesday morning i collapsed part of the rail line so the the traffic bridge is totally fine at least they're looking they're evaluating, but it looks to be fine. People left the island after this happened. They were able to get off. But after that, it had been closed. And as officials from the federal government and the state come in and try and evaluate things, what happened was a barge was being, from what I'm told, pushed by a tugboat, and it somehow broke off, disconnected, and kind of veered into the causeway.

And you can see pictures of the barge sitting there in the water, and then the rail line kind of collapsed on top of it, like a whole chunk of it. So pretty crazy stuff. Nobody was hurt, which is good the only real problem was some fuel oil was leaked into the the bay they're not sure how much yet but they're trying to figure that out the capacity of the barge was 30,000 gallons but they don't know how much of that actually leaked so overall a bad situation but could have been a lot worse. Nobody was hurt. They're figuring it out down there. We saw the – it was in Baltimore, correct, where there was a ship that crashed into a bridge.

We sort of have seen strings of incidences with industrial sort of disasters like this where we saw our transportation sort of issues with the trains. Remember there was a string of issues related to that, but when you dug into the numbers, it wasn't anything higher than usual. It was just there was more eyeballs on it. I'm just wondering, is this something that has occurred over, you know, something we've been monitoring and keeping track of and we have data on like barges or ships crashing into things? Like, is like, how normal is it? Or is this just something that we're paying attention to now? I don't, I just don't know. I mean, freak things happen all the time, right? It's just the way it is.

I think it becomes an issue as, like, infrastructure gets older. Like, it becomes more prone to problems. So you might see it more frequently. But I do remember, like, several years ago, ages ago when I was living in Texas' largest county, Oklahoma, there was also, like, a similar incident where, like, a boat ran into, like, a dam. And so they were, like, trying to get that from causing a big issue. And I think they succeeded and, like, the dam didn't break or anything.

But there was issues like that that happened. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it's just interesting that, you know that we're starting to see more eyeballs get on or more reports of sort of these transportation-related issues like the trains or boat crashes, barge crashes. So I just don't know if it's outside the realm of what's normal, but just seems to be popping up in my news feed more often, these sorts of things. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, let's go on back to Daniel.

Daniel, Matt had a new border story related to Fronten Island. What the heck is going on there? Yeah, I'll try to be as brief as I can because I haven't dived into it too much because it's Matt's story. So if you want the full story, go to thetexan.news, subscribe, read his article. But the gist of it, last year Texas saw this island, this island, Fronten Island. It's right along the border, right next to the Rio Grande. And it was apparently being used by cartels and whatnot for drug smuggling and just different

operations like that. GLO goes in, does some research and like, hey, this is owned by Texas. So they take over the island and now they're using it kind of as a hub for border security operations. Fast forward to this year, the news story that just happened that I reported on, and you have the International Boundary and Water Commission. Don't ask me too much about what they do, but they're an international agency tasked with enforcing the 1970 treaty to resolve pending boundary differences and maintain the Rio Grande, yada, yada. If you want to get into the weeds, read the article. But basically they sent a letter saying, hey, this actually doesn't belong to Texas.

This belongs to the federal government, so you guys need to back away. And that's basically the gist of the argument. The GLO Commissioner Don Buckingham has defended the state's claim on the land, saying that land is Texas. We are clean in our legal right. Now they are going to throw whatever legal stones they can at us that is clearly evident, but I am not going to apologize for securing the border and for making Texas safer. So she's saying that she's not going to back down.

If they want to take this to court, bring it on. Is this like a Falkland Island situation? Yeah, I'm not familiar with Falkland Island. Oh, my gosh. I'm sorry. It's an underrated war. Britain and Argentina? Anyway. Basically, but you've I'm sorry. It was an underrated war. Britain and Argentina. Anyway.

Basically, but you got the cartels and the federal government and some international organization that's there to resolve disputes. But I don't know everybody's side in this. But basically, Texas is like, this is our land. We're going to use it to secure the border, use it as a hub of operations. And there's pushback from this international organization, which they're also associated with the Biden administration. And so what will happen? I don't know. Matt, we'll keep on the story, though. We shall see. Yep, absolutely. Next one of mine, the House Select Committee released its reports.

This is the Select Committee on Protecting Texas's LNG Exports. It was in response to the Biden administration's pause earlier this year on approval of permits for LNG export projects. Very complicated. It was hard to figure out what the heck he was even doing when it first came out. But anyway, the administration issued this as one of its climate change items, and it also said that one of its other justifications was America's exports, LNG exports, were driving up the cost of the price of natural gas here in the States. Supply demand, if supply goes elsewhere, the supply existing in another market increases in price. That's the argument that was being made. Regardless, this was very much opposed by Republicans, including House Speaker Dade Phelan,

who commissioned this select committee to evaluate. He appointed State Rep. Jared Patterson to head up the evaluation. The committee issued its report. Patterson wrote in there, the Biden administration's federal permitting pause during a presidential election year appears to be purely political in nature in an attempt to disrupt Texas's booming economy, now the eighth largest economy in the world. For further proof that it is political, the Secretary of Energy said earlier this year that by the time we get to this point next year, this will be gone. Just, you know, clearly political posturing.

Anyway, what's notable to me in this is the report outlines some responses, policy responses that include creating an interstate compact on the Gulf Coast, creating grants for construction of new export facilities. But the one that stuck out to me the most is potentially expanding the new – it's not Chapter 313 anymore – the new school district tax abatement program that was created last year by the legislature to replace 313. Much more limited in scope, focused on larger projects that create more jobs. Right now, it looks like the position is that LNG terminals, export terminals, do not qualify for that. And so that's something I could see them doing there. Also, during the writing of the bill, there was an omission that essentially wrote out the ability for currently existing generators in the state to get the abatement for new power facilities. And, you know, I've talked a lot about the problems with the ERCOT grid and the lack of development of thermal power. Well, this doesn't really help that at the moment because there's a carve-out for the determining factor aspect of this.

In order to get the abatement, the abatement itself has to be a determining factor in the company locating here. So for a company that's already located here, that doesn't compute, right? So which is why right now generation facilities, it seems like, do not qualify for that. I am positive that they're going to fix that in the legislature next session. They could also write in LNG facilities. So we shall see that. A couple other notable things in there that you can read the article if you want.

But yeah, that was a bit interesting, I thought. Last one, Cameron. The University of Austin announced a new partnership with Capital Factory. Briefly tell us about it. Yeah, University of Austin, partnering with Capital Factory. Capital Factory is a sort of early stage startup investor. They connect entrepreneurs. They have a huge

portfolio where they work with companies like Oracle, AWS, Microsoft, US Army. So I reached out and spoke with Carrie Waters at University of Austin, and she says this partnership is really going to help expand what they're doing in their innovation office. two-year liberal arts sort of education focusing on sort of western canon philosophy literature but then moving them into working in practical applicable skills and so this partnership she sees is really going to be innovative for them sort of a one-stop shop she said center center of gravity where everything is going on in tech especially here in Austin, lots of tech companies moving here to Austin. And what I thought was interesting is she mentioned they're going to be having a space symposium. They, at University of Austin, actually have an in-house DNA sequencer. So I thought that was really cool. And she had mentioned what they're doing at University of Austin is really partnering with different private industry, helping co-develop curriculum, providing initial funding for research and future projects, things that might spark up in a classroom can now move into the commercial settings right away with the with a new partnership with Capital Factory. So just an interesting partnership and just

showing University of Austin is really trying to push the boundaries on what is commonly known as a traditional higher education. They're trying to move that out of the classroom into the real world. So just another movement in that direction. There you go. All right. Instead of doing tweeter-y this time, we're going to talk about our newsletters. Daniel, let's start with you. The headline was the 40, Texas, all red or all red?

Yeah. Shout out to Rob. He's the one who came up with that. Texas all red or all red yeah shout out to Rob he's the one who came up with that I had like a really boring headline and I was I told

Mac and Rob I'm like guys I'm way open to ideas and Rob comes in clutch with the puns look at Rob

being useful for once well done like yeah my kid so Daniel in this you kind of go through your thoughts on the senate race you don't think cruz is going to lose but you do mention some challenges yeah give us the rundown

yeah so looking at the challenges and i the reason why i dove into uh this topic was because i was clueless about what to write about and you and mckinsey had done your smokefield room and focused a lot on this race and so i just wanted to share my own thoughts. Um, so I do think that there are some challenges that he faces that's going to keep him on his toes. Uh, the first of those being his favorability. Um, you, you talked about this in the smoke field room podcast, but, uh, Cruz, when he ran for president 2016, when he was a tea party darling of the 2012, 2014 era. Like he was a bomb thrower. He got a very big national profile. And that's really, I think, the big factor in what turned so many people away from him in 2018. Like it was still fresh

off of 2016. He was still that national figure, very well-known person. And so everybody had a very strong opinion of him. So that's something- Whether it's good or bad. Yeah, whether it's good or bad, it's a strong opinion. And there were a lot of people who had bad, strong opinions about him. And so that was kind of one of the things that helped Beto O'Rourke when he was running against him in 2018, was Beto O'Rourke was running on this positive campaign where he was emphasizing his image as a middle-of-the-road guy, just an average Texan visiting all 254 counties like average Texans do. And, yeah, so that was what Cruz was facing. You still have kind of that aspect that Colin Allred is trying to emphasize now. He's trying to resurrect Cruz's negative image. So he's trying to remind voters of, oh, it's

Cancun Cruz. It was Cancun or Cabo? No, it was Cancun. Adler was Cabo. Right. And that was during COVID. But yeah, the like stuff like that where they're trying to to paint him in a negative light it was during it wasn't during the it was during the freeze cruise yeah um adler was covid but yeah um the so yeah he's trying to bring up that negative image so that's one of the things that he's working against is still that favor favorability. I don't think, again, with the FAA thing and other things Cruz is doing, he's trying to—he's even launching a campaign like Democrats for Cruz. He's trying to get cross-isle voters this time. He's trying to not be the bomb-throwing candidate.

He's trying to work against that negative aspect. And it's also been—I pointed out voters have memories like goldfish, right? Like 2018 was six years ago. So many people, like every time I meet someone in Austin, I'm like the old timer and I haven't even been here that long. So there's a lot of new people to Texas. There's a lot of people that have forgotten that Trump has dominated politics. You've had COVID since then. There's been a lot of things. And so I don't know that that's going to cut against him as much. The other challenge that he faces, in my view, is RFK Jr. being on the ballot. And we spoke briefly about this. And I walked through some numbers in here. So just going off of the poll that you mentioned from the Texas Hispanic Foundation,

that showed about like 10% of voters would vote for Kennedy. So if we're just running with that number, then of that 10%, about 50% would lean towards Colin Allred, where about 25% would run against Cruz or vote for Cruz. So there's like the net difference there. And if you crunch the numbers really nice and tight, um, as I did just based strictly on those polling numbers, which again, that's not what it's going to end up being, but just for the sake of hypotheticals, let's run with it. That's going to swing about, uh, 200,000 votes, 187,000 votes toward all red against Cruz. And if it's as close as 2018 was for Cruz, where Cruz only won by 215,000 votes, you can see how that could put him down to the wire. But as I argue in my newsletter,

that was 2018, and things have changed in Texas since then. In 2020, the next thing on the ballot after the president, Railroad Commissioner Jim Wright, won by over a million votes, right? So it was not nearly as close as Bader O'Rourke. And same thing with Abbott versus O'Rourke in 2022, he won with 800,000 votes. So based on that metric, yeah, the RFK junior votes could put a dent in Cruz's total vote and kind of help Allred in that way. But it's not going to be enough to really turn the tide if it's not as close as it was in 2018. The other reasons why I think – I'll try to run through these pretty quick. But the other reasons why I think 2024 won't be 2018 for these pretty quick. But the other reasons why I think 2024 won't be 2018 for Cruz again, it's not going to be as close. First of all, votes are trending

toward Republicans. If you look at how voters have swung since 2018, 2018 was really close. 2018 is, we've talked about this, that's why we have a job here. But since 2018, things have been trending much more towards Republicans. 2020, there were no net changes in the Texas House. It was pretty much a pretty good win for Trump. And then in 2022, again, it was swinging more towards Republicans. A lot of that is thanks to stuff in South Texas and along the border. Rural Hispanics are swinging towards Republicans at a pretty good rate. I think that'll continue. The second reason why I think Cruz is in a different situation, he's down the ballot, right? He's not at the top of the ballot. 2018, top of the ballot, that was the race everyone in Texas was focused on. That was the one that was going to define

Texas. He was target numero uno. Yeah. And now he's not numero uno in Texas. It's the White House. Like we have the president on the ballot. That's what voters are going to care about. That's what they're going to go vote for. They're not voting for Cruz and Allred. They're going to be voting for Biden and Trump and RFK, right? Generous of you to put RFK. Yeah.

Hey, 10% is 10%. That's true. Ross Perot got 22% in Texas, which was pretty significant, but Bush still walked away with the with taking it um over clinton that year um so third reason also all red is just not beta work he doesn't have the uh charisma of him in my view i don't like beta work was just soaring in popularity you know there was no challenge to his primary. When he ran for Democrat Senate candidate, like, he had it in the bag, right?

There were some other candidates against him, but he didn't really have, like, a real challenge. Allred actually had a challenge in his primary. He had to do a lot of fundraising for that. So at this point, yes, Allred has outraised O'Rourke in the cycle, but Allred had a primary challenge. And so now all the donors that gave to him were probably giving the max amount in federal elections and can't give again for the general election. So he's probably dried up a lot of his support. I don't think we're going to continue seeing the fundraising at the same level, at the same pace as it work because the primary is a huge factor there. And then second or final reason kind of alongside that is Democrats are stretched thin at the national level, right?

The most competitive seats that are held by Republicans are Texas and Florida. So you'd think, oh, well, of course, that's going to be a target for Democrats, right? Like if they could flip Texas or Florida, that'd be great. If those are the most competitive ones, let's target them, right? Problem is they have, if you go to like the Cook political ratings or other analysts of Senate races, you've got West Virginia, which is a shoe-in for Republicans. They can flip a majority with that. And then Democrats have to defend Arizona, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, which are all very competitive races.

With a razor-thin margin on the Senate, too. And so with that razor-thin margin, if Senate Democrats want to try and hold on to their majority now, I don't see a way in which they maintain their majority this fall. But even if they want to get the majority back in the next election cycle or the election cycle after that, they have to hold on to as many seats as possible. So they're going to be focusing on defense this time, not offense. So I don't think they're really will they will they give some nods to texas and florida yes by all means they want to flip the seats is it going to happen no okay pretty good assessment i think um cameron let's talk about redacted the fentanyl edition right that's the fentanyl file the fentanyl files. The fentanyl files. What do you do? What'd you put on paper in

there? Yeah, so I sort of stepped away from doing what I have previously done in redacted, which is kind of cultural commentary, metapolitical stuff. This was really digging into a lot of numbers because what's been going on with opioid overdoses, like I mentioned earlier, Austin has been experiencing this surge in overdoses. And so I just wanted to kind of compile like how we sort of got here. And so there's been a rise in drug overdose deaths over the past two decades that involve things like methamphetamine, cocaine, Adderall, and actually some numbers from the CDC between 2002 and 2022. The number of drug overdoses per 100,000 people nearly quadrupled. Almost 108,000 people died of drug overdoses in 2022. So a very shocking number

there that I came across. From November 2019 through October 2023, approximately 270,000 individuals succumbed to overdoses involving synthetic opioids. And we've actually seen this movement in the drugs that are being abused that result in overdoses have shifted away from more natural opioids or things like heroin and have moved towards synthetic opioids like fentanyl. And so we really became aware of the use and abuse of synthetic opioids, especially when something like OxyContin became much more popular, especially when it was first introduced in 1995. There was a really great Hulu sort of fictionalized documentary style thing they did on the rise of OxyContin. There's been lots of documentation about how the Purdue Pharma, who introduced OxyContin,

pursued an aggressive campaign and how they promoted opioids in general and how much money they spent on marketing and to promote the use of opioids like OxyContin. And their sales in 2001 actually exceeded over a billion dollars. But Purdue Pharma and OxyContin, people became aware of the abuses of them. And so there was lots of revisions done by the FDA. And actually in 2008, there was a resolution between the DOJ and Purdue Pharma that resulted in the largest penalties ever levied against a pharmaceutical manufacturer. So there has been federal intervention and awareness of what's going on, but the ongoing crisis of fentanyl abuse and deaths associated with fentanyl abuse is something we're still trying to work out because what's been going on with fentanyl is it's much more,

it's one of the most powerful opioids. And we saw, I've listened to some interviews from people who have studied this and there's actually testimony from an author that I had listened to where he gave testimony like I mentioned at the U.S. China Economic and Security Review Commission in 2019 where he explained fentanyl is mostly made in China and then sent directly to the U.S. consumers through the mail or funneled into the country by Mexican cartels. So that sort of raises an eyebrow. I was like, how is China involved in this? And so there was actually a report done by U.S. Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking, where they stated the People's Republic of China, their chemical and pharmaceutical

sectors have actually outpaced the government's efforts to regulate them, which is creating opportunities for these vendors to export chemicals needed in the illegal manufacturing of fentanyl and opioids. So because China's oversight of these sectors have been unable to regulate the manufacturers. They are sending the precursors to Mexico and the cartels are essentially spinning up these laced fentanyl pills or whatever it may be. We actually saw fentanyl overdoses here in Austin that involved cocaine that was laced with fentanyl and even marijuana. So it's in all sorts of different types of drugs. And something we actually talked about on Send Me Some Stuff last time is there's been different efforts in a place like Portugal to decriminalize drugs. They pulled back on that. Even in Oregon, they attempted to decriminalize all drugs. They walked that back.

So how to combat the issue, you know, because it's a global issue now. So it's going to have to be addressed. Federally, we've seen different people offer resolutions to this, whether it be sending special forces across the border to take down the cartels or labeling fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction even. So lots of different approaches. We'll see what they end up going with in the next few years because it is an ongoing issue. Both Biden and Trump have talked about it. Yeah. Yeah. And definitely a big issue here in Texas with the border and drug smuggling and whatnot. Yeah.

Brad, earlier you mentioned there's not a lot going on in between sessions in Texas politics. It gets kind of boring. There are a few things, though. I guess something happened pretty recently. Yeah, interim charges were released. And in my newsletter this week, I went through those because something jumped out to me. Some property tax stuff I mentioned, but that's not really what stuck out. What stuck out was a little bit of retribution.

Representative Tom Oliverson and J.M. Lozano, they both chairs, and they both kind of got benched in these interim charges. Lozano's committee got nothing. Oliverson, who chairs Urban Affairs, Oliverson chairs Insurance, which right now is a huge issue. Skyrocketing premiums is going to be something people talk about, and those were in the interim charges. They were just not given to the insurance committee. They were given to a couple others, or one or two others, I forget which. But state affairs, that's right, it was state affairs.

But clearly the reason for this is Oliverson is running against Phelan as speaker. Jay Lozano was one of the first members to come out in opposition to Phelan's speakership, his first chairman to do that, even before Oliverson, if I recall correctly. That's politics, right? And this game is played for keeps. Retribution is very common. And, you know, if the shoe was on the other foot, you know, if Oliverson was speaker, you know, I'd have a hard time believing there wouldn't be something like this done to members that oppose him. That's just, that's how it works. You know, it's power politics. So, you know, I mentioned in there, this is a calculated gamble on Oliverson's part. Same with Lozano.

And for Oliverson, in the newsletter I say there's three scenarios here. Phelan wins, wins re-election, and Oliverson's just – his legislative hopes in accession are dead. Another one is Oliverson's speaker. If that's the case, the world is his oyster and then the other one I put in there was he gets a higher committee chairmanship under the next speaker

as a bargaining chip essentially one I did not put in there that I should have included was that the next speaker especially if it's kind of from the feeling wing of the caucus, he still ends up getting benched and getting kind of the shaft on it because he went against the speaker. And it's reasonable to suggest that the next speaker, if they are on that side of things,

would not trust him to be on their leadership team. So this is a gamble that he's taking, and he knows that. He knows it's going to come with consequences. Same way Phelan knows that this is a gamble, and his speakership itself is a gamble. This is all just a numbers game, whether you can keep it, how long you can keep it, and so on and so forth. So I recommend checking it out more if that inside baseball interests you.

But it wasn't just policy tasks divvied out in these interim charges. There was some retribution. And with that, we are – I've got to make a final pitch. Okay, go for it. Yeah. I mean, Brad, you do a phenomenal job. I mean, we were just talking about how old you are.

You're like one of the most senior people in just the capital press corps here in Austin, which is weird. I've been here five years, and I'm one of the most. But you have a lot more insight than a lot of the other media outlets. And I think that doing these newsletters is a good way to just dive into more analysis and getting a perspective that people don't normally get to see. The catch is for our subscribers, it is only for our subscribers. This is not a typical thing. We usually talk about tweets, but we're giving you a little sneak peek at our newsletters,

giving you the analysis of things, kind of giving you some more details about that. So if you want more of that kind of content, you've got to subscribe to The Texan. Like just, you know, you can stay here and listen to the podcast, and we like giving these podcasts so people can be informed and get some good perspectives. And we appreciate you, yeah, absolutely. But the podcast doesn't pay the bills. Yeah, it doesn't pay the bills. It doesn't pay for Winston's Food. It doesn't pay for the Chia Pet. You know, we've got important things here. Yeah, it doesn't pay the bills. It doesn't pay for Winston's food. It doesn't pay for the Chia Pet.

You know, we've got important things here. Yeah, very important. So go subscribe. If you want us to keep doing what we're doing, we need subscribers. Yeah. More subscribers. We have subscribers. Yeah.

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