The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - May 20, 2022

Episode Date: May 20, 2022

This week on The Texan’s “Weekly Roundup,” the team discusses how some pro-choice district attorneys plan to not prosecute abortion crimes, what the Electric Reliability Council has to say about the Texas power grid, rising numbers of encounters with illegal aliens, the partisan leanings of all of Texas’ counties, what Texans think about Gov. Greg Abbott’s border policies and the border wall, the Supreme Court of Texas’ recent ruling on gender transition in children, the wild campaign of a Texas Railroad Commissioner candidate, Austin City Council’s continued emergency spending on COVID-19 projects, and Sen. Ted Cruz’s successful bid in court regarding campaign finance laws. Plus, you’ll get to know the newest member of our team!  Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on next week’s podcast.

Happy Friday, folks. Senior Editor Mackenzie Taylor here on the Texans Weekly Roundup Podcast. This week, the team discusses how some pro-choice district attorneys plan to not prosecute abortion crimes, what ERCOT has to say about the Texas power grid, rising numbers of encounters with illegal aliens, the partisan leanings of all of Texas' counties, what Texans think about Greg Abbott's border policies and the border wall. The Texas Supreme Court's recent ruling on gender transition and children. The wild campaign of a Texas Railroad Commissioner candidate. Austin City Council's continued emergency spending on COVID-19 projects.

And Ted Cruz's successful bid in court regarding campaign finance laws. Plus, you'll get to know the newest member of our team. If you have questions for us, 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, Hayden Sparks, and we have a new guest on this week's podcast. Rob, welcome. We're so glad to have you. Thank you. Happy to be here. What do you do here at the Texan? I'm the assistant editor.

Woo. That's pretty awesome. Has the senior editor been absolutely hazing you and awful this week? In every respect, yeah. Perfect. That is exactly what I would hope to hear. These boys have to deal with me daily, so I'm sure that they would they would uh agree with that what is um well most days most days sometimes i get really hangry actually yeah you yelled at me this week it's true i think i yelled at everybody this week yeah i mean i've seen you mad before but i feel like that was like i was like wow i didn't know she could be like this really and then i thought about yelling back but that was nice that was i really appreciate it i don't

remember what i yelled about it wasn't even really yelling no it wasn't even it was it was like you were saying normal things but you were just yelling them so that's a really good way to put it my tone was just yeah it wasn't that you were saying things you were just saying them loudly yeah a few more decibels a few more decibels i mean i would demonstrate but you got mad at me earlier for briefly like elevating my voice in the microphone well it hurt my ears with these headphones on it really truly did so i appreciate you again sparing me but we, welcome. We hope we don't haze you too much on this podcast. We'll get to you at the end and kind of talk through some,

I don't know, some questions. Brad has some very pressing questions for you. He's nodding. He has no mic right now, but welcome. We're excited to have you. Thank you very much. Good to be here. Okay, gentlemen, let's get into the news. Isaiah, we're going to start with you. Some Texas district attorneys recently renewed a promise not to prosecute abortion crimes. How would that affect state law if Roe v. Wade gets overturned? has been a known factor since 2019. If you recall that year, heartbeat bills were kind of in vogue in Texas and a lot of other states. And elected prosecutors around the country, including Javier Becerra, who was then California Attorney General, and who now helms the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, they put out this letter promising not to prosecute abortion crimes.

And at that time, four Texas DAs joined this letter. John Cruzot out of Dallas County. Joe Gonzalez for Bexar County, Mark Gonzalez for Nueces County, and Brian Middleton for Fort Bend County. And Travis County DA Jose Garza also joined in another letter that they put out, bringing it up to five, after a recent case concerning a star county woman who um briefly faced murder charges for a self-induced abortion and so they they put out another letter renewing their promise to not prosecute abortion crimes um and so there's that and i'm resisting the urge to go into the different legal implications of like well well, you know, we still don't know what statute this woman wasn't charged under and it was dropped.

So it's likely that the case was real flimsy and a bit anywhere. So you could say like, well, their letter only deals with prosecuting women themselves and state law doesn't authorize prosecutions against a woman or self-regarding abortion. But I say that's irrelevant because these DAs probably would oppose any kind of enforcement of other abortion crimes as indicated by their letters. So the older Texas statutes that we've been talking about quite a bit, and that you might've been hearing about in the news that the state has had since before Roe v. Wade, but hasn't really enforced, those are dependent on DAs to prosecute And if you recall Those older statutes say that

You can get thrown in jail for 2-5 years For administering A chemical or Carrying out a surgical abortion On a woman And so once again State law Targets the person who

Carries it out or administers the drug But again that is Dependent on DAs to prosecute State law targets the person who carries it out or administers the drug. But again, that is dependent on DAs to prosecute. And so if Roe v. Wade gets a return, that will become effective again, but not in these particular counties. You know, Travis, Dallas, West West Fort Bend counties where these DAs have promised not to prosecute it. Yeah. However, the trigger ban, officially entitled the Human Life Protection Act, does authorize other kinds of enforcement. One of those is civil action by the Attorney General,

who obviously has jurisdiction over the whole state. That law says, and that's the one that would take effect 30 days after Roe getting overturned, if that happens. And that law says that the AG can bring a civil action against somebody that performs or aids in elective abortion for damages of at least $100,000.

So if you recall, the civil action is kind of similar to the Heartbeat Act, where not the AG, not any government official, but citizens can sue somebody that performs or aids a post-heartbeat abortion. And if they win, get damages of at least ten thousand dollars so similar to that but it ups it to a hundred thousand and it tasks that job to the attorney general it also says that the uh the relevant board that licenses doctors or nurses whoever does it like the texas medical board for doctors would be the main one yeah they can strip the licenses from people that perform or aid elective abortions if roe v wade gets up returned yeah interesting enforcement mechanisms real fast were there any counties that joined that were a surprise politically do they do these you know da's coming out and saying that they're not going to prosecute these um you know abortion crimes do

they make sense politically was this a surprise in any way? Well, something that does kind of surprise me is that we see Fort Bend County, but not Harris County. That's interesting to me because Harris County is very deep blue. And it seems to me like it would make political sense for the Harris County DA to join in a letter like this. But what do I know? So I was surprised more by the counties that we don't see than by the counties that we do yeah i would say that uh if one of these counties were to surprise me maybe bear and west's county um but uh i mean dallas county and fort ben county are a little bit more i think more solidly blue but i'm shooting from the hip on that one and i mean once again i'm more surprised that we didn't see more DAs joining this kind of thing.

But since this was a known factor, this is actually one of the things that did motivate the authors of the heartbeat act in the legislature to say, to include a provision in there that you can file this in any County, regardless of where the thing happens. So yeah, this has just been a known been a known factor for a long time. Yeah. Well, that's a good segue into a project that Daniel's been working on this week

that we'll get into a little bit later. Yeah, I was just going to note that, I'll get to that analysis, but Harris County is just a little bit more blue than Fort Bend, actually, which is really interesting. Out of those five counties, Nueces is actually the most Republican, but they're all pretty purple except dallas and bear they're more salt blue and travis of course is not not purple right yeah well kim hogg is the da in harris county there's a lot of complications there politically just in terms of county leadership and what she's done previously holly hansen will be able to explain that far better than i but kim hogg

kim hogg really has um is politically complicated in terms of what she's chosen to do and what not to do, and aligning with her party specifically. Okay, so let's talk real fast before we get on to the next topic. Is there any kind of new legislation on the horizon for this issue? behind the heartbeat act, stay at briscoe cane has proposed or, or promised to file legislation that would allow DAs around the state to prosecute violators of the state's abortion laws. Again, regardless of where that crime takes place. And so expanding the jurisdiction or whatnot, we don't have the bill yet.

So we don't know how that would work, but he's made this, this kind of threat repeatedly to various corporations. They'll pay for the costs of traveling to get an elective abortion for employees that are in Texas. And so Briscoe Cain, he's been coming out to file or prosecute crimes that happened in Harris County or whatnot. Right. So, yeah. Awesome.

Well, we'll definitely keep an eye on it. It's crazy how, you know, soon the legislature will be in session. Thank you, Isaiah, for covering that. Brad, we're going to go to you. Over the weekend, there was a frenzy over the power grid. Once again, shocker, shocker, as conditions got tighter and ERCOT put out a conservation request. Interesting to watch. A few months ago, we had this for cold temperatures. Now we're getting into summer and the heat uh collectively the amount of two um 2,900 megawatts of generation they tripped offline and they tripped offline for mechanical issues is that a lot is 2,900 a lot uh well during peak hours one megawatt will power about 200 homes so in

terms of the amount of homes that would power sure yeah in terms of the grand scheme of the available uh power on the grid it's probably about it's like half a million homes let's say three percent yeah um it's it's a low amount but uh it's enough when demand jumps up and and supply uh the supply margin gets uh shrinks a bit so that caused them to issue this conservation request um asking texans to reduce their electricity use from the hours of 3 to 8 p.m and after the fact according to urquhart this saved the grid about 300 to 400 megawatts of electricity uh but all in all nothing happened and we saw a lot of frenzy a lot of people freaking out um and that's going to happen constantly because of what happened in 2021 and that's understandable but things like this have occurred all the time like before that

even happened but ultimately we didn't even enter emergency conditions didn't uh come close based on what ercot and the puc said um and also this occurred one of the reasons that there was a bit of a tight window part of the reason was that there were other plans scheduled for maintenance. And that happens in the spring all the time because they have to do that in order to get ready for the summer. And so last year, about this time, there was another really tight situation. Nothing came of that, but that was also exacerbated by these maintenance operations and in order to prepare for the summer so we have the vast majority of of generation available to us during the summer when conditions when it's hottest when conditions are are most stringent then they need to be

kept up and things need to be fixed and tuned up so that's generally what happened and all in all a lot of talk about nothing that actually really occurred yeah so a whole lot of nothing happened but there were concerns there were concerns nonetheless so urquhart released its summer assessment report this week what did what did it show uh basically it showed that we're going to hit a new record or likely to hit a new record uh demand this summer at about 77 000 megawatts that's more than we've hit at any other point um mainly because of growing population and that's going to continue to be a thing we're going to continue to to hit these um new records basically every year so ercot said that they have enough uh generation to power for that and actually a substantial

margin about 20 000 megawatts actually 15 about 15 000 megawatts but um you know we'll see how it how the summer heat actually affects this and if there are any mechanical malfunctions that cause more issues. Absolutely. You can't really mitigate those entirely. It's just impossible. It's going to happen. Yep. Absolutely. Well, Brad, thank you for that. Hayden, we're going to come to you. Let's talk about border numbers, illegal apprehensions and crossings. What was this number? How was it published and what does it include for the month of April? The border numbers that were revealed in a court

filing reflect a spike in illegal immigration before Title 42 even ends. And whether it ends is precarious at this point. The number that we're referencing is 136 encounters in Texas sectors and offices of field operations in an exhibit attached to a federal court filing related to the state of Texas lawsuit against President Biden's administration over the Remain in Mexico policy. The feds revealed that there were 234,000 encounters total in the U.S., which includes 202,000 encounters by U.S. Border Patrol, that is apprehensions of illegal aliens along the southwest land border. 110,000 of these individuals were released on parole or their own recognizance. And in Texas sector specifically,

there were 128,000 Border Patrol encounters and 8,000 field operations encounters for a total of 136,000. And what is notable about these numbers is 62,000 of the Texas encounters ended in a Title 42 expulsion and 97,000 of the encounters nationwide ended in a Title 42 expulsion for a total of 1.5 million encounters so far this fiscal year, which began in October. Yeah. So let's talk about Title 42. Is it still scheduled to end on May 23rd? Here we are a few days away from May 23rd, and it is still in limbo because U.S. District Judge Robert Summerhays put a temporary restraining order on the feds preventing them from ending Title 42 enforcement, but he hasn't made a final decision on a preliminary injunction whether Title 42 will continue to be in effect while

the litigants in this case hash out their differences. Mayorcas, Secretary Alejandro Mayorcas of DHS said in a visit to McAllen that the Department of Justice would respond to whatever the decision by Judge Summerhays is. In other words, they would adapt and seek to continue their plan to end Title 42's enforcement. However, they don't know what to do yet because he hasn't made a decision. But the CDC has a desire to end this program next week. And if they do, then enforcement would return to the Title VIII procedures, which is how immigration was handled before the pandemic. And really, and throughout the past few administrations. This Title 42 policy was the invocation of a law that was written in the 40s for hopefully a once-in-a-generation occurrence of a pandemic,

and its use is not usual. Title 42 is a public health measure, not an immigration measure, legally speaking. But now it has become a way to control illegal immigration. And that is why members of Congress on both sides of the aisle are concerned that when this program ends, there will be a huge spike in illegal crossings. And Commissioner Chris Magnus of CBP, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agrees with that, that there likely will be an increase in illegal immigration. Yeah. So what is DHS doing to prepare for the end of Title 42? Well, as I mentioned, Secretary Mayorkas visited McAllen a couple days ago as of Thursday, and he indicated again that there could be up to 18,000 daily encounters if Title 42 ends, according to some

federal estimates. And he stated that the U.S. government is creating what he called a consequence regime and will continue to enforce the laws of the United States under Title 8, which of course, as I mentioned, is our regular immigration rules. Part of the plan is giving asylum officers the ability to make a final decision on asylum claims to make the process more efficient and to hand over more power to those officers rather than immigration judges. And the Department of Homeland Security seems to be focusing on messaging. In other words, making it clear to people across the globe that just because Title 42 is ending doesn't mean it's open season. Whether they listen, whether there is a surge on the border is dependent on the

beliefs of what immigration policy in the US is. And as we saw last year in Del Rio, just because the feds say don't come to the border doesn't mean they won't so cbp is saying we will likely have a surge in the border and the fact that mayorkas is telling the world don't come here it doesn't mean there won't be a spike in illegal immigration they are hoping there won't be and they are implementing policies that they believe will mitigate the consequences of a surge on our border with Mexico. Yeah, totally different. But it reminds me of during the freeze, was it that the mayor of Austin told criminals to stay home? Or was that in Houston? When? Where was that? Yeah, it was in Austin. Okay, there you go. Reminds me just a little bit of that.

Yeah, just don't do bad things anymore. Please, everybody. It'll'll make all our jobs easier if everyone just behaves themselves everyone just stays in line um well wonderful hayden thank you for covering that daniel we're going to come to you we've alluded to this but you know you've compiled partisan leanings for different legislative districts before state board of education districts before and this week you took a look at where each county here in texas stands i hear there are4 counties. I just heard that as a rumor, but I assume that to be true. I think I've heard that too. Yeah, a time or two

from a gentleman who likes to stand on different elevated objects. Maybe, yeah. Maybe, possibly. So real quick, explain how the TPI is calculated. The TPI, Texas Partisan Index, is a fun little thing

that I kind of came up with based on the, or kind of modeled after the Cook Partisan Index. That's something that rates congressional districts nationwide. The problem with the Cook Political Index is that it only can use the presidential election results because that's the only election that happens nationwide. So if you're trying to compare districts from California to Texas, you have to use the presidential race.

In Texas, when you're comparing stuff district to district or county to county, you can look at stuff that is statewide. So you can have a lot more races of anybody that is on the ballot statewide. So that's going from the U.S. Senate to the governor to comptroller to attorney general to all of these Supreme Court justices and the justices on the Court of Criminal Appeals. So the analysis that I do looks at the results from 2018 and 2020. I exclude third party votes.

So it's just comparing Republican versus Democrats, what they received on the ballot. You find the median vote for each one in each year. Then you average those two years together and you come up with the TPI. So for the statewide TPI, that would be an R54%. Looking at the specific numbers from 2018 and 2020, in 2018, the statewide median GOP vote was 53.71%. That was a year the Democrats did really well. And then in 2020, it was 54.78%, a little bit better with the presidential election for Republicans. So that averages out to 54.24% for Republicans or 54. Yeah, got it. So what a lot of red on there, you'll notice, because most counties in Texas lean strongly towards Republicans, probably about 200 out of the 254 are solid red counties. They're not going to vote for Democrats too often.

Those are usually our 70% to our, I think the, let me, let me look at the highest one. I think it's like our 88. No, no, it's our 96% at Roberts County. So, you know, that's basically everyone is voting for Republican in some of these counties, which is quite something. So that's the most of Texas's wide rural counties. But then you have a number of counties that also lean toward Democrats, namely Travis County, like I mentioned earlier, and also a lot of the counties down along

the border and South Texas. So anywhere from Hidalgo County to El Paso, there's tend to vote toward Democrats. We're seeing some change though, so that'll be interesting to see. And then there's about 15 counties that are stuck in the middle at a competitive district, which I say competitive between R-55 and D-55. So that's within the swing range. So even the state as a whole would be competitive based on that standard. Right. But still leaning toward Republicans. Some of those lean more towards Republicans like Tarrant County and Williamson County.

Other ones lean more towards Democrats like Fort Bend and Harris County. So that's just kind of a breakdown. And you can look at the full results on the website. Yeah, go to thetexan.news. We love some data-driven pieces. And Daniel delivered again this week. Thank you, Daniel. Hayden, we're coming back to you.

You wrote about a poll this week that came out from UT Tyler. What were the views of those polled on border security? Well, Mac, Texans are on board with border security. 60% of Texas registered voters disapproved of President Biden's handling of immigration and 30% approved. So twice the number of registered voters in Texas who approved of the president's handling of this issue. Twice the number disapproved as opposed to approving it. I'm not sure if I phrased that correctly, but I think I got it across. The poll included just over 1200 registered voters. It was conducted from May 2nd to May 10th. And the poll asked about different border security actions that Governor Abbott has

instituted, including the enhanced inspections of the border. 70% said that they supported that. I should note, though, that a poll often the answers or the results of the poll can say a lot, not only about the views of the respondents, but also about the way the questions were asked. So the phrasings of these questions did often portray the issue in a positive light. So enhanced inspections of the border, 70% said that they agreed with that. Of course, that was controversial. Even Commissioner Sid Miller was opposed to that because of some of the consequences to the commerce with Mexico. Wait times. The wait times and there's rotting food and problems like that. And none of that was

included in the poll question. So these are to be taken with a measure of skepticism. And of course, we have the phrasings of the questions on our website with this piece. But 51% also supported the transportation of illegal immigrants to DC. The border wall was a little bit more controversial. 44% agreed with the statement that a border wall is necessary for security and 42% disagreed with that statement bearing in mind that this poll had a margin of error of 2.8 percentage points. So as far as whether the border wall is popular, it's about a toss up and 55% supported sending the National Guard, whereas only 34% were opposed to that. So the border wall was the only policy that seemed to be truly controversial in the sense

that Texans are divided on it. Most Texan registered voters seem to be on board with Governor Abbott's other border actions and were also on board with what appeared to be a question about the Title 42 policy. 65% of respondents said that they were on board with keeping the borders closed to Mexico and Canada to people without visas during the pandemic. And that didn't explicitly mention Title 42, but it seemed to be a summary of the essence of what Title 42 does. So that is an overview of some of Texans' views of border security, which were a focus in this poll. Is Governor Abbott on track to win the governor's race? The elections questions were pretty interesting in this poll. Is Governor Abbott on track to win the governor's race? The elections questions were

a little more pretty interesting in this poll. 46% of respondents preferred Abbott to Beto O'Rourke in the governor's race, whereas 39% chose O'Rourke. Not a landslide win for Abbott in this poll, or not a landslide win, but it wasn't overwhelmingly favoring him in this poll, or not a landslide win, but it wasn't overwhelmingly favoring him in this poll, but other candidates received 3% or less. So Abbott, with a margin of error of 2.8%, was leading O'Rourke in this poll with 7%. However, 46% said that they approve of Abbott's job performance, while half said they disapproved or strongly disapproved with his job performance. So he's a bit upside down on his approval rating, but he's still leading his opponent in the governor's race. Interestingly enough, though, while the questions about border security were favorable to Abbott's

policies, 42% said that they trusted O'Rourke on border policy, while 41% said they trusted Abbott over O'Rourke. So still within the margin of error, but interesting tidbit that a lot of registered voters in Texas prefer O'Rourke. He's never been in charge of border policy in Texas, but from a hypothetical standpoint, would trust him over the current governor. 17% said that they trust neither Abbott nor O'Rourke on border security. So they said none of the above. We want somebody else. But that's the rundown on how Abbott fared in this particular poll with these particular registered voters. Any other key takeaways? Interesting note, Democrats in the runoff for lieutenant Governor don't know who they support. 44% said that they were undecided, but there were a few who had made up their mind. 31%

of respondents preferred Beckley, our State Representative Michelle Beckley, and 19% chose Collier. So, I exaggerate a little bit. Many of them have made up their minds, at least as far as this poll is concerned, but that's still a few days before a runoff, 44% of unsure who they support. That's a huge chunk. But Republicans in the Attorney General runoff preferred Attorney General Ken Paxton, 41% to his opponent. 35% said that they preferred Land Commissioner George P. Bush, Paxton's opponent. And then there were a few questions about different issues that Texans support. One that stood out was that 60 percent of respondents indicated that they support legalizing recreational marijuana use in the state of Texas, which is notable considering how serious of an offense possession

or distribution of marijuana is under our laws that 60% of registered voters say that they would like to see that legalized. Only 39% were opposed in that poll. But I do want to mention one point that stood out to me in this poll because it did ask about the religious beliefs of Texas voters. And two-thirds of registered voters in this poll identified as Christians. And that includes those who identify as Roman Catholic, Evangelical Protestants, Mainline Protestants, Non-Denominational Christians, African American Protestants, and Latter-day Saints, commonly known as Mormons. And so, registered voters who identified with no faith accounted for 22%. And then Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and those who practice other faiths were 11%. And then those who were of Jewish faith were at 1%. So, Christianity is still overwhelmingly

the faith of choice for Texas voters. Christian voters do have the major lion's share of political power in the state of Texas with two-thirds of registered voters identifying as Christians. Well, thank you, Hayden, for covering that. Isaiah, we're coming right back to you. The Supreme Court of Texas recently ruled on the state's authority to treat gender transition procedures as child abuse. Remind us first how this case began. We all recall that one of the lawmakers who proposed a bill or filed a bill in the legislature that would have banned these procedures, the bill that went nowhere, submitted an opinion request to Attorney General Paxton asking if these procedures might already be considered abuse

under existing Texas child abuse law. And Paxton eventually issued an opinion saying that, yes, they do. They are considered abuse under current law. And following that, Governor Abbott sent a letter to the Texas Department of Family Protective Services, the agency in charge of investigating child abuse, and told them that they should start treating these procedures among the other kinds of abuse that they investigate. And the DFPS agreed, obeyed, whatever verb is appropriate for the legal issues we're about to discuss. Because as the Supreme Court said, as we'll get into,

the DFPS is not really an extension of the executive office of the governor. Abbott does not have statutory authority over DFPS. And so it was more of an agreement. I guess that's the best word to put it, where they decided that, yes, they will treat these procedures as child abuse. So after that, there was a lawsuit on the part of a child psychologist and a family, parents of a transgender child, who sued Paxton and the governor and obtained an injunction at district court that would stop the DFPS from investigating these procedures throughout the state. Paxton appealed it. That superseded the injunction when it went to the appellate court. But that appellate court, the third court of appeals, Texas third court of appeals, reinstated this Texas-wide injunction block under the Texas Rules of appellate procedure um and we'll get into the significance

of that but um so the supreme court of texas anyway yeah so we're watching basically statewide republicans this all kind of started with statewide republicans being like well we're not in session there's a lot of political pressure this is certainly an issue in the gop world in texas right now that a lot of conservatives care about. So they're saying, okay, well, we can't make laws. So here are the actions we can kind of take. That's kind of what we're seeing. And there's a whole legal battle too. So what did the court rule? So the Supreme Court of Texas ruled in a nutshell that the DFPS can continue these investigations into these procedures as abuse, but not into this particular family and not because Abbott

told them to. So to kind of pick that apart, the rule under which the appellate court reinstated the statewide block can only apply to the parties in the case, according to the Supreme Court. So in their words, they say that the text of this rule plainly limits the scope of the available relief to that which is necessary to preserve the party's rights. So the word parties is explicit there. In other words, only people that are involved in the case can have this order apply to them. So in this particular litigation, that means that the family that sued is safe from these investigations for now. But the rest of the state, the DFPS can still investigate these procedures

as abuse elsewhere in Texas. However, like I mentioned, the Supreme Court also observed that the governor does not have authority over DFPS investigations in a direct way. An interesting quote that stood out to me from the majority opinion says, although this case comes to us in its early stages, it appears already to have been infected by a misapprehension of the proper rules played with the various government actors involved so in some they continue we are directed to no source of law obligating dfps to base its investigatory decisions on the governor's letter or the attorney general's opinion so just to recap the role that these documents play attorney general opinions are a an educated guess on how a court might rule based on what

Texas law says. So they're an interpretation of Texas law. They themselves do not have binding legal authority, right? They're just, this is the Attorney General's opinion on what a court might say on the law. And that informed the governor's letter to the DFPS saying, well, according to the AG, this is abuse now, so treat it as such. And so the court said that DFPS had always had the authority or discretion to say which things they will investigate. And so even though the governor does not have direct authority over the agency, their decision to listen to the governor is valid. There were three justices that dissented and agreed on that particular issue with regards to Abbott's authority over this agency, but said that they would have granted further

relief to the state. And what that means here specifically is allowing the DFPS to continue investigating this particular family that sued. And their argument in a nutshell was that an investigation is not action. So, like, before the DFPS removes a child from a family where they have made a finding of abuse, they have to go, they have to take that to a court. And the court approves it. And investigation has to precede all that. So, investigation does not result in necessarily a removal.

That was their argument, but they were in the, in the minority. Yeah. So, well, we'll certainly keep an eye on it and going into the legislative session, there will be a lot more talk about this issue.

Thank you, Isaiah. Broderick, coming back to you, the wildest race in Texas this year has certainly been the Republican primary for railroad commission. Wayne Christian has one remaining challenger, Sarah Stogner you wrote

a piece on her this week give us a brief preview of all that you uh reported yeah so in case you've been living under a rock which uh maybe that's the case uh sarah stogner rocketed to notoriety when she released a get out the vote video showing her mostly naked straddling a pump jack an oil pump jack and so she attributes that to the reason she's in the runoff but um she has since taken the offensive against incumbent wayne christian and uh it's interesting because she is not your typical republican she holds or at least previously held various beliefs that do not jive with the Republican parties. And she kind of takes that as a badge of honor. She also is oriented as,

in opposite the oil and gas industry, which is what this position would be charged with regulating. So the Railroad Commission doesn't regulate railroads? No, not anymore. Shocker. They used to, yeah, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. But yeah, it's a really interesting race. I recommend you go read the article for more information,

more of a rundown on Sarah Stogner and her bid against incumbent Wayne Christian. But that's definitely a race that I will be watching on election night next week. And I think everybody should, especially because it does concern the, uh, if not the biggest part of the Texas economy,

one of the biggest parts of the Texas, Texas economy. So, um, we'll see how it shakes out. Certainly a great piece to go read folks and very entertaining and interesting to read about the policy differences, the spicy parts of the campaign. There's been a lot going on and two very, very different candidates on the ballot for Republican runoff voters. Thank you, Bradley, for covering that.

We're going to stick with you, though. Okay. Okay. If I must. This week, the Austin City council is voting on more spending we're shocked by that right right shocked that city councils would be spending millions of dollars especially austin especially frugal very frugal um project connect comes to mind um but a package of coronavirus related expenditures totaling 42 million dollars is on the docket what's included in that

so some of the bigger items includes uh 10.4 million dollars for temporary housing agreements like rental mortgage and utilities assistance that obviously came from the when the unemployment shock hit and people were having trouble paying their bills, the city implemented a program to help pay for those. That is no longer the case, though. With the unemployment, it's getting much better, especially in Austin, which has led the state just constantly since probably about July 2020 in terms of improving unemployment rate.

Another one would be $147 million dollars combined for coronavirus tests support services in a new testing center 1.6 million for food deliveries to the homeless population and 130 000 for ultrasound devices which just seemed really random to throw into this package but it all stems from spending that the city manager cannot approve on his own it needs approval from the city council and notably this comes after the city announced the rescission of its covid emergency orders back in march but these expenditures still continue and likely will continue even more the council is set to vote on this today being Thursday. This has not received any of the controversy that some past expenditures that we've talked about on this podcast have that eventually failed.

So likely this will move through and another $42 million will be put towards this package of items. Yeah, certainly. Thank you, Bradley. Daniel, coming back to you, lots of attention has been paid to the Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court lately, particularly in response to the leaked Roe opinion. But earlier this week, the court released another opinion in favor of Ted Cruz's campaign. What was that about? The Supreme Court struck down a law that kind of governs the FEC and regulations for federal candidates for office. Under the previous

standards, if you were running for office and you wanted to give yourself some money to help your campaign out, you can lend it. You can lend your campaign that money and then your campaign can pay you back that money. In Texas, that's basically you just lend yourself however much you want. You can pay it back at some point or you can contribute it yourself and just don't worry about it. Those limits are not, it's different than the individual limits. So if you're donating to a different campaign, obviously there's caps on how much you can limit yeah donate at federal level all that to say if you're running for federal office and you gave yourself more than 250 000 you could only pay back 250 000 after the election um using funds that you raise after the election now if you raise

if you loan your campaign 250 000 before the election and someone you you raise a ton of money from different packs and individuals and you get a million dollars you can pay out more if it's before the election but after the election you can't pay back more than 250 there's a cap on that so in 2018 during the competitive senate run between Cruz and Beto O'Rourke you saw Ted Cruz loan himself 260260,000, basically just trying to challenge this law. He waited until after the campaign and his campaign paid him back $250,000, the maximum allowed, and they filed a suit against the FEC saying, hey, we should actually be able to give him back the $10,000 on top of this. And so this went all the way to Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court basically said this is essentially

a violation of the First Amendment, that candidates should be able to donate to who they want to or contribute as much as they want to themselves. There's not good reason for Congress to limit that in this instance. And so in the gist of it, now candidates will be able to contribute more than $250,000 and be able to pay that back longer than just at the election date got it well daniel thank you for following that for us interesting to watch um the supreme court ruling something from texas junior senator junior senator my goodness thank you for that okay gentlemen let's pivot to our tweetery segment um daniel let's talk to you about what caught your eye on twitter this week

okay so i've been covering the um the campaign for the attorney general's race you have george p bush running against compaxton but i want to talk about a different george bush the the one that was more well known long before that uh president former president george w bush um w he was giving a speech the other day and i had to watch his video because someone tweeted it out with a quote. And I thought they were just like, this was not real. I thought it was sarcastic. I did not think it was real. And then I watched it, and he literally said this.

It was real, yeah. He was talking about, he criticized Putin for the war against Ukraine. And he said the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq. I mean, of Ukraine. So, I mean, I'll just leave it at that. Yeah. Let's just say it made its rounds on social media and is continuing to make its rounds on social media yeah kind of ridiculous and the the president's face afterwards was quite something to behold he realized his gap yeah it was something and watching him also try to recover

because he's yeah yeah it was it was a yeah you felt it was just i don't know your heart goes out after you're literally out of office and something like that happens. Yeah, certainly interesting. Hayden, what did you see on Twitter this week? Mine is not nearly as jaw-dropping as Daniel's, and I can't speak for the Twitter accounts that I read from. This is a guy named Tony Paul. I don't know who this is. Does anybody? Never heard of him. I know some Tonys and I know some Pauls. I don't think I know any Tony Paul. I don't know who this is. Does anybody? Never heard of him. Okay. I know some Tonys and I know some Pauls. I don't think I know any Tony Pauls.

Any Tony Pauls. Well, yeah, I can't trust those people with two first names. Yeah. Um, oh my gosh.

Mackenzie Taylor. Lord in heaven. Um, what about Isaiah Mitchell? That works too. Yeah. Mitchell's a, Mitchell's a last name I have two last names Hayden Sparks

Sparks is totally a great first name Hayden is also a popular last name in some parts of the country I did not know that but I learned recently but this guy tweeted what was that like that musician he made some songs yeah that's probably where

it came from. This guy tweeted, I just got a full tank of gas for $22. Granted, it was for my lawnmower, but I'm trying to stay positive. So I thought, you know, that was relatable to all of us right now. And this tweet got quite a lot of traction.

So our AP, our gas tanks and our wallets. It cost me 50 bucks to fill up my Toyota Corolla's gas tank this week, which is just like unprecedented. I filled up for 70 yesterday. Oh, that's ridiculous. And you also have a sedan. Yeah,

it's ridiculous. And it's only, you know, 20 or 30 bucks extra. But when you're used to being able to fill up for 30 or 35 bucks and then it costs 65 or 70 that's just it's a little bit breathtaking it used to cost me 22 to fill up my gas tank have you all seen that thing that says when the gas pump asks you for a receipt and you reply i'd rather just forget this whole experience that is awesome i love that it's similar to ones that i saw going around earlier where it was

someone was called the police about a robbery and they're like can you identify who sold it yeah it was pump seven prime suspect i'm just impressed you guys could list off that many um gas price jokes they stick mckenzie because we feel them in our souls point so of course they stick um thank you hayden brad i want to ask you before we get your to your twittery when you see those stickers on gas pumps with joe biden pointing to the price and saying i did this does it bother you knowing that there are more factors at play than just joe biden does your um reporter oil and gas mind start going i mean there's in an economy there's always more factors and i don't know why did you ask me to answer this question you weren't gonna

like my answer you knew what i was gonna answer no i thought you're gonna be like yeah it's the worst instead of like well in an economy i don't know well i just whenever you try and boil down something so complicated as a price to one factor it is so that's such a flawed comparison that doesn't mean that that factor is not contributing greatly but there are many many different factors at play for why the gas price is so high for sure i mean to be fair i've seen some where it was like Biden and Harris. Oh, okay. So there's another family. Yeah, I'm sure the vice president has a ton to do with that. Okay, Brian, what did you see on Twitter this week?

So in pulling way back into my own quiver and pulling out a tweet of my own again. This is getting ridiculous. You guys should just send me your tweets ahead of time so that I can choose. Because I chose one of y'all's tweets this week. It's literally listed in the doc. You could have checked. Oh, I know.

I see it. This was from last night. I got a screenshot of a text being sent out in HD85, which has thus far been really quiet. I think the most notable update in it has been that comptroller Glenn Hager endorsed the challenger to representative, uh, Phil Stevenson, but Stevenson apparently has been sending Stevenson's campaign has been sending, uh, direct text messages to voters with this graphic that says he's been endorsed by governor abbott with a picture from

2020 because governor abbott is not endorsed phil stevenson this time around i don't know why but he is not among those incumbents that has been supported by the governor but stan kitzman its campaign uh hit him back on it and said this is not true and you should basically be ashamed of yourself. But it's just interesting, especially in the homestretch of this election, what campaigns will try and get away with because there's not much time to be called on it. Yeah. And my tweet has a whopping one retweet from our Holly. So, uh,

the Texan didn't retweet you. Gosh, who's slacking on that? Gosh. He also sent it out right as I'm driving home from work. So I was probably driving home from work. Yeah. So I didn't see it,

but, um, yeah. So odds are a few people will actually see it and more people will see those, those texts. So it may work. Who knows? It's interesting watching Phil Stevenson be,

uh, really come, uh, be, I don't know. He has a lot of opposition, um, in terms of,

and not a lot of support, um, this election cycle, which is very interesting. The feeling hasn't jumped in on the side yet, which is rare for an incumbent. Yeah. Yeah.

Um, the governor, like I said which is rare for a incumbent yeah yeah um the governor like i said is not um yeah it's very odd it's a very odd situation down there over there i always think geographically i always picture houston's southeast of austin but it's just basically it's like it's like a little bit south barely southly south. Barely south, yeah. Thank you, Bradley. Isaiah, what on Twitter? Also, you are taking a page from Brad's book here and citing one of your own tweets. I'm mainly referring to a tweet that I quote, quote about how districts. This is from a guy who's named Dale Chu. I don't know who he is. He appears to be involved in the education policy field.

He says that districts have yet to spend 93% of $122 billion sunk into the K-12 system last year as part of the American Rescue Plan Act. And I linked mine because it was just to remind myself that the AARP sent just one of three school funding packages to public schools as COVID relief. And so it was the biggest one. And I've got my chart in front of me. But that one for Texas alone sent over $11 billion to Texas public schools. And there were two that came out during the Trump administration from Congress. The first one sent out a little over a billion, and the second one was just shy of five billion. And so depending on which other funds you include, there's the Governor's Education Relief Fund as well, depending on whether or not you throw that in. Texas public schools have 17 to 19 billion dollars in only COVID relief funds from the feds to spend and the soonest deadline for the first one that came out under Trump is this September and schools

have not finished spending that yet actually and that is just a little over 1 billion as we said and that's the first of three packages, which have grown, you know, like, anyway. Yeah. They've got all kinds of money. Yeah. The U.S. Department of Education kind of tracks how much they spend, and they're usually a little bit behind, I've noticed.

But by their numbers, that's the only place you can find it, really. But by their numbers, schools have spent a little over $4 billion of the $19 billion they've got from the feds just for COVID relief. And this is interesting in light of another story that we're going to put out in a little bit that hasn't come out yet on how the sheer amount of local debt that school districts asked voters to approve in May, it was pretty staggering. I believe the exact number was a gazillion, trillion, trillion dollars. Something to that effect, yes. There was a slight dip in the number of bonds that they proposed during COVID, like in 2020.

And then in 2021, that shot up. And in 2022, the number of bonds proposed themselves, I want to say doubled from the previous year or somewhere in that neighborhood. But too soon for that now. Suffice it to say that public schools in Texas have more money than they know what to do with. With enrollment that has dropped to a certain extent as well. With fewer students, yes. And this is something that is not paid attention to when we talk about school funding. Absolutely. Fascinating.

Well, thank you, Isaiah. I'm going to quickly plug a tweet from Daniel since we're in the ballpark of hyping each other up here or hyping ourselves up rather. Daniel mentioned earlier the 15 most competitive counties in Texas. I'm just going to read them. It's fascinating to me, the ones that made the list. From leaning left to leaning right.

This is a tweet from Daniel at Daniel J. Friend. Harris, Hayes, Fort Bend, Frio. How do you say LaSalle? How do you say that county? LaSalle? I don't know how to say it. It's a great question. LaSalle. I do you say that county? LaSalle? I don't know how to say it. That's a great question. LaSalle. I realized after I tweeted that that I miscapitalized it.

The S is supposed to be capitalized. I apologize to anyone who lives in that county. Wow, Daniel, come on. Gosh. Jim Wells, Kleberg, Jefferson, Valverde, Brewster, Noises, Reeves, Williamson, Tarrant, and Cald and coldwell very interesting so if you live in one of those counties just know it is uh you live in one of the places in texas that is actually politically um a little bit of a swing area very fascinating okay gentlemen we are going to um go ahead and get back to roasting our newest member of the team, Rob. He has been a good sport this week in terms of, well, we really haven't. Okay. Actually, I want to start with this. On Tuesday, on Rob's first day, y'all last week on the pod talked about how one of the things you wanted to do for his arrival was dress in suits. Okay. That was one thing you wanted to do was

dress in suits, make Rob think he had, you know, horrendously underdressed for the occasion of his first day at his new job. Very cruel, I'd say. Now, when it's like your idea or something, it was absolutely not my idea. Let the record reflect that it was McKinsey's idea. It was not at all. I'll let the record reflect that. Thanks for letting me. Rob, don't listen to them. You'll learn very quickly not to.

To just disregard the shenanigans that they, oh, Isaiah, whatever. Regardless, it was not my idea at all. I, in fact, encouraged you guys not to do it. I will say I did not put my foot down and say you couldn't either, though. Well, unencumbered by evidence, I think you did. Here's the problem, folks.

I could make this about my gender and say man i'm the only woman at this table gosh what a hard life i live but i'm going to just move on i'm going to just keep going regardless i walk into the office on a tuesday morning along with rob and the only person in this office who went all out and was wearing a suit was our dear Isaiah Mitchell. The disappointment on his face when he realized he was alone was just, it saddened even me. Isaiah, how did you feel being the only office?

My car doesn't have AC. I sacrificed for this prank. I came here, rolled up, and walked into this newsroom to see Nary a tie in sight. Nary a tie in sight. And I was the bamboozlee. I was supposed to be the bamboozler. Isaiah, Isaiah, you looked like a proper statesman. You looked great.

Thank you. He did. He looked so good. He did. And he was all by himself. Absolutely. You looked like a proper statesman. You looked great. Thank you. He did. He looked so good. He did. And he was all by himself. Absolutely. You looked excellent. He's got a new profile picture on the website.

That's true. That's awesome. Yes, if you want to see the suit that Isaiah wore, go to our website because there is a picture there. The traffic to our About Us, like our team page is about to just spike. Yeah. And honestly, Isaiahaiah from the bottom of my heart we did not mean to do that oh no no listen i i i say this in all honesty i dropped

off my dry cleaning and i intended to have it back in time so i could wear a suit and it was not back in time i would have worn a suit i promise you that was not intentional so there was a tornado it was an unintentional prank and yeah there was a tornado it was all kinds of chaos that no that that kept me but i i i think you looked amazing you should not feel bad about it at all oh but it was so funny but it was hilarious it was absolutely hilarious because isaiah is the one in the office and it was particularly funny hayden because you and isaiah like if anybody is going to dress up at the office i'd say it would be you you certainly will dress up more often the rest of the gentlemen like right now like right now but walking in and seeing Isaiah

in a suit and you in like a button-down like Hawaiian printed shirt it was like what alternate universe have I stepped into because that's totally Isaiah's garb typically and that's one of my favorite shirts I just don't wear it to work very often it was like opposite day you could not have chosen a better day to wear that shirt to work it was so perfect it really was like opposite day or opposite week because it's like brad is the one or mac is the one yelling and getting mad and saying brad everything was off i was just hungry i didn't i didn't meal prep this week lord in heaven um anyway back to rob rob we're so sorry we've been um all that to say welcome to the office we're so glad to have you gentlemen do you have any um burning questions for our newest edition oh i have a question

we're ready and by we mean, I'm scared now. You make me nervous. Do you know what sucks? Oh my gosh. Vacuum cleaners? Yes. Oh my gosh, no. No.

I've definitely never heard that one before. Oh man. You said never hear it again here's hoping oh yeah okay daniel says that all the time like he always always says that so i really am glad to hear that you hate it because i do too and i just hate dan well it's it's the kind of joke it makes sense fitting a vacuum cleaner because it's just some trash that he sort of got off the floor, like a vacuum cleaner. Here's the thing about it, though. Whether a vacuum works or doesn't work, it still sucks. I'll agree with that, yeah. I don't think that's a very controversial statement.

No, but it just makes the joke more layered. It's beautiful. It makes it more layered? No, it doesn't. It does not make it any more layered at all. It makes it worse because you think that that counts as being layered. Be careful, Daniel. That is worse.

Don't explain the joke too much because it's like when you have to dissect a frog in school. When you have to take the joke apart, you kill it. So don't explain it too much. That's a real layer. That's a real layer, Daniel. real layer daniel okay yeah okay second second thing okay regarding puns but this is this is more of a preparatory thing so that i know some good boundaries here how do you feel about your name being used as a verb it would depend on what the verb is what's the definition of of to rob i guess i mean to well yes to rob that's a

good point yeah i've also never heard that joke before in my entire life yeah i'm sure ever ever i'm i'm pretty happy with it honestly i like that i think that they should start capitalizing uh it when they say rob okay news or something okay start giving me credit for that yeah because i love making jokes about my own name and people always ask me like oh you probably get tired of that and everybody sitting this table knows that i don't so i some i wasn't sure if he would be offended if i made jokes with your name well to avoid that we can just start calling him bobbert well that works too yeah yeah that's um awful and should not be practiced. Yeah.

I think it's a great name. Bradley, do you have any questions for our- I do. Okay. I knew you would. In my 27 and counting years of life, I have been searching for the answer of one question. And I have yet to find the answer. So, Rob, maybe you can enlighten me.

Maybe you were put in my life just for this moment. We'll find out. And the question that has stumped me to this date is what is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow? African or European? Drats. It continues. I don't know know i don't know the answer to that so i get thrown in the pit yeah and that's it rob my question for you is do you have an outsized love for monty python or are you a normal person i don't think that having an outsized love for monty python makes you an abnormal person necessarily but you can be a very abnormal person who who loves monty python there might even be a couple

of people like that in this room right now but you know i've i've seen uh monty python in the holy grail but i have yet to be introduced to the rest of the uh canonical monty python canonical yeah monty python wow yeah brad the only reason i have seen money python and the holy grail is because brad insisted we have a team movie night where we watched said movie and um i don't really know what happened to me that day but nothing really changed you know it didn't really change me sad well let me break the ice um it's not been broken well just to start like a light one. Why don't you just tell us a crime that you committed and told nobody about?

Or I would settle for your darkest secret you haven't shared with anybody. Well, so the problem is I can't really tell you because if I told you, then it wouldn't be a crime that I told nobody about. Okay, that's good. That's all I got. Wow. That was really, um, that was deep isaiah um well rob for our listeners tell them something that um maybe folks don't know about you tell us um something that you're looking forward to in your position here at the texan give us a little bit of insight into who you are no pressure

um i suppose what i'm looking most forward to here at the texan is um just helping to deliver uh real news to the people of texas um all right now now do i get my paycheck for having said that yes exactly but prior you would have not received a paycheck and now you will all right fantastic i just got my bonus there um yeah i am from houston so when i hear people complain about austin humidity i think that honestly this place feels like paradise compared to houston that is such good perspective because i walked out of my house so i was like dang it's a little you gotta look at the glass half full're literally because it's so humid in Houston. You can put a glass outside.

It'll be half full by the end of the afternoon. That's awesome. Swimming down the street. Swimming down the street. And you just graduated college, right? I did. I just graduated from Hillsdale College. Not let's see.

What day is it? The 19th, fewer than two weeks ago. That's crazy. And in two weeks ago that's crazy and in two weeks you in 10 days really you moved um across the country and then across the state and here you are that's wild indeed here i am that is so wild i know it's got to be culture shock especially coming right off of graduation like going straight from school to working that quickly did you road trip here i did not i will i road tripped from uh from houston to austin but i i had to fly from michigan too so if you were to do a cross-country road trip what would be

the soundtrack you listen to great question that is a great question um if it was just myself or if it was my family my sister would have to put on the music because she actually knows music unlike me who has maybe two or three bands that i know about that i just listen to all the time what are those bands uh i like panic at the disco um okay church of the cosmic school is a very good band and i can think of a third one if i try really really hard um the darina harvey band is actually really good they do like c Celtic punk rock sort of music. I'm sorry. Those are the wrong answers for a road trip.

Why? Because the correct answer is Johnny Cash. I mean, I love some Johnny Cash. That's fair. For a cross country road trip. Okay. I mean, they're fine on their own, but for this purpose, that's the correct answer. You asked him a question expecting only one

correct answer he offered you his preferences and you're shooting them down yep got it um just gave a thumbs up oh my gosh well rob we're so glad to have you gentlemen real fast before we um jump off here and let our listeners get back to their um regularly scheduled days runoff predictions. Next week is the runoff. We will be having, there'll be a lot of coverage. Make sure to go to the Texan for all of your election results needs. We'll have pieces out as results come in and an election tracker as we partner with the decision desk as well.

All sorts of good stuff. But gentlemen, real fast, what are your, what races will you be watching specifically so readers can know what to look for that evening i'll be watching the railroad commission race uh that's probably top of my list in addition to that there's a bevy of house districts that i have been following quite a bit a bevy yes as it were um and those include 17 19 23 52 23, 52, 73, 84, and 85. So if you need to know what those are, you can go look them up on our website. You can see the matchups on the War Room or the Election Night Tracker. But those will all be very interesting to see how they play out, especially with the larger factors at play, like the Greg Abbott versus Ted Cruz endorsements. And specifically the issue focused there most is school choice.

So it's going to hold a lot of implications for next session. And we'll see how they shake out. Certainly. Very good. Hayden, what about you? What will you be following? I will be keeping an eye on the lieutenant governor's race and whether Democrats will choose to nominate mike collier

or michelle beckley the reason that's important is mike collier was nominated in 2018 and nearly won yeah i don't imagine it will be as close this time although election predictions are always tricky because as soon as you make a prediction you know donald trump could never be president of the united states that could never happen but i see what you're saying historically midterms favor yeah it's just how how it is predicted to go it is it is likely that republicans will fare better in 2022 than they did in 2018 but it would be a rematch if collier went to the general with uh patrick if beckley goes to the general with patrick that will be a very contentious general election absolutely

daniel what about you i assume you just won't be watching the attorney general's race at all yeah no i won't yeah it's not spicy on either side of the aisle i think i will be watching it but in all honesty i do think it's going to be one of the less interesting races to watch on election day um just kind of interesting i think yeah which you know had you asked me that six months ago i probably would have said no if there's a runoff that'll be really interesting and i don't foresee that i don't foresee it being uh yeah anyways uh so there's that that i will be watching, both Republican and the Democrat primary. But then in South Texas, there's going to be some interesting races as well. You have a bunch of Democratic runoffs in H in HD in the congressional district of 28 Henry Quayer versus Jessica Cisneros.

I think that is going to be one of the most fascinating races to watch for runoff. And it will have big implications on the November election, I think as well. Um, and then also the Republican primary in that race as well. You also have, uh, SD 27, you have a Democrat runoff that was pretty close between Sarah Stapleton Barrera and Morgan LaMontia. Yeah. That will be interesting. Um, and then there's also an interesting runoff in hd 37 which is down in uh kind of the north of brownsville area um in camera county and why am i blanking on the county above camera county that one um why yeah i can't it has a name i i'm so sorry to my listeners down there what county or what i mean what county was below the one you were just talking north of cameron county north of cameron oh yeah i can't remember either wow

well look it up real fast and we'll we'll circle back with that isaiah what do you have on your docket for the runoff also do you like how i use the word docket just specifically for your uh segment it makes me itch i am going to be watching both party runoffs for land commissioner and a couple of san antonio races, namely the race to replace Lyle Larson in the statehouse and the Democratic primary runoff for county judge for Bexar County. That's going to be interesting. And like Brad, I'm interested as well in watching these races where Ted Cruz and Governor Abbott have endorsed against each other. That's going to be interesting.

Yeah. governor i would have endorsed against each other that's going to be interesting yeah well that issue specifically school choice being at like the center of that entire debate um is really something that you've been following extensively so it'll be interesting to watch that on election night gentlemen thank you for joining me rob welcome to the team thanks for dealing and being such a good sport with all of this ridiculousness oh yes dana please share with us the county it's will see county and it's notable because this is in addition to hd 70 the other 50 50 split district um and it's also the one that's in contention in a lawsuit so that'll be with redistricting fascinating fascinating situation i could talk about it for an hour but i won't you can you can finish the podcast i don't care it's fine that's okay daniel's sad he's having

sad boy time right now well folks thank you so much for listening we will catch you next week thank you all so much for listening if you've been enjoying our podcast it would be awesome if you would review us on itunes and if there's a guest you'd love to hear on our show 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.