The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - May 21, 2021

Episode Date: May 21, 2021

On this episode of our Weekly Roundup podcast, our team talks Abbott’s most recent face mask order, the City of Lubbock being sued by Planned Parenthood, the Governor opting the state out of a bonus federal unemployment benefit, Texas senators opposing Biden’s response to the Israel and Hamas conflict, controversy in Southlake over social media posts by an American Airlines pilot, and the potential elimination of a fee for the LTC program. We also cover legislative updates on taxpayer funded lobbying, sex change surgery bans for minors, critical race theory, the Texas Heartbeat Act, the Star Spangled Banner Protection Act, CPS recordings, and hospital price transparency. 

Howdy, howdy. Welcome to the Texans Weekly Roundup podcast. Mackenzie Taylor, Senior Editor here. This week, our team talks Abbott's most recent face mask order, the city of Lubbock being sued by Planned Parenthood, the governor opting the state out of a bonus federal unemployment benefit, Texas senators opposing Biden's response to the Israel and Hamas conflict, controversy in Southlake over social media posts by an American Airlines pilot, and the potential elimination of a fee for the LTC program. We also cover legislative updates on taxpayer-funded lobbying, sex change surgery bans for minors, critical race theory, the heartbeat bill, the Star-Spangled Banner Protection Act, CPS recordings, and hospital price transparency.

We appreciate you tuning in and enjoy this episode. Howdy folks, Mackenzie Taylor here with Daniel Friend, Isaiah Mitchell, Hayden Sparks, and Brad Johnson. We're recording fairly early on a Thursday morning. Who all has coffee here? Hayden and I definitely have coffee. Michelle, who's recording, has coffee. Daniel, you don't have any of the devil's juice, do you? No, that's disgusting. Yeah. Brad, do you? No, that's disgusting. Brad, do you have any? No. Okay.

That's actually kind of shocking. I drank it earlier. Oh, okay. This is really great. We're really glad to have you as part of the conversation. Isaiah, no coffee for you? No. Man, okay.

It's my choice. Glad we did a little roundup, a little roll call. And on that note, we're going to go ahead and jump right in. Daniel, this week, the governor made another mask announcement. Run us through what happened this time. It is his latest executive order in the COVID-19 pandemic, if you still want to call it that. This is probably his like 30-somethingth executive order. Yeah, there have been a lot. This executive order specifically prohibits local governments or government institutions in Texas, whether it's local government or even some other type of subsidiary state government, from requiring face masks. So it's kind of doubling down on his previous executive order

in which he said the state was completely open 100% and that there would be no mask mandates. There's still been, since then, there were some local governments requiring it for city employees or even the city of Austin trying to require it still for the community. And so this is kind of pushing them into a box to say, no, you can't have any masks. Got it. So what are exceptions under this order?

So the exceptions still, of course, private businesses, if they want to require masks for customers, they can do that. That has not changed. The other exceptions for like government entities, there are some jails and hospitals that can continue following those masking requirements. And also schools for a short period until June 4th. After June 4th, the Texas Education Agency is supposed to completely change up their policy to basically say normal mask requirements in schools. Yeah. So I think it's fair to say that throughout the course of the pandemic, the governor's stance on masks has not been entirely consistent. Walk us through how that has changed over the course of the pandemic. Yes, it has changed quite a bit. There's been various levels

right at the beginning of the pandemic. Uh, he, of course he issued his lockdown order back in, uh, last March that did not come with any masking requirements. Uh, but when he, uh,

the cases really didn't do anything in March, April, May. Uh, but as cases began to rise, uh, some local governments in Texas started trying to say we need to require masks. And the governor issued an executive order.

And in his executive order, he said governments cannot issue mask mandates on individuals. Then as the cases continued to rise in June, he allowed a loophole to go through with a Bexar County judge who, instead of issuing mask mandates on the individual, he said businesses are required to require masks for individuals. And the governor said, that's great, that's A-OK, that's what he intended in his order all along. And then the governor changed even further into the pro-mask crowd a couple weeks later when he issued his own statewide mask mandate that was required on individuals, which he previously said the government shouldn't do. So kind of a swing there. And then, of course, in March of this year, he changed directions again and he issued his executive order saying, you know, no more mask mandates, ending his statewide mask mandate. And he also said that the government, local governments couldn't impose mask requirements

on businesses in that order. So kind of like a complete turnaround from last summer. And then this now, this new order is doubling down on that and trying to push back against local, local governments that are continuing to require masks. Got it. Well, Daniel, thanks for following that for us. You've been on the mask beat for a hot minute. So thanks for following up on that. Isaiah, we're going to come to you. We've talked a lot about a Lubbock ordinance that would ban abortion within city limits. Some developments happened this last week regarding that. A lawsuit sprung up. Surprise, surprise. I'm sure we're both shocked.

But explain briefly, again, remind our listeners what the ordinance does and how it works. So the ordinance is an effective and overtly intentional ban on abortion in city limits. And previous versions of the ordinance simply held those who performed or aided abortions other than the mother liable to the living kin of the aborted child. And in the Lubbock version, anybody can sue those violators of the law. And again, the same exception exists where you can't sue the mother. Got it. So what is the lawsuit alleging? The most obvious allegations are that the ordinance is unconstitutional under Roe v. Wade. It also has some more specific allegations under Texas law regarding municipalities. The most obvious allegations are that the ordinance is unconstitutional under Roe v. Wade. It also has some more specific allegations under Texas law regarding municipalities.

Namely, it claims that municipalities don't have the power to create civil liability. Standing is going to be a big issue in this case because the government technically cannot enforce this ordinance unless some certain complicated legal conditions are met that are meant to dodge jurisprudence that has enabled abortion companies and abortion rights groups to sue on behalf of injuries incurred by people that aren't them, right? And so, in June Medical and Whole Woman's Health, we see these big companies suing on behalf of their customers, but not themselves. And so that has created some jurisprudence regarding like whether or not you have standing to sue that this ordinance slips around by saying that the government is not the one actually, you know, enforcing this law. Right. So a similar, you know, a similar case has been,

you know, seen in Louisiana. Run us through a little bit of that and how, you know, the effect of that ordinance and that change applies to this one. Yeah, it was just yesterday or the day before that the judge on the case, Judge Hendricks, ordered all attorneys involved in the case to review a case called Okpulobi v. Foster. And this is a 2001 ruling at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals based in Louisiana. And it was on a Louisiana law that enabled women to sue their abortionists for damage to themselves or to their aborted fetuses.

And it was rarely invoked. And so this law was upheld in 2001, invoked, I think, for the first time in 2007. And at least that was the first time where it started going to court. And then it was upheld again, another ruling in 2013. And so, you know, it's a very similar law. The way it works is that, again, the government is not involved. And so the Oak Pelobe v. Foster ruling actually is not involved and so the oak polo versus foster ruling actually is not as spicy as one might expect um which is kind of the point of these

laws because it doesn't deal with the merits of like abortion related jurisprudence it simply says that under the 11th amendment um the government in the oak polallobi case, the Louisiana government, was not technically involved enough to be sued. That's probably the best distillation of the legal mumbo jumbo. Got it. Well, thank you for doing that for us. We certainly need it. We'll continue to follow that. Thank you, Isaiah. Brad, we're going to come to you. Another big announcement from the governor this week involving federal dollars. Walk us through what happened there.

So the governor, Governor Greg Abbott, governor this week involving federal dollars walk us through what happened there so the governor governor greg abbott announced this week that he would be discontinuing the extra 300 unemployment benefits um stipend uh that the federal government has been financing since uh roughly the beginning of the pandemic um you know state, you already get $600 a week from the state government for unemployment and the federal government injected some extra money to provide people closer to what they were making during regular times after they had gotten laid off because of government-mandated shutdowns. It won't go into effect until june 26 so up until then these payments will um will be continuing

and um but after that the there'll be people unemployed will be limited to the six hundred dollars so what was his jurisdiction for the move? Justification. He said that, first off, the number of job openings exceeds the number of people on unemployment. And so the official TWC count, Texas Workforce Commission count, shows a slight excess of job openings compared to people on unemployment. Now, that doesn't count a litany of job types that are typically not listed. And so really, the real number of job openings is vastly higher than the number of people on unemployment. Another justification for the move was that about 800,000 of the unemployment claims made throughout the last year, according to the Texas Workforce Commission, are either confirmed to be fraudulent or they're strongly assumed to be. They haven't been fully investigated, but they appear to be fraudulent filings. And so that's like $10.4 billion of money that if all of those are

fraudulent has been given out errantly. And so those are the two big ones. The governor said that he wants the state to start incentivizing people to go back to work. You know, there's a lot of a lot of businesses that are having across the country and not just in Texas that are having trouble hiring people back. And part of the reason is that in many cases, people are making more money on unemployment than they were at the regular job. And so just based on human nature, people are making decisions based in their own best interest. In this case being, is the amount they're bringing in on unemployment worth not working in whatever lost money they have there? It's the whole opportunity cost and a lot of people are making the judgment with the factor of the ad factor some people are you know scared to go back to work still um to whatever degree that's accurate or not uh people still some people still believe it so um it's kind of it's there's a lot of different aspects to this but uh the governor said that

you know he's focused on getting people back to work, not leaving them government dependent. So what is the give us a 30,000 foot view of what unemployment employment looks like in Texas, particularly, you know, this is what you've been following since the beginning of the pandemic is those, you know, those rolling differences and numbers throughout the course of this entire thing. Yeah. So obviously, back in April, May of last year, we saw unemployment skyrocket to a place, you know, we've never seen it before. at least since, you know, the Great Depression, up to like 13 percent, slightly over that. And since then, we've tapered off quite a bit.

Right now, they're floating. It's floating around 7 percent. These are all state numbers. State numbers, yep. Floating around 7 percent. And it's been that way for the last few months. It's kind of evened out there. And it hasn't moved drastically one way or the other. more than double what texas was at its record lows before the pandemic hit specifically in like december of last year was i believe that was our lowest point and texas has kind of gone back and forth whether it's you know higher than the u.s average or lower i haven't seen the

u.s numbers the latest ones to compare them, but we should have updated unemployment numbers the day that this podcast comes out. So we'll have a better picture then. I like it. Well, thank you for covering that for us. Hayden, we're going to come to you. We've seen a lot in the news about Israel and Palestine. And this week, let's just say the two senators from Texas had some pretty strong words regarding the conflict. Walk us through what's going on.

President Biden on Wednesday told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel that he expected, quote, significant de-escalation today. Those were the White House's words. It was framed as, I'm not sure if command is too strong a word, but it was definitely framed as an expectation. That was their word. And meanwhile, there has been fighting in Israel between Hamas, the radical Islamic terrorist group, and the Israeli defense forces. A couple interesting notes of context. The President of the United States currently does not have any military service. So, President Biden did not serve in the military. Benjamin Netanyahu, the President of Israel, in fact, served six years and he was left the Israeli Defense Forces with the rank of captain. So, the two combatants

in this current conflict are Israel and Hamas, which has been designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the United States since 1997. So, Senator Cruz and Senator Cornyn appeared in a press conference yesterday to reaffirm their commitment and their allegiance to Israel and to call on President Biden to replenish and provide additional resources for Israel's Iron Dome. The Democrats in Congress and many of those in the media are emphasizing concern for the Palestinians, who probably could fairly be characterized as the, um, getting caught in the crossfire between Hamas and Israel. No one is defending Hamas as a terrorist group, but there are definitely differences in the way that one side is emphasizing Israel's responsibility to prevent

civilian casualties. And the IDF, the Israel Defense Forces, has said that they are doing everything within their power to prevent civilian casualties, but some say that they are not doing enough. And obviously, the White House, while it did reaffirm Israel's right to defend itself against Hamas, apparently believes that they're not doing enough to deescalate the conflict. So, Senator Cruz and Senator Cornyn came forward to say that they stand with Israel. And by the way, they appeared with a number of other senators. It wasn't just- A little Texas press conference. Those two. Yeah, but I'm emphasizing those two because they represent Texas.

And it is a break from the White House's foreign policy because the the White House appears to be taking more of a of a referee type of approach while affirming our alliance and our our state of being an ally with Israel. So, the radical Islamic terrorist group Hamas is fighting Israel for control of additional land, more or less. And the Democrats have in the past supported the two-state solution, which would entail Israel ceding additional land for the formation of a completely sovereign Palestinian state. I am still learning about all of this, so I don't know a lot of the nuances of that. But I can say that Prime Minister Netanyahu reportedly has not taken well to the White House just sort of laying down the law and saying that they just need to de-escalate the conflict because I don't think their position is that they want additional conflict. Israel has not stated that. They're not trying to instigate additional conflict or create a prolonged war.

They are trying to defend their population against terrorist attacks from this terrorist group. The United Nations has not acknowledged Hamas as a terrorist organization. I'll walk that back a little bit. They declined in 2018 to pass a resolution offered by the United States that would condemn them for various terrorist activities. I'll have to double check. The UN may have also called Hamas a terrorist group, but I'm not quite sure about that. So, I'll have to double check on that. That's the situation in Israel. I like it. Well, Hayden, thanks for covering that for us. Certainly a lot of nuance, and we appreciate you following what our Texas guys are doing just about the conflict there. Daniel, we're going to come to you. The gun beat,

your signature beat now at this point, but we've been watching constitutional carry for weeks now, and I'm laughing because Daniel and Isaiah haveaiah have this for our listeners have this little rivalry in terms of uh you know which stories get the most traction and daniel at being the constitutional carry you know beat uh carrier over here uh usually gets a little bit more of that action and isaiah is very aware of when that happens. It seems that our readers really love guns. It does seem to be that way. Though Isaiah did bump me off of the top trending story recently with two of his articles. Hey, well, look at that.

It's a healthy competition. But back to constitutional carry, there is another gun bill that's making its way through the process. It's also notable that has been a big talking point of the Senate in particular. Walk us through what's going on with that. So that bill is pretty simple. It was actually considered to be an amendment to constitutional carry, but after some concerns were raised about the potential germaneness of that to the bill and if it could delay the process as the

bill goes from the Senate to the House, the Senate decided not to add that amendment to it. Instead, they let Senator Joan Huffman from Houston go ahead and file this bill after the deadline and then they quickly passed it out as well as constitutional carry. The Senate breaking rules? Yeah.

Oh my gosh. The Senate breaking guidelines, more like it. It's like a speed limit, right? But this bill is institutional carry. The Senate breaking rules? Yeah. Oh my gosh. The Senate breaking guidelines. It's like a speed limit, right? But this bill is, like I said, really simple. All it does is eliminates the fee required to obtain a license to carry an LTC. Currently in Texas, if you want to carry a handgun in public, besides carrying, besides, you know, carrying it to your home or to a gun store in your car, you have to have a license to carry an LTC, which is just the current process in Texas. Got it. So what it talked to us about that current process and tell us what this would do to change that. Yeah. The current process, I did it a year ago just to kind of uh get my own ltc which is very handy when you're going to the capital you don't have to go through security you just hand them your ltc they scan it and you can walk right through it's a it's a nice little disney

fast pass type thing um of course it comes with other perks as well, like carrying a gun. So in order to obtain an LTC, you have to go through this class. You can either take it online or in person, which is heavily focused on the firearm laws in Texas, kind of explaining to people what you can and cannot do while carrying a firearm, what is legal, illegal. Even if you are carrying a handgun, you can't wave it around in a threatening manner and just point it at people. That's not legal. So they kind of just give you a rundown of the whole laws in Texas on that. They also go over some firearm you know, firearm safety practices, you know, different, you know, how you should store it, yada, yada. There's not a lot of training specifically on how to shoot a gun. It's very much like if you go to get a driver's license, if you go to the DMV, they're not going to tell you how to drive a car.

They expect you to figure out how to do that. You have to go through the training course when you get your driver's license. In the same way, you go to take this test. You sit through the class and learn about the laws, and you pass a written test. And then you also pass a weapons proficiency test, which is just you shoot 50 rounds from various feet away from the target. And you have to get a certain amount on there. It's not a hard test to pass. Most people, you know, if you know how to hold a gun and point and shoot, it's not too complicated. And then all that together there, you have to pay, of course, the class fee, which this bill would not eliminate.

That's a private fee. Someone conducting it, they're still going to charge for that. But then you have to pay the state a $40 application fee for the license to carry. You also have to go and get your fingerprints done and sent in to the Department of Public Safety, which costs, I think, $10 if I remember right. So there's some other costs in there besides the $40 fee that will still be in place. But it's that $40 fee that will be eliminated. And hopefully the intent of the bill from the author and the people who are pushing for this

is just to encourage more people to get an LTC even if constitutional carry passes they want people to do that you know it you know runs them through a background check process and you know teaches them about the laws in Texas so they're trying to encourage that. A similar measure was passed a few years ago to lower the cost of the fee. It was $140 and they dropped it down to $40. Got it. Well, good stuff, Daniel. Thank you for covering that for us. Brad, we're going to come to you. One of the most talked about issues prior to the legislative session was taxpayer-funded lobbying. It's one of the GOP priorities. But it really has not seen as much movement as many would expect, particularly after what went down last session and the drama surrounding the bill then.

There was a lot of drama surrounding this bill then. Walk us through what's going on now and the differences between what we've seen in previous versions and the current one. So it seems like the kind of the anointed version of a taxpayer funded lobbying ban is Senate Bill 10 that is authored by State Senator Paul Betancourt. And it prohibits localities specifically and only cities and counties from paying money to a lobbyist with taxpayer dollars to lobby on their behalf for any issue um that that seems to be the one that um that the senate is is pushing and there have been multiple others that are kind of more prohibitive versions that have basically just stalled in both houses. So that one seems to be the one that is likeliest to make its way through. Now, we saw a, this was last week, this happened on Friday morning last week,

the State Affairs Committee in the House put out their own version of Senate Bill 10 as a committee substitute. It was carried by Chris Patty, the committee chairman, which is kind of notable because usually the member that has been pushing that issue, whatever it is, is one that will typically get the committee substitute. It will be submitted by a committee member on their behalf. But in this case, Patty has taken the legislation himself. And there's some notable differences between that and what the Senate passed, including it expands it to more than just cities and counties. It includes multiple districts, taxing entities. But the biggest difference is that it

drastically reduces the number of prohibited issues to lobby on with taxpayer dollars down to these two tax rates. What everyone knows as ad valorem tax rates, property tax rates, that's one. And it's unused increment rates, which is very complicated complicated it would take a long time for me to explain what it is but um it's also related to the tax rate so only on those two issues would a locality a political subdivision be prohibited from spending taxpayer dollars on to lobby so it's much more narrow in scope than previous versions is basically what you're saying yes it it took one step towards expansion in terms of making it more than cities and counties and then took two steps towards uh yeah um yeah that's how i would describe it and another actually this is probably the biggest

thing um you know there's no civil cause of action in in the senate version and the other versions that each were, that have just kind of faltered in each respective chamber. There was a civil cause of action wherein a taxpayer, a resident of a certain political subdivision that had been found to spend taxpayer dollars on lobbying could be sued by that individual. Here, you can only levy it or file a tec complaint a texas ethics commission complaint and so uh has a lot less teeth which is essentially

the tec is essentially the body or the agency that you know keeps track of campaign finance reports lobby reports if you're a lobbyist you are registered with the tec and so there's a lot of you know the in crowd is already very much part of the tec so some of the criticism there is that well why would we file a complaint again you know with an agency that's that knows us that's familiar with us that is kind of you know lobbyists are in and around the tec like nothing else and in part run by um in part run by the or they in part run the agency yes so um not as much of a of a detriment if a complaint is in fact filed um well good stuff bradley thank you for covering that for us in terms of where you think it's going you know is this even a taxpayer-funded lobbying ban at this point this

version with this version only slightly i would say um you know i i have a strong feeling we're going to see a lot if it makes it to the feeling we're going to see a lot. If it makes it to the floor, we're going to see a lot of amendments thrown at it to try and fix fix the issue here. And then I if it manages to pass, I foresee a conference committee. Yeah. Maybe that version just gets dumped and they go back to the original SB 10. You know, we'll see what happens, but yeah, I can't imagine the Senate being very pleased with this version. You know,

in short, what lies ahead for it is a lot of conflict. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks for covering that for us, Isaiah. We are coming back to you.

Another beat that we've covered extensively that you've covered extensively. This legislative session has to do with sex change for minors. Very controversial, covered extensively this legislative session has to do with sex change for minors um very controversial but the senate just passed a senate bill to ban puberty blockers and sex changing surgeries for children um describe it tell us how it's different from the others and give us a little bit of a rundown of okay well what chances does this have of passing after a very similar bill died in the house sure so um we wrote about how one house bill died recently, 1399. And the reason we singled that one out was because it was the only one of its kind in the house to actually make it onto

the calendar. But it got a very low spot on the calendar. So it missed the deadline to get passed. Senate bills have a little bit more time. And so the Senate bill that you mentioned that the Senate just passed is very similar to Krause's House Bill 1399 that died on the calendar. Because you can kind of divide these general proposals into two broad categories. On one side, they would categorize these procedures as child abuse. And on the other side, so one would target the family, the child abuse side, and the others would target the doctors. And the Senate just passed the latter. It would be a prohibited practice for doctors to administer puberty blockers or perform a gonadectomy on a child and anything along those lines of gender reassignment. So Krause's was similar that died on the calendar.

And Senate bills have a little bit more time, even if they're in house committees right now. So currently in the house public health committee, where the other three house bills that would have done the same thing have died. There are two Senate bills that are still pending. And so that's the house public health committee under chair Stephanie click. Uh, one of these is senate bill 1646 by charles perry which is on the classifying it as child abuse side and um oh excuse me it's just that one that's in there right now yeah yeah and senate bill 1311 that the senate just passed is probably going to make it there it was just received from the house and um most likely that'll be the committee it's assigned

to so basically the senate has sent over two versions and said, okay, House, it's in your hands again, right? That's basically the messaging that's coming from the Senate. Now, what deadline are we dealing with on the House side for these bills to make, you know, to have some movement? So the last day for the House to consider Senate bills on second reading on the floor is the 25th. And the 22nd Saturday is the last day for House committees to actually take action on these bills that are that are in the committee.

So to clarify, you know, my own confusion from earlier, Charles Perry's bill to classify these procedures as child abuse is already in the Public Health Committee in the House. And the one that we've been talking about, Senate Bill 1311 by Bob Hall, has been received from the house, but not yet, you know, sent to a committee. It'll probably go to the public health committee because that's where all the others have gone. And that committee has until the 22nd to vote it out, or, you know, in theory to say that, you know, vote it down. And if they do vote it out, then the whole chamber has until the 25th to take a vote on it. Got it. So we're dealing with a very truncated deadline here.

And part of the reason that we were, you know, I think all the press was watching the House bill that died. Was it last week? I can't keep my week straight. Yeah, it was last week. Wow. That's crazy. Part of the reason we were watching that one is because the most movement had happened with that one. Right.

We were waiting for the House to respond. The Senate had already passed a version um and so now we're dealing with a very short uh runway for this bill if it was to move at all i think the chances um of it making significant progress unless unless they really hurry this up and the house starts making moves is very unlikely at this pretty slim pretty slim so but nonetheless it's it's still alive at this point we'll see what happens. Thank you, Isaiah. Daniel, we're going to come to you speaking of the Senate and some of the priorities that they've been focused on this legislative session. Where are the Senate priorities right now?

Well, like I was mentioning, you're up against a deadline right now with Senate bills. The House has until Tuesday to pass them. Interestingly enough, a majority of the bills that have been prioritized by Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, he listed out 31 towards the beginning of session. A majority of them have gone through or have made significant progress. Several have been passed by both chambers. Isaiah will talk about one here briefly, the heartbeat bill. And there's been a few others. There are also 14 currently as of Thursday that have been approved by House committees, but they have yet to actually receive approval from the entire lower chamber.

So there's some there. There's a few that have, uh, that are practically dead. Um, you know, for instance, there are two redistricting bills in there. There's one for, uh, the court of appeals districts and the state Senate districts. The census is sadly not giving out numbers. So sad. That's those bills are not going anywhere. So you're telling me the Senate is killing researching?

Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Two of their priority bills, they just haven't done anything with. There's a couple others that have gone pretty much nowhere. One would have prohibited the dissemination of any personal data from the state without an individual's consent. So, you know, that would have, I think, I think some problems with that. Some people were raising concerns like, okay, what about the TEC? Like you're releasing information about how much candidates are raising.

They have to give written consent for this. Right. Or public records. Or what lobbyist is registered for which company. Yeah. So some concerns there i think were raised and it just hasn't gone anywhere uh but the majority of these bills are are now making significant progress got it so you know you've already mentioned a couple but give us a quick uh a quick listing of the of the most notable or maybe the the most newsworthy items on that list

so you know two of the ones that were prioritized in february after the freeze were reforms to the puc and er the floor um there's also sp12 which is a notable bill that has gotten support from governor abbott that would allow people to sue big tech companies that have censored individuals it wouldn't allow them to sue for any monetary relief really but just for being reinstated on the platform that they've been censored or deplatformed from. There's also, you know, Brad touched on the taxpayer lobbying bill. That's one of these priorities. Taxpayer-funded lobbying.

Yes. Whatever. Taxpayer lobbying. Yeah. It's okay for a taxpayer to come to their capital and talk to them yeah yeah um there's also some uh police defunding bills as i was writing through uh this this article i was kind of listing out explaining where each of these bills were one of the things that i noticed was i kept on saying uh and a similar bill has been scheduled for the Senate State Affairs

hearing on Thursday, which is when we're recording this podcast. There's a handful of bills like a police defunding bill, allowing hotel carry, so requiring hotels to allow guests to carry their gun to the room. A lot of these bills are now, they have similar House bills that are in the Senate, and the Senate is acting on those. And lots of those were scheduled for a hearing on Thursday as we're recording the podcast. So that'll be interesting to see, you know, which of the Senate bill priorities might not pass with the Senate bill, but the House bill version of it will. Right. And with a lot of these big ticket items, you're going to have, and not even just the big ticket items, a lot of bills are going to have

two versions, one in the House, one in the Senate. Often they start as identical and, you know, which ones make their way through the process is the interesting part. And the Senate being the Senate has a little bit more of a runway in terms of getting bills through the process. So we'll see. We'll see what happens. Well, Daniel, thanks for covering that for us and keeping an eye on all those priorities. Isaiah, we are coming back to you. You did not get much of a break, my friend. Give us some background on the critical race theory bill. First of all, we've talked about it before, but it's making some new headway and there are some interesting developments that have come this week as the bill has made its way over to the Senate. So quickly give us an overview of the bill and walk us through what's going on this week.

Well, you laid a little bit of the groundwork when you mentioned the companion bills and how that works, because that's kind of a complicated part of this process. Basically, this bill that we've mentioned several times before is introduced primarily to stem the teaching of critical race theory in Texas classrooms. And it also has similar requirements for professional development several times before, is introduced primarily to stem the teaching of critical race theory in Texas classrooms. And it also has similar requirements for professional development teacher training. And it has some provisions in there that are aimed at the 1619 Project. And there's a more in-depth description in the article, but we've described this a lot.

The New York Times is the 1619 New York Times project is basically what, yeah. And the important thing for today is that when it passed the House, HB 3979, the author, Steve Toth, accepted nearly two dozen amendments by Democrats that really expanded one section of the bill that would have required an understanding of the nation's founding based on founding figures and documents. And so this is not even really the critical race theory part of the bill. This is more like required reading. And, you know, representatives and some other pundits joked that they were writing curriculum on the House floor that evening. And so figures like Cesar Chavez, documents like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, all made it into the definition of America's founding documents and figures. And some Democrats this evening, or that evening, asked Toth, is the Senate going to take away these amendments when it moves over to their side of the chamber, their side of the Capitol? And Toth said that he doesn't have any

control of what the Senate does, which is technically true. But that ended up being exactly what happened in committee. Yeah. So tell us exactly what happened in the Senate. The bill that came out of the House was a very different bill from the one that was filed. And the Senate basically made some big changes. So walk us through what happened in the Senate. So like you mentioned at the end of Daniel's segment, you've got companion bills. This is very common. And the Senate already passed the companion bill

for House Bill 3979, which is the one that got amended heavily in the House. And so the companion bill is Senate Bill 2202 by Brandon Creighton. And the Senate already passed it ahead, but nothing has happened really after that. So they have since received TOS HP 3979. And in committee, they presented a committee substitute, which is a slightly altered version of the bill that just took the original text of 2202, the original Senate companion, which is itself nearly identical to Toast's original version.

So all of these amendments that had to do with Cesar Chavez, Susan B. Anthony, the suffragette movement, the UN Declaration of Human Rights, those are all gone now. And so that was a very quick and pretty simple procedural move on the part of Brian Hughes, who laid it out before in the committee. And so now the original of HB 3979 that is passed over to the Senate is what's going to go to the Senate floor. Got it. So we'll see what happens next, but essentially what we're expecting would be a conference committee. Is that basically what you're thinking? Yeah. So whenever a bill gets amended or amendments are removed then the two chambers have to meet in a conference committee to hash out which ones are going to keep and um

the house can choose not to you know concur with those amendments and say hey we want to go to conference or they can say no we like the senate version we'll stick with the senate version so if the bill author if representative toth decides that the Senate version that is, you know, clean, you know, a more original version of his of his bill, then he can say, yeah, we're not going to go to conference. Right. And then I can only assume the Democrats in the House will be fairly furious. Right. Right. So there can be some political maneuvering that would be difficult for the representative to figure out. And it should be mentioned that a number of the Democrats that presented amendments that Toth accepted that evening then spoke against the bill when the amending process was done. And so Toth's bill actually passed with zero Democratic votes and accepting the amendments didn't earn him any Democratic

support. So another way of looking at that would be to say that he doesn't need Democratic support to pass this bill in the House again. Right. Absolutely. Well, Isaiah, thanks for covering that for us. We'll keep an eye on it. Daniel, let's talk. We're going to stick back with the Senate and talk with you about something the Lieutenant Governor has been very vocal about. Tell us about what the Star Spangled Banner Star Spangled Banner Protection Act is. What a mouthful. Yes, it is a bit of a mouthful, but it is our national anthem.

The Protection Act is? Yeah, the Protection Act is our national anthem. We're going to sing, we're not going to sing about the Star Spangled Banner, but rather protecting the Star Spangled Banner. Wow. That's very meta. Yeah.

I mean, I think that's kind of where we're at in politics. It's just everything is very meta. Fair. In all seriousness, this bill would essentially push back against some concerns that were raised earlier this year when the Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, news kind of broke that he was quietly just had removed singing the national anthem from the games. Right away the NBA came out and said

no we're going to require this for all the NBA games in the US. I think they're still doing stuff over in China, but that's beside the point. But there's still a lot of pushback against sports teams that are not playing the national anthem. And so Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick came out and said that one of his priority bills was to require the national anthem to be played at professional sports games. And so the way that this bill goes about requiring that is that for every sports team in professional sports team in Texas that basically receives taxpayer money from from some way with some kind of government incentive with either local governments or the state government, then they'll be required to sign a contract saying that they will play the national anthem before each game. And that's that's the bill. So what kind of opposition has this bill met, if any? It is very interesting.

You would expect a bill like this to receive a lot of maybe pushback from the left, people who, like Mark Cuban, say, we shouldn't have the national anthem be required to play. Interestingly enough, though, in Mark Cuban, say, you know, we shouldn't have the national anthem be required to play. Interestingly enough, though, in the Senate, it passed, the entire Senate, with all but two Democrats voting for it and all Republicans voting for it. And then when it was approved in the House committee this week, it was approved unanimously by both Republicans and Democrats on the committee. There were some people who came to testify against it when he was in the senate there was only one person who came to testify in the house and he was for it

so i think there's a lot of of eye rolling from people who say that we shouldn't be prioritizing a bill like this there's a lot of other more important issues in Texas. And, you know, that's from both Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and progressives who are saying that. But that said, everyone is just kind of going along with it. Do you know off the top of your head which two members of the Senate didn't vote for it? Yeah, it would be Sarah Eckhart and Nathan Johnson from Austin and Dallas, respectively. Okay, usually paired in their votes. Yeah, I think they're probably safe to say they're probably the most progressive members in the Senate. I would think, of course, there's analysis that will come out later. That'll be fun to look at

and see the different scorecards and where people put different members. Yeah. So fun. I say this sarcastically. I love it. So what happens next for it to be passed? So this is a Senate bill. And like we were talking about earlier, it needs to be approved by the House before Tuesday. Realistically, that means bills need to get out of committee by Saturday. This bill has already gotten out of committee, so now it just needs to be slapped onto the calendar at a high spot and get to the floor and get approved on the floor. If there's any amendments that are added, then the Senate, kind of like we were talking about earlier, they'll either need to concur with the amendments or send it to a conference committee and work those out. Good stuff. Well, thanks for covering that for us, Daniel. Isaiah, back to you again.

This week, a very big landmark piece of legislation was signed by Governor Abbott. We've talked about it extensively. Give us a quick rundown of what happened this week. Yes, the Texas Heartbeat Act is now law, though it won't take effect until September 1st. It has passed both chambers, and Abbott signed it yesterday. It bans abortions after a detectable pulse. There has been some conflict on the House floor, namely over the definition of heartbeat. But if you can hear a pulse, then you cannot do an abortion after September 1st.

Got it. Why is it so historic? What's the big deal? Well, first, I was trying to do some research on how many states have Harvey Bills, and I think the media just decided that these were so 2019 and just unfashionable this year. But in 2019, there was another Harvey Bill that was proposed. I think Kane was the one carrying it, and it just died in committee. It got no traction. So the fact that it passed the year after that, like without any other increment between it, that's a pretty big leap. Absolutely. On top of that, it's a very creative heartbeat bill. As far as I can, I asked Hughes about this. And as far as he knows, there's no other heartbeat

bill in the nation that uses civil enforcement. So the way this one works is that if anybody violates this law to aid an abortion or perform an abortion on a child with a detectable pulse, then any Texan can sue that person as long as, you know, that plaintiff, that Texan suing is a private citizen and not a government employee. So again, this is to get around the undue burden standard of like Planned Parenthood versus Casey and some other jurisprudence. But so we're back again to Okpulobi versus Foster again in this podcast. And, you know, and just to remind you, that case upheld the law allowing this kind of action, civil enforcement action instead of government action to enforce a pro-life law.

Got it. Well, Isaiah, thank you for following that so closely for us. We appreciate it. Daniel, coming back to you. There was a bill that we started looking at this week. It's a CPS bill. Walk us through a little bit of one. And to be fair, previous sessions, CPS reform has been one of the biggest, if not the biggest issue. I mean, I think it was the 85th legislative session when an omnibus bill was passed that reformed CPS as a whole, but it's not been talked about as much this legislative session. What's happened with CPS bills so far this session? There has been one, again, another significant CPS bill that we kind of wrote about at the beginning of session that was when it was introduced that kind of vastly reformed CPS.

A lot of parental rights advocates, the Texas Homeschool Coalition, which is a big player in this, were supportive of this bill from Representative James Frank. And that was actually approved by both chambers and is now going to become effective later this year. And that one was significant. another bill that's also getting a lot of attention from parental rights advocates as well which uh the the way that it was originally introduced uh would have or still would require cps investigators to notify parents of their rights to record an interview with the cps worker um and so under current law it's it's legal to record but it's the the idea of the legislation is to make sure parents are aware of that and then record conversations just so that there's evidence there about what happens um but there's some concern uh from parental rights advocates that were concerned about the policy when it was first

introduced, but they're even more concerned now after the Senate amended the House bill that's already been approved by the House. And they amended it to include a provision that if any recording is made of the CPS investigator during the interview, that video cannot be published online on internet platforms, which we've seen in previous cases that have kind of been a very important part in how the case progresses and the attention that it gets from lawmakers and just the general public. Got it. So, you know, talk to us a little bit about pushback arguments that are being made and what's next for the bill. Yeah. So on the bill itself, the, just the notifying parents of their right to record, like I mentioned, there is already a

right to record in Texas. It's a one party consent state. So that means that if you want to record a conversation, if I wanted to record a conversation with you, Mackenzie, and we were talking, I could do that secretly because I know that I'm in the conversation I'm recording. Um, you can't, I can't wire tap and record you and Brad talking if I'm not part of that conversation. Um, but if you are a part of that conversation that you can, so parents under the current law can already record CPS investigators. They don't have to tell them. They can record in secret. Parental rights advocates are kind of concerned that by telling parents that they can record,

and I think the bill also did in some ways in different stages put some restrictions on how they can record instead of just being able to record however they want. It also opens this up to a court being able to subpoena it. that that can be used as evidence against the parents themselves, similar to the reason why we have the Miranda rights, where you're informed that anything you say or do can be used against you. And so people are concerned that these recordings could then be used against the parents and the families in the CPS case. And then, of course, they're also concerned with the prohibition on being able to publish this video online. Got it.

Well, thank you for covering that for us, Daniel. We appreciate it. Bradley, we're going to come to you. There was a big health care fight in the House, and not even necessarily a fight. It was pretty much without much fanfare, but a big issue in the House that was passed this week. Walk us through what happened. So this has been a fight in the healthcare industry for a

while, and that has been a knockdown, drag out fight over regulatory rules or laws requiring hospitals to list their actual prices for services rather than mere estimates. Most of them just give these very, very wide ranges and you could fall anywhere in the middle of it. And the Texas House, they have following up what the federal government did in issuing the regulatory rule. The Texas House has just passed on second reading a bill, and by the time this goes out, I assume it will be passed on final reading, a bill to require these hospitals to post their prices. One issue with the rule that lawmakers had struggled to figure out how to fix was how to get these hospitals, rather than to just pay the penalty, to actually list their prices. The way they did it here they did a tiered system um with

you know mostly the bad actors the ones who are not posting their prices are the really really high grossing uh big hospital conglomerates and so the tiered system creates a tiered um levels of of uh payment so like for the top ones they have to pay a thousand dollars per day that they're in violation. And so I expect that to sail through. It's already passed the Senate. And like you said, there was no opposition on the House floor, which I was surprised about, but that means it probably will go through and become law. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Bradley. Hayden, we're going to come to you. You covered a very interesting story this week about some, let's just say some controversy in Southlake. Just a little dust up. Give us a little bit of an idea of what's going on.

National media has paid attention to this story. Walk us through the details. Well, the story has gone back a long ways. In 2018, in Southlake, there was a video that went around of some high school kids using a racial slur. And it was awful. And the community went through a very unfortunate moment when that happened. But since then, the national media have definitely covered Southlake. And the crux of the controversy is the national media has covered this community as though it is an indisputably, uniquely racist place. And the response to this coverage has been very strong. And the District Diversity Council, as it's called, formed a

plan to address concerns about racism in Southlake. And it is called the Cultural Competence Action Plan, which opponents of this plan have likened, have said it's a manifestation of critical race theory, which Isaiah has covered and discussed here extensively. So, that's what's going on with the background of the story is this cultural competence action plan and the controversy surrounding that, and all of this stems from that viral video in 2018. So, that's the national media angle on this. But the latest controversy is over American Airlines investigating one of their pilots who lives in Southlake. He has worked for American Airlines for more than 30 years. He has been an outspoken opponent of this cultural competence action plan. And he believes that it will be an infringement on parental rights and that it is

casting unfair aspersions on Southlake and that broader community. And he has a podcast where he's laid out all of these arguments, and others have laid out arguments on his podcast. But it goes to the broader debate of the extent to which employers should be monitoring and controlling the social media content of their employees. I know, you know, here we're a news organization. So there are obviously expectations. We don't spout off about policies and candidates on our social media pages. But that's, that's specific to our, our job or function. But there are, you know, this is an individual who he's expressing viewpoints that aren't related to his job. And so now he has his employer investigating him for those viewpoints. And so we were able to get a statement from

American Airlines and they said, quote, we are troubled by the allegations of harassment and are focusing our investigation accordingly. American expects our team members to treat all people with dignity and respect at work and in their communities, end quote. And when American says they're concerned about harassment, the reason they say that is because there were some anonymous accusations on Twitter against Guy Medcalf, is the name of the pilot, that he was harassing or accosting people in the community over this plan. But it's really important to note that these statements on social media were completely anonymous. The accounts from which these comments were made do not have names attached to them.

And they are ostensibly associated with a group called the Southlake Anti-Racism Coalition. Again, I sought to learn more information about the Southlake Anti-Racism Coalition. Their website does not have any information about the people running the group. And I emailed an email address that is on the website and interacted with someone who did not identify themselves. It is very clear that they don't want to identify who is running this organization. I was told they don't have a board of directors, and it is comprised of both adults and children. So, it's ex-students, it's students that graduated from the school, and it is middle and high school students as well who currently attend Carroll ISD, which is the school district that encompasses most of Southlake. So, these are anonymous accusations that are made on social media, and American

Airlines is now investigating this pilot, Guy Midkiff, for these anonymous accusations. And this is all wrapped into the controversy over the Cultural cultural competence action plan um and i would encourage you to read our piece on this topic because it goes into depth of midkiff's response to the south lake anti-racism coalition and some more context that goes along with the ccap speaking of planes could i hijack this sure go ahead uh kim or reporter Kim has been covering this plan for a little bit in Carroll ISD. And it's interesting. You mentioned that it intersects with Toast Bill 379. In the school board election recently, a plan like this and others in districts around the state,

like there was one in an Austin ISD where the school board races just had unusually high fundraising numbers and media attention because of initiatives like these that would, as you mentioned, be prohibited by Toth's bill. And so there's a lot of attention being drawn to it, and it's affecting funding and fundraising numbers. And it's important to note that the opponents of this plan, the CCAP, I wish Kim was here to talk about this. There's so much about this topic. Yeah, so many details. But the opponents of the CCAP won huge victories on election night. Right. And that's not just on the school board, but the mayor mentioned it in his victory speech.

This is how much of an issue this has been in Southlake. So the mayor said he wants to try to reclaim the identity of the community as not a racist place but as a as a welcoming community and that that these incidents are not the defining feature of this community so that's that's the position of of south lake leadership right now and that they are going to be in all likelihood moving even further away from this ccap because the the people that are promoting it are actually, a couple of them are under indictment for Open Meetings Act violations. So not good news for this plan. That's a huge, go ahead, check out our coverage on the texan.news because there's so much context to this issue. You just can't really cover it in a five minute segment.

Yeah. And like you boys said, Kim Roberts has been covering this extensively for us up in the North Texas area. All sorts of really great in-depth reporting going on from Kim. We're biased, but we're also not. She's the best. Okay, boys. Well, let's transition to our fun topic. There are multiple things you guys want to talk about and so instead of choosing one and having y'all hijack me part way through this segment we're going to just talk about both so one what caffeine source has gotten you through session so far what caffeine source usually fuels you and two isaiah what is your favorite meal to cook we'll start with that isaiah your favorite meal to cook you're just just asking me. Yes, I'm asking you. Because you were very ardent about this inclusion of this topic.

I wasn't that ardent. You threatened to hijack me. I think it was fairly ardent. You're already making me hungry. We haven't even started talking. Sorry, man. I don't know if it counts as a meal meal, but my favorite kind of bread to make is beer bread. It might be my favorite kind of bread uh to make is beer bread might be my

favorite kind of bread to eat too what is beer bread is that just like some flour that you pour some beer on you know essentially that's you've already listed like most of the mechanics of making the beer bread but i mean you know there's baking powder and other ingredients but there's no yeast and so you don't have to wait for the dough to rise it's very fast compared to other kind of breads and uh and it tastes great the color and the flavor depend on like the kind of beer you use but overall um it comes out of the oven with a nice beery smell so um it's awesome i think it's impressive you bake bread at all oh appreciate it yeah yeah um are you ready for the actual meal i am yes please tell me in previous anyway so i think my favorite actual

substantial menu make would be beef cheeks people always ask isaiah which cheeks are these and they come from the face of the cow that's what barbacoa is usually oh i didn't know that yeah and so i got like the first time i got some i got some with the intent of making barbacoa and then it turns out that that takes a while. So instead, I made this Irish dish where you marinate them. I don't know if that's quite the right word, but you marinate them in broth and Guinness with carrots and onions. Wow. And you just slow cook them for a little while, like three hours, and it tastes awesome. That's amazing.

That stuff is like meat jello. It comes out just beautiful beautiful unctuous beef cheeks they're tasty i recommend them meat jello yeah i i'll take your word for it yeah i was with you till that descriptor and then i i will admit i jumped off the bandwagon daniel what's your favorite of both questions well i'll go the caffeine route. The caffeine route? Thank you. I appreciate that. I hate coffee. Yeah. I'm sad again now. It's bitter.

It's disgusting. I don't know why people drink it. It's like the world is just full of masochists who don't enjoy life. I understand that. Oh, my gosh. But I have realized that caffeine does affect me. I used to think that it really didn't. And then I found myself awake at night and then I put the two together and it was actually keeping me awake.

So I have found that caffeine is helpful, especially to get going in the afternoon after a big meal. And one of the things that I found, there's a tea at H-E-B called Zest Tea. And it has about the same amount of caffeine in it as a cup of coffee wow and it's it's flavorful tea so you don't have to add sweetener to make it taste good it's got you know they have like a mint one and more of a berry-ish type one and they are both really good so you're a fan yeah yeah if we make a coffee run you always get an iced tea that's where you land i like it um hayden where are you at with this uh caffeine debate and what's your favorite meal to cook

i um just drink lots of coffee mckenzie that's pretty much the whole story i have a giant mug of coffee sitting right next to me right now hey cheers yeah clink clink i don't know what that was but it was fun. We had a great time. Hypothetically clinking our coffee mugs here. We're not long enough. On the podcast table. But we're sitting across from each other, so.

In case you were wondering, folks. Reach out. Yeah. I'm sure all of you were wondering about that. So I'm glad you stepped in. I still am. JK. Favorite meal.

Favorite meal. I don't know. like chinese food had chinese food a lot the past couple weeks that's super yummy speaking of which i forgot to get sweet and sour sauce when i ordered panda express last night i'm so sorry sad that is very sad wait do you cook chinese food is It's the most first world problems. That's good stuff. Bradley. Yeah. Caffeine.

Okay. I actually, okay. I was going to stay away from bashing Brad in this segment, but I just, I just remember something that makes me really mad about Brad. Okay. Okay. So I go to coffee shops and I always order an oat milk vanilla latte and here's the thing brad in all his wisdom has started to copy my coffee order which you know credit to him it's delicious but now whenever i make a coffee run and i say, I'm going to go get coffee.

What do you want? He says, I'll take my usual as if it's his usual. And he's not just copy my order. And it makes me so mad every time. I'm sorry. You feel that way. You don't care at all that way.

What? Why do you feel that way? Because he says it like without any self-awareness that it would be weird to say. You want a footnote for you? No, but he says it as if it originated with him. And he's saying it to the person he copied it from. So it's just kind of a weird self-awareness exercise I think we can work on. To pivot away from the bashing Brad hour.

I really thought I was going to get away with this segment not being this, but no. My answer to uh the coffee the caffeine question is anything that gets the job done and then favorite meal to cook um i love anything that i can put on the grill but more specifically i'd say my favorite meal to cook is lasagna wow yeah i laughed at you saying grill because you have uh a whole grill story about you being mad about yeah i still mourn that grill yeah that was a sad time for you do you have any rebuttal to my um allegations against you no i'm just going to be the bigger person oh ignore wow hate speech that makes me to inject into every freaking podcast that uh that will be my next bone to pick with you is your uh

your unwillingness to jump in and defend yourself okay um kick him while he's down come on oh my gosh good stuff the night The knight in the Mono Python. Which one? The black knight? Where he gets his arms cut off and he's still fighting. That's him. Wow.

That's me now? No, that's Mac. Oh, okay. Oh, that's me. Yeah. Oh, that's nice. Okay. Is that nice?

I don't know. Well, folks, thank you for sticking with us. Thanks for listening. We'll 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.

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