The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - May 26, 2023

Episode Date: May 26, 2023

Get a FREE “Fake News Stops Here” mug when you buy an annual subscription to The Texan: https://go.thetexan.news/mug-fake-news-stops-here-2022/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=weekly_roundup The Texan’s Weekly Roundup brings you the latest news in Texas politics, breaking down the top stories of the week with our team of reporters who give you the facts so you can form your own opinion. Enjoy what you hear? Be sure to subscribe and leave a review! Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast. This week on The Texan’s Weekly Roundup, the team discusses: The Texas House’s investigation into Attorney General Ken PaxtonU.S. House Republicans passing a border security bill as the Title 42 order came to an endThe Senate passing a House education bill after tacking on school choice proposalsThe House passing a bill to ban the state from adopting ESG policies just minutes before a legislative deadlineThe House passing a ban on state public universities having DEI officesTexas House Democrats defeat a measure to require U.S. citizenship to vote in TexasThe Senate approving a substitute for the House’s bill to replace the expired Chapter 313 programThe House moving forward with a bill to increase state control over Harris County’s electionsHarris County considering legal action over the House’s actions over its electionsThe Senate passing a bill to remove explicit materials from public school librariesThe Senate passing a bill to create a state border force and increase penalties for human smugglingBills to address gun crime and bail policies dying on the House floor as deadlines roll inThe Senate adding grid priorities to the Public Utility Commission as insurance against the HouseThe House passing a b

Happy Friday, folks. Senior Editor Mackenzie DeLulo here and welcome back to the Texans Weekly Roundup podcast. This week, the team discusses the Texas House's investigation into Attorney General Ken Paxton and his calling for Speaker Dane Phelan to resign, and U.S. House Republicans passing a border security bill as the Title 42 order came to an end. We also talk about a slew of legislative proposals and where they're at in the process, including border security, school choice, ESG policies, DEI offices at universities, citizenship requirements for voting, Chapter 313 replacements, explicit materials in school libraries, increasing penalties for human smuggling, creation of a state border force, tenure reform, and school safety. Reporter Holly Hansen joins to chat about the House moving forward with the bill to

increase state control over Harris County's elections and how the county has reacted. As always, if you have questions for our team, DM us on Twitter or email us at editor at the texan.news. We'd love to answer your questions on a future podcast. And we answered a lot of those questions today. Thanks for listening and enjoy this episode. Well, howdy folks, Mackenzie here with Brad, with Cameron, with Hayden and Holly Hansen is joining us from Harris County. We're so glad. And Holly, it's been a long time since you joined the podcast and I don't even understand why. I think you have been so busy and we have been so busy and we just keep forgetting that we should have you on the podcast more often. So thank you for joining us.

Oh, you're welcome. It's great to be here again. And yes, Harris County and Houston are always producing news. And so I stay pretty busy. Yeah, and it crossed over with the Capitol this week. We'll get into that later. Hayden, before we even started recording, you asked Brad, are you mad today? Because that's just a question you have to ask Brad every once in a while. It's just like, what's the level of anger he's at? It's increasing right now.

Tell us about your time with him on the floor this week. Well, the other night, I think I may have gone too far in picking on our dear Bradley. And I kept saying in our text message that he was bullying me. And then I would try to shush him every time he defended himself. And it got funnier and funnier every time I shushed him.

Did Brad think so? I don't think he did. No. Because I knew everything you were saying was being taken as gospel by a certain esteemed senior editor. It was like, Brad pushed me. Things that just wouldn't happen.

Well, I would just exaggerate everything that had happened. So Brad nudged me. And so I would text Mac that he punched me. And then he made a totally innocuous comment. And I said, Brad's bullying me. Tell him to stop. And then Brad would go, I'm not bullying you. And I would say, shh, I'm trying to listen to the conference committee assignments.

Shh. These are legislative proceedings you're interrupting. Oh, this really is. It was quite a night. I think we're all a little. Loopy? Loopy. Loopy. That's the word I we're all a little... Loopy? Loopy. That's the word I'm trying to go for.

Loopy. We have a few days left at the legislative session. By the time this comes out Monday, or it'll be Friday, Monday is the last day. It's time to die. Knock on wood until a special session comes, Cameron, for all your issues. I know. I'm ready. It seems like every single one of my issues, it's going to be brought up in a special session.

Yeah, you never know. It could be interesting. We'll help you out, Cameron. We're not going to lead you to the wolves. Well, let's go ahead and jump into the news. This could be an hour and a half long podcast if we aren't careful, so let's jump in. Brad, normally in the last week of session, it's the policy decisions and compromises that guide the news cycle. But not this week. Give us the details on the biggest story, bar none, of the week. A clash between the Texas House and Attorney General Ken Paxton became the biggest news of the week on Tuesday. The Texas House General Investigating Committee announced the subject of its long-running investigation into, quote, Matter A. They announced it as the subject being the state's

attorney general. Since March, the committee apparently has been evaluating the case for or against using tax dollars to pay for Paxton's $3.3 million settlement with former employees who accused him of various corruption charges and filed a lawsuit under the Texas Whistleblower Act. On Tuesday, the committee issued two subpoenas to quote John Doe number six in the office of the attorney general to testify on the issues gathered by the committee. It's presumed that John Doe number six is Paxton, though that has not been confirmed. It might be by the committee at some point, but so far they have not disclosed that. On Wednesday, the committee held an hours-long hearing in which its counsel, about five or six lawyers, ran through in painstaking detail the allegations against Paxton in both

the eight-year-long securities fraud case that has bounced around in courts for eight years and that whistleblower lawsuit. No decisions were made. And as I was sitting there listening, it appeared to be the committee laying out its case publicly for not paying the settlement with tax dollars through a budget appropriation. Paxton had earlier in the session advocated that the legislature do that, appropriate those dollars. And the House has basically the entire session been very against that, especially Speaker Dade Phelan.

He said back earlier in session that Paxton is going to have to prove to us that, that we need to pay for this. He's going to have to, the onus is on him. Um, now I think the Senate did include a budget rider to, uh, pay for the, um, the settlement through tax dollars. And if I recall correctly, although this has had this has happened a long time ago, it seems, there was no agreement on that. So I guess we'll kind of see where the final budget comes out on that. And the conference committee report was just filed. So in the next day or so, we should get a better picture on that issue itself. What did Paxton have to say about all this?

He said, quote, in a very fiery statement, it's not surprising that a committee appointed by liberal speaker Dade Phelan would seek to disenfranchise Texas voters and sabotage my work as attorney general. The false testimony of highly partisan Democrat lawyers with the goal of manipulating and misleading the public is reprehensible. Those attorneys, the ones that are counsel for the committee, all of them have connections to Harris County and the Harris County DA's office. Erin Epley is the chief counsel. And as she was laying out her background, Andrew Murr, chair of the committee, made a point to say that Epley used to work in the Southern District of the party, I'd say.

But yeah, they're the ones that are being contracted to do this investigation by the committee, and they were the ones that laid out the case. Paxton also said that the various allegations are, quote, easily disproved. I'm not sure if he has come and testified in front of the committee yet. Now, if he is going to do that, if he is John Donovan number six, that will happen in executive committee or executive session. So that won't be probably viewable by the public. Another part of Paxton's statement

was a line about, quote, disenfranchised voters. And that seems to indicate he believes the House is looking at impeaching him. He was just reelected last year. There are and have been a lot of rumblings about a potential impeachment in the Capitol before the legislature leaves on sine die. But it's still unclear if that will develop, how quickly that will develop, and if it can even pass if brought up. We shall see, I guess. But the Attorney General clearly thinks that in addition to the House laying out

its case for not paying the settlement, it is also laying its case for a potential impeachment. Yeah, absolutely. So give us a rundown. You're kind of laying this out in very easy to understand terms here, but as the news was unfolding, it was very difficult to kind of piece it all together. There was a lot going on and it was very revelatory. This is not just some like, oh, news came to fruition. Interesting statement from Paxton. It was wild. So give us a rundown of the timeline on Tuesday. Yeah. So at around 2.30 p.m. on Tuesday, the House General Investigating Committee announced a meeting to come at three o'clock p.m so a half hour later at 2 53 p.m paxton tweeted out his statement or a statement calling

for speaker dade phelan to resign um there was a viral video over the weekend of the speaker slurring his words on the dais and he's been accused of being drunk well uh at the helm of the house yes at the helm of the house thank you and uh that has not been confirmed or denied yet by the speaker um nothing it hasn't been resolved at all but paxton was the first official that i had seen at all make that allegation and comment on that video. But it has been making the rounds on social media quite a bit. So fast forward to seven minutes to 3 p.m. The General Investigation Committee convened and went into executive session.

At 3.10 p.m., the Office of the Attorney General tweeted out a letter that it sent to the committee calling for an investigation into Phelan on the allegations that Paxton made just 20 minutes earlier. At around 4.40 p.m., the committee announced publicly that it had issued two subpoenas in, quote, Matter A, now known to be the Paxtonxton probe and would hear public testimony the following day on wednesday that we just talked about at 8 a.m from the counselors so there's a lot of tit for tat on this um it's it's a complicated situation and i'm not sure if um anything's going to be resolved anytime soon on it but on either of the issues. But I guess we'll just wait and see.

And maybe by the time this podcast goes out, this whole thing is dated. I don't know. Yeah, that's it's moving. It's moving that fast or that might be the case. And to be fair for folks, you know, it's worth noting. We've heard about matter a throughout the entirety of the Slayton investigation, thinking it was related to something else in the house. No, we had no idea. Slayton was matter B. We had no idea matter was related to something else in the house. No, we had no idea. Slayton was matter B.

We had no idea matter A related to the Attorney General at all. And so that was a huge revelation for us this week that the house had been for months investigating and kind of putting together these, you know, basically making the case for why his settlement should not be included in the budget. Yeah. So. And that what we thought matter A was was the jolanda jones accusations that her staffers made we talked about that previously on the podcast but clearly that

wasn't it and so that also everybody thought that that was just i thought it was an open secret but that's what it was exactly and but also like i've seen no matter c that has been listed in the general investigating committee's meeting minutes. So that also raises the question, are they even looking into the Jelena Jones stuff? Is that even an issue anymore? Has it been dismissed? I have no idea. They have kept a very tight lid on everything, Slate and stuff,

this clearly until now that they're taking things public. It's been locked shut in that committee. And one more clarifying question before we move on to everything else. In all of this investigating of Paxton, have there been any new revelations about anything that's happened with him? Or is this the House kind of bringing forward those accusations again and those legal issues saying, hey, this is what we're dealing with here with the Attorney General? Everything, almost everything they laid out had already been discussed in the various lawsuits. Now, I think the only one relatively minor detail in the grand scheme of the issue that they, that they announced that I had never heard before. And a lot of people never heard before was that Paxton allegedly could have two homestead exemptions, which is reduction in your home's taxable value. You're only allowed to have one. So even if you own multiple homes, you're only allowed to have one homestead exemptions, which is a reduction in your home's taxable value. You're only allowed to have one.

It's like even if you own multiple homes, you're only allowed to have one homestead exemption. So at least I think that's the way I understand property, have understood the property tax law so far in the state. But I mean, that's not like substantive on whether he violated, whether he allegedly abused his office. Yeah. So. So largely it's the house coming forward allegedly abused his office. Yeah. So.

So largely it's the House coming forward and making its case. Yes. Got it. Thank you so much for covering that. We'll continue to be on it. And again, by the time this podcast might come, will be out on Friday morning, it might be all outdated. Who knows? Hayden, we're coming to you. Earlier this month, Republicans in D.C. passed a border bill as Title 42 ended. What were some of the provisions of that bill? This legislation was passed on the day the Title 42 public health order expired, which caused the federal government to go back to the Title VIII measures that were in place before the COVID-19 pandemic. The Republican majority passed the bill by a vote of 219 to 213. It is designed to

continue some of the policies of the Trump administration, including continuing construction of the border wall and the remain in Mexico policy, widely reviled by Democrats as a use of cruelty as a deterrent. The bill also included funding for border patrol agents and security infrastructure. Speaker Kevin McCarthy pitched the bill as the Republican response to the Biden border crisis, and he pointed the finger at Democrats for the record numbers of illegal border crossings and enforcement encounters with illegal immigrants, which indicates more illegal immigration that accompanied the end of Title 42 earlier this month. Does the bill have any chance of becoming law? Not really. President Biden said that he would veto the legislation and the U.S. Senate is controlled by Democrats, so it is unlikely to receive any kind of reception or hearing in the Senate because it contains numerous non-starters for Democrats like the border wall and the Remain in Mexico policy. Veronica Escobar rose in the House and gave a long-winded speech

against the bill saying that the GOP is using cruelty as a deterrent and is seeking to employ patchwork solutions to a broken immigration system. And that is a point that has been repeated for years that the immigration system needs to be reformed. However, Republicans are emphasizing the border security piece more and saying that a secure border needs to come before any kind of comprehensive immigration reform. Hayden, thank you for your coverage. Cameron, we're coming to you about this issue that we've talked so much about. There's been a lot of movement with school choice legislation over the past week. Tell us what happened. Yeah, so big shakeups that were going on

with House Bill 100. Senator Brandon Creighton announced a early Monday morning committee hearing where he completely revamped HB 100. He included a lot of the language that was originally in SB 8, things like the $8,000 allocations for education savings accounts. And so it was actually encompassing a wider range of students as well, private school students, low-income students. So it was actually a bit more broad than a lot of the original language. That was very interesting to follow. And then also on the floor, there were 16 different amendments that were proposed by the Senate, and with a large majority of them being accepted. And you could really tell Creighton wanted this bill to pass because at one point during one of the amendment interactions, he said,

with a hope and a prayer, the senator will vote yes on the final bill. The bill eventually did get passed and it was by a vote of 18 to 13. Wow. There you go. So give us an idea of what this other piece of legislation that was being debated in the House and tell us what happened there. Yeah. So at the same time, the House had their own piece of education legislation they were talking about. They had SB 9, which was a it was originally labeled as a teacher bill of rights. And it was aimed at adding a lot of things with waiving different accreditations that teachers had to go through. And again, the House was adding on a bunch of amendments, 10 in total, because they saw this as their piece of legislation they could add on some of their individual issues that they were focused on. However, SB 9 was postponed on the House floor Wednesday morning, and that essentially kills it

for the rest of this regular legislative session. Yeah. So what happens now? Well, now the last chance for significant education legislation, including school choice, to pass this session all rests on the House acceptance of HB 100 and its recent amendment. So if not confirmed, this summer could feature a special session. And as we know, the governor and lieutenant governor have both said a special session is inevitable if school choice is not passed. Yeah, spicy stuff.

Thank you so much. Brad, let's go to you and talk about another deadline that occurred in the House this week. House Democrats chubbed prolifically on Tuesday. That is the legislative slang for time-wasting tactics, whether it's calling points of order, talking, debating a bill for as long as possible, various other things. And they managed to slow the body down to a glacial pace. that would prohibit any insurer operating the state from adopting or enforcing internal policies related to the environmental, social, and governance movement in the world of capital. Texas Republicans have increasingly focused on this issue and tried to push back against it. We saw SB 13 last session that prohibited any pension dollars from being invested in companies that harbor

these, quote, boycotting fossil fuel policies. And the comptroller has put out a list of 10 companies that the state has divested its pensions from. So this deadline was the second and then the following day, third reading deadline for all Senate bills in the House. And on the first deadline, on the House bill deadline, Democrats managed to kill the main bill they wanted they use, just the blocker bill is the one that whoever is chubbing wants to prevent passage. So that bill was a deep transitioning bill by Representative Jeff Leach. This one was the ESG bill, and it was about halfway down the 13 page calendar for the day. So as this,

as the midnight approached it, it became clear this was the bill Democrats were trying to kill. And then once the bill got brought up, they really drawn out their drew out their, their discussion, their amendments. Representative Aaron's Wiener proposed an amendment to strike the enacting clause. drawn out their, drew out their, their discussion, their amendments, uh, representative Aaron Zwiener proposed an amendment to strike the enacting clause. And this is all happens literally

minutes before midnight and everything would die. Um, so she's talking on the front mic about the amendment and basically how bad the bill is in her view, and just time-wasting trying to get to midnight. A classic move. Right, right. And as I'm sitting there on the floor, Democrats are all surrounding the back mic trying to prevent Republicans from getting up to it. But Representative Briscoe Cain managed to squeeze his way in there and made a motion to call the question

on the amendment. That's a motion that ends debate and triggers a vote almost immediately. And it requires 25 members. And it's rarely used, largely because it's an expected aspect of general decorum to let debate play out on the issue.

Now, deployed in this certain circumstance, it was clearly an effort to prevent Democrats from killing the bill itself because their intention was to talk until midnight and kill it. But once Briscoe Cain got up there, the Democrats agreed to relent on the amendment and they took a vote. Then right after that, Democrats called a point of order. Again, this is all just minutes before midnight. And so they called a point of order trying to run out the clock on that. They go up to the parliamentarians. Parliamentarians issue a quick dismissal. And then Kaine again uh the previous question motion and um they trigger

vote and get past the bill just before midnight three minutes in so there was some retribution the following day before that so you can read about it in the piece but a lot of drama on deadline night again absolutely thank you bradley Cameron, coming to you, DEI offices at public universities in Texas have been a debate that has lasted all session, and we finally have an answer on what the future might look like. Tell us what happened. Yeah, so this bill has been subject to long debates last four sessions, went almost till midnight, different points of order, amendments, questions. So it's been a long road here. SB 17, it's had a lot of revisions and it's not an outright ban of DEI offices as it's been labeled. Yes, DEI offices

will not be allowed to be established under the new bill, but it does include the provision unless it is required by federal law. And some notable amendments were added onto the bill. One would allow for grants and accreditation requirements to be submitted that highlight certain DEI-style initiatives like highlighting first-gen students or underserved students. Another amendment was that universities will have to offer positions in other departments to employees who lose their jobs due to these DEI offices closing. After all these amendments and conversations, the bill was eventually passed by a vote of 83 to 60. Wow. So what happens now?

Well, this is one of Dan Patrick's priority pieces of legislation and the Senate has to vote to approve those changes with the amendments I mentioned. So it is possible the bill could get changed again in a conference committee if those amendments are not approved. Yeah, absolutely. Well, Cameron, thank you so much for your coverage. Hayden, coming to you, the Texas Constitution does not explicitly prohibit non-citizens from voting. Tell us about a GOP effort to change that. Republicans tried to pass a proposed amendment to the Texas Constitution that would have been on the ballot this November to specifically state that only United States citizens can vote in Texas elections.

In the state of Texas, constitutional amendments must be approved by two-thirds of each house of the legislature and a majority of Texas voters. In the bill analysis, lawmakers alluded to efforts in other jurisdictions, such as New York City and a handful of states in the Northeast, who are allowing non-citizens to vote in their elections, or at least passing ordinances to do so. I believe a court in New York struck down New York City's effort to allow non-citizens to vote in their elections, but state law in Texas does prohibit non-citizens to vote in their elections. But state law in Texas does prohibit non-citizens from voting in elections. You must be a U.S. citizen to vote according to state law here in Texas. However, the legislature could conceivably legalize non-citizens voting in elections or allowing cities and counties to make their own decisions. This

constitutional amendment would have solved that or prevented that from happening. And that amendment reached the House floor, but it did not pass, so it will not be on the ballot for voters this year. How were Democrats able to defeat the bill? This was one of those situations where the parliamentary maneuvering is what killed the legislation because there were no votes against the bill and there were 88 votes in favor, but somehow it still failed. And I'll explain. Like I said, two thirds of each house need to approve the amendment. And that is two thirds of the membership, not two-thirds of those who voted. 54 Democrats voted present on the bill, which in this case has the same effect as voting no because of the required threshold being 100 votes. So the vote was 88 to 0.

All Republicans and a handful of Democrats voted for it, but the 54 votes at present denied the bill the 100 votes it needed, and it was past the deadline for, it has now passed the deadline for the House to vote out Senate joint resolutions, so the bill is officially dead. Wow. And this is where bills can just die because, you know, somebody may know a rule that makes a bill vulnerable and it gives them an opportunity to find a way to make that happen. Well, and I don't, this isn't, in this case,

it wasn't so much procedural obscurity that defeated this bill. This was a way for the Democrats to keep it from passing without directly voting against it. So at some point, I don't know if it was Chris Turner or who made the decision to say, as a caucus, we're not going to vote no, but we are going to make sure it doesn't pass by voting present. So that was a conversation that would have had to happen behind the scenes. But this is just an unusual way to vote down a bill. This could not happen for most pieces of legislation because the threshold for most bills is just a majority of those who vote, not a majority of the membership. So for instance, if 140 members vote on a bill, a majority of 71 members. But the Constitution has a very high bar for amending the

Constitution. So if there aren't 100 votes, like there weren't 100 votes on casinos, then the bill cannot proceed. There was one other thing I was going to add, but I can't remember, so we'll just move on. Hey, it's the Friday. It's the Thursday before session ends, so you're fine. Thank you, Hayden, for your coverage. Bradley, we are coming to you. One of the biggest questions this last session is whether or not the Senate will allow a certain House priority across the finish line. Give us those details.

Yeah, so one of the biggest horse trading issues of this last week is going to be House Bill 5, which is the House's priority replacement of the Chapter 313 abatement program. It's been something the House has wanted this entire time to replace that now defunct 313 program that was killed off last session and then expired. Renewal was killed off last session and then it expired at the end of last year. The Senate passed its own version of HP5 this week. The new version limits the list of eligible projects significantly from what the House passed. It excludes not only wind and solar generators from the abatements, which is something the House also excludes, but also battery storage facilities. It did expand the eligibility list somewhat from its first substitute version that it heard and committed last week that include the additional additions included pharmaceutical

and automotive manufacturers, along with the headquarters of Fortune 500 companies. Now in the final product that the Senate passed on, what day was yesterday? Wednesday. I think, I believe that was stripped or at least curtailed significantly based on the amount of the cost of a headquarters. And so it's still this is going to go to conference. The two chambers are going to have to hammer it out, find a compromise on how to structure this. But it's looking like a replacement is going to happen.

And it's just a question of what the Senate gets in exchange for allowing this through from the House. We'll see what that is. But other House priorities or other Senate priorities have moved in the House, presumably in part because this bill itself has moved or an agreement to move this bill. So we'll see where things file out on this, but it's certainly an issue to watch. Absolutely. Bradley, thank you. Hayden, we're going to come to you and kind of dovetail with Holly here. The Texas House passed a key election bill concerning Harris County. Give us a quick overview of some of the discussion on that bill. Well, the Texas legislature passed a bill that was sponsored by Dr. Tom Olervison that would give the state the authority to exercise administrative oversight over Harris County elections in instances where there are credible complaints of misconduct or other irregularities. Democrats are concerned about the legislature targeting urban counties.

But I know way less about this than our esteemed Houston contract writer. So I'm going to turn it over to Holly to explain some of the background information on Harris County elections and what precipitated this. Reporter Holly Hansen, are you ready to join our podcast? Okay, Holly, you're good whenever you want to begin. Okay, great. Okay. Yes. So Harris County has had this history that has put them in the spotlight, both at the Texan and in national news because of their difficulties in managing elections. Now keep in mind, this is the most populous county in the state of Texas. There's a population of about 4.7 million people with, I believe, about two and a half million registered voters. But what has happened is the county in 2020 voted in a partisan vote on

commissioner's court to move the management of elections away from the elected county clerk and the tax assessor, collector, voter registrar. So those are two elected positions. And they opted instead to have an appointed elections administrator. This is not unusual. About half of the counties in the state of Texas use an appointed elections administrator instead of these elections officials. But Harris County has had a lot of problems since then. They made national news during the 2022 primary when the elections administrator at that time, Isabel Longoria, failed to count about 10,000 ballots, 6,000 in the Democrat primary,

and another 4,000 in the Republican primary. She did resign shortly after that. The county brought in another elections administrator who had served in the D.C. Elections Administration, as well as in the U.S. Elections Commission. But Clifford Tatum, the new elections administrator, also had a number of problems in the general election. This has led to a number of lawsuits over delayed openings, over the shortage of ballot paper that prevented an unknown number of voters from actually voting, possibly on Election Day. that they approved this past week, as Hayden mentioned, in one case will allow the Secretary of State's office to exert a little more oversight and possibly take over elections if there are irregularities that are proven. The second bill would force the county to return management of elections to those two elected officials. And that has provided a lot of consternation from the county. Interestingly enough, the county did not send anyone to testify

when these bills were being heard in committee. And we're not sure why. Possibly they didn't think they really had a chance of passing. Not sure what happened there. However, last week they did hire a law firm that specializes in parliamentary procedure. It is a law firm that's affiliated with one of the House parliamentarians, and it seems like they may have been looking for ways to kill these bills through that procedure. They were unsuccessful unsuccessful and those were approved this week. Yeah, absolutely. Well, Holly, thank you so much for your details on all of this. Now, the Harris County delegation certainly had a response. The Harris County itself had a response to all of this. Give us some details on that. That's right. So this week, you had Harris County

Judge Lena Hidalgo, the county attorney Christian Menefee, along with County Commissioner Rodney Ellis, and the mayor of Houston held a press conference yesterday announcing that they would be filing a lawsuit as soon as these bills are signed by the governor. They believe that Harris County has been targeted in these bills. And to be fair, both bills are only applied to large counties. So in one case, the bill only applies to counties with populations of greater than three and a half million. The other two counties with populations of greater than four million. And of course, Harris County is the only county in the state of Texas that would fall under those qualifications.

Lena Hidalgo accused Republican lawmakers not only of targeting the county, but of using what she of those bills, of course, returns the management of elections to elected officials, both of whom are Democrats, women from Harris County, Tanishia Hudspeth, as well as Anne Harris Bennett. Hudspeth in particular is interesting because she has about 15 years of experience in managing elections. And when the county sought to shift the management to the appointed administrator, a lot of Democrats were very upset because they thought Tanisha Hudspeth would do a particularly good job in running elections. And she had a lot of respect from both sides of the political aisle. Awesome. Well, Holly, thank you so much for your coverage of those issues. We'll be back with you later. Cameron, we're coming to you. The Reader Act would ban children

from accessing certain books labeled as sexually explicit material. Tell us about what happened during the floor debate in the Senate. Yeah. So Rep. Jerry Patterson first introduced this bill, and he's been vocal about his support for passing this. And even while I was watching the video feed of the debate, he was sitting in the background watching the debate go down on the floor. So that was really interesting. But after it actually came up on the floor, the bill's sponsor, Angela Paxton, and two Democratic lawmakers who were really the bulwarks of the opposition, Jose Menendez and Sarah Eckhart, they were going back and forth. And both those Democratic senators asked a lot of questions about who is going to be held

accountable when books are found, what happens if schools mess up during the implementation of the bill, how are purchases monitored. And a lot of the answers from Paxson kept coming back to this bill is designed to hold the vendors of the books accountable and not the schools. And she said that, of course, there's going to be a learning experience that will happen early in the implementation process, but this bill is more of a tool for schools to use. So vendors are the ones who must be aware of the law, not the districts. So what happens next? Well, since it was passed without amendments, it will now await a signature from the governor and it will not have to go back to the House for

approval since there was no amendments added. One of the rare times that that happens on big bills. Thank you so much for your coverage, Cameron. Hayden, we're coming to you. The Texas Senate passed a major border bill Wednesday night. What were some of the key provisions of the bill? Border security has had quite the odyssey through the legislature this session. And the product that Republicans produced was House Bill 7, which includes many provisions that are designed to respond to the border crisis and massive amounts of illegal immigration. The legislation includes a landowner compensation program that will provide up to $75,000 per incident for landowners whose

property is damaged by illegal immigrants crossing the border. And the fiscal note for the bill says it's hard to pin down exactly how much this bill will cost because there are so many variables. But one remnant of a border security policy that Dade Phelan and Matt Schaefer were seeking to get across the finish line was the Texas Border Force in HB 7, which was formerly the Border Protection Unit in HB 20, which was lost to a point of order. But the Border Force would, under HB 7, be under the Texas Rangers Division. It would be composed of Texas Department of Public Safety officers and the Texas Military Department service members.

They would be compensated, obviously, and their salaries could run into the tens of millions of dollars under this bill. There are also criminal statutes in this bill. The human smuggling mandatory minimum sentence ended up under this bill. There are also criminal statutes in this bill. The human smuggling mandatory minimum sentence ended up in this legislation. There is another bill, HB 800, that is still in play that would also do the same thing and include increased criminal penalties for evading arrest and operating a stash house. But HB 7 does include the criminal penalties for human smuggling, notably in the fiscal note in this bill.

It says that the average amount of time that a convict spent incarcerated for human smuggling in 2022 at the time of release was only one year. And this bill would increase it to 10 years. So more or less, we're 10xing the sentence for human smuggling, and it would be pretty much across the board. I think there might be some exceptions for people who smuggle individuals and their immediate family, but more or less, the minimum sentence will be a decade behind bars for human smuggling. And then this legislation includes the provision that criminalizes illegal immigration at the state level it makes it a class a misdemeanor or that could be upgraded to a felony and for repeat offenses or if the person has other convictions there are other provisions of this bill but those are the main components of the legislation and it is part of the state's

effort to respond to illegal immigration. Yes, make sure to go to texan.news and read all about it. Really quickly, before we move on, tell us a little bit about the procedural, the very complicated procedural history of this bill. Well, I mentioned that a little bit at the beginning, but this bill was carried primarily by Ryan Guillen. This is his first session as a Republican. He switched parties back in November 2021. He was a border Democrat. Now he's a border Republican. But as I mentioned, some of the provisions in Matt Schaefer's bill, HB 20, were added and amended into HB 7.

One of the major differences, though, between the Senate's amended version of HB 7 and the way HB 7 came out of the House was the Border Protection Force will not be subject to the discretion of Commissioner's Courts. In the bill that passed the House, Commissioner's Courts would get to decide whether the Border Force operated in their counties, but in the Senate's version of the legislation, they will not have that discretion and the Border Force will be able to operate regardless of any local jurisdiction's decision. And the current status of the bill is it has been passed by the Senate. The next step is for the House to concur with the Senate amendments or request a conference committee. The House has until Friday, May 26, to make that decision. So as you're

listening to this podcast, they are facing a midnight deadline to either concur with the amendments or request a conference committee. If they do not, the bill is lost. There you go. Hayden, thank you so much. Holly, we're coming back to you. In addition to efforts to enact more gun control legislation, there were also some efforts to address gun crime this session. What were these proposals and what is the status? That's right. So while, you know, we've worried about gun control and trying to, you know, enact some more legislation in that area, there were some efforts to try to crack down on gun-related crime. And one of those efforts was a Senate priority bill that would have enhanced penalties for felony crimes committed with a firearm. However, that bill never got out of

the House committee, although it sailed through the Senate in a bipartisan way. Likewise, there was another bill that would have prohibited personal recogn personal recognizant bonds known as PR bonds for which criminal defendants don't pay anything for release from jail would have prohibited those for felons in possession of a weapon. This was of a lot of interest to residents of Harris County because we know that felons in possession of a weapon are released on bond in Harris County as often as 50 times a month. Our colleagues over at Crime Stoppers of Houston have indicated that at least a dozen times last year, some of those individuals were caught with machine guns. So they were looking for a way to crack down on some of those repeat offenders. Unfortunately, although those bills did sail through the Senate, that one got through House committee and was brought up on the House floor, but suddenly and unexpectedly, it was pulled down and postponed until the fall. So that will not

move forward. Another criminal justice bill that everyone was watching for was a constitutional amendment proposal that would have given judges the discretion to deny bail to certain violent offenders. Currently under the state constitution, bail can only be denied in cases of capital murder. And in light of what we've seen happening in Harris County and some of the other urban areas of Texas, there was a lot of concern that, you know, judges maybe did not have the tools necessary to keep some of those repeat offenders in jail who are brought in on charges of kidnapping or human trafficking or some of the more violent crimes. Unfortunately, that's not going to happen this session either. We have seen some folks trying to reach out to the governor if there is a special session that maybe he'll bring some of those up, but we're just not sure at this point.

Yeah, absolutely. Holly, thank you so much for your coverage. Bradley, let's move on to another huge topic of conversation in this legislative session. The two chambers have gone back and forth on power grid reforms. Give us a status update. So, largely, they're still kind of to be determined, although they are inching a lot closer to finalizing something. The Texas House passed a bunch of bills related to the power grid, but two took more importance than all the others. SB 7 has a firming requirement that is cost allocation generally to renewables for dispatchable power costs incurred during times of grid stress that the renewable generators do not perform. It also had PCM guardrails, performance credit mechanism guardrails for the $1 billion cap. We've talked previously about how the cap itself was a big fight between the industrial side, the users of electricity, and the generators, the producers of electricity. And so the legislature seems to have settled on the $1 billion cap. It also would create this new backup generation market on which generators could

trade electricity. Then the other big bill was SB 2627, which was the Senate's second attempt at some sort of more direct subsidization of the construction of natural gas power plants. You can read in the piece the more details on the percentages of the loans and whatnot, but it would provide loans and bonuses to power generators for constructing this new capacity. I was actually just looking at the outside the bounds resolution for the state budget. So we do have more answers on what I was referring to earlier, but on the power grid issue, the resolution outlines $5 billion for this loan program with 2627. The Senate previously in its version of the budget had a rider for 10 billion

for Senate bill six, which was the predecessor of 2627 that failed in the House. And so they have compromised and cut the total amount of money they're going to appropriate to the construction of natural gas power plants in half. We'll see how quickly that gets divvied out by the Public Utility Commission, but pretty interesting right there. Overall, something's going to get done. It's just a question of whether the, because of the warnings we've heard from grid regulators that for the first time ever, there will not be enough dispatchable power to itself compensate or generate enough power to make up for the rise in demand that we have. The summer could be pretty tight,

it seems. And, you know, we'll see if all goes according to plan or if, you know, there's going to be a lot of issues to deal with ahead. Absolutely. Thank you, Bradley. Cameron, coming to you, a bill to reform college tenure has had a very turbulent journey through the legislature. Tell us what happened. Well, this is another priority for the Senate and was originally an abolition on the college tenure. And this is more of a reformulation because tenure can be granted through a governing board on the recommendation of the university's chief executive officer and university systems chancellor in this new House version. Last week, the bill was blocked on a point of order and had to be sent back to committee. It was voted out quickly, placed back on the calendar. And now, since it has finally passed the House, it will be sent back to the Senate for confirmation.

There you go. And the Senate could choose to not accept the changes to the bill. Is that correct? Well, yeah. So Dan Patrick, he's been vocal about getting rid of college tenure. And if the Senate does not confirm the changes made to this bill as it went through the committees and with amendments then it could be sent to a conference committee there you go thank you cameron hayden last but not least coming to you no no last and least lieutenant governor dan patrick lost two bills

on the deadline for the house to pass those senate bills we talked about earlier give us a brief overview of those bills as we talked about earlier there was us a brief overview of those bills. As we talked about earlier, there was a deadline for the House to pass Senate bills, and two of the bills on Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick's priority list of legislation were lost. One of those bills was a school safety bill that would have tightened truancy requirements and added funding for school safety. Not to fear if you are a proponent of that idea. There is another bill that is still in play. It's in conference committee. HB3 would include funding for school safety, but it does not include the truancy elements to that. So that bill is gone.

SB 11, I believe, is not going to be passed. Another bill, I wrote judicial compensator in this docket, and that is not a word. I have no idea why I wrote that. I think that's supposed to say judicial commission, but I don't know. It is a bill to allow the state to remove judges that run afoul of statutory bail guidelines and provide structure for complaints against judges in the state of Texas. It would provide more guidelines for a timeline on that. And it is lost because it was not passed on the deadline. So those bills are gone. Those bills are gone?

Yeah. They're out of here. They're out of town. Oh, man. Okay. Well, thank you, Hayden. Gentlemen, let's move to our tweeter-y section. Brad, why don't we go ahead and start with you?

So I talked about deadline night and all the chicanery that occurred. But the funniest part, I think, was Representative Harold Dutton point of ordering himself during when the clock struck midnight. He has the tradition. He's always the one that calls the point of order about the deadline has come. Everything's dead. We can't consider anything more. Usually, though, he does that from the back mic. But when it struck midnight, he was offering an amendment to try and chub the bill that was currently being considered at the moment. And another Democrat tried to jump in and call the point of order. And then he just decided to preempt them and point of order himself from the front microphone. And it was pretty comical.

The point of order was accepted, even though I don't recall ever calling a point of order from the front mic. It was a new one. It was. Yes, yes. Harold Dutton always blazing new trails. That's so true. My gosh. Bradley, thank you.

Cameron, what about you? Well, I was browsing Twitter this week, and for some reason, Boris Johnson kept popping up on my timeline. He was at the Capitol. It turns out he was at the Capitol. And so he met with Dan Patrick. He met with Governor Greg Abbott. And apparently he was even in Dallas at one point.

And he was, I found this interesting article from Politico that called him Agent Bojo because I guess he was here to lobby for pro-Ukraine efforts here in Texas. I'm not completely sure the entirety of that conversation. But, yeah, I just thought it was interesting. Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson here in Texas. Not what I was expecting this week. No, it was a spicy little addition to the legislative happenings this week. Absolutely. Hawley or Hayden?

Who to go to? Just go to Hawley. Okay, Hawley, you're up. I'm up, finally. No, I was interested in seeing one of the responses to some of our articles about, you know, the back and forth that's gone on this week between Attorney General Paxton and Speaker Dade Phelan. And one of our readers responded, if anybody can get away with bringing dueling back to a legislative body, it's us David Burnett challenged him to a duel after they had some big fight where they called each other names in the newspaper and everything.

But sadly, Houston did not respond to his request for a duel. So we're missing that. What would have been a very fun part of our history. Man, dang it. Can you imagine if there was some like i think there is a bullet hole in a desk in the u.s the u.s house or is the senate from something it was not a duel it was a different situation but can you imagine if there was some sort of you know bullet hole in a desk on the texas house floor from a duel how wild would that be brad didn't somebody

kill somebody else with a stick and he didn't kill him i think charles sumner was the one beaten preston brooks was the one that beat him over uh slavery basically i think it was um it was a 19th century ordeal it wasn't a duel yeah close yeah maybe secession which you know tied slavery but yeah it was around around the civil war when that happened and yeah well maybe we'll just bring back some sticks maybe put a stick a stick at each lawmaker's desk you know i think everybody in the legislature just needs to go on the capital lawn and scream at the sky for 10 minutes you're exactly right especially as sine die gets i think that would be good for our state i think there's a point mid-May where tensions are highest, and once you can see the end, I think we all can,

and I know legislators can too, like tensions diffuse a little bit. That's my observation. I could be wrong. I think after the big deadlines, things cool off a little bit, but the frustration is visible in the legislative chambers as the deadlines get closer. Hayden, what do you find on Twitter this week? Well, it dovetails nicely with Cameron's tweet.

Because after Boris Johnson went to the Senate, there's this account on Twitter called Parliamentarians Stan, and they tweet some pretty funny stuff. Yeah, they do. But right after Boris Johnson went to the Senate, Parliamentarians Stan tweeted, 88th couldn't get any weirder if you tried. And hours later, Paxton accused Phelan of being drunk from the dais. And then the House General Investigating Committee published all of that stuff about Paxton. So talk about tweets that did not age well. The 88th certainly did get weirder. And we didn't even have to try. Well, I'm going to bring up a part of this that makes everything weirder is yesterday, I know there

were some videos circulating on Twitter of a literal dumpster fire outside of the attorney general's office. It was insane. There were just these dumpsters on fire. There are some videos that show, I don't know, papers in this dumpster that were just like lit. Brad tweeted, like he quote tweeted those videos and said a police presence outside the ag's building but no more smoking dumpster in sight um at the very least and there were there were state troopers outside with their lights flashing of the attorney general's office so if things can't get weirder after a day where um the attorney was that yesterday that the attorney general called for was that yesterday that was t general called for? Was that yesterday? That was Tuesday. That was Tuesday. Okay. Oh my gosh.

I was about to have a real, yeah. It's been a week. Problem with the, yeah. It's been a week. I don't even know what timeline we're on at this point. In fact, a fraction of a week because it's been just been a couple of days. It's been wild. But regardless, that happened.

Literal dumpster fire outside of the attorney general's office and the attorney general twitter account i think just the texas ag account tweeted later that they had surveillance footage looking to identify a person of interest in an arson please contact the austin fire department if you have information that can help solve the crime so lots of questions about what's going on there but regardless something very odd was afoot uh in a dumpster outside of the attorney general's office yeah texas politics is starting to sound like a no a low budget netflix series it really is low budget there's gonna be a feature film i think the writing is good enough like i think there's a is there is a writer strike still going or like tv writers are still on strike well this is like you know no does anybody care we have a script for everybody what holly i said does anybody care that the hollywood writers are on

strike my guess is that holly does not holly does not um okay let's go ahead and jump into our listener questions we have a few that we want to answer before we hop off the pod for the rest of the day. From Patrick, what is the significance of the front mic and the back mic? Is the back mic typically where opposition is voiced? That's a great question. We talk about that pretty colloquially. Let's dive into the difference between the front and the back mic. Brad, if you want to start.

Sure. Yeah, the front mic is in the House. We should say the Senate is an entirely different world, and this doesn't apply. The front mic is where members lay out bills, where they take questions from other members. Everything has to start basically at the front mic. I guess technically everything starts at the dais, but... The dais being where the speaker is. Yes, which is raised above the rest of the house.

After that, everything starts at the front mic. They lay out the bill. And then where the back mic comes in is when members want to either ask questions of said bill or member or call a point of order. They have to do it in the back mic unless you're Harold Dutton. And then, yeah, Hayden, am I missing any details here? The back mic, yeah. No, I think that pretty much sums it up. The front mic is the well. It's where you go to present your bill and speak

for or against a proposition. I think there's this, a little bit of a misunderstanding out there that the front mic, you're for something and the back mic, you're against something. But really the front mic is just the main forum where somebody is recognized to speak. And the back mic is, you can ask a series of questions, you can raise a point of order, you can make requests of the speaker, but it's just another, it's a venue for members to make motions when there is somebody in the well.

And I haven't seen this as much this session. So, but y'all may have, cause you spend a lot more time on the floor than I do. Oftentimes the back mic would be a place where people would particularly when it came to controversial issues would try and make sure their opposition, like they're the opposing side to whatever side they're on is not able to access the back mic. Because in the Senate, you have a mic at every desk. So if at any point you want to be recognized to say something, you have the freedom to be able to do so. You can stand up, flag down the lieutenant governor. It's a very different situation.

In the House, you've got one avenue by which you can speak to the speaker or the person at the front mic laying out a bill or an amendment. So there are some times where you you know, you have a line of legislators at the back mic waiting for their turn. But also it's not like, it's not like there's not an invisible force field around the back mic where it's the only way for you to communicate with a speaker. I think the house rules do allow you, for instance, when the speaker says, so-and-so sends up an amendment, is there any objection? You don't have to sprint to the back mic before you say, I object. You can say, I object. Or if there was really a severe rules violation, somebody could probably call out point of order and then go to the back mic. That's why

sometimes you'll see lawmakers tweet, the speaker ignored me, or I tried to get the speaker's attention, but they will quibble over control of the back mic. But it's not supposed to be a situation where members are tripping over one another to see who can get to the back mic first. It's supposed to be more orderly than that now it does turn into a scrum sometimes but that's that's a great point of the game and there is there are points to to your to your point hayden where if there is objection to somebody's time being extended or something along those lines like they can just shout that out the speaker literally just says like members i need to hear from you is there any objection and they say yes or no like or they're just silent and there's no objection so um there is that too

like right but if there is a formality that needs to occur the back mic is typically where that there's always a gap between the way things are supposed to work in theory and the way that they work and practice a hundred percent um and the bag mic is the attempt at making that a little bit more orderly too. Good stuff. Okay. I love this. Kim Roberts herself. We miss you, Kim, who used to be one of our wonderful reporters.

She covered North Texas. She sent us a little question. I noticed you briefly mentioned the legislative council, but are they not primarily responsible for the bill drafts? How much responsibility do they have over these bill purpose statements that keep trapping legislators this is specifically in response to the points of orders i've been called this session in particular there's just been so many more than usual that have been sustained and called like it's just become a really big i don't know if issues the right word but a point

of contention this legislative session. So what are y'all's, specifically you House reporters, our questions? Oh my. Sorry to cut you off, but the Texas Attorney General's office just announced they arrested the person who lit the fire, the dumpster fire. That could not have been better timing. The Texas Department of Public Safety has arrested and charged the individual seen on video starting a fire Wednesday night at the office of the attorney general.

The 42-year-old woman was seen discarding what appears to be a lit cigarette into a waste receptacle behind the building. Wow. Interesting. So, yeah, that's wild. Anyway, to answer Kim's question. Yeah, this was in response to my piece about the deployment of points of order uh i think last week or the week before that i wrote um yeah legislative council does write all the drafts they do so um either at the beckoning of a of a member um their staff they then work with those members of staff or the committee

clerk to hammer out a final version so yeah, Ledge Council does play a role in this although I think the responsibility for making sure things are line up well or point of order proof lies with the members, their staff, or the committee

clerk themselves, depending on who you ask. But there has been some displeasure with ledge counsel over this issue and how their drafts, especially on these background and purpose statements, has led to so many points of order, valid points of order. Yeah. Hopefully that answers your question. Which all of that, that's one of the disappointing things about the way that this legislative session played out in particular is how much of the discussion and debate happened off the

microphone because most of the consequential decisions were made off of the microphones and the way the system is supposed to work is somebody proposes a policy they debate the merits improve the policy amend it and then have a vote on whether or not the state is going to adopt that policy. But what it came down to this session and past sessions as well, it's just been more pronounced this session, is so much of the policy was formed based on what happened between the parliamentarians and lawmakers at these sidebars in the dais. And those conversations happen off the microphone and it's whatever reporters are able to overhear in the press box. So I don't know, obviously it's not for me to say whether that's good or bad, but the many of the decisions,

and this is just where we are in Texas, many of the decisions were not made based on the merits of a policy, but were made on these procedural snafus that were made, for instance, in the background and purpose of the bill analysis. And I would encourage everyone to go read Brad's piece because it explains why there were so many policies that were lost before the house even began debating whether they were beneficial to the state. Yeah. Yeah. And especially on the background and purpose statement, which has no bearing on the actual law itself. You know, there's like an, it's an ancillary document, right? Well, in the analysis, you can make the argument that

if the analysis of the bill is poor, then it can lead to a misunderstanding of what the bill does. But that's like the analysis actual aspect. We're talking about this statement of intent, basically for why this bill was filed and background for it. And honestly, I'm not taking a stance on whether the rule,

you know, the rule is valid or not. And I always hate, I always am cautious not to be one of those journalists who goes, well, this raises a question because I'm not the one, you know, to do that. Having said that, it is, it seems that another way of doing that would be having that debate on the microphones. Like you had this in your bill analysis, can you support, for instance, when it says concerns are raised, blah, blah, blah. It seems that that could be a series of questions. You say that this is a concern. Can you support that statement? And then the person at the front mic can say, here's our evidence for that instead of just weaving it into a technical question. On the other hand, the public doesn't have time to listen to hours and hours and hours of debate

as well. And these bill analyses inform people on whether or not they need to pay attention to an issue and whether or not they might be affected by an issue. So there is also the importance of having these accurate documents on the TLO website so people can make informed decisions without having to wait until the day of the debate and listen to hours of testimony or hours of debate. So there are ways to look at it both ways. But I think that's also something that is worthwhile is baseline. The bill author obviously is not the one sitting there typing up the amendments or the bill language.

That's not what is happening. But is there due diligence to sit down and say, okay, does everything line up here? Did I get a draft that I wanted? Does the bill analysis, knowing that all these bills are dying for these purposes, does that kind of look good? Like, sure, absolutely. There is some responsibility on the author as well but it goes both ways there's a lot of people that are that have culpability for why bills are dying and

we'll see if they can all button the system up there you go well and there's there's also you know is there blame to be assigned or is is this just the process working? Because it also has been said before that the Texas legislative process is designed to defeat more legislation than not. And that's why they only have 140 days too. So it may be that the system is working exactly as it is designed and that this is how it's supposed to work. It's supposed to be hard to pass a bill. Right. That's the intent. Awesome.

Well, Cameron, next time we'll get some Senate questions in here. Make you, put you on the spot here. I'll be ready. Atta boy. That's what I like to hear. Well, folks, thank you so much for listening. We know this has been a longer podcast. Holly, thank you for joining.

And folks, we will catch you on next week's episode. Thank you to everyone for listening. And folks, we will catch you on next week's episode. questions for our team to our mailbag by DMing us on Twitter or shooting an email to editor at the texan.news. We are funded entirely by readers and listeners like you. So thank you again for your support. Tune in next week for another episode of our weekly roundup. God bless you and God bless Texas.