The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - May 6, 2022

Episode Date: May 6, 2022

This week on The Texan’s “Weekly Roundup,” the team discusses the latest on the leaked Roe v. Wade Supreme Court opinion — including what the reversal of Roe would mean in Texas and how officials on both sides of the aisle are reacting, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) holding a federal nominee at bay, ranking of Texas members of Congress according to how often they vote by proxy, a local election is forced to a redo, concerns are raised regarding a federal “Disinformation Governance Board,” more campaign promises are made, one lawmaker pledges to roll out the red carpet if Twitter moves to Texas, and a Texas pension system voted in favor of environmentalist proposals.

Happy Friday, folks. Senior Editor Mackenzie Taylor here on the Texans Weekly Roundup Podcast. This week, the team breaks down all the latest on the leaked Roe v. Wade Supreme Court opinion, including what the reversal of Roe would mean in Texas and how officials on both sides of the aisle are reacting. Senator Cruz holds a federal nominee at bay. Lawmakers are ranked according to how often they vote by proxy. A local election is forced to a redo. Concerns are raised regarding a federal disinformation governance board. More campaign promises are made. One lawmaker pledges to roll out the red carpet if Twitter moves to Texas, and a Texas pension system voted in favor of environmentalist proposals. Additionally, our team gives some

history on Cinco de Mayo and discusses our coverage of this weekend's elections. 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 episode of our podcast. Thanks for listening and enjoy this episode. Howdy folks, Mackenzie Taylor here with Brad Johnson, Daniel Friend, Isaiah Mitchell, and Hayden Sparks. Our full team is back together today, which is pretty awesome. Good to have you back, Isaiah. And as soon as you get back, we have huge news that hit this week. Oh, yeah. We were like, oh, man, this might be a slow news week for Zay.

I remember saying, like, well, I got these two topics in. Something else will probably happen. Something else happened. Something else will probably happen well happen it did um yeah y'all ready to get into some news oh i thought that was your transition it was the topic it was like a loosely leafed like loose leaf tea i'm not ready to get into the news you're not not ready. Oh, bummer. Well, here we go. Isaiah, we're going to go ahead and just start this off. Turn to you.

This is the biggest story in a long time. But tell us, just give us a rundown of what happened this week with the Supreme Court. So a draft opinion that was being circulated among the justices got leaked in a Politico article. And from an anonymous source. So we don't know who did it. I was hearing this morning that investigations are underway to figure that out. Chief Justice John Roberts is very mad that this happened. And rightly so, because this kind of thing just does not happen.

This was. And by mad, we mean he came out with a statement that was very strongly worded. Right. Is that the extent to which he's communicated to the public about this? Right. And I'm envisioning him toppling bookshelves in the Supreme Court. Throwing glass objects against the wall and things like that. Using his gavel in various violent ways.

Case law just strewn across the office. Yeah. Yeah. Well, somebody, there have been some nationalists have talked to like legal experts about this kind of thing. And it's not like that this is top secret confidential documents that we're talking about here, but for this particular thing, that while a case is pending for a draft opinion to get released. Yeah. So Roberts confirmed that it was authentic. And so that's the D.R.N.O., basically. Wow. That's just super, super wild.

So, yeah, summarize a little bit of what the content of the draft itself contained. So this is a case that a lot of people have had their eyes on regarding a 15-week ban on abortion. And by that, I mean a ban on the abortions of unborn children past 15 weeks of gestation, passed by the state of Mississippi. And it was challenged, and the district court and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals both sided with the challengers of the law. What's the case name? Dobbs v. Jackson. And I believe the docket number is 19-932. That's a really actually good information.

But, yeah, I'll figure that out later. Well, we've got the document itself, the draft opinion linked in our article. Yeah, just go and text me on it. So, yeah, just go take a look. You can find the docket number. But broad strokes, this is a very direct head-on challenge

to Roe v. Wade. That's what this law... This law is not oblique like the Texas Harbid Act. It's, you know, just full frontal. And the draft opinion that was leaked strongly excoriates Roe and Planned Parenthood versus Casey,

which is the case that kind of cleaned up after Roe, but upheld its central holding that the Constitution confers a right to an abortion. And so it totally reverses that precedent set by Roe and says that the Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each state from regulating or prohibiting abortion. So, um, there are a lot of reasons for this. Uh, the constitution is obviously central, like the text of the constitution itself. And, um, won't spend too much time on this. Uh, the text of the constitution does not recognize the right to an abortion. So there's that. Additionally, uh, the document, the draft looks into the history and tradition of America's laws, going back to English common law and discussing how the this this legal precedent in the common law does not also, going way back to England, you know, almost into the early modern period, there's ample common law precedent criminally punishing the abortion of what they would call a quickened child in the womb.

And this is not a terribly hard and fast scientific or legal term to define. So there's some dispute about that, about like how you define quickening, because it's kind of a medieval term. But nonetheless, what the Supreme Court is observing in this draft is that the common law does not recognize the right to an abortion. And so that's, that was just, there's no precedent for that in the history and tradition of America's laws. So I'll just quote on that note from the document directly. Until the latter part of the 20th century, there was no support in American law for a constitutional right to obtain an abortion. Zero. None.

No state constitutional provision had recognized such a right. Until a few years before Roe was handed down, no federal or state court had had recognized such a right nor had any scholarly treatise of which we are aware and although law review articles are not reticent about advocating new rights the earliest article proposing a constitutional right to abortion that has come to our attention was published only a few years before roe so that's from the draft and since abortion is they they decide it's not a constitutional right the draft says that the court decides the best standard standard to judge challenges to abortion laws is the rational basis review standard, which basically means that states can regulate it for legitimate reasons. Stare decisis is on everybody's mind. So this is a doctrine that you've got to let previous decisions stand because that helps a lot of things.

The economy of the court, avoiding needless relitigation of the same topic over and over. So that's the doctrine that initially motivated the court to uphold Roe and Planned Parenthood versus Casey. So this is on a lot of people's minds. The court decided in this draft that, for one, paradoxically, Casey decided not to reverse Roe because of this doctrine, but still did a fair amount of overruling in the drafts words. Casey, throughout the trimester scheme that Roe established and replaced it with the undue burden standard, which itself is very, very difficult to define. You can go down to like, well, what's undue burden mean? It's like, well, that's a substantial obstacle. So what's substantial mean?

What is obstacle mean? And that's all conditional and based on essentially the financial and legal situation of the woman herself, which varies on its own even within states across the country. And this is in addition to the viability standard that Roe established, which is also highly dependent on the scientific advancement of our time. Viability is different from place to place depending on how good your hospitals are. And so you've got kind of a Russian nesting doll set of increasingly indefinable terms that the court criticized in this draft additionally um there's an interesting footnote uh buried in the middle of this draft of decisions that the court has overruled they name and describe three important ones like brown versus

port of education that overrule previous precedent um with new decision. But they also tack on this footnote saying, here are some other decisions that the court has overruled with new decisions. And it takes up about a page and a half. And this is in small type for a footnote. So it happens. But probably most substantially with regards to stare decisis is the fact that Roe and Casey created conflicts for other decisions and a lot of circuit conflicts, what they call like conflicting decisions in the various appellate circuits regarding abortion law.

So again, this is a meager explanation. Everybody should go and read this thing, basically, because you'll understand it better. Meager, but I'm still learning a lot. So talk to us about what this means for Texas specifically. What does this mean for Texas abortion law? Well, we'll get into this a little bit more with the reactions of state officials to this leaked draft. But again, this is not official. This is a draft. And so it's not the real opinion. They've got until the end of the term to put that out. But if they maintain their course and release something along these lines, repudiating the idea that the constitution refers to right to an abortion, then the decision will be returned to the states. And in Texas, the state passed a law just last year, colloquially

called the trigger ban, officially titled the Human Life Protection Act, which would begin criminally punishing abortions, elective abortions in the state, 30 days after the reversal of Roe. And so when I say elective, I mean that it's all abortions with the exception of procedures meant to save the life of the mother, the child, or to save the mother from severe bodily impairment. And the mother herself cannot face penalties under this law, only those who perform the abortion or induce it with the chemical or whatnot. So there's that. That's a

new law passed last year. That law and the text of the Harbate Act both recognize in their factual finding section that the state has never repealed its statutes that it had before Roe v. Wade. They were actually at the center of the real case, which began in Texas.aled its statutes that it had before roe v wade they were actually at the center of the real case which began in texas um so those statutes include a total abortion ban but where the trigger ban passed last year punishes abort like the performance of abortion or the administration of an abortion with as a as a felony so you can get like two to twenty years for a second degree felony um the pre-ro statutes that were never repealed, but are just kind of dormant, punish that with two to five years in jail. So there's that. And also the trigger ban has that

30 day grace period, basically. And it's not clear if, you know, right when Roe is overturned, you know, some people have the opinion, well, that means prosecutions could begin under the older statutes immediately so there's some interesting overlap of these two laws but we basically got two sets of laws that describe kind of different punishments for the same crimes of really do abortion yeah absolutely i mean this is in so many ways and we don't like to throw the word unprecedented around here but this was an incredibly shocking development to happen Monday night. I know, you know, immediately conservatives were, one, very

hopeful that this would be something that would come to fruition later on. And it's important we all remember that this is not something that, you know, this is not an opinion that has been issued by the Supreme Court. This is very preliminary and likely would not have been, you know, coming out for another couple of months, right? And this was in terms of where the draft actually was. And who knows? Right. We don't know that yet. But it was not something that was baked and ready and issued. And so, you know, conservatives were immediately hopeful. But also, like, I know a ton of folks, Twitter was just a cesspool the night this came out and probably will continue to be for, you know, weeks and months going forward. It's a status quo. But, you know, the concern over the fact that there was a leak of this magnitude when that is just something that the court has not seen in I don't know how long. You know, that's just something that does not happen. The I think it was Chief Justice Roberts who said, you know, I cannot overstate. Was that his statement? I cannot overstate the impact this would have on the court. Um, and just the, the, the trust within the chambers of the clerks, the staff, the justices themselves. So unbelievable. And of course, liberals are, uh, you know, obviously very, very concerned that this would be something that would happen, you know, down the road. It's one of the most partisan and personal issues we see on the national and state level. So we'll see what happens, but incredibly complicated for many reasons, socially and judicially.

One more quick detail since Hayden's fixing to discuss it. Other provisions in the Human Life Protection Act, we've got the direct felony penalty. And in addition, it authorizes the attorney general to seek civil damages for violations of the law up to i believe a hundred thousand dollars and on top of that doctors that perform these procedures can lose their licenses and so there are are several modes of punishment that can all kick in uh froze reversed well there you go okay well thank you isaiah for breaking that down for us um we'll continue to talk about this topic and and run over to hayden now to talk a little bit

more about this specifically but um hayden let's talk about um a democrat congressman from south texas made some waves this week what did he have to say about the possible reversal of roe versus wade congressman henry Cuellar represents the 28th congressional district. He's a Democrat from South Texas. And he put out a statement indicating that he is opposed to the possible reversal of Roe versus Wade, especially in view of his Catholic faith, which he believes teaches pro-life beliefs, but he also is concerned about what he called an outright ban on abortion. And as Isaiah just discussed, Roe would not, the reversal of Roe would not automatically create a nationwide ban on abortion, but the

Human Life Protection Act of 2021 in Texas would make abortion a criminal act on the part of the person committing the abortion, not on the part of the pregnant mother. So, Cuellar is opposed to the concept of having a blanket ban on abortion, and I imagine he is reacting primarily to the Human Life Protection Act of 2021, which, as Isaiah talked about, only creates an exception for the imminent serious bodily injury or death of the pregnant mother. And that's probably not quite the right language. I think the act says something to the effect of the impairment of a major bodily structure or something to that effect, and those would be the only circumstances under which

someone could perform an abortion. And further, the law requires essentially that the physician treat both the mother and the unborn child as patients and do everything within his ability to save both lives unless the mother's life would be imperiled by trying to save the unborn child's life. And the criminal penalty for that, as Isaiah just referenced, is if the unborn child dies in the course of an abortion would be a first-degree felony, which is the same punishment for a non-capital murder in the state of Texas. The framework is very similar, but Cuellar's statement on this issue would include an exception for rape and incest, which is not in the Human Life Protection Act.

Part of his statement was, quote, let me be clear about the leaked opinion of the potential SCOTUS ruling. It is not based on precedent and is not incremental in nature. It will further divide the country during these already divisive times, but let us wait until the final ruling, end quote. And Mac, as you just mentioned, it's not a final ruling. So he's saying, let's wait and see what truly happens, what decision the court makes in the end. But in the meantime, he is saying he is opposed to an outright ban on abortion. And while he's pro-life, believes that there should be these exceptions in place. Yeah, absolutely. And it's worth noting that Congressman Cuellar is in an incredibly difficult

political position here, which you'll talk a little bit about. But he's in a runoff right now against a progressive challenger who he's faced before. And South Texas has been a hotbed for Republican activity and Republican gains. So interesting to know he's just being hit from both sides. He's between a rock and a hard place here. So tell us what the reaction was from the Republican National Committee. As you just talked about, he's in a runoff with a progressive challenger defending his seat from the left, but he's also facing long odds. Well, not long odds, but he's facing a real general election battle, unlike many incumbents who won't have to worry much on election day this November. But the Republican National Committee spokesperson, Macarena Martinez said, quote, Henry Cuellar has tried to toe the line

on abortion for far too long. South Texans are pro-life and Cuellar can no longer straddle the fence as Democrats have embraced radical abortion policies, end quote. Interestingly enough, Cuellar's position is popular in the U.S. according to polling that abortion should be limited but not entirely illegal. Many people support these exceptions, including an exception for rape and incest, but the South Texas scene politically is shifting and it seems the Republican national committee is saying that this measured or what seems to be a measured or divided stance on abortion that i'm pro-life but there are also these exceptions and it's a difficult issue that's more complicated it seems the republican party is saying it's really not that complicated and voters in south te South Texas are going to see that you're saying you're pro-life,

but you have this association with a party that usually doesn't make the safe, legal, and rare argument very often. The Democratic Party usually leans pretty hard into the bodily autonomy and what they would call the reproductive healthcare argument that this is entirely a decision between a pregnant mother and her doctor. So, the RNC is very strong in their statement that they are going to be running hard against Henry Quire in November. And I imagine that his statement against the reversal of Roe v. Wade will become an election issue. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you, Hayden, for covering that. Certainly politically interesting. Isaiah, let's talk about how lawmakers here in Texas have reacted to this news. How have Republicans reacted specifically? by the way, we'll focus on some interesting policy implications of the leak and its consequences mainly, as opposed to just like, this is what they said on Twitter, but there will be some of that.

So, the bill that we've been talking about, well now law, the Human Life Protection Act, was carried by Senator Angela Paxton in the state senate and Representative Giovanni Capriglione in the state house so senator paxton put out a statement uh expressing hope that the court maintains the position in the draft uh in an official opinion uh in this term uh she often and she does in this case refer to the fact that she is an adopted child so she says as an adopted child i have a deeply personal perspective on the value of human life my life began as a result of an unplanned pregnancy. And I'm thankful my birth mother chose life. The Human Life Protection Act promotes human dignity by protecting the unborn in Texas.

And the state GOP also released a statement celebrating the new law. So Republicans naturally have much to celebrate with this leak. But on top of that, it also presents pretty grave questions about the security of the court and its reputation. And as we alluded to earlier, it might require a detangling of certain Texas laws, but we'll get to that. So Ted Cruz called the leak shocking. And he says, this report is true. This is nothing short of a massive victory for life and will save the lives of millions of innocent babies but while i continue to wait for the supreme court's ultimate opinion i am appalled by the shocking breach of trust posed by this leak so he called it a blatant attempt to intimidate the court through public pressure

which is interesting um as we get to the democrat reactions as well because each side kind of has its own theory that this leak aids the other side in some respect, right? And so while we're on Republicans for now, Cruz and Briscoe Cain, who we'll get to, both implied that, or Cain said it outright, that the leak was intentional, meant to kind of build up public pressure on the court. So onto the actual policy implications. As we mentioned, we've got both the Human Life Protection Act and the older statutes. And Cain talked to us a little bit about both of these and said that they mesh pretty well in his opinion, but there are some differences between them. So he says, I have a few questions I'm working on getting answered.

For example, considering that HB 1280 contains a 30-day grace period before it takes effect, could a prosecutor use the older statute to prosecute an abortionist after Roe's overturned? So that's a question that he's still curious about. And he says that there are, of course, provisions in HB 1280 that are preferred over the previous statutes. And he describes as the primary example, the fact that it's a felony under the recent law, but only punishable by two to five years imprisonment under the older statute. So there are some questions that need answering on that front with regards to policy. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Well, talk to us about how Democrats have reacted as well. that's the need answering on that front with regards to policy so yeah absolutely okay well talk to us about how democrats have reacted as well um it's been a pretty universally negative

reaction from democrats naturally um which just goes without saying um i talked to donna howard who's chair of the texas women's health caucus and collected some statements from some others uh what's interesting with regards to policy is that Howard and others are already kind of exploring the possibility of bipartisanship with regards to increasing funding for pregnancy health care. So specifically, Howard suggested that this would well, this, for one, would cause an increase in births especially among those of limited resources as she phrased it and what she would hope to see is um an expansion of health care for the entire perinatal period and expanding it from two months postpartum to six

and uh some other increase for health care coverage and so forth obviously medicaid expansion that's a perennial goal of the Texas Democratic Party. And so she sees that as kind of an opportunity. Well, maybe that can happen now. Right. If Roe is overruled, that might be a good bargaining chip to expand that policy. Yeah, absolutely.

Well, thank you, Isaiah, for all your coverage of this issue and we'll continue to watch and monitor the implications for Texas. Bradley, let's move on from this row news and talk about some other stuff going on senator cruz pulled a procedural move yeah move against the department of energy tell us about that and what he got in return so senator cruz basically stonewalled a nominee specifically for assistant secretary to the Department of Energy that the DOE had been wanting through for a while. He put a legislative hold on it, just a maneuver that prevents a nominee from moving forward that any of the senators can do, can use. And so what he was trying to get in return was the approval of some, the approval of liquefied natural gas shipping operational permits.

Basically the ability for a facility to be built and operate in shipping liquefied natural gas elsewhere, mostly to other countries. And so there have been there are multiple of these facilities that are planned and that need approval from the Department of Energy throughout the South, multiple in Texas. There are a few in Louisiana. So he secured two permit approvals with this exchange, one of them in Texas, a Port Arthur facility, and that had been trying to get this

approval for years. And the Biden administration, because it is trying not to expand fossil fuel use, did not want to issue it. And so they were dragging their feet on it. But after this move, they relented and they approved it. And Cruz's justification for specifically focusing on this was now we can ship our natural gas to Europe in order to supplant the market from Russia for years. And this is an opportunity now that Russia is upsetting the apple carts and a lot of European countries are now either deliberately choosing not to buy Russian natural gas or doing so because it's not feasibly possible anymore. This is an opportunity for American product to supply natural gas to Europe and for Americans and Texans to profit from it so that was his reasoning there's a gap to fill basically yes yes and so he got it done and um

we'll see if he does anything similar there are many more proposals but um i could see him doing that uh for you for other nominations. But who knows? But it was a fun one to watch. Well, thank you, Bradley, for that. Daniel, we're going to go to you. You've been working on a long term piece kind of detailing, you know, which Texas members of the congressional delegation have voted most by proxy. So who from Texas has voted by proxy the most in Congress? So looking at the proxy votes this year, and even before that, she has the most is Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson.

So far in this year of 2022, there's been 141 votes, and she has voted by proxy 102 of those times. So a little bit over two thirds of the number of of votes this year she's voted by proxy. The next members who have voted by proxy the most since January would be Representative Henry Cuellar, who Hayden mentioned earlier has the competitive primary, who's voted 98 times by proxy. Then you have Representative Ann Taylor, who's voted 69 times by proxy. You have Representative Louie Gohmert, who's voted 62 times by proxy. And then Representative Lloyd Doggett is fifth with 55 times by proxy. And that's just looking at the votes this year. Last year, there were also some other members who voted by proxy quite a few times as well. But I won't go into detail here. Yeah, I'll go to the texan.news to read all about it.

Now, explain to us what proxy voting is has this always been a tool used by members of congress has been bipartisan what kind of what kind of background can you give us on the procedure itself proxy voting was one of those practices put in place at the beginning of the covet 19 pandemic actually it was a few months into the pandemic um while they were still debating the big massive trillion dollar bills that we wrote about um like the cares act and whatnot those were still going the big massive trillion dollar bills that we wrote about, like the CARES Act and whatnot. Those were still going through.

Members were going to Capitol Hill and voting on those in person. But then in May, as more and more health policies started being implemented, the House decided to implement this rule change, which basically allowed members to vote by proxy by designating another member to vote in their stead. So if they send a letter to the House saying, you know, I'm going to assign so-and-so to vote for me, then that person can go and cast a vote on their behalf. And so that's basically what's been going on since then. Members will submit a letter saying, I'm going to have so-and-so vote for me, and then they go and vote.

When this was first introduced, it was interesting because there was not a single Republican who actually voted for this rule change. They were unanimous in their opposition to it. They all said, this is not constitutional. There was even a lawsuit filed by the minority leader, Kevin McCarthy from California against another Californian speaker, Nancy Pelosi, trying to challenge this lawsuit on grounds that's not constitutional. I'll talk a little bit more about that later. But all that to say, members were very outraged by it. Even Representative Gohmert, who, like I mentioned earlier, is one of the members who's voted by proxy the most this year out of Texas, he went on the House floor the day this rule was being adopted and gave a very scathing speech against it. He was literally shouting on the floor saying that this is a bad idea.

To give you some of his comments, he said, quote, you can't pass a bill on this floor with proxies and have it upheld unless you change the Constitution, and this doesn't do it. Except imagine that in a more fiery tone yes that i won't shout into the mic and hurt the mic because that would be sad to the poor little mic yeah and to my ears yeah yeah i like that the mic got preference over me though that was no i would definitely not want to hurt your ear balls i had a little little slip earlier instead of ear drums I said ear balls which was yeah totally not the right word but it's fun it was eyeballs and ear drums is what it was

and I just couldn't remember which of my senses was hurt so I conflated them anyway um okay well talk to us about I mean um are there any Republican members that are still against it or just members at large who are against this practice? And also, is it basically they're on the floor. Is it another member that can vote for them? Who can press the button? Who can vote for them? Essentially, what happens is another member goes up there. So somebody's got to be in the chamber.

Yes, and it has to be another member so another member will go up and basically be recognized and say hey i'm so and so is not able to be here because of uh they're concerned about the physical illness and so i'm casting a vote in their stead and so then that's accepted the house clerk will then mark this down so they have a list of everybody who's voted by proxy on each vote they don't have a nice collective list that would have been very helpful if they just put it in one place where you can see when people vote by proxy but you can go in and see pdfs of each vote and how people voted by proxy and you see on the on the one hand you see people's who voted by proxy and then in parentheses you see

the member who's voted on their behalf. So you can you see both. So it's not like a staff member can walk up and be like, OK. So there is some security stuff. Now, there is I think there's some of the security concern about, you know, what goes on behind the scenes of like, you know, can a staff member for X representative who's voting by proxy tell the other representative? And then the representative is just like, OK, that's probably how they vote. And then there are some legitimate security concerns about that, that some members have pointed out. Now, it's interesting that, you know, you have members like Louie Gohmert and Van Taylor who haven't voted by proxy in the past, and now they're

on board with it. You have lots of representatives who have started doing it. I think the first Republican in Texas was Representative Pat Fallon to submit a letter saying that he was going to have assigned someone to vote by proxy back in at the beginning of 2021, which I think that was actually when he was going into Congress. And so you have a bunch of members from Republicans now voting by proxy. There's only been eight members from Texas who have not voted by proxy. And those members are representatives Jody Arrington, Kevin Brady, Michael Cloud, Jake Elsey, Lance Gooden, Chip Roy, Randy Weber, and Roger Williams. I will note, though, that even though some of those members have not voted by proxy,

some of them have actually helped other members vote by proxy. So they've been the ones who have been voting on another person's behalf. I think I saw Arrington's name on there, and I think LZ has voted by proxy for some or helped others vote by proxy, but they themselves have not done it. Now, going back to some of the opposition to this, I'd say one of the most, or probably the most outspoken person against this from Texas has been Representative Chip Roy. He has called this practice a, quote, legitimate constitutional question. He argues that the language throughout the Constitution, just the verbiage that is used when talking about the House of Representatives and having a quorum present and having people assembled. Words like that clearly indicate that, quote, members of Congress are supposed to be actually present in the House or Senate chamber.

So that is what Roy has argued. He actually went before the House Rules Committee, which had a hearing on this in March. And so he was arguing, saying, you know, we need to get rid of this rule. It's not, you know, we can have a debate about the merits of whether or not this should change. But in order for it to change, it needs to be a constitutional amendment is what he's saying. There's also been I didn't talk about this in my piece, but I'll note it on the podcast just because we have some time, extra time. Representative Veronica Escobar has also been kind of a talking point on this. She's argued in favor of having some form of proxy voting, but having it limited so that it's only in, you know, a specific sick leave type time.

And so whether her kind of proposal will go through in the future or whether they'll just get rid of it entirely, we'll see what happens after November or even before then. I don't know. There you go. Well, Daniel, thank you for that. And folks, definitely worth going and checking that piece out. All sorts of information compiled by Daniel. Bradley, you wrote about an election in liberty county um

being thrown out by a judge what happened so a judge threw out an election put succinctly um so it stems from the a um a commissioner's precinct election and one of the four in Liberty County, which is an exurb of Harris County, Houston. And the election between Craig McNair and Leon Wilson was decided by five votes. Very among the lowest margins that I've seen in a long time. But after some investigation, they found that voters, 22 at least, who should not have been in the precinct for that race, cast ballots in that race. And it stems from the redistricting. And they these voters used to be in precinct four, but no longer should have been after the lines were redrawn. So that was enough to throw the election into question for the judge, Michael Mays, who was a visiting judge from Montgomery County to that. He was brought in basically to ensure no conflict of interest between county officials there um but uh that tossed the election i spoke to the

a couple officials there um but they all pretty much agreed that this was the right decision. And now the two candidates will face again in the May 24th runoff. Wow. Just for a redo. What did county officials real quickly have to say about it? Like I said, they agreed. The county clerk told me that it was a few issues combined into creating this situation. Redistricting, obviously, but that was truncated because of how late census numbers were um the uh the secretary of state's voter registration

system is very outdated and very error prone and actually they're in the process of redoing it or choosing a different one and then the third one was the county's uh the employee that oversees the voter registration stuff in their elections administration got very sick in right when early voting started. So that all of that kind of combined to this mistake that 22 people voted in this race that they shouldn't have. They have since started cleaning the rolls for this race before the May 24th election. And we'll see if it's cleaned up for the redo. Absolutely. Thank you, Bradley.

Interesting story. Hayden, let's talk about the Disinformation Governance Board. What is it and what will its role be? If I tell you what it is, I'll have to kill you. The Disinformation Governance Board is a panel within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. And Secretary Alejandra Mayorkas of the Chinese government, as well as securing or seeking to prevent the spread of disinformation and misinformation prior to the 2022 midterms. Senator Cruz put out a statement on social media about the board,

linking it to Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter. Of course, there's been debate in recent weeks about freedom of speech, and many on the left are concerned that if conservatives like Elon Musk, and I think it's safe to call him a conservative at this point, begin purchasing social media platforms, then there will not be what they would characterize as adequate moderation of content and that there will be false information, for instance, about COVID-19 vaccines or that there will be lies about candidates prior to the general election. While Mayorkas has clarified the role of this board. He is describing it as a small working group and one that will focus on threats coming from outside the U.S. And he believes that the Department of Homeland

Security has a responsibility to address what he calls disinformation and make sure that it doesn't interfere with or harm the interest of the u.s yeah and this was essentially the thing we saw on twitter correct that was trending as what the what was it called the opponents of it were characterizing it as a ministry of truth yes so calling it orwellian and saying that it was um you know it was more or less uh going to be attacking american citizens right um is that is that a direct harry potter reference i think it is the ministry of truth isn't that that's from 1984 that's the 1984 reference but there also is um i haven't read which ministry is the harry potter ministry i don't remember the ministry of magic oh my actually is the ministry of magic yes it was just confusing 1984 and harry potter they're very similar books

in some way i'm sure they have words in them for instance they're both fiction the announcement of this board was not great very graceful. Secretary Mayorkas really sprung it on a committee in the middle of a congressional hearing. Congresswoman Lauren Underwood from Illinois had asked him questions about disinformation being targeted specifically toward African American and Hispanic Americans. And he responded, he rattled off a number of things that the department is doing. And he said, one of those things, really, he briefly mentioned it. We're setting up a panel, our board, to combat disinformation, something to that effect. And it created this dust-up where it was being described as Orwellian.

So Secretary Mayorkas went on a number of Sunday morning programs, and he promised that it would not target American citizens, that it would not monitor American citizens, and that it would respect the rights of freedom of speech. And he, in fact, described it as precisely the opposite of Orwellian. He proceeded to say that it would respect civil rights, and he contended that it is within the purview of government and that this board is just a continuation of efforts that's a new concept. A lot of people are saying that disinformation governance board is really just kind of a strange name for a government agency. So that's the stem of a lot of the criticism. And there are fears that this board will become a Frankenstein monster of sorts and will be misused. And while Mayorkas says it doesn't have any operational ability, in other words,

they can't subpoena people and do things like that, it still is concerning people that this is something that could get out of hand and could be misused in the future. Yeah. Well, thank you for breaking that down for us and kind of giving us a little bit of an update on where it stands and what it is. Bradley, you attended a state house debate out in Fredericksburg last Friday. Iiday man multiple state house hill country debates in the last few weeks here yeah give us a brief like there's an election going on yeah exactly just go ahead and tell us about it uh yeah so the race is between um ellen trots clare former austin city councilman and justin berry a current austin police officer who was the republican nominee in hd 47 in 2020 and so um the the race we've talked about it here before but the race has

been very heated very spicy yes yes um personal attacks uh with with abandon um and so i went to this and chronicled some of those and also some policy differences that they discussed. It was actually mostly policy. It was not mostly personal, but if you're interested in it, if you're a voter in that race, I recommend you give it a read. The form was put on by the Gillespie County young republicans and i thought they did a good job of moderating um but yeah they asked about all the the top issues and um you can see their answers there i love it thank you bradley daniel we've talked a little bit about elon musk buying twitter recently and by a little i mean a lot and so have some lawmakers here in texas what was one of the

latest things a house member had to say about this so the headline for this is that representative tan parker said he would roll out the red carpet for texas uh for twitter not for texas i guess you really don't need to roll out the red carpet for the state that you live in yeah that's a little maybe you could i don't know it'll be a lot of carpet to carpet texas russian nesting doll kind of situation, you know? Yes. But anyways, he was saying that Texas would definitely try to incentivize Twitter to move to move their headquarters to Texas.

Should Elon Musk decide to do that after he purchased the social media giant? So that's a broad general thing that he said. He didn't give any specific indication of what policies he would support, just that he would definitely try and urge Elon Musk to move Twitter to Texas. So let's talk about what has done previously. What could rolling out the red carpet potentially mean? Yeah. So if you've been following Elon Musk over the past few years, I think it really kind of began with the pandemic. Maybe a little bit before that, he had all the SpaceX stuff down in Boca Chica, which is down near Brownsville. So that was already there. But then in the past few years, he's also moved a lot of his other stuff, including

himself, to Texas. And some of the things that he's moved is he opened up a tesla facility uh here by austin and then he's also more quietly moved the boring company's headquarters to the austin area as well that hasn't gotten as much headlines as the the massive car factory that he built but um those are some of the things that he moved here. Now, he's gotten several different incentives from the state government to have his stuff here. Some of the taxpayer funding that he has received for his companies has been indirect, such as the Spaceport Trust Fund, which is basically the state government has this big pot of money that they put together to try and create spaceports in texas and so one of the ones that they do is down in cameron county this is not going directly to the company but rather to a spaceport development corporation that's a government-run entity in cameron county but this is something that is, you know, benefiting SpaceX.

Then you also have Tesla has received some money through some tax breaks from the local governments. Brad has written about the Chapter 312 and Chapter 313, which come from the county and the school boards.

I might have that backwards, but Chapter 313, the school boards is expiring at the end of the year, but it should, Chapter 312 will remain. And then you also have the Texas Enterprise Fund, which I believe SpaceX has gotten a little bit from that. That's also just grants from the state. I don't think Tesla has received any yet

that I've seen, but that's definitely something that could be at the table. Yeah. Something that, you know, critics say is corporate welfare and, you know, supporters say is economic development. Thank you, Daniel. Brad, one topic you've been following for some time now is the ESG movement in the business world. What development this week? What happened? So the Texas Public Policy Foundation discovered that the employee retirement system, the state's second largest pension system, voted by proxy for four proposals that would prohibit new financing for fossil fuel companies. The proposals were at the Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Wells Fargo. ERS owns stock in each of those companies, and therefore their beneficiaries, their pensioners, own a share,

or some shares, of these companies, and therefore they get a say in the shareholders' meetings when they propose these various policies. Each item failed because the bank's boards rejected them, but we're seeing an increasing movement by especially environmentalists to push these really anti-fossil fuel policies into business day-to-day business policy and it especially would impact the fossil fuel industry if you know they can't access financing to expand their operations so yeah absolutely so what's next how did this happen kind of give us a little bit of a rundown quick before we move on to the next topic well texas is currently investigating various companies that it has pension funds in for harboring these kinds of

boycott oil and gas policies the comptroller is currently compiling a list and once that list is compiled they will begin to pull the this pension money out of those companies. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, after this specific instance, put out a statement expressing outrage about it and saying that ERS had committed to fixing the issue specifically came from the service that ERS uses for its proxy voting, voting on behalf of them at these shareholder meetings. And they said that it was already something that they had identified to fix. Obviously, didn't fix it quick enough. But going forward, they said this will not happen again. But, of course, we shall see. And it won't just be policies like this.

There are going to continue to be efforts trying to chip away at this fossil fuel reliance that the United States and Texas has by these environmentalist groups. So we'll see how it develops. Certainly. And lots of mentions of voting by proxy today. Thank you, Bradley. certainly and lots of mentions of voting by proxy today thank you bradley um isaiah we're going to come to you to shout out an article from our kim roberts up in the dfw area about cinco de mayo which is today happy cinco de mayo everybody um let's go ahead and um or excuse me it's tomorrow what am i talking about well oh when the podcast comes out it will be tomorrow yeah so we'll have been yesterday wow today is cinco de mayo thursday

may 5th my computer says that it's may 4th right now which is your computer is oh my gosh there is it's may 5th there and it says may 4th you'll mark the paper calendar in my car i love oh well in your car yes but you all know i'm a planner type of gal that's true yeah that's true how's it working for you well anyway kim wrote this wonderful article dealing a little bit of the history of cinco de mayo what does cinco de mayo celebrate isaiah so it celebrates the mexican army defeating the french at puebla on may 5th 1862 now you might wonder, why is this celebrated by both Texas and Mexico? And the answer is that our countries are united by our distaste for the French. The figure at the head of this victory...

Also, were you just saying that Texas is the country? Well, yes. Okay, there you go. Yeah, so for those of y'all not from the Holy Land, Texas and Mexico were once just all Mexico. And the figure at the head of this victory is General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguin, who is actually related to Juan Seguin, hero of the Texas Revolution. And he was born near present-day Goliad during the time in which where we are now was part of Mexico before the Texas Revolution.

So he was born in present-day Texas, in other words, and so that's why both countries kind of lay claim to him because he was born as a Mexican citizen, like all people at that time in this neck of the woods. But interesting, there's a statue of Seguin that stands in Laredo that was donated by the Mexican government as kind of an ode to freedom. And that's kind of the lens through which people view this, this battle. You can go to Kim's article as to the results of the rest of the war.

Yeah. Mexico is a country. So take a wild guess. They speak Spanish. They're not French. But yeah, some interesting historical stuff. One of the cool things about the text, we publish history articles every once in a while on notable occasions so yeah absolutely well thank you isaiah and shout out kim for that wonderful piece daniel real fast i wanted to take

a second and say that um this saturday we have an election here in texas we will have some resources about our website to make sure that you can track and follow all of the latest on all sorts of different things. But what's on the ballot? What, you know, talk to us a little bit about what the elections page will entail. Yeah, so it's not too complicated this time. The election is not pages and pages long. If you go and vote, you'll probably see a few things on the ballot. There might be some local stuff that you'll be interested in.

Go look for that. The things that will definitely be on our website, we have the two constitutional amendments that Texas will be voting on. Brad did a piece on those. They're both related to property taxes. So there's those two amendments, which were really put forward by Senator Paul Betancourt. And then you also have one of the notable things for state offices down in the legislature. You have a special House District election for House District 147. That is Representative Garnett Coleman's seat as he is resigning early.

Before his term expires, there's going to be a special election to fill that seat. The two candidates in that race are also the two Democrats who are in a runoff together right now. So we'll see if the person who wins the special election will also go on to win the runoff. Or if someone drops out after the special election. I don't know how that will play out, but there is a special election for HD 147. Those are the big things. Fun stuff. We'll keep an eye on all of it.

Thank you, Daniel. Okay, folks. Let's talk about what is going on on twitter this week also and partway through the podcast annie brought in coffees um brad and i both asked her she offered to pick us up some and we both took her up on that offer it's not hitting me as fast as i wish i would have or i wish it would i can't speak today which is horrible when you're recording your own words being spoken i can't talk rough it is really rough especially as you're listening to yourself oh and not because i the headphones really make me more self-conscious of how i'm phrasing things yeah it's the worst i'm

gonna let you just think about that just wallow in myselfity yeah do you want the coffee to hit you you could just throw it up in the air and stand underneath it oh my gosh i want to say folks daniel had been um inactive on instagram for many many months years and now he has been more active on instagram on his stories and so after i leave work and i'm like i have gotten my share of daniel puns and squirrel hate for the day i'll be scrolling through my friend's instagram stories and i see more of it because he's starting to post more stories of him talking about squirrels about puns okay there are the vacuums suck one like as soon as he got back from his road trip i can't escape it now it's absolutely ridiculous i mean you could just like not click on the story

here's the thing daniel one i care about what's going on in your life and two if you click a name and you just start scrolling through eventually you get to people's who you didn't see in the lineup at first. Sure. See, I think, and the reason why I'm doing this is to kind of prove the point to myself. People always say that they hate puns and they're like, oh, that's just so stupid. And they roll their eyes. They love it.

But Daniel, you take it to the next level. Okay, we're not going to get into this. We've gotten into this so many times. Let's talk about Twitter. Daniel, why don't you start out? What did you find this week that was notable to you? Well, I figured we haven't talked about Elon Musk enough. Actually, you know how I actually determined to pull up this tweet?

Hayden was in here beforehand talking about the tweets to pull up. I'm like, oh, shoot. I didn't look up a tweet. So I'm like, you know what I can do? I'm just going to go to Elon Musk and find something that's interesting because he always has something to pull. I'm like, oh shoot, I didn't look up a tweet. So I'm like, you know what I could do? I'm just going to go to Elon Musk and find something that's interesting because he always has something to say, especially now that he owns Twitter or is in the process of purchasing it. So I decided to, I found one that is really interesting that kind of gives an indication of where Twitter might be going as a company as far as business practices go.

First, he tweeted something a little bit strange and vague. He said, ultimately, the downfall of the Freemasons was giving away their stone-cutting services for nothing. It's just kind of bizarre. It also seems like a Dark Knight reference, potentially. Way to go. When the Joker is like, if you're good at something, never do it for free. No. when the joker is like if you're good at something never do it for free no anyways um he tweets this out and there's like a long space between his next tweet and that tweet so i'm just

like what in the world does this like what is he going to do is he going to start charging people on twitter to use twitter or something um and then his next tweet answers my question he says twitter will always be free for casual users but maybe a slight cost for commercial slash government users so that's

just an interesting concept that he might start charging for I don't know like business profiles or something yeah

so that would be fascinating very fascinating they were right about paper tweet we should have listened to him you know paper tweet

oh pay per tweet oh pay per yeah I thought you were saying like a paper tweet. We should have listened to him. Paper tweet? Oh, paper tweet. Oh, paper. Yeah. I thought you were saying like a paper tweet. I'm like, is this like a bullshit? Isaiah has a paper calendar in his car. So, you know, we never know. Speaking of Isaiah, what did you find on Twitter?

Speaking of Isaiah. Okay. So I'm going to present you specifically with a choice. Brad told something pretty funny, but I also have a more serious political one about something Briscoe Cain said. Let's go with Brad's first. I can do both of them? Yeah.

Okay. All right. So Brad, okay, I'm pulling it up. Hold on. Wait. Wow, that was so anti-clonic. There's this account called Super 70 Sports that posts some funny stuff. Oh, it's great.

Yeah. So much good stuff. They said, man, Goliath really crapped the bed against David, didn't he? You got to win that one. And it's just an artist rendering of the David versus Goliath bout. And so Brad quotes with that one and said, greatest collapses in history. Quote, quote. Falcons fumbling a 28-3 Super Bowl lead.

Indians blowing a 3-1 series lead. Japanese botching a 12-8 battleship lead from Pearl Harbor to Midway. And Goliath bungling a two times Hyde advantage. Which made me laugh aloud.

It should have gotten more attention than it did. I'm glad you liked it, say. You're the only person. Well, there are two likes. There are two likes. One of the other ones

related to you. Related to me? That was some mutual. Oh, my cousin. He's not related to me at all. Oh, it's so funny. I was just at the Pacific War Museum out in Fredericksburg, and so that's where I got the battleship one.

That was on top of mind. If y'all haven't gotten Go, it's the most incredible. It's so cool. It's so awesome. But I cannot believe, I actually thought I got more likes than that. Nope. There, I'll give you a pity like. But I laughed a second time when I just read the verbs in order,

which are fumbling, blowing, botching, and bungling, which are a funny collection of verbs. That made me laugh. That's it. Briscoe Cain's tweet, there was somebody that floated the idea That made me laugh. It's only a theory The relevant portion for our purposes here Is that Briscoe Cain One of his points of evidence was the paper That this lady wrote in college And it regarded abortion

So Briscoe Cain Quoted with that And said, kid you not, my paper was on Civil causes of action against abortionists The paper was not entertained Excuse me, the professor was not entertained That the goal of my paper was to drive abortionists out of business through litigation i got a c dot dot dot fast forward 10 years so for one i thought i guess he was older but um i guess he was in law school

10 years ago it seems pretty recent but that's not the important thing the important thing is um his civil causes of action idea in a paper got a crappy grade. And now it's state law in Texas, which is interesting. That like these ideas move from a purely academic sphere into actionable law in such a short span of time in Texas. Absolutely. Well, thank you, Zach. That's good stuff. Hayden, let's go to you.

What did you find this week that um caught your eye i always love the mic every time someone moves this microphone it sounds like a duck being injured so um mine is about also the scotOTUS draft being released. Megyn Kelly is known for her genuine reactions to things. Her producer, Steve Krakauer, was on the panel when the Texan had its Babylon Bee event, which is hard to believe was nearly two years ago now. But she stated quote the pathetic spinalist leak of a draft scotus opinion has the feel of something a sad little woke 20 something year old would do the kind of person who thinks their personal agenda is quote more important whoever did it should lose their law license end quote i think there's been a lot of criticism of the whoever leaked draft, but that's probably the strongest one I've seen.

And Isaiah went over some of the different theories for why it was leaked. But it will be interesting to see if the identity of this person is made known once they are found out, which I imagine that eventually this person will be identified and um if there will be any real consequences or if it will mainly be public outcry absolutely well thank you hayden okay bradley i think you were last up yeah so mine is about a um the vice chair of the republican Party, Kat Parks, she announced that she's not seeking re-election as Texas GOP vice chair. The convention is next month. So that opens the door for a bevy of candidates to vie for this position. But I believe she, this was her one kind of term that she served.

She was, her one kind of term that she served she was um oddly enough uh kind of treated as a ticket with alan west when he was running for texas gop chair um even though those two butted heads quite a bit um but she was the challenger to i don't know if the that was the current the incumbent gop vice chair or or what but whoever she beat was kind of aligned with dickie former chairman james dickie at least in the perception of this election and so cat parks said at the tfrw board meeting over the weekend it's been fun uh i'm saying she won't run again stay tuned so so potentially running for anything else yeah maybe possibly i think um that is exactly what it means but who knows how far down the road and what office but i have a feeling we haven't seen

the last of cat parks what's causing me to raise my little eyebrows yeah so that's my that's my thing she is literally raising her eyebrows up and down repeatedly just i felt like that needed to be known just spicy stuff you know you never know what will happen did you raise your eyebrows at any tweets of your own man well we're out of time we're out of time wow yeah i'm so sorry about it but i can't share my delightful finds with the world yeah i will say i'm about to fly to arizona tonight for my brother's air force commissioning and i will be at the airport and i will be listening to kendrick lamar in my headphones as i stroll through the airport with purpose i mentioned this because we've talked about this before um because there's no better uh purpose walking music than kendrick lamar i don't know i feel like the soundtrack to the born identity is pretty good

i'm probably the only person that thinks daniel is a soundtrack kind of guy that's very true okay well daniel and brad y'all are about to head to the Capitol for a, um, Beto presser, which will be very interesting. He's responding to the row stuff, right? Isn't that what it's for? Okay.

Well, let's get you guys off the pod. Get you guys over to the Capitol folks. Thank you for listening and we will catch you next week. Thank you all so much for listening. If you've been enjoying our podcast, it would be awesome. If you would review us on iTunes and if there's a guest you'd love to hear on our show, give us a shout on Twitter. Tweet at The Texan News. We're so proud

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