The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - May 9, 2025

Episode Date: May 9, 2025

Show off your Lone Star spirit with a free "Remember the Alamo" hat with an annual subscription to The Texan: https://thetexan.news/subscribe/Learn more about the Data Center Coalition at: https://www.centerofyourdigitalworld.org/texasThe 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.Gov. Abbott Signs Texas' 'Universal' School Choice Bill Into LawTexas House and Senate Strike Property Tax Deal on Homestead, Business Exemptions224 'Medically Necessary' Abortions Reported in Texas Since Dobbs, Data Scope Remains DisputedTexas Lawmakers Weigh Border Security, Illegal Immigration Bills in Last Month of SessionPower Grid, Data Centers Bill Awaits Testimony in Texas House Committee HearingTexas Ports, Retailers Impacted by Trump's Global TariffsPaxton Seeks to Depose Austin ISD Leadership Following CRT Curriculum AllegationsTexas Arrests Six in Frio County for Election Tampering ChargesTexans Weigh in on Trump’s Job in Office, Texas Republican Approval RatingsResidents in Cameron County Vote to Incorporate SpaceX City of 'Starbase, Texas'Self-Driving Semi-Truck Company Launches Operations in Texas

Howdy folks, Mackenzie here with Brad Cameron and Mary Elise on another edition of the Weekly Roundup. We're recording early, getting over to the floor a lot to be keeping track of this week and really this is like maybe the second time I've seen you all week. Yeah, I pretty much just show up to the office and then take off for the house. Yeah, she's over there all the time, which is awesome. Which is great. Cameron's keeping us company.

Although you're over at the time, which is fun, which is great. Cameron's keeping us company. Although you're over at the Capitol, plenty yourself. Yeah. I kind of hold down the fort, get out all the quick hits we need to keep the, these two, uh, uh, able to cover all the different bills that are shuffling through the house right now. So it's a team effort. Sessions kind of lopsided in that way. Where the Senate front loads a lot of the big items and the house is, you know, working its way

through the process throughout, but now there are deadlines that they're faced up against. So it kind of does feel a little lopsided in terms of House and Senate coverage. Bradley, how are you doing? Good. Today's going to be quite a day on the floor. The colloquially China land bill will be up. I'm sure that is going to be quite a long debate. To say the least. And I'm curious to see who shows up in the gallery. Because when they had committee hearings for it,

it was stacked with testimonies. I mean, that might not necessarily reflect the amount of people in the gallery, but I'm curious. There'll be protests. It's always interesting to see how a bill like that often has more opposition in attendance than support, even though it has a lot of support maybe, you know, statewide or in Republican party politics, whatever it may be. Right. Well, that's, that's what any sort of issue you're going to see people who are opposed to anything, they're going to want to show up and try and voice

their opinion on something, those who support it, they don't need to tell them to pass it because the bill is already proposed so it can pass, you know, they don't propose a bill so it doesn't pass. Right. It feels more urgent. It feels more urgent if something has the potential to pass as opposed to supporting it. Well I was shown numbers from James Frank. He showed me this graph of the testimony on the school choice bill, I think it was HP3, and in the House committee.

So vast majority of the people that testified were against the bill. Then he broke it up between the people who testified from Austin and the people who were from outside of Austin who testified. And of the people in Austin, 90%, 85, 90% were against the bill. And of the people that were from outside of Austin, it was closer to 50-50. It was like 56% against the bill, 44% for. Well that's interesting. So you know the there's especially on those

hot-button issues Austin is still Austin. Right. Right. And so it makes a lot of sense that even though if you look at the whole totality it looks like this is very much against the Texas populace is very much against this law. Once you break it out further, where these members are actually from outside of the city, you know, the people they actually represent, it's a lot different. And that doesn't mean that, I mean, it's still 56% opposed, right? Yeah. That goes to what you were saying, but people who dislike a bill are more likely to show up and testify

against it, right? Well, and with the Capitol being located in Austin, and Austin as a city being more on the left side of the political spectrum, it's much easier for residents of Austin to show up to the Capitol to provide opposition testimony to a Republican-held legislature, right? So if there's conservative legislation that's proposed in a liberal city and the individuals who live in that city are going to hold those similar liberal views and it's just more convenient for them to come testify in opposition to those. Well the other factor for on something like education is that all the associations that are one side or the other of this, they're all located in Austin. So like these are professional lobbyists coming and testifying and they're representing their constituents, which are you know for let's say Tasbee or the school boards, right?

Or at least the school boards that are members of their organization. But yeah, it's very different between those people Or at least the school boards that pay that are members of their organization but Yeah, it's very different between those people who come and testify in Austin versus the ones who are from outside for sure Absolutely, the lobby apparatus is located in Austin as it should be that's where they do their job And that's where it makes the most sense for them to be located Well, let's talk about school choice Cameron speaking of which governor Abbott signed school choice ESAs into law last weekend. Tell us about it. Yeah, it was a huge event at the governor's mansion. Brad joined me at that signing. There was nearly 1400 people there. So very big event because this has been a big issue for Abbott over the course

of the past three, four... That's putting it lately. Yeah, probably the biggest issue for... Not probably, it's been the biggest issue. The biggest issue for Governor Greg Abbott. So you know he spent millions of dollars campaigning for pro-school choice candidates in the last election and it paid off. You know, we have written extensively about the journey of school choice over this past year through both chambers of the legislature, all the debates back and forth, changes in committees, all the testimony've here at the Texan We've covered it all but it was the culmination of all that that we saw over the weekend

Abbott was joined by Dan Patrick. He was joined by Justin Burroughs He was joined by John Cornyn very interestingly, you know who John Cornyn was standing very close to who Angela Paxton Interesting. I don't think that was a by design Well, it kind of Caught us by surprise that Cornyn was there we weren't expecting that because it wasn't on the Announcement or anything like that. He just sort of popped up. They're like, oh hey, and obviously he hasn't really had a hand in this Yes, federal official. It's's not yeah it's not a federal issue so senator Paxton was there but attorney general Paxton was

he there interesting at least I didn't see him yeah you didn't see him but yeah it was a big event all the big names were there like I just mentioned and people might understand now that the school choice issue in the legislature just getting across the finish line that's been accomplished. What happens next is how school choice ESAs look in the implementation phase now. And so once it starts getting rolled out, there will be continual updates, I'm sure, you know, successes and failures of the program. And who implements it, Cameron? The Texas Comptroller manages. That's interesting.

Tell us why it's interesting. I was asking you, why is it interesting, Cameron? You literally asked him the question, Cameron answered it, and he asked you and back. Is it because Glenn Hager is leaving and there's going to be a new cop controller? Yeah, that would be why. Okay. Lord of the Coffins. Fine, I'll talk about it. We have two people running for the seat, but you'll also have someone appointed in the

meantime, once Hager's done in June. And it'll either be a holdover or it'll be someone who has designs to run for the office. And there's a lot of talk about that being Kelly Hancock. That's not official and who knows what the governor's thinking on this but you know the other route he could go is just someone who like John Scott who just kind of is his habits fix it. It's kind of like the perennial appointee. Yeah yeah I've not really heard John Scott's name pointed to point to in this, but he is kind of the guy to go and just run things for the governor on a short term basis. But

that's the other route you go and just let all the other people fight it out in the primary. See, that's important context that I was not thinking about. So I'm glad you answered that for me. context that I was not thinking about. So I'm glad you answered that for me. Mary-Liess and I always whenever you guys say things we just look at each other like oh my gosh. But just for people to understand a little bit here the ESA program is estimated to cover 100,000 students in the 2026-2027 biennium. Every biennium, the legislature is

going to have to take up the school choice issue again for allocating funds to the program. So we'll see another discussion about this in another two years. But right now, it's just a big win for Abbott, as we mentioned at the top of this segment, this is something that has been the most important issue for him,

so he sorta rolled out the red carpet for everything. Did you mention who else was in attendance? Jeff Yass. Yes. Yass. Oh gosh. Well, and that's important because there was millions, tens of millions of dollars. I think 12 million dollars given to Abbott.

Yeah. And then another handful of million put into the AFC Victory Fund. Yeah, so, and that was a big issue prior to the bill passing is those on the pro public school side were saying that the issue was being driven by these billionaires across the country and it wasn't really a grassroots issue but you know those arguments now are kind of know that the bill was passed so we'll see what happens once the implementation occurs. And with all the factors that Brad brought up with the Texas Comptroller, having someone new in that position, how that will be handled, it'll be interesting to see.

You guys were outside for a long time on that day. Yeah, I know. How'd you guys fare? I came out very poorly. What do you mean, Bradley? Well, as you know, I'm follicly challenged, but I'm not yet used to that life. And so I didn't, I did not think to put sunscreen on the top of my head. Um, I looked like I went through a wood chipper.

I woke up in the last week I've woken up to many funny texts from Brad. And Monday was one of them. I think it was. Should I read this? It's just very I mean, it's gonna take a while to score. But basically, I woke up and Brad says, I mean, it's gonna take a while to score, but basically I woke up and Brad says, I got really sunburned on my head on Saturday. I need to work from home today. Obviously if a sunburn is requiring you to work from home, that elicits concern. So he went into a little bit more detail and I was like, oh gosh, this sounds horrible. but I think you've recovered.

You're back at it. You're in the office. You've been at the Capitol the last few days. So, you know, I'm sure getting quite the looks, but I would like to note that I showed up to work on Monday with a sunburn and it was pretty bad. Are you going to become a hat guy? Like at work hat guy? Yeah, like a fancy hat.

You can wear like a cowboy hat on the house floor. Oh, cowboy hat would totally be appropriate. There are many who do that. Yeah, but I've seen a few that are not adhering to that this week. Thanks for your advice. Yeah, no problem. And make sure to put it in the trash bin. You should also take her advice

and that she uh you know battled through her own sunburn and showed up to work. We brushed over that and I just wanted to give that um thank you. Yeah it's proper. Appreciate it. You're welcome. Uh well Cameron thank you for your coverage there. Welcome. Bradley let's come to you. The Texas House and Senate struck a partial deer deal. A deer? Speaking Past, well we can talk about later, but there was a Bill Past related to shooting deer out of helicopters. Yes, odd ads. Well they were like sheep weren't they? Oh yeah according to you a deer sheep. Have you guys ever had odd ad? No. Well we should talk. Well, we should talk about this. We should talk about this.

I've had Audad meatballs at a restaurant here in Austin. It's a really cool restaurant. It's called Die-Doo. And they were very gamey. But it was fun. And this, but this, like it's a very good restaurant. They do a great job with it, but it's a lot of exotic meats. It's a really fun spot to go to if you ever want to try something that's very Texas-y, some interesting game. But the only reason I knew what that animal was is

because I'd gone to that restaurant and eaten odd dad meatballs before. Odd dad meatballs. Yeah. You never know. But anyway, there's a bill. A property tax deal. To allow you. Oh. There's a bill to allow you to shoot these things. I thought we were going back shoot these things from helicopters. Yes.

And I think West Ferdale had the best line where he said, yeah, anything that allows me to shoot more animals from a helicopter, I'm for. So Texas. So Texas. Was that, is that a Morales bill as well? I think that was. Yeah. Yeah.

She was really proud of it. Yeah. He was really proud of it. Everyone kind of had a smile on their face. I'm sure there were plenty opposed, but there were certainly a lot of folks there who were just having a really good time. Only one person voted against it. Only one person?

Who was it? Pearson. That had to have been a mix up. Yeah, maybe that was on accident. Or she might have been joking. Yeah, we should go back and look at the record and see if she changed her vote in the journal if there's a machine Malfunction or a button issue or something

Very interesting. Okay, Bradley. Yes property tax deal yeah, so we are not going as I've been as I've been saying for a while we are not going to have a redux of the 2023 break down. And there are many reasons for that. First of all, the Lieutenant Governor and the Speaker do not hate each other. Oh. With a burning passion of a thousand suns, at least so far.

But they are operating from, on the property tax stuff, from a closer set of our line of arguments. The Senate has not budged. They're still very pro homestead exemption, a reduction on the taxable value on your home. They have wanted to increase that, the standard one, by $40,000. The House in their first tranche was emphasizing an increase in the business personal property tax exemption, that is the amount of money and value on which you pay taxes of items related to conducting

the business. So like inventory, if you're a McDonald's, you know, the fry cooker, the grill, that all counts towards taxable value. And so the House stayed there. So in 2023, they were generally in the same spot, conceptually, where the Senate wanted to emphasize the homeowner, and the Senate wanted to emphasize the homeowner and the house wanted to emphasize the business, specifically small businesses. Now here they're not as far apart. The house is going to move on a homestead exemption. The Senate's gonna move on compression but also the strategy that the house outlined for the business personal property tax. The final compromise they have come to on this segment because they have not

figured out compression yet. The amount of compression they're going to levy. But the final deal here that was struck this week, $840,000 standard homestead exemption. That's a $40,000 increase from the current, $825,000 business personal property tax exemption. That's an increase from $2,500, which is almost nothing. And then in the middle, they both have, this is what Dan Patrick announced a couple, a few weeks ago, a $60,000 elderly and disabled homestead exemption, that's a $50,000 increase.

So for an elderly and disabled home owner that's someone over the age of 65 or they're disabled, that makes a $200,000 homestead exemption. Caveat all this with if appraisals go up, that makes this worth less and less, right? go up that makes this worth less and less right but they have reached a deal and I don't see this causing any special sessions like we saw last time around I think they'll come to an agreement at some point on compression and that'll be that. As with all these types of bills what's you know the important most important part is what this means for taxpayers.

What does this look like? Well, for a business owner, let's take that one first, specifically a small business owner, a $122,000 increase in their exemption is pretty significant, I'd say. And for a large corporation, that means nothing. The amount of stuff, inventory and

stuff that they would have to write off on this just far exceeds that amount. But for a small business owner that's significant. For an over 65 homeowner this is pretty significant too. And the argument from the Senate is that this could actually bring that this coupled with compression could actually bring the their bills down to zero. And there are also these classification of homeowner their tax bill is frozen at the at the amounts that they had when they first hit that over 65 exemption. So it's not allowed to go up and they keep putting downward pressure on it, it means eventually it will reach zero, right, if they keep doing that. So very significant for them.

A $40,000 increase to the standard homestead exemption is significant. It also depends on your individual home and what your value at is now and what it will be next year and the year after that during this biennium. So it all varies, but it's pretty significant. Yeah. Can I just ask one question? Is there a reason why, um, there's this bracketing for the elderly and disabled. I feel like there's been a lot of conversation over the past few years about trying to help young people purchase homes. Is there a reason, Dan Patrick, in the Senate with this bracketing, like I mentioned, for elderly and disabled? What was the reason for that? Well, the general argument is that a lot of these people

are on fixed incomes, right? Social Security, retirement, they're not making money and they're not increasing their amount of money coming in. And so if we want to incentivize them to keep their homes, just like we want to incentivize a young person, young family to be able to purchase a home in the first place, then we need to give them more tax cuts basically. Whereas the difference between those two categories

of people is the young family, the earning power is increasing. Right. Or at least conceivably increasing, it depends on who you're talking about, right? But the counter argument is when you do this and you take a bunch of... we see this with with the the Housing Finance Corporation fight that Holly's covered a lot. The concept is generally the same. When you take more taxpayers out of the mix, take more taxable value off the rolls that spreads out, socializes in the non-pejorative sense of the term, the cost to everyone, all the other taxpayers and a lot of those taxpayers are businesses, you know. So when you emphasize the Homestead Exemption, Paul Bittencourt likes to talk a lot

about how one billion dollars in a Homestead Exemption, towards a Homestead Exemption increase, goes a lot further than one billion dollars in a homestead exemption towards a homestead exemption increase goes a lot further Than a billion dollars in compression, which is just lowering the rates across the board but the reason that it is the case is because there's fewer taxpayers that fit that and So it's more concentrated in that smaller group of people Whereas if you throw a billion dollars towards compression it spread out over the entire tax base Which is also the reason the argument for a compression because it's more fair. It's all about who you're wanting to prioritize in this, right? And the Senate has emphasized that they want to prioritize homeownership. It was a very legit argument for that, right? The House

traditionally has not been as enthusiastic about that, but they're on board with this because they got their business personal one that they wanted. We saw this fight in 23. It got lost in the shuffle of the Phelan versus Patrick feud, but at root, the arguments were the same. The people they wanted to prioritize were the same, and actually with the appraisal cap that the house wanted, if you looked at who testified for which one, the large businesses testified against the appraisal cap, but who testified for the small businesses.

And that is who at root that the house is trying to prioritize here. They'll get a lot of crap about wanting to help big corporations. That's really not what they're trying to emphasize here. The big corporations just love compression across the board because that's the one that actually includes them more than anything else, right? So yeah, all this property tax stuff is all,

it's all a question of who you're wanting to emphasize in whatever amount of money that you are allotting towards this. And in a perfect world, both Republican controlled chambers would want to do both of these things. It really just comes down to Azure as you're saying the emphasis placed on which plan gets more a bigger piece of the pie. Right. Bradley, thank you. Mary Lee is coming to you.

Texas's health and human services Commission released its latest data on the number of medically necessary, considered medically necessary abortions performed in Texas. Give us the details. Yeah, so the Texas HHSC, they released this data about monthly. So they released the data that goes up to December 2024, a couple of days ago. And it showed that there's been about, it's what would be exact 6.2 abortions per month in the 30 months following the reversal of Ruby Wade that have been performed in Texas under Texas's medically necessary exception.

And so just to scoot back a little bit and talk about Texas abortion laws. So there's the Human Life Protection Act, which was signed into law by Governor Abbott in June 2021. And it became effective 30 days after Roe v. Wade was reversed. And the Dobbs v. Jackson case. And essentially, as we know,

the bill prohibits selective abortion of a preborn child from the moment of conception forward. But this is the exact definition of what these abortions we're referencing fall under. These are exceptions. So in the case of a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or rising from a pregnancy that places the female at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless the abortion is performed or induced. So this is definitely a hot topic right now because we're seeing a lot of legislation

or seeing that some of the most talked about legislation has to do with clarifying the state's abortion laws. So it's interesting to see these numbers and it's the report outlined 224 abortions that were performed under this category. And from what they reported, there's been no repercussions, no legal repercussions for the providers or for the women. And so it's interesting data to take into account considering that right now we're working to clarify the state's abortion laws.

So I spoke to a few different pro-life groups to see if this kind of affects their perception of our legislation, like the Life of the Mother Act, which is Senate Bill 31, which clarifies the state's abortion laws. And something that, first of all, that the groups all seem to kind of agree on was that this report from the HHSC, well, it's helpful. It's kind of missing the bigger picture, they say. It's not taking into account the abortions that are happening

as a result of chemical abortion pills, which is another piece of legislation that we'll have a piece out on that's working its way through the legislature that would crack down on the distribution of chemical abortion pills. So they said, well, it's missing that aspect. And then they also talked about, you know, what if they're self-managed abortions that are happening here? That's not accounted into this 224 abortion lists where you they're just saying, you know know it's not covering all of the abortions that are happening in Texas um but they said still the numbers are helpful and they also noted that they um while there haven't been repercussions for physicians and

from others yet they have heard from folks from medical associations and other institutions that are saying we need clarification on the abortion laws, which is why we're dealing with SB 31 right now. And they said this data might not reflect the fact that these health care providers are getting into legal trouble after performing these medically necessary abortions. They said they've still requested it and they also noted one aspect of the Life of the Mother Act clarifying the abortion laws is that it has continuing medical education and continuing legal education so that our lawyers and our doctors are educated on the abortion laws.

And so this, you know, they still wanted that because it's possible this data is missing out on some further context. There's also, it's worth noting that from August 2022, which is when Texas's trigger law went into effect, to December 2024, which is what this data goes up to, there have been no elective abortions performed. This is according to the induced termination of pregnancy data from the Texas HHSC. And so we have more numbers woven into the piece, but that's a general overview there. Yeah, absolutely. Definitely worth checking out Mary-Liz's piece of the Texan.News. Yeah. Cameron, coming to you. We're nearing the end of session. And I think before session started,

I constantly and multiple of us were talking about how border related legislation was going to be top of the list in terms of what we were going to be watching for. Where are we at with border related bills that are either set to be debated, that have passed? Where are we at in the legislature on border issues? Yeah, well, this was a big point of conversation prior to the November 5th election, because it was still up in the air. There was lots of issues occurring at the southern border with illegal immigration, border security

under the Biden administration. But since Donald Trump was elected, things have quieted down quite a bit at the southern border. Um, I need to, I've detailed some of these dramatic drops in border crossing numbers before Trump gave an interview to NBC news, uh, just the other day talking about how he said, quote, we have the best border in the history of our country. Well, some of those numbers, um, back up his statement there. Um, I detail those and other pieces, but what we're

talking about here is what's happening actually in the Texas legislature and there's been a number of bills that have been proposed that are still awaiting to find the endpoint in this legislative process. A couple of examples are Senate Bill 36. For people to understand, the Senate bills, when they have these low numbers, that means they are priority pieces of legislation. And this is one of those. And it would create a Homeland Security Division within the Texas Department of Public Safety. And that bill is currently pending in a House committee.

There's also SB 17, like we mentioned earlier in the podcast, would impose restrictions on the purchase or acquisition of real estate properties by certain foreign individuals, organizations, and government entities associated with quote, designated countries that pose national security risks. I've written a number of pieces because there's been a lot of changes to that legislation over the past few weeks going through different committees. So if people are interested in checking out the details of that, I encourage them to go read up on SB17 on the Texan.News. Switching over to the House, there's some similar initiatives like HB17, which is sort of the House companion to SB 17. But back in the Senate, there's actually SB 8, which would mandate that sheriffs and counties with populations over 100,000 enter into agreements with ICE

to enforce immigration law. And that bill is scheduled to be placed on a house calendar, so it can be debated. There's also a number of other house bills, HB 626, HB 674, HB 908. All of these have to do with different agreements that state law enforcement would enter into with federal law enforcement and for this reason to help or essentially allow federal authorities to make arrests for felony offenses, increasing penalties for evading law enforcement and improving the processes of reporting and recovering missing children, which is another big issue that we've covered here at the Texan. So another interesting wrinkle to the border and immigration discussion is what was what has been proposed in the biennium budget

6.5 billion in border security funding for multiple state agencies, as well as funding for border wall maintenance and grants for local border security. And this is interesting for the fact that during the Biden administration, Governor Greg Abbott and the Texas legislature, they continued to allocate money to border wall construction. And Abbott has since asked for reimbursement for that border wall construction. And we don't really have an update yet. I know you mentioned something in your newsletter. Yeah, I was going to say there's a little section in there in the newsletter because a group of Texas Congress members sent a joint letter to one of the committees requesting that it be included, and I think they asked for $11.1 billion in reimbursements.

So we'll see what comes to that. That would be a big chunk of money for the state there. But going back to what this segment's all about, still lots of runway left for many of these border and immigration related issues. And they're going to have to sprint here in the last, how many days left do they have? 25. 25 days. You know, they're going to have to sprint here in the last, uh, how many days left do they have? 25, 25 days. So, uh, there's going to be a mad dash to get some of these across the finish line, but, uh, it'll be fun to watch for the, uh, tech

sludge junkies out there who watch committee hearings and, uh, floor debates, uh, a lot of these bills will, uh, produce some interesting conversations. Absolutely. And we are a week away from the deadline in the House that everyone tends to stay up till midnight to watch. And by everyone I mean the sick in the head like me. But it will be a fun day where certainly not fun for some legislators whose bills are not passed by that midnight deadline, but always a spectacle to watch, you know, to kind of see what's placed on the calendar. There are certain basically there's a deadline in the house, we'll get to it next week at

midnight. Any new house bill that's not already passed that chamber is dead on arrival, right? They cannot be moved through the process anymore. And what's fun is you see where bills are placed on the calendar. And sometimes members are racing to get to a certain bill because they want to ensure it passes. Whereas maybe members of the opposite party are trying to chub or delay as long as possible to ensure that those bills do not pass. You kind of have this and there's negotiation happening behind the scenes or members saying, hey, I'll give you this if you give me this. Make sure we get to my bill and I won't chub anymore. It's so interesting. And that's one week from today, right? One week from today. The

chubbing has already begun. So the house, I think they actually finished the whole calendar yesterday, but the previous few days the house had not reached the end and they had called it quits early. Early I mean like 8 o'clock, 9 o'clock, right? And points of order like one day was it Tuesday we saw six points of order called. Now they're simultaneously the Democrats are trying to kill whatever bills their point of ordering but it wasn't just them doing it. But they're also wasting time to prevent a lot of progress to be done. More bills get through because the house was stacking calendar on top of

calendar. And that just makes for a really long calendar the next day. So it just rolls over, right? Like to explain that, that rolls over. So the more you delay or if you don't get to certain bills, it just makes the calendar for the next day much longer. Yep. So I'm sure that'll continue until we hit the midnight deadline. Oh, it's so fun. I'm curious to see what the blocker bill is. The one that Democrats try and kill and prevent from passing via the midnight deadline. In 23 it was

the Leach bill, representative Jeff Leach, requiring insurance companies to pay for detransition services if they covered gender modification services. And that got killed at the deadline, I believe. And that was the one that Democrats were targeting. And they killed it, they got it. They got it. It'll be fun. Well, we'll talk more about that next week.

Okay, Bradley, coming to you, the Senate's priority power grid bill had some movement this week. Tell us about it. So Senate Bill 6 is the Senate's top grid priority. It is a large electricity load bill. We see huge influx of these data centers that come with it, a lot of power generation need, but also water, water need.

That's just straining the state's resources. And they passed out a committee or out of the Senate. It's now, it was heard in the House State Affairs Committee last night, Wednesday night. It was pretty straightforward hearing. There wasn't a lot. I was in the JCJ hearing, but this one didn't last very long. There's a lot of internal fighting in the industry over whether they like it or not. The data center guys don't like it or don't like most of it because it places more regulations

on them. Generally, the outlines of the bill are requiring these data centers to disclose both their intention to come located in a certain spot. And if they're planning on having any behind the meter generation which is like on-site generation that they use themselves they pay for themselves it's not put through the general grid system they're not pulling from the grid also proving to the state they are financially committed to the proposed project and will not just say oh yeah we're looking here here here across the country we'll come here Texas oh wait yeah, we're looking here, here, here, across the country. We'll come here, Texas.

Oh, wait, just kidding. We're going to go somewhere else because we've got a better deal. And then paying upfront interconnection fee to the state so the cost isn't uplifted to the rate payers. So it's all fairly weedy, complicated. But generally, the idea is the state needs to be able to be better prepared for these

large electricity loads that are coming in. And data centers are kind of the face of that, because it's this burgeoning industry, especially with AI developing. There's a lot of pros and cons to this, as with everything on the power grid. You'll be curious to see what the House committee ultimately does. They did not introduce a substitute. They heard the Senate's version. Do they introduce a substitute that they vote out with some tweaks? We'll see. But the other, the other, the House's other version that they have on this topic is by representative Darby,

it creates kind of like a fast track lane, fast pass at Disney. If you meet certain requirements, you get to skip the line and interconnect as a data center, provided you meet these certain requirements that enable us to know that you're there and operating to a certain degree of certainty. So could we see the larger bill that you let off with?

Could we see that pass with maybe Darby's fast track bill added as an amendment to the bill? An amendment? Yeah. That way they're not passing one or the other? I think because the Darby bill is narrower I think that would survive a point of order unless there's some other random germanness issue but I don't think they're gonna do that. Okay. Now they might introduce a committee sub

with some components of that. Or they might just advance the Darby bill and send that over to the Senate and have them deal with that what they will. For what I'm told, much of the industry doesn't really like the fast track bill. Not because they're philosophically against it, but because they think it's too difficult.

But as with everything on this, this issue, it's about not necessarily picking winners and losers, but picking who wins a bit more and who loses a bit more. It's just, it's incredibly complicated. And this is, I'm sure there will be another issue that we see come up on the power grid stuff next session. But this is kind of the third leg of the stool from what we've seen previously where in 21

after the blackouts, the focus was physical reforms of generators, specifically being weatherized against cold weather. Then last session we saw trying to fix the markets, the ERCOT market, and make it, tweak it so that the financial incentives are there and the price signals are there to jog into existence more traditional thermal generation. And then this is dealing with the consequences of the massive influx of business, frankly, not just population of business coming in and trying to figure out a way to ensure we're

not taken by surprise by these things. And there are massive amounts of electricity. For example, in the Waco and Hillsboro area, the planned data center or two that is going there would double the amount of electricity load that that those areas use, those cities use. Wow. That's just insane. Yeah. Right? So it's a very difficult problem to solve and it's going to take more years to actually fix after implementation but this bill is not gonna fix it like that but it can help so yeah they just need to get the ball rolling right right and the grid will be something that the legislature addresses

every session so here we are on the sessions big issue well folks we're gonna take a quick break and hear from one of our sponsors did you know data centers support 364,000 jobs in Texas and contribute $3.5 billion in state and local taxes? These critical facilities boost the state's economy and power essential services. From video calls and online banking to healthcare and government operations,

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We're back and folks if you ever want to sponsor you know have an ad in the podcast, email info at the Texan dot news. We also have a forum to fill out on our website. So just saying, join the party. Cameron, coming to you, tariffs continue to be a big point of discussion. Give us the latest on how this is impacting Texas specifically. Yeah. President Donald Trump's announcement of tariffs on liberation day. We're starting to see some of the effects here in Texas and some of the uncertainty

in the global trade market. There was a report in investors observer that is showing texas Especially texas because it's such a large state has many many ports Is more exposed to the chinese import tariffs both on raw Trade volume and in the economic significance of those tariffs. I'll just read one portion of the report here. While Mexico is Texas' top trade partner, China's role is crucial in supplying electronics and industrial equipment for the state's booming energy and technology sectors, making

it vulnerable to price shocks and supply delays from tariff changes. So some strong words there in that report regarding some of these larger tariffs that are placed on China specifically upwards of 140% in some instances on some goods. And Texas importers according to a report in ABC News, are projected to pay an additional $82 billion in tariffs under Trump's new trade policy, which is only second to California. Nationally, U.S. importers could see a collective increase of more than $712 billion in tariff costs in 2025. I also, in the piece if people are interested, go into some of the details of how individual ports here in Texas are being impacted. There's also a survey from April done by the Dallas Federal Reserve that found 58% of

the 348 respondents said that they expect quote, higher tariffs will have a negative impact on their business. I know that's a lot of doom and gloom about these tariffs, but there's been also some reports, especially some reports detailed in the Wall Street Journal, that some American-based manufacturers here in Texas are actually seeing a more competitive and even playing field with these tariffs being implemented. There's also been news of businesses on-shoring some of their production and manufacturing. We wrote a story about Nvidia, which is the

world's largest GPU manufacturer. They announced they were expanding operations and manufacturing domestically here in Texas as well. So there's two sides of the coin here with the tariff plan from the Trump administration. So we're already seeing some rollbacks on the tariffs, the 90 day pause for example. We're also starting to see some of these quote unquote deals being made. There's been reports earlier today, this is Thursday, May 8th,

that the Trump administration is entering into a trade deal with the UK. So that would be a very significant movement in terms of coming to a more reciprocal trade policy with these other nations. So there's still a lot of time that we need to allow for these tariffs to play out to ultimately see what's going to happen. But that's just sort of the short term updates for people. Well, certainly you have a lot more of a lot more left to see play out.

Yeah, Cameron. Thank you. Bradley, there is a very lengthy hearing in the house on a very hotly debated tort reform proposal We've talked about it on smoke filled room before probably the weekly to how'd the hearing go? so if you want to run down to the Legal odds and ends read either the piece I've already published or the one I will be publishing probably today about the hearing but it was it was Fascinating to watch this thing play out where

you have attorneys arguing the odds and ends of law and policy. And then you have everyday people who know nothing of that, but are discussing like, they're very real and horrific stories about loss and impairments and potential loss. So the dynamic there was fascinating to watch the suits versus the regular people and I think one of Mitch Little's staffers told me that Mitch Little is sitting in on it even though he's not on the committee and he was there much of the time and engaged in some questioning. She said, he said it's like a the lawyer Super Bowl this this bill. Yeah it was fun watching some of your videos. Yeah. Come out and also like the ones where one of them you panned across all the lawyers that were there.

Yeah. And they look like lawyers. Oh yeah. You know there was lots of dress sneakers. Lots of dress sneakers. But you know you you first started off the first panel, there was Adam Lowy, a trial lawyer, one of the most well known in Austin circles. Then you had Dictor Bolsey, who's the founder of TLR, Texans for Lawsuit Reform. That represents the political fight here between the business community, TLR, and the trial lawyers in Lowy but also TTLA who would come up later. So there's all that. Then they got to everyday people and I think the first people that came up it was a husband and wife who lost their son in an accident. Another woman who was paralyzed from I think the chest or neck down, she could have had some movement in her arms because she got in a car wreck and the seatbelt

was faulty. Nobody else was hurt in that entire car but her. So it wasn't like a horrific but her. So it wasn't like a horrific physical crash but whatever happened to her, the seatbelt, faulty seatbelts, you know, paralyzed her for the rest of her life. Another woman who was in a crash at age 11 and she was a quadriplegic, can't function at all other than signing to communicate and by signing I mean single letters to spell things out. Wow. And her mom was there to interpret for her. One kid, a young man, got up and talked about how his, this was horrific, his adopted father adopted him and eight other boys under the guise of

some like school that like homeschool thing and he raped them constantly he made them do horrible things and filmed it and put it on TikTok just generally neglected them like horrific stories from all these people then the other side of that was people who small business owners who are believed that they're going to you know go out of business soon because their insurance rates are climbing up too high and the reason that's happening is insurance companies are wanting to settle more on these lawsuits rather than fight them because they're afraid of these massive nuclear judgments.

And so the dynamic in this hearing was stark and shocking to watch between people whose either worlds have been upended or ended entirely and people who feel like their world might be ended soon and then the other side of people who are trying this stuff on who are more concerned about the financial side of things.

Constantly I heard from some of those in support of this bill was this might end the Texas miracle, the economic miracle. And then of course, like the trial lawyers are worried about their ability to make it, make money and you know, engage in their career. Right. And so just totally different outlooks on this.

And who knows if, actually how this bill would affect things, you know, the pro sides said that flat out this would make judgments go down. You had someone get up there who showed they were sued for $5 million because of a literal fender bender. Nobody was hurt. There were barely any dents in the cars. They were sued for $5 million. Uh, and that causes people to react and they, they settled earlier.

So all this stuff has a ripple effect. You know the one thing I want to mention is Chairman Leach got into a scrap with Anthony Holm who is an operative who's been running very ham-handed and critical ads of Republicans related to this, accusing them of, you know, supporting sexual abuse, making it impossible for, you know, a detransitioner to get damages from the doctor who performed the gender modification procedures on them. And it's very much turned into a national campaign. I think I totaled up the numbers and as of yesterday 4.4 million dollars has been spent on both sides of this in a public lobbying fight. This thing has gotten outside the capital But leach

Started pressing the home for who is funders were he would not budge and you see a lot of these ads malign TLR who is very much involved on one side of this and they, you know, they're a combatant. So they deserve to take some fire on this. It's just political nature of it. They're accusing TLR of being a dark money group. TLR is not a dark money group. You can see who gives them money. You know who are dark money groups? These groups running these ads hitting TLR for not a dark money group. You can see who gives them money You know our dark money groups these groups running these ads hitting TLR for being a dark money group Because you they're 501 c4s. You have no idea who's giving them money now. It's got to be trial the trial

attorneys bar, right plaintiffs bar, but You don't know you know who's operating this and because they're not putting their names in it, you know, at least with home He's putting his name out there as treasurer But he's not he's not telling people who's funding this and because they're not putting their names in it you know at least with Holm he's putting his name out there as treasurer but he's not he's not telling people who's funding this and so that fight was a result of these ads being put out there and really pissing a lot of Republican members off like Hillary Icklund has come up to me multiple times on the floor and talked about this and how her she's getting blasted in her district

over this stuff and she was you could see her on Twitter fighting with Holm in Twitter replies on this so it's this has taken on a life of its own and the hearing showed that it also showed a totally different side of this, the human side of this policy fight. Yeah, I think the public fight with the advertisements is one huge aspect of this, but then I think this entire issue sort of highlights how there are real on the ground, there's a real on-the-ground necessity for some of these people to get compensation for the tragedies that have ensued. But then there's also, like the example you brought up

with the $5 million fender bender. There are people who take advantage of our legal system in some aspects. And so how do you balance those two things? And it comes down to some of the fights that we're seeing in committees. And the last thing I'll say is that this, I put this in my first piece on this, but this whole thing, this whole attempt to legislate a policy shift on this is aimed at extreme examples on both sides.

Both sides are like, okay, you know, the trial lawyers rolled out all of these people who are paralyzed forever, lost their kid forever. You know, very horrific, sympathetic stories. And it makes sense as a political move. The other side, they're showing these people who are going bankrupt because of the financial implications of this trend. Yeah. And they're, they're marketing on the extremes, but what this should be really doing is figuring out how do we handle most of the rest of these examples, these instances. Yeah. And I don't, Ann Johnson said that on the, in

the hearing, and I'm sure others made that observation, but like this, you can't legislate on the extremes because it's Well, I'll most of the example and a lot of these legal disputes to the penalty is the process, right? They sue for these large amounts and people like you just mentioned people are able to Financially carry through a an entire legal process. So they'll settle Yeah, you know because they're gonna be paying upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars to go through a legal trial for years. And so people don't ultimately get justice.

Yeah. I'll add one more thing. Sorry, Mac. A lot of this is the discussion about pushing this is to try and lower premiums. I don't recall anyone from the insurance lobby actually testifying on this, like specifically for an insurance company. Like insurance companies are members of the business community, but no lobbyist that represents all state was there to testify on this.

And then I saw the other side of it was I saw at least one, a couple other trial lawyers who are, not all of them were like this. Most of them were not like this, but stereotypical jerk trial lawyers, you know, they just come off as pompous jerks. They're organizing these, these very sympathetic stories to go up there. They're not testifying themselves. They're sitting in the back, just, you know, crap talking to the committee, you know, and

the other people engaging on this. Sitting, that's the kind of thing you don't see when you're watching on TV. You see all the dynamics happening around you. I didn't mention this guy but it was so shocking. One guy literally did not have a face. They went up there and testified. But yeah, it was well worth sitting in for the many hours that it lasted. And I thought the committee handled it very well on both sides. An imperfect system, folks are trying to make it a little bit less imperfect. Bradley, thank you. Well, we have multiple other stories that we're not going to be able to get to, including the attorney general seeking to depose Austin ISD leadership following CRT, curriculum allegations. Haven't

heard about CRT in a hot minute, Cameron. Mary-Lise has a story on six in Frio County being arrested for election tampering charges. We also have a poll on Trump's job approval rating. We have residents in Cameron County voting to incorporate SpaceX, city of Starbase, and then a self-driving semi truck company launching operations in Texas. So all sorts of great things to check out at the TechSend out news that we did not have time to get into today. Go check it out folks. Let's move on to the Tweet section here. Mary-Lise, what do you got? Well, this is something that I've written about in the newsletter a bit and I've also tweeted out a bit. I find it pretty interesting, but it's rather niche. Senator Cornyn and Senator Cruz are trying to get NASA to move its headquarters to Houston.

They're right now in DC, but it looks like it's, I don't know if lease is the proper term to use here, but yeah, I guess lease expires in either 27 or 28. So trying to get the ball moving on, okay, this could be where you move NASA to next instead of just renewing the lease. So that would be pretty interesting to have NASA headquartered here. And they made some, I think good arguments, but I'm a little bit biased towards Houston. So well, with SpaceX being headquartered now, with their star based city, that election occurred over the weekend.

Having NASA and these private space exploration companies together in one state could sort of helped breed further innovation in the, in the, in the space. So it'd be very interesting to see if this happens. Absolutely. Cameron, what do you got for us? Uh, I came across, uh, interesting tweet here, uh, by Frank Luntz. He's normally known as a pollster legendary pollster, but I feel like I grew

up on him on Frank Luntz on election poster, but I feel like I grew up on him on Franklin's on election night, but his focus groups. Yeah, exactly. Raise your hand. But, uh, he tweeted out a study that was done at Northwestern that looked at sports gambling and in the study, they found nearly 8% of households were involved in sports gambling and on average $1,100 per year was spent on online bets. And this is one of the more interesting aspects of it.

While the amount of money people put into legal sports gambling rose, their net investments fell by nearly 14% for every dollar a household spent on betting. It put two fewer dollars into investment accounts. So people spending more on sports betting putting less into the market and they also found in their research that sports betting also increases people's willingness to play the lottery. And so again the lottery has been a continued issue here in the state. So just lots of information continuing to come out regarding online sports betting.

That's that's a big issue legislatively in Texas. The lottery again, big issue of this session. So just some interesting information for people. Absolutely. Cameron, that's really fascinating. Thank you. Bradley. Absolutely Cameron, that's really fascinating. Thank you

Bradley So Senator John Cornyn made a campaign announcement this week. He announced a handful of senior staff hires For the campaign Rob Jesmer will continue as his general consultants. He's been He's been with Cornyn since 2007. So that's that's not changing. I think the headline was he has Tony Fabrizio, who is famously Donald Trump's pollster, or at least has been. That is, that's of course what that there was a New York Times article where Ken Paxton basically said, I'm going to run for Senate, just not yet. And he cited a poll that was done by Fabrizio. Now, the behind the scenes dynamic of this is Paxton has Jeff Rowe and Axiom as his consultant, whom Trump hates and much of Trump World hates because Rowe ran DeSantis' Super PAC.

Is there a firewall? I've heard that at least part of Trump world is trying to put up a firewall between Axiom and Trump world and prevent, you know, there's like a you will not do business with anyone Axiom because we don't like that guy. On the flip side, Axiom has said that it's NICMATICS that's Paxton's consultant who's with Axiom not Jeff Roe. Jeff Roe is not involved in this race at all. So interesting tidbits there. Down further Andy Hemming who I know, good guy, he's in Trump world. He is hired as campaign manager and then then Matt Mikovia, he's been on this pod, staple of Austin political scene.

He's now going to be the communications director. Now interesting wrinkle of that. Mikovia, if I recall correctly, he was at least first open to impeachment of Paxton. Then he became very critical of impeachment. Now he's gonna have to be the spokesman for Cornyn who is going to emphasize the impeachment and the allegations therein quite a bit. As a cornerstone.

As a cornerstone, absolutely. So, Bob and We've from from uh and then the others that were announced, John Wilcox will serve as senior advisor. Vincent Harris will serve as director of digital strategy and Matt

Wiltshire will serve as the political director. So, Cora now has his campaign team set and we'll see where the chips fall. See where the chips fall. I want to talk about some awards that were handed out this week that I think meant a lot to a couple of us in the office Bradley we should talk about this in tandem, but our favorite Tex Lodge anonymous account three several days Returned to Twitter he rose from the dead after a

Little bit of a hiatus there saying I'm going to peace out, came back just in time to award Sevys. Now Sevys are, I'd argue, the most coveted award given out in Texas politics, at least online. I think you're right. Would you agree? Oh yeah, 100%. Especially now that I won one. I know I was, I'm thinking how quickly or, um, how taboo it will be to add it to my bio on Twitter this quickly. Like I may wait a couple more days and then add it. I noticed that, um, at least some of the other recipients have added it to their bio, so it wouldn't be a London that.

Yeah. I have noticed that it's a thing people do. It's really is just a, how fast can I do it without looking a little too excited about this? But am I excited? A hundred percent. So let's talk about this. So these SEVYs are given out, the awards are in many different categories. The one that I won an award for honored was best Texan new staffer, which honestly just felt like

three several days way of just finding a way to throw me a bone. That's what, that's what it felt like. But I will pick up said bone and wave it around and be super excited about it. I will say in the comments, a lot of people were saying, has Brad fallen off? People are asking, people are asking, does this mean Brad Johnson, disorder Sanders treatment? He's fallen in the draft. Literally. Or is this because we're primaring Brad, which has been a movement on Twitter to primary Brad Johnson, who certainly

does not hold any elected office but still deserves a primary. Our very own Matt Stringer is leading the charge in some of this as well, ensuring that he... But he's not putting the money where his mouth is and actually jumped into the race yet. So... No, but will he donate to a challenger? I think he'd put his money where his mouth is there, even despite his, you know, being a broke lawsuit and I assume he'd still find a way to make that happen. Yeah. But I... You get some dark money funneled in with the race. My favorite comment in the in the the replies though, was from former Senator, former house rep, Drew Springer, that replied, that's a lot of characters

just to get a free subscription, which I also need to go and ensure that we get some sort of free subscription for several days. And then a couple of days later, Brad, you received an award yourself. This was yesterday yesterday Wednesday. I Did I received the award for best clap backs? and this dates back to when I would had Had a few drinks mmm at a bar local watering hole as I say, yeah, and

Somebody announced that I should be primaried. The first time this happens. I decided to reply and go to Daman. And, uh, people loved it. It turned out to be quite the, the, uh, the entertainment before. It's true. I got more compliments on that than anything I've ever written. That was pretty funny.

The next day on the floor, people were like multiple people coming up to you and complimenting you and I just got Again, I keep told I need to be primered this morning So we'll see if I have the same reaction on the floor when we go over there later, but There you go. That's clap backs I will say I was a little disappointed when this award came out because it gives me less footing upon which to stand when you text me and say can I tweet this? Which happens frequently because Brad now has an audience that he feels he needs to feed so yeah, it just it It does scare me a little bit that the monsters becoming too big for his britches

They're there the people go and I must follow them because I'm their leader. You're also super humble. On this especially. On this especially. It's exactly right. I will say also that, um, SEVS reached out to me and was going to drop this, uh, award while we were recording and it was like, we were coordinating on timing cause they wanted to

drop it while you can get like a live reaction from you on the podcast but I think because yesterday you you served up a clap back it was just too good not to yeah oh yeah to do it then so that one we won't mention on the podcast yeah absolutely but regardless I think that is what drove that uh timing. But regardless. Okay, folks. Well, thanks for listening. We're going to head over to the floor, a few of us. Some will stay here, man the ship. But folks, we appreciate you tuning in to The Weekly Roundup, and we'll catch you on next week's episode. Thank you to everyone for listening. If you enjoy our show, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

And if you want more of our stories, subscribe to The Texan at thetexan.news. Follow us on social media for the latest in Texas politics. And send any questions for our team to our mailbag by DMing us on Twitter or shooting us an email to editor at thetexan.news. Tune in next week for another episode of our weekly roundup. God bless you and God bless Texas.