The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - November 18, 2022

Episode Date: November 18, 2022

Want to support reporting on Texas politics that doesn’t include the spin? Subscribe at https://thetexan.news/subscribe/ Or get a FREE “Fake News Stops Here” mug when you buy an annual subscription: https://go.thetexan.news/mug-fake-news-stops-here-2022/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=weekly_roundupThe Texan’s Weekly Roundup brings you the latest news in Texas politics, breaking down the top stories of the week with our team of reporters who give you the facts so you can form your own opinion. Enjoy what you hear? Be sure to subscribe and leave a review!Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast.This week on The Texan’s Weekly Roundup, the team discusses:Democrats sweeping the Dallas County Commissioners CourtA memo from the Texas Democrats about their lackluster statewide midterm performanceAn ethics complaint for corporate donations filed against the Texas DemocratsThe state’s investigation into elections in Harris CountyChris Magnus resigning as commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border ProtectionDonald Trump announcing his 2024 presidential campaign A GOP poll of Texans’ new preference for DeSantis over TrumpA federal judge ending the Title 42 policy used to expel illegal aliensThe over 200,000 border patrol encounters in October 2022The new data for crime in Harris County in 2022 amid disputes over reporting delaysThe over 900 bills filed on Monday for the upcoming 88th Legislative SessionA member of the Texas House filing a bill to abolish the death penaltyThe causes and effects of high diesel prices in Texas and the nation

Happy Friday, folks. Senior Editor Mackenzie Taylor here on the Texans Weekly Roundup podcast. This week, the team discusses Democrats sweeping the Dallas County Commissioner's Court. A memo from the Texas Democrats about their lackluster statewide midterm performance. An ethics complaint for corporate donations filed against Texas Democrats. The state's investigation into elections in Harris County. Chris Magnus resigning as Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Donald Trump announcing his 2024 presidential campaign. A GOP poll of Texans' new preference for DeSantis over Trump.

A federal judge ending the Title 42 policy used to expel illegal aliens. The over 200,000 border patrol encounters in October 2022. New data for crime in Harris County in 2022 amid disputes over reporting delays. The over 900 bills filed on Monday for the upcoming 88th legislative session. A member of the Texas House filing a bill

to abolish the death penalty and the causes and effects of high diesel prices in Texas and the nation. As always, if you have questions for our team, DM us on Twitter or email us at editor at thetexan.news. We'd love to answer your questions on a future podcast. Thanks for listening and enjoy this episode. Well, howdy, folks.

It's Mackenzie here with Hayden, Brad, and Rob in studio, and we have Matt and Holly joining us remotely. We have quite the crew that will be chatting on the podcast today and a lot of news to get into, so I'm going to kind of not have any small talk right up front, which irks me. I want to have small talk with you guys. Okay, great. That seems like an effort to create small talk. Brad. Instead of moving on like you said you're going to do that's probably true it's like i like to have a little something up top but you know what i'm going to be very mentally strong today and we're going to jump right into the news hayden and brad just get each other like that's not happening hayden we're starting with you there are a handful of safely blue counties in texas and republic Republicans hoped to change that this year.

How did they fare in Dallas County on Election Day? They got smashed. Republicans lost everything in Dallas County. They lost their only seat on the commissioner's court and they handily slash overwhelmingly lost all countywide races. The only Republican commissioner, J.J. Koch, lost to Andrew Sumerman with 52% of the vote to Sumerman and 48% of, excuse me, 53% to Sumerman and 47% to Koch. And Republican Lauren Davis lost to Jenkins, the county judge, with 63% of the vote. District Attorney John Cruzot defeated Republican nominee and former DA Faith Johnson with 59% of the vote. So Cruzot performed, excuse me, Johnson performed a little bit better than Davis and Jenkins outperformed Cruzot. But both men won re-election by comfortable and

substantial margins. And it is notable that Democrat Clay Jenkins had faced the voters on a general election for the first time since the measures that he instituted during the COVID-19 pandemic. What were the reactions from the candidates? Davis was thankful for the campaign and her supporters, but seemed irritated that more did not turn out to vote. And she said, quote, while I am proud of myself, our supporters and our 2000 plus individual donors, my family and all that voted for me, I am disappointed in this election, not reflecting the voice of the majority, all caps of Dallas County, end quote. I'm not quite sure what she bases that on, but it seems to be frustration with the turnout. And Koch said that he was saddened by the results, but also

thankful for the opportunity to run and that he knew it was an uphill battle from the get-go. What does this mean for the GOP in Dallas going forward? Well, the party in power during redistricting always has a major advantage. Republicans, What does this mean for the GOP in Dallas going forward? to be favorable to a possible Democratic challenger. And nationally, all over the map, Republicans did not perform as well as they had hoped. There are plenty of things that go into that that we're not going to pick apart right now. But Summerman and Koch, either man easily could have won, either candidate. But it was a situation where the commissioner's court set it up so that Summerman had a real chance of winning. And because Republicans came up short in so many places, Koch ended up losing that seat.

Jenkins is probably emboldened after winning such a substantial margin. And by the way, his margin of victory, 63%, was exactly what the Texas partisan index was for Dallas County of D63%. So Cruz underperformed that just a little bit. But Democrats are strong in Dallas County, and now the county will be ruled by one political party. Fascinating. Well, thank you, Hayden, for that coverage. Certainly a surprise. I think that it was that definitively blue in a lot of ways. So thank you for that coverage. Rob, while a national Democrat saw success this midterm, Texas Democrats failed to unseat any of the seven statewide Republican incumbents. Did the state Democrats see any successes? So they did see some successes,

you could say, in this election cycle. Republicans did take the 15th congressional district in South Texas with Monica De La Cruz defeating Michelle Vallejo, but Democrats did keep the other two big South Texas congressional seats that were in contention this time around the 28th and the 34th congressional districts of Texas under Democrats, Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, respectively. The executive director of the Texas Democratic Party, Jamar Brown, claimed in a memo that was posted to sparked calls for gun control reforms from Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O'Rourke, the Uvalde County actually voted for Republican statewide candidates by a margin of about 20 points.

So Democrats did see some success in not getting as in Republicans not taking as much of the Latino vote or South Texas vote as they thought they would get. However, it was not a complete loss for Republicans even then. I would say Republican hopes in South Texas were extremely high. They thought they could overturn seats that had, you know, I think it was 61, 63 percent Democrat ratings, according to the Texas Partisan Index. That is a steep hill to climb, even in a midterm with the Democrat in the White House. So certainly something that Democrats can celebrate. Democrat incumbent was, you know, remained in those seats. But regardless, it was still a very tough hill for Republicans to climb.

About this memo that you mentioned, does it say anything about the Texas Democrats failures this midterm? Indeed. So Brown actually blamed one of the things that he attributed to the failures of Texas Democrats to flip those statewide seats was Senate Bill 1, which was the election reform bill Republicans passed last year. This is actually the cause of the quorum bust in 2021 when many Texas Democrats fled to Washington, D.C. to prevent this bill from being passed. And eventually enough of them trickled back that the Republicans, the overall the Texas legislature, was able to pass this bill. Republicans called it election reform, but Texas Democrats thought that it was closer to something like voter suppression. They blamed this bill for reducing the amount of people going out to vote or preventing Democrats from voting. It is true that, if I recall correctly, voter turnout is slightly lower than it was in 2018 with the Beto blue wave that swept through Texas. But it is true that turnout is still a lot higher than it

was in 2014. One of the other things that Brown blamed in the memo, Brown and I believe the rest of the Texas Democratic leadership said was responsible for Democrats not succeeding as much as they wanted to was redistricting, which they claim benefited Republicans at the expense of Democrats, effectively turning purple districts redder and turning blue districts even bluer. So it deepened but narrowed the Democrats' districts that they controlled, thus making it more difficult for them to win an overall majority of districts. Some other things they blamed were Republican dark money and corporate funding, claiming that Republicans are receiving this

funding from corporate donors and that the Texas Democrats are not receiving the kind of attention and investment from national Democrats that they need in order to succeed in a state like Texas. One of the things he Brown noted in the memo is that national Democrats need to invest more in Texas, which he said is getting more blue, unlike States like Florida, which he said are actually getting more red. So he thinks that Texas would be a very proactive investment for, uh, national Democrats and also pointed out that, you know, Texas has a huge share of the electoral college and Texas going blue would definitely change national politics a little bit. Uh, one of the other things he did note though, is that the Democrats his opinion, needed to be firmer on public safety and

border security. And so he disagreed with how Republicans framed the issue. I believe he said that the emphasis on border security is an attempt to appeal to a largely white base or stoke some kind of racial animosity. But he did say that Henry Cuellar won by the largest margin of victory of those South Texas seats. And he is vocal about border security. He's all in favor of it. So Brown, on top of the other issues about redistricting, supposed voter suppression and corporate funding, does

think that Democrats sort of need to take the initiative on public safety and border security issues away from Republicans. Fascinating. Thank you, Rob. Brian, let's stick to talking about the Texas Democrats. An ethics complaint was filed against a progressive activist organization for their dealings with the Texas Democratic Party. What are the details?

So Power the Vote, which is an organization based in Georgia that was hired by the Texas Democratic Party. What are the details? So Power the Vote, which is an organization based in Georgia that was hired by the Texas Democratic Party to conduct its voter protection operation, which entails creating like a voter assistance hotline, an education program, a poll watching program, some other run-of-the-mill things like that. The complaint alleges that

this organization funneled corporate dollars into the state party's coffers. So Mark McKegg, president of the Texas Republican Initiative, filed a complaint with the TEC alleging improper corporate donations going to the TDP. The group was contracted, as I said, by the Democratic Party, but that occurred in February. And shortly after, the organization's national branch based in Georgia donated $175,000 to the Texas arm that is filing with the TEC as an LLC with a PAC. From April through September, the state PAC contributed $170,000 to the TDP's general fund. What does state law say about this? So state law prohibits the taking of corporate donations outside of certain specific purposes like for overhead and various other administrative costs a 2015 texas ethics commission advisory opinion on a similar situation stated that a general purpose committee may not use political contributions accepted from a corporation for

its own administration to make a contribution to a political party for the party's administrative costs so it's a very convoluted way of saying that broadly speaking this is something that is at least questionable under state law whether it amounts to anything yet we don't know but um that is what mckag and his complaint points to along with two sections from code that prohibit this where does this go from here so the TDC has acknowledged that it will review the complaint so that right there is something they didn't dismiss it already which they do for a lot of complaints doesn't mean that McKaig right, and so they're going to review the complaint

and the TEC cannot issue criminal penalties. They can issue civil financial ones if there's any wrongdoing found. But this is, violation of this statute would be a Class C

misdemeanor. And so, that's something to keep in mind. But these things tend to get bogged down in the bureaucratic review process. We may not know for a while. So we'll see where that goes. Thank you, Bradley. Holly, we're coming to you. Like Dallas County, Harris County appears to have remained mostly blue. But on Monday, Governor Abbott called for an investigation opening sometimes until 11 a.m. and then even after opening experienced malfunctioning equipment. So you had, you know,

problems first thing in the morning. But of greater concern, there are at least 23 of the county's 782 voting locations that ran out of paper ballots at some point during the day. Election judges and workers at those precincts are saying that although they notified the county's elections administration early in the day, at times elections administration staff argued with them about whether or not they had a sufficient supply of paper ballots or delivered the paper ballots hours later. In some cases, these polling sites had to close down and turn away voters. One judge says she called repeatedly prior to completely running out of the ballots and then had to turn away about 250 voters. She says she received her resupply of ballots at about 7.45 p.m. There were also problems with handling of the

two-page ballots, and it is alleged that in some cases, if the first page, so what happens is a voter, you know, goes to one machine and makes their selections, and then it prints this two-page ballot, and then they feed it into a scanner. So if the second page did not scan properly, in some cases, it seems that election workers were then allowing that voter to re-vote and print another set of ballots to then feed into the scanner, effectively letting that voter vote twice in all of the contests that were on page one. That hasn't been proven, but that's one of the concerns and allegations that's out there. Also, on the night of the elections, a local district court judge ordered polls in the county to remain open an extra hour because of some of

the problems that had occurred earlier in the day. But later, that was stayed by the Supreme Court of Texas. Voters who got in line after 7 p.m. were to vote a provisional ballot that was to be segregated from the other more traditional provisional ballots that those post-7 p.m. votes were mixed together with the other provisional ballots inappropriately. What did Abbott call for, and are there other investigative agencies involved now? Right. So Monday, Governor Abbott announced he was referring a number of these issues to the Secretary of State's office, the Attorney General's office, and the Texas Rangers to investigate. A huge development came, though, that the local district attorney here in Harris County has received criminal complaints about violations of the Texas election code in Harris County elections. And this week, Kim Ogg, a Democrat district attorney, formally requested the assistance of the Texas Rangers, the state's elite lead investigative body. Being a Democrat, this was interesting because a lot of people were saying the complaints were just on the Republican side of the aisle, although I have seen them from both sides. We saw a number of Democrats also

complaining about the problems in the election. And we're at the point now where even the Houston Chronicle editorial board, which tends to lead left for the most part, has also said that an investigation is appropriate. If proven, some of the issues related to the elections, which in addition to failing to provide these supplies, include the posting of the early vote totals or results before the polls were technically closed while people were still waiting to vote. So those violations would consist of both Class A and Class C misdemeanors. So we could see indictments come from this investigation. Wow. So how has county leadership responded to

these investigations? Well, this week's meeting of the Harris County Commissioner's Court was very heated. Dozens of citizens and election judges and workers were on hand to testify about the issues, and they became even more irate when Democratic Commissioners Rodney Ellis and Adrian Garcia were looking at their phones or their papers while people were speaking, Harris County Judge Lena Hidalgo participated in the meeting via a Zoom link. She's on vacation, technically. She referred to the state's investigation as targeted harassment of the county and of election workers. She also suggested that Commissioner Tom Ramsey's questions about why the

county couldn't seem to run an election were encouraging a dangerous furor and compared the people who were upset about the elections with January 6, 2021 rioters. Elections Administrator Clifford Tatum told commissioners his department did not have the resources needed to run elections, which raised a lot of eyebrows since the county this year allocated $17 million for elections for March through September of this year, and then for October this year to next year, another $31 million. Wow. Well, Holly, thank you as always for your coverage of Harris County. It's so important. And particularly in election season, there always seems to be something afoot down there in Harris County. And it's so worthwhile for folks to know what's going on in their state and just locally as well. So thank you for your coverage. Hey, listeners, if you enjoy our podcast each week, subscribe to The Texan. We're not funded by corporate interests or big donors,

so we rely on the subscriptions of everyday Texans to keep churning out news. When you subscribe, you'll get access to stories like all the ones we've been discussing on this podcast as soon as they're published so that you can stay informed, up to speed, and ready to vote at the ballot box. A subscription is $9 monthly, but you can save by purchasing an annual subscription for $90, which comes out to just $7.50 per month. And we just brought back that fan favorite merch item. New subscribers will now get a fake news stops here mug. For more details, visit thetexan.news forward slash subscribe or click the URL in the description of this podcast. Now let's jump back into the news.

Hayden, the Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, resigned last weekend. What were the circumstances of Chris Magnus' departure? Commissioner Chris Magnus submitted his resignation on Saturday after facing pressure from Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and other superiors in DHS. He was reportedly told that if he did not resign, then he would be fired by President Biden. The day before he resigned, he gave an interview to the Los Angeles Times and told them that he was proud of the work that he had done and that he signaled he had no

intention of leaving his post as commissioner of CBP, which oversees border patrol and other border security operations. He was confirmed in December of last year after a somewhat lengthy process in the U.S. Senate. His confirmation hearing was in October, and he declined to characterize what was going on at the border as a crisis, including illegal immigration. So he is a relatively recent appointee in the Biden administration, and his tenure came to an end on Saturday. Wow. Were there any other highlights you can highlight of Magnus's tenure? He was the commissioner during the investigation into allegations that border agents near Del Rio had whipped illegal immigrants coming over the river, specifically Haitian illegal immigrants. And that was during the

Del Rio surge in September of 2021, which was before his confirmation. Just to give a point of reference for how briefly he was in office, he was only there for 11 months. And ironically, the interim official that was there during the Biden administration before Magnus confirmation, Troy Miller was there for 11 months. So he was not even there longer than the acting commissioner before he was confirmed. And that same person, Troy Miller, has now taken over at CBP. So I'm not sure why the Senate doesn't just confirm Troy Miller if they're trusting, the administration is trusting him to lead the agency. But during Magnus' confirmation hearing, he also said that he would support measured, limited border wall construction and he would support filling in some of those gaps. But probably the most notable highlight

during Magnus' time in office was the 2.4 million encounters with illegal immigrants in the southwestern border, including 2.2 arrests by border police between ports of entry. That was more illegal immigration than in any fiscal year prior, which was objectively a failure of Magnus and the federal government to deter illegal immigration. And this year could be another record-setting year, but it will depend on if Miller or whoever succeeds Magnus as the permanent commissioner of CBP will be able to implement policies that deter illegal immigration. Hayden, thank you for your coverage. Bradley, we're coming back to you. The big announcement that everyone had been long expecting finally came this week when Donald Trump announced for 2024 run for president of the united states

that was interesting that he used the word glorious instead of great maybe there's a rebranding going on for his slogan here um make america glorious again yeah yeah they'd be able to keep all the maggot stuff yeah yeah and i've never heard him say that word before, so that's why it stuck out to me. But we are currently 719 days from the 2024 presidential election. Suffice it to say, it's a very early announcement. He's hitting the ground running very quickly. He's basically been running for president ever since the 2020 election. It's just now going to ramp up, I think, a lot more.

He's been doing rallies in Texas and Ohio and Pennsylvania, all across the country. But now with the midterms firmly in the rearview mirror, the former president is hitting the ground running on his next endeavor. There you go. And it's fascinating to watch Texas officials, which which will have more information out at a later date come out either supporting or not supporting uh president trump when we've seen so many republicans in the past just line up behind the former president i believe um lieutenant governor dan patrick issued a

statement of support but did not explicitly say i endorse he didn't use the word endorse he did not use the word endorse ken paxton explicitly used the word endorse yep um i think that's kind of the extent that we've seen yeah we've seen a couple a few congressmen uh wesley hunt issued an endorsement troy nels issued an endorsement uh greg abbott has not um commented on it yet we'll see if he decides to wait in or if he just wants to wait it out and see how things shake out but um it's definitely gonna be something to watch see how these republicans and in texas uh treat this and any potential clash that trump has in the 2024 primary yeah well let's talk about the primary let's talk about texas the day before trump's announcement a poll was released um on the gop presidential primary what did it show so this is a question that has been polled every month of this year since like february or march i

think it's been done by cws uh research and uh this one was released by the republican party of texas and it showed ron desantis up 11 on trump in a geo in a 2024 gop primary field in texas now one of the reasons this is so notable in addition to desantis being on top and that's of course within texas it's a 28 point swing from the same pollsters uh october iteration which had trump up 17 above the florida governor the main thing that happened since then is the midterm and so uh that at least has something to do with this wild swing and you know pulling it can get erratic and go back and forth um it's a snapshot of a picture in time that does not mean that whatever was on the mind of voters pulled in this instance that will remain on their mind when they're asked the question

a month from now so we'll see how this kind of ebbs and flows. But it was very interesting to, I would say surprising. It was very surprising, especially the degree to which it swung. It didn't swing from a wide margin to very close or even a very slim lead. 11-point margin is pretty big. So clearly it's setting the table for what everyone is anticipating to be. If there is a rivalry between two candidates in this race, it'll be those two. Absolutely. And it'll be fascinating to see who else jumps in the race.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm fascinated to watch. So how have these two candidates reacted to the 2024 race so far? So even before the, I think it was just like just before the midterm happened uh trump started kind of taking aim at at the florida governor he coined a new nickname for him ron de sanctimonious that is one thing trump is good at coining new nicknames i must say this one doesn't really roll off the tongue like the others ron de sanctimonious but that's what he's

sticking with and he said it multiple times now um he also claimed credit for desantis's victory in 2018 um desantis won by a very very small margin in 2018 over andrew gillum the democrat uh i'm sure different people have different opinions on what influenced that and what didn't desantis though has been very pro-trump uh both in his run and in his time as governor but um after the the the attack started coming from donald trump desantis was largely silent about it all until tuesday this week when asked about it and he said he didn't address it specifically like he didn't name the former president and his response but he said one of the things i've learned in this job is when you're

leading when you're getting things done you take incoming fire that's just the nature of it at the end of the day i would just tell people to check out the scoreboard from last tuesday night a reference to him winning by 20 points and many, many Republicans, including multiple Trump-picked Republicans in various battleground seats losing. And I feel like that's going to be a pretty big, if these two do duke it out, that will be a pretty big theme of their squabble. But as I said, it was over 700 days until the general election, less than that, but still a long way from the GOP primaries. There's a long road ahead until that primary, but these are undoubtedly the two biggest dogs in the fight. A month ago, I think everyone thought if Trump jumps in, no one else is going to get in.

And now that is very much not the dynamic. Yeah. That still could happen, still could play out. But there is not this firewall against other candidacies that existed before the midterm. Yeah. Well, and fair to remember that DeSantis has not thrown his hat in the ring. Yes. We're all acting as if he has and commentating as if he has, but that has not taken place yet.

But, and we'll get this in the Twittery section, an interesting development happened in Iowa. Huh. Fascinating. Foreshadowing. Foreshadowing. What a nice literary tool, Bradley. Hayden, we're coming right back to you. A federal judge made a decision this week that affects border security. What did Judge Sullivan decide about Title 42?

Judge Emmett Sullivan is a familiar name on border security policy because he has made decisions in the past about different measures that have been instituted. This time, Judge Sullivan decided that the public health order under Title 42 can no longer be enforced to rapidly expel illegal immigrants at the border. Title 42 was first invoked by President Trump at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a very old law that allows the federal government to turn people away at the border or deport them automatically without jumping through the usual hoops of federal immigration law found in Title VIII

because of a communicable disease. Obviously, this time that was COVID-19. The Biden administration continued using Title 42 after the new president took office, much to the dismay of more progressive groups like the ACLU, who thought that it was a cruel policy and had no basis in any valid public health reason. But Biden continued its use, and the CDC under Biden did not recommend that it be rescinded until earlier this year, I believe in April. And then a federal judge in Louisiana kept Biden from striking it down. So there's been so much litigation and the Biden administration has actually been on both sides wanting to strike it down and wanting to keep it in place.

But this time, Judge Sullivan said, you can't enforce Title 42 anymore. So we're back to the pre-pandemic situation of Title VIII being the basis for any immigration action. Sullivan said that Trump's implementation of 42 was arbitrary and capricious, and that he should have considered alternative ways of handling COVID-19. Sullivan is the same judge who protected unaccompanied minors from being expelled under this policy. So unaccompanied minors, thanks to Judge Sullivan, have not been sent away under this policy. The feds have been taking care of them, unlike single adults and family units. So big picture, what could this mean for illegal immigration? Republicans have long contended that this is a necessary policy from an immigration standpoint. Even while the Homeland Security Department was implementing it, Secretary Mayorkas

said that it was a public health policy. But if we're really being intellectually honest, it's an immigration policy because this has kept the Fed's ability to just deport people and that be that without having to go through the normal process. And the high number of re-encounters with people who have already been apprehended has also been attributed to Title 42 because there's no consequence after being deported. In other words, they're just expelled and they can come right back across. So there may be a drop in the number of repeat encounters, but as far as deterring illegal immigration, it doesn't look good. There you go. Well, fascinating stuff. Thank you for covering that. Let's keep on this topic of illegal immigration. What were some of the highlights of the October 2022 operational update? Really fast. There were 204,000 arrests by border police in the southwestern U.S.

And 131,000 of those arrests took place in Texas Border Patrol sectors. That does not include encounters at ports of entry. 16,000 were encountered at the El Paso and Laredo ports of entry. That is according to the Customs and Border Protection's operational update for October. In October 2021, there were 99,000 arrests compared to 131,000 in Texas sectors last month. But there was a slight drop from September to October from 136,000 to 131,000. So there was a slight month-to-month drop, but compared to last October, there was an increase. And we already talked about the overall numbers for last year being astronomically high, a record-setting number. So fiscal year 2023 is not off to a great start.

Thank you, Hayden. Holly, we are circling back with you. Harris County has seen a sharp rise in crime, but a few weeks before the election, the county administrator David Berry, under Judge Lena Hidalgo, gave a presentation arguing that crime was down. This drew public outcry and some discoveries on your part. What was the problem with what Berry presented? Well, Berry gave this presentation about how crime numbers were down in the year-to-date totals, and he gave this presentation in October. But many people, including the district attorney's office, thought it could not be true based on what they were seeing firsthand. What I figured out is that Barry had pulled his data from the Texas Department of Public Safety's website.

But as we were the first to report, the first problem with this data is that the Harris County Sheriff's Office had not yet reported the September crime data. They actually delayed it due to a technical issue. So while the comparisons included September data from 2021, for every category of crime for 2022 in September, there was a zero. So that completely skewed the percentages of crime increases and decreases. Now, since then, the Sheriff's Office has entered the September data, but there are two other big issues with the year-to-date information that's collected at the Texas DPS site. First of all, there are multiple law enforcement agencies in Harris County, and there's no monthly reporting requirement. Those that report to the state agency are only required to do so once a year.

The other problem is that for many categories, reports are delayed for months. For example, when the Sheriff's Office finally uploaded their September report, they also updated the numbers of rapes and murders for each month beginning in January. The reality is that it is very difficult to state year-to-date crime statistics with any kind of accuracy, which is why the FBI does not release the previous year's data until September of the following year. And even after that, those numbers can continue to rise as new reports come in. Wow, unbelievable. So how did the county respond to the news that there was missing or incomplete data? Well, I reached out

to Barry's office and they simply said they would be taking the new figures into account, but they have not yet provided the commissioner's court with an update to my knowledge. The sheriff's office told me that they delayed the September report due to that technical issue, but they also acknowledge that there's a second technical issue that is leading to underreporting of sexual offenses, and that technical issue has not yet been resolved. And so even with the delay in reporting, we have inaccurate numbers beginning in, I believe, July. The district attorney's office, however, has called for County Administrator Berry to retract this report and apologize for misleading the public as they feel it really skews the perception and undercuts their continued requests for funding for prosecutors to continue to pursue rising crime in the county. covering this for us holly that is just um absolutely crazy to watch this all happen and

thank you for breaking so much of this story um time and time again you seem to have the scoop on these harris county issues so thanks for bringing it to our readers at the texan brad you wrote a piece on the first day of pre-filing for the 2023 legislative session give us a preview of that piece so there were over 900 bills filed this is the first day of pre-filing which means legislators and legislators elect can file bills they want to have ready for the next legislative session which starts on january 10th next year so over 900 bills that's a lot um i didn't check the numbers but i was hearing from people that would know that it was higher than they had seen any time recently on the first day and then we've seen multiple we've

seen uh you know a dozen or two dozen trickle in and the days following that so probably have between the two chambers over a thousand bills in uh that's a lot and let me first state that most of these bills are going to go nowhere yes so not like not even have a shot in passing but not get referred to committee or or um not pass committee i think of the total number of bills filed versus those that actually end up being signed into law by the governor is like 15 20 percent yeah it's something along those lines so so that's still a lot of bills that get passed but um bays just compared with the sheer number that are filed um they're not all gonna make it so you might see some ones that have really good ideas that you like that

don't have a snowball's chance in hell yeah passing yeah um that's just the reality of it but there are there were some definitely some some really notable bill filings, including the Save Women's Sports Act that's representative Valerie Swanson's follow up to the Save Girls Sports Act from 2021. That one required athletes from K through 12 to compete within their biological sex. This one is an extension of that to colleges in the state. And so that's going to be, they got a low bill number on that, which legislators like. That'll be something to watch going forward. Another one that was notable by Representative Andrew Murr is the restoration of a felony for illegal voting.

Now, that's notable because that was reduced by a floor amendment in the House last year in the large election reform bill that was, as somebody mentioned earlier, the reason the Democrats broke quorum twice. And so that was actually amended by a Republican, I think it was Steve Allison, to reduce that to a misdemeanor. So figures like Abbott and Dan Patrick have called for that to be restored. And so Murr carried the Senate bill, SB1, that was the election reform bill

in the second special session. And so now he's filing the bill to restore that to a felony and third what is a the first kind of blueprint for a school choice plan that we've seen come out yet at least by a legislator that was by representative maize middleton who is jumping over to the senate after winning by a wide margin in his general. And so I have more details about that specifically in there. It's pretty complex. It creates education savings accounts similar to these health care savings accounts that we've seen.

But that's one of what will likely be a few probably um different blueprints that legislators operate from on this issue we know governor abbott has said that he anticipates a really large push for this for some sort of school choice but we have no idea what ultimately is going to be passed so i run through those and a bunch of others in the piece so if you're curious to see what uh what came down down the pike on the first day of pre-filing, check out the piece. And to be fair, a lot of legislators will file just like you're saying, the exact same bills. An example that immediately comes to mind is constitutional carry from last session where I believe Representative Biederman was the initial author of a bill. It had a lot of attention from gun groups basically that were

backing the bill representative schaefer representative white two other very conservative republican members of the house filed versions as well representative white was the chairman of the committee where the bill should be kind of worked through the process and i believe schaefer's and white's bills both got hearings in that committee, but I could be wrong. It could have just been Schaefer's. Regardless, there's usually one version that is knighted and says, okay, this is the one that has the best chance of making its way through the process. Whether that decision is made due to who is carrying the bill, maybe leadership says you might stand up to questioning. We're excited to have you as the spokesperson for this issue or there might just

be parts of the bill that are better than uh or more not better but more favorable to leadership um in order to get it passed uh in that instance it was schaefer whose bill was the anointed one that then went on to be passed an example of this this that I think may become if the legislature decides to touch this third rail is the gender mod. Brian Slayton out of Royce City, he filed a bill to classify it as child abuse.

Basically what Abbott has done through the bureaucratic process, just putting that in statute. Representative Jared patterson filed a very similar not exactly the same but does tries to accomplish the same goal while going through basically the same route and um one of those members is not liked by leadership yeah that would be slayton because he did not vote for Speaker Dave Phelan last time.

And so we'll see if Slayton is able to get his any attention at all. I mean, he's gotten attention on social media for it, but within the chamber, that's different. But there are already multiple. And Steve Toth has another version of classifying it as not outlawing these surgeries. That one doesn't classify it as child abuse. So there's more than one way to skin a cat with these. We just don't really know which one is going to kind of get tapped for being pushed. Certainly.

And again, like you said, sometimes the author is chosen because they're in with leadership more than another author. So we'll see what happens. But thank you for giving us a preview and certainly make sure to go check out that piece of the Texas news, folks. Hayden, speaking of file bills, a Texas Democrat filed one to abolish the death penalty. How would that work in Texas? Speaking of bills that are never going anywhere ever. It's not unusual for a member to file a bill to abolish the death

penalty. This one is a little bit notable because it was filed by Joe Moody from El Paso, who was part of a coalition of lawmakers who opposed the execution of Melissa Lu lucio who was sentenced to death for the murder of her two-year-old daughter but her execution was stopped by the texas court of criminal appeals because her there was there were claims by her attorneys that her trial was tainted and that there was testimony improper testimony um at her trial so. So the Texas court of criminal appeals, um, stopped her execution. Moody filed a bill to make it punishable by life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. And that would be for adult offenders. It would not be for, um, juvenile offenders because they cannot be sentenced to life without parole. They

can only be sentenced to life. And there are only a few types of crimes that are considered capital offenses in Texas, such as if you murder a young child or murder a police officer. So only those types of murders are punished as capital murder and if this bill were to pass it would be uh just life imprisonment without uh the possibility of parole but like we talked about with some of the bills that brad just referenced this is one of those proposals that's not going to go anywhere yeah it'd be shocking if it did and there are often like you said, bills that are filed specifically these ones that lawmakers are not stupid.

They know they're not going to go anywhere, but it's very ceremonial in part, or just indicative of a position. They're taking some sort of political stand or being able to go back there to their constituency and say, Hey, I filed a bill on this issue. It just did not go anywhere. And the environment, the political environment is not favorable, but a bill on this issue just to not go anywhere.

And the political environment is not favorable, but I fought for this issue in one way or another. And I say that Republicans like Jeff Leach have not come out against the death penalty, but they've said that they are concerned about it. But even after that news conference, I don't think the news conference to call for Lucio's execution to be stopped, I don't think the mood was, let's abolish the death penalty. It was, there are problems with the system. But there was an execution last week. There's another one scheduled this week. And these murders were decades ago.

So that's another issue that is often raised against it, was that how effective is the system when it's so many years and so many millions of dollars worth of appeals? And those are issues that are valid to conservatives. So it's not something that has no possibility of happening, and it has in some uh red states that have abolished it but in texas it's unlikely to happen absolutely hayden thank you brad your first piece this week was on the diesel shortage in the u.s resulting in higher prices at the pump why is this happening so i spoke with anthony lavagnos he's an economist um who deals in and u.s energy quite a bit he attributed the shortage to a few factors demand being higher in the fall demand for diesel being higher in the fall due to uh harvests and then winter preparation by power plants switching to diesel rather than heating oil.

Another aspect is the refining capacity, shutting down or curtailing output for maintenance purposes. They usually do that during the winter. And then finally he attributed it to the Russia-Ukraine conflict that has led to a large reduction in fossil fuel imports from Russia, not just to the United States, but mainly everywhere in Europe or almost everywhere in Europe that has been historically incredibly reliant on Russian gas for heating. one a rough winter because of that um and especially if the u.s exports of of like let's say liquefied natural gas does not get ramped up to meet the demand there um but here in texas the thing we see it most is uh in is the the diesel price at the pump and i mean as with everything in economics and energy there are many different

direct and indirect causes i think uh you know whether it's the power grid or or um gasoline prices or just energy in general that's a takeaway i would stress to everybody is that there are many different complexities to this and And let's say federal policy, that is absolutely one. It's not the only one. But the biggest reason for high fuel prices right now is the lack of refinery development. And I wrote about that earlier this summer. We talked about it on the podcast. That bottleneck, that creates a bottleneck between turning petroleum into something that

it can actually be used. bottleneck that creates a bottleneck between turning petroleum into something that can actually be used, whatever purpose it is, whether it's diesel, gasoline, asphalt, a ton of different purposes. And so that makes the supply that does exist, the price for it increase. And so this is a big problem. There's not a lot of, as Lavanya said, there's no short-term fix for this. We're kind of stuck with the way things are at the moment. We can fix things in the mid and long term.

But whether there's an appetite to do that from the federal level is an entirely different question. Yeah. You talked a little bit about this, but how does this affect everyday Texans? So while gasoline prices are felt more directly, everyone that drives a gas-powered car feels it when they fill up their tank. But the reason diesel impacts more is that it fuels semi-trucks and increasingly more cargo ships that ship everything we buy and so you're buying more things than just gasoline um you know the

the produce you purchase at the grocery store that's affected by the diesel price yeah anything and any home goods you buy at target that's affected by the diesel price yeah anything in any home goods you buy at target that's affected by the diesel price and the broad scale representation of this of that phenomenon is inflation which in september was eight percent which is very high uh but diesel because it's so heavily used for transportation of goods means it basically affects everything and costs will increase and pass on to the consumer to adjust there you go well a wonderful piece folks and brad has gotten some accolades this week from just different stakeholders about this piece particularly so make sure to go and check it out at the texan.news. We are going to pivot right into our tweetery section here. Hayden, a beat that you cover so often and so well is gambling in Texas.

What caught your eye on Twitter this week relating to that issue? Former Governor Rick Perry, the Rick Perry, not the other Rick Perry that we talked about, probably more than the real Rickick perry has become the spoke not for much longer because we're about to talk about oh are we really former governor no i was agreeing with you sorry oh he became the spokesperson for the sports Alliance, which is advocating for legalizing mobile sports betting. And Governor Rick Perry put out this video with them describing why Texas, in his opinion, should legalize sports betting, including protecting consumers from the illegal sports

betting market and keeping basically all the stock arguments for expanding gambling at all. We've been from, from the tax revenue, keeping the money in Texas and, uh, protecting people from the illegal black market. Um, which is a lot of the,

uh, same arguments used to justify casinos. So, um, a big name for a relatively unknown interest group advocating sports betting yeah interesting to see him get this and i mean he's been pretty involved in texas politics though for for good measure but his last couple appearances have been pretty odd the one did he go to the capitol to sell like sell humidifiers or something it was during covid

and that was very odd and then this one is less odd because it's a pertinent political issue, but just to see him put his force behind it is... How was he allowed to do that at the Capitol is what I want to know. I think there were concerns that he may not have been technically allowed to, but I don't know the merit of those.

Because it's clearly a commercial... I didn't watch it. I don't know what it was, but when I heard about it, it was strange. It looked like a QVC show. Like a late night infomercial that you watch when there's nothing else on. Seriously. And now he's doing sports betting, but I don't know.

Maybe he'll be at the Capitol and he'll testify in favor. That would be interesting. That would be fascinating is if the chair of state affairs said okay our first witness former governor rick perry to talk about sports betting sports betting oh my gosh classic um well thank you hayden um matt we're gonna come to you and talk a little bit about west texas here so what was it that has been going on in west texas it's not just a tweet necessarily it is something that's just been going on out there in West Texas that deserves some attention. Well, it's not just what was going on. It's what was shake, rattle,

and rolling yesterday all across West Texas. It got exciting. Yesterday, I was just minding my own business and the entire house started shaking. And I thought, I don't have anything in the washing machine. But then it got so severe that it was way beyond the old Maytag, just shaking everything. And so I walked out in the kitchen and stuff was starting to come off the shelves. And lo and behold, we were having an earthquake. And according to the U.S. Geological Survey, we had a 5.4 magnitude earthquake. Just north occurred at the epicenter of it just occurred north of where I presently am in Fort Davis. The epicenter was in an area north of Culberson County near the Reeves County line.

And apparently people felt it pretty severely all the way from Alpine, Texas to north of Midland, Texas. And there's even some reports of people hearing or feeling it in Lubbock and San Antonio. In the aftermath of the earthquake, there have been a number of aftershocks ranging in the 2.5 to 3.0 magnitude. And so I decided today that I would do a little bit of research trying to figure out what's going on here. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the area where the epicenter of it was, there are some energy-related industry deep injection wells where they take chemicals and heavy saline water used for fracking and have been injecting it into formations deep in the ground to dispose of it. And this is being attributed to a number of earthquakes in West Texas and whenever I compared

where the epicenter map from the U.S. Geological Survey was to the Railroad Commission's map of where these existing problematic wells are, lo and behold it was right on top of it. So I've reached out to the Texas Railroad Commission, as well as the Texas Oil and Gas Association for comment to see if they have any news about what their findings are as far as the cause of this massive quake. And I've also asked them if because of the severity of this quake, if we're going to see some regulatory changes with how much or how these oil related industry companies are injecting this water, this disposal material down into these formations, if that is in fact the cause. So stay tuned for our upcoming story on that. It should be rather shaking. Well, thank you, Matthew, for that news. Bradley, let's go back to talking about the presidential contest. What is something that

you saw this week? So what I was not so subtly alluding to was an ad by a Ron DeSantis supporting PAC airing a TV ad in Iowa, which has the First in the Nation GOP primaries in general. actually. But already, right after Trump's announcement, DeSantis is at least someone supporting DeSantis is airing an ad, a pretty well done ad, and it touts Florida's economic exuberance and

the lack of shutdowns and how people are moving there in droves right now. So that's kind of the theme. But I think it's becoming more and more clear every day that he is going to run. It's just a question of when does he jump in. Yeah. But, you know, crazier things have happened.

He could decide he doesn't want to. But that especially, seeing that after Trump's announcement was definitely pretty, pretty interesting. And he's already hitting the ground running in Iowa. Yeah. Which if you need any indication of whether somebody is going to run for president, check out if they're spending money in Iowa. Yes. That'll tell you everything you need to know. Thank you, Bradley.

Rob, what about you? So something interesting that I've seen on Twitter is that Carrie Lake, who was running for governor in Arizona, has not conceded. She said that she is assembling a legal team to try and, I guess, have votes recounted or find out if she has a path to victory. But the Carrie Lake war room tweeted out one of the most interesting tweets i've read in a very long time and it goes like this man plans god laughs tabulators in red district stop working during peak voting hours arizona counts and counts and counts dot dot dot and that chilled me so i thought everybody should hear that as well because because that was absolute poetry, I suppose.

I was going to say, it sounds like an Edgar Allen Poe poem. Yeah, it kind of does. I wonder if it was a haiku. Did you count the syllables? It was not a haiku. I think it has too many syllables, but it was just, it was, I don't know. It chilled me to my bones. I never understood haikus.

Yeah. It's just 5- haiku no i i get that like i don't understand why people are why people do it it just seems so silly it's an it's a it's a traditional japanese form of poetry i understand the history i took seventh grade english class too i just think it's kind of dumb. That's my opinion. I'm sticking to it. You're entitled to your wrong opinion. Somebody cancel Brad for hating on Japanese historic

literary forms. Yes, cancel me for that. Cancel Brad. Okay, Holly, what about you? Well, I'm so glad that Brad can be chief curmudgeon and not me. Well, I'm so glad that Brad can be chief curmudgeon and not me. Well, I'll drag you back into Houston-Harris County politics. But there's an interesting tweet from a group called Urban Reform.

There's a couple of individuals involved with this group, most notably Charles Blaine in this area is a pundit and very intelligent person. They kind of advocate for policies that tend to lead, excuse me, lean right of center to improve life in cities and urban centers. But they post these little video snippets of Houston City Council meetings. And one yesterday was interesting. There is a city councilwoman, Dr. Evan Shabazz, who flagged an item that included taking a roadway near Texas Southern University. And the plan was to take it from four lanes to just two lanes and add two bike lanes there. And she wanted to flag it because she said she didn't believe there had been appropriate community engagement and discussion about this. And because of the events that would naturally be around TSU, such as football games and other events, she didn't think that narrowing her county commissioner, which would be Rodney Ellis, saying basically Rodney Ellis wants these bike lanes and you need to have a conversation with him. It's illustrative of a kind of conflict going on in the community about what to do about roadways and transportation. And there is a kind of a push from the county to make it a little bit your bike to work is not optimal in rain or extremely hot weather.

Is it really a subtropical climate? I think it is. Oh, wow. I mean, that would explain a lot. It's not tropical, but if it's not, it's borderline, right? Interesting. if it's not it's it's borderline right and uh i mean interesting yeah yeah when you walk outside in the summertime you immediately need a another shower because it's so hot and humid oh my gosh well i mean even going north to south on uh 35 you know going in any direction it just is amazing how quickly things become more humid after you leave d you get into Austin you go further down to San Antonio Houston like everything just becomes a little bit more humid so um well Holly thank you

for that folks we are right at the hour mark here so I'm gonna I'm gonna peace out but um and make sure that we get our listeners back to the rest of their day folks thank you so much for listening and joining us each and every week to hear us blather about the news. We appreciate it. And we will catch you next week. 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.

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