The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - November 20, 2020

Episode Date: November 20, 2020

This week on The Texan’s “Weekly Roundup,” the reporters provide an update on the allegations surrounding Attorney General Paxton, discuss a CPS reform bill filed ahead of the session, detail Lubbock’s proposed sanctuary city for the unborn ordinance, examine the sex education curriculum debate at the state board of education meeting, consider Representative Toth’s bill to ban sex changes for minors, revisit the final state and federal election results, and assess property tax reforms in Texas.

Hello, folks. Welcome to this Thanksgiving-themed episode of the Texan News Weekly Roundup podcast. Mackenzie Taylor is out, so it was just the guys here to provide your weekly vaccine of straight news reporting. Daniel Friend gave us an update on the allegations surrounding Attorney General Ken Paxton and a CPS reform bill that was filed ahead of the session next year. Isaiah ran us through the gamut of Lubbock's proposed sanctuary city for the onboard ordinance, sex education curriculum debate at the state board of education meeting, and Representative Steve Toast's bill to ban sex changes for minors. I discussed the now finalized Texas federal and state elections

and previewed property taxes for the upcoming session. Thanks for joining us and we'll catch you next time. Howdy folks, this is Brad Johnson the texan news and welcome to our weekly roundup podcast today i have with me daniel friend and isaiah mitchell mckenzie taylor is off gallivanting across the continental u.s right now why is it always gallivanting i like that word it's you do yes i do um And so we are running the show today. Guys, how you doing? I'm doing pretty great.

Yeah. That wasn't very enthusiastic. I'm doing all right. I was thinking about the word gallivanting. Okay. Yeah. Any more deep thoughts with Isaiah there? Well, not today. We can move on to substantial stuff, but eventually we should discuss the verb to swashbuckle.

Okay. We'll table that for now swashbuckling across the united states like that that seems a little bit weird anyways how are you doing brad oh i'm doing wonderfully cool that's great i'll put it here i'll leave it right there i should ask you that more often yes you should like the first time in like three months and we are now bantering well beyond what we should be. We're getting dirty looks from Sarah across the table. Daniel, you had quite an update occur in something you've been following recently. What happened last night in the Ken Paxton Attorney General situation? Yes, well, so if you've been following Texasxas politics for the last month you've probably

heard about attorney general ken paxton and the allegations that have been brought forward against him of abuse of office and bribery these have these accusations were raised by several senior officials in the office of the attorney general back at the end of september beginning of october and since then, some more information has come out. A lot of people have been doing more research into this, trying to figure out what's going on within the attorney general's office. What is this shroud of stuff going on that we really don't know with Ken Paxton and the allegations against him. And last week, the whistleblowers who raised these allegations against him, all of them have either been resigned, put on leave or put on investigative

leave or been fired. And four of them last week filed a lawsuit under the Texas Whistleblower Act accusing Ken Paxton, the attorney's general's office, of retaliating for their blowing the whistle. And so within that lawsuit, it detailed a lot more information about the allegations of Paxton. And so, you know, as we've reported before, a lot of these allegations have centered around Paxton's relationship with an Austin real estate developer, Nate Paul. And Nate Paul has been in a series of lawsuits with his business. One of them was with a charity called the Mitt Foundation. And that has kind of become a little

bit more central to the whole case and what's going on. And so back last fall, uh, the FBI raided Paul's business and his mansion. Um, you know, they had a search warrant. They went looking for whatever files related to whatever their investigation was.

Uh, and since then, uh, the, the whistleblower said that after that in November of 2019 was when Ken Paxton began abusing his office in order to support Nate Paul. And Nate Paul had donated to Paxton's campaign in 2018. They have some other kind of personal relationship.

The whistleblowers allege that throughout this year, Nate Paul and Ken Paxton have regularly, you know, just hung out with each other outside of Paxton's official office hours. Not something that's put on his official schedule. Not something that other people from the attorney general's office necessarily go to. His security doesn't go with him to those meetings. But those have allegedly happened throughout this year and throughout the year um the whistleblowers also allege that uh ken paxton has helped nate paul in several different ways um now one of the ones that had already been kind of known was an investigation uh that was requested by n Nate Paul. And that kind of came to light

last month through the Travis County District Attorney's Office. And according to the district attorney, and also according to the whistleblowers in this lawsuit, back earlier this year, in like May or June, Ken Paxton met with officials from the Travis County District Attorney's Office to discuss the possibility of starting an investigation into the FBI and other law enforcement officials that were involved in the FBI raid last year. And so the FBI raid of Paul's house. Yes. Correct. And so Nate Paul, Ken Paxton allegedly wanted this investigation into these officials. And so Paxton was, according to the district attorney, according to the

whistleblowers, he was there kind of pushing for this investigation to happen at the Travis County district attorney's office. So they start that process at the Travis County district attorney's office. The Travis County DA does not have the resources to conduct the investigation that is as widespread or far-reaching as Nate Paul's claims were made. And so the Travis County District Attorney's Office then refers the investigation to the Office of the Attorney General. They said that they might, in some cases, they would have referred this to Texas Department of Public Safety, the Texas Rangers, other investigative entities like that. But since there were people in those offices who were being accused in the investigation, they thought it was more appropriate to refer it to the attorney general's office. And so they did that. Um, and then, uh, so, you know, Ken Paxton came out with a statement last month, uh, basically suggesting that, uh,

he did not have any role in starting the investigation, uh, but rather that it was just referred to his office and it was just a natural order of steps, a very procedural thing, nothing unusual about it. But the whistleblowers and the attorney kind of say otherwise. So that was one of the things, that investigation. And then there's some more details about hiring an outside counsel to kind of conduct the investigation on the behalf of the attorney general's office but i'll spare you the details

on that for now there are three other areas outside of the investigation where the whistleblowers alleged that ken paxton was kind of using his office to benefit nate paul so you know two of those things are kind of common things that the attorney general's office does. They do a lot of letters and responses to open records requests. So, you know, I think, you know, within our office, we submit open records requests to other agencies, government entities, asking for records that, you know, might be private and that should be public. And so that we're requesting that. And so anybody can do that. And then if the government entity,

you know, if a city attorney says, well, I don't know if we should technically be allowed to release this, they can bring that opinion to the attorney general's office. And then they make a ruling on what can be withheld, if anything, maybe the whole thing and whatnot. Right. And so the attorney general's office gets 30,000 to 40,000 of those a year, just like hundreds and hundreds. I was looking through the pages trying to find the specific ones related to this, and there's a lot. Well, it's kind of a default option that a lot of these localities use when maybe it's something they just don't want to release, whether they should or not.

And they appeal to the attorney general's office, regardless of whether they know themselves this will succeed or not, just to buy themselves some time quite often. Right. And so Nate Paul, in trying to have his investigation, have his attorneys look into this FBI raid, and the other opponents that were involved in it, the opponents at the Mitt Foundation in that lawsuit, they submit open records requests. So lawyers can do this, not just journalists, but reporters. Anybody can, I think, submit an open records requests. So lawyers can do this, not just journalists, but reporters. Anybody can, I think, submit an open records request. And so they submitted several of these requests. And the whistleblowers say that Paxton rarely ever pays any attention to these requests.

You know, there's 40,000 a year. It's not really necessarily relevant to his seniority to be looking at each and every one of these but he's the whistleblowers say that he took a very personal interest in a handful of these open records requests that were related to nate paul so that was one of the things now another thing that the attorney general does a lot of are issuing formal and informal legal opinions at the request of state lawmakers or in city county attorneys and that sort of thing and so you know they they also receive hundreds and hundreds of these a year and like the open records request the the whistleblowers say paxton really doesn't pay much attention to these he doesn't get in them, but he did pay attention to one in late June, July of this year that was related to whether or not foreclosure sales

could continue under COVID-19 restrictions. And so the reason that the whistleblowers say this is kind of relevant is because it was related to Nate Paul, who had several properties that were being foreclosed and had foreclosure sales. the COVID orders and that they would have to like stop, um, and not be able to do those in person after like, you know, a 10 person limit or something. And so they, they say he was using that, uh, to help Paul. And then the last thing that, uh, was kind of brought up was this, uh, the civil litigation with the MIT foundation and Nate Paul's Business World Class LLC. And now the attorney general has the authority to get involved in any civil litigation that involves a charity if the Texas attorney general is getting involved kind of to support the interests of the charity and so uh what paxton allegedly did uh was kind of get involved in this lawsuit between the mitt foundation and nate paul's business or his the subsidiaries of his business that were involved in the lawsuit. And now the attorney general, the charitable trust division of the office of the attorney general,

originally declined to get involved in this case back in January of this year. Now, keep in mind that this case has been going on since December 2018. So it's been going on for quite some time. And so they declined to get involved in January of this year. Now, according to the whistleblower lawsuit, Paxton was not involved involved and actually instructed the Charitable Trust Division to get involved in this lawsuit. underneath him to put pressure on the two people, the two sides in the lawsuit, the MIT foundation and Paul's business to reach a settlement. Okay. And so they were saying that he wasn't doing this out of the interest of the

charity, but rather out of the interest of Paul. So that's kind of the, the allegations that were brought against Ken Paxton that were kind of revealed. It kind of shows a little bit more about what was the context of their original complaints that they were making against Ken Paxton. And I think this definitely gives us the biggest picture so far out of everything that we've seen. Now, of course, the lawsuit focusing on the retaliatory acts of that also included a lot of more information about what they saw Ken Paxton and also the new first assistant

attorney general, Brent Webster, were doing to retaliate against them in the workplace. I won't go into details now for the sake of time, but you can go to our website and look up our article on that. It has a little bit more information on it. So those are kind of the two things about the lawsuit that were really new. Now, since then, Paxton has also come out with a statement saying that he's looked into the allegations that were made against them. And he said, essentially, he said that they were all very, you know, false, misleading and denying. He said something about instead of taking this through the proper channels being internal channels, taking it to, quote, the media and letting it play out in the public square. He criticized the whistleblowers for that as well.

Yes. Yeah. And he said that their allegations are overblown based upon assumptions and to a large degree misrepresent the facts. And he also said that given these circumstances, we'll be fully prepared to address these allegations through the judicial system if necessary. So that's what Paxton reportedly issued the statement on Tuesday morning. There was a reporter who tweeted it out. Now, I was trying to verify this because it wasn't coming from any official channels. We didn't get any press release from this. The attorney general didn't tweet this statement out. So I emailed the office of the attorney general and I said, can you confirm that the statement is accurate, that this is what Paxton said?

Got no response. But later that day, the AP broke a story saying that the FBI is conducting an investigation into Attorney General Ken Paxton. Basically saying what we already assumed, right? Yeah. Assuming it's presumptively about these allegations that have been made against him. This is just the first on-record confirmation. Correct. Yes.

That the FBI is actually conducting an investigation. They were anonymous, right? Yes. Yes. Because of the fact that it is an ongoing investigation, the people quoted in the AP story are anonymous, but the AP says that they have knowledge firsthand knowledge of the situation so yeah anything else with uh with this situation yeah so the the fbi is looking

into it now it's kind of a it's a he said she said thing at this point another thing worth noting is that uh nate paul's attorney michael winn also has sent two letters to the Texas Attorney General, first on October 11th of this year and then more recently on November 17th on Wednesday. Paxton and saying, accusing Paxton of not handling the situation properly and letting these accusations against Nate Paul to kind of be kind of defaming him in a sense. And so in that letter, in the more recent letter that they've sent, they had some interesting points that they made. They said that one of the people in a subject in one of Mr. Paul's complaints, Brian Hardiman, who is, I believe, related to some kind of car dealership in Austin, they said that he sent a text message to Attorney General Paxton with a picture of a dead animal in the statement, stay the hell away from Nate Paul, after they sent the October 11th letter. So, you know, whether this is true or not, not sure.

There's a lot of allegations going around, he said, she said. They also make the allegation that several members of the office of the attorney general, including one of the whistleblowers, actually met in June with one of the lawyers for the MIT Foundation, as well as FBI and Department of Justice personnel, who are the subjects of one of Paul's complaints. And so, you know, there's two sides going on here. You've got the whistleblowers saying that Paxton is using his office to support Paul. And then you have Paul coming in and saying that there's kind of a conspiracy against him with the FBI and DOJ and also these whistleblowers. And so now you just kind of have these question of who's right. We don't know. The facts are still kind of being played out.

I'm sure this will be played out in courts more, but that's where we're at in the situation right now. If I can make a movie reference, it's kind of like Animal House's food fight scene, only replacing all the food is allegations sorry man that's that's one belushi movie i have not seen oh my gosh isaiah i'm so disappointed you're the one that gets my movie references i know that's why i feel i feel like a betrayer yeah because he betrayed me i'm now going to put you on the hot seat that's fair um isaiah you have you and daniel had been following this, but there's a trend among typically lower population cities in Texas passing or at least trying to pass the sanctuary city for the unborn ordinances. And there's one that you've been following quite a bit that had never really developed yet until recently, until last night, I believe.

Lubbock City Council, they had a meeting over it, and they decided to reject the ordinance. So, why don't you tell us about what happened there? Yeah. So, the ordinance made its way into Lubbock, into the Lubbock sphere first, propelled by the support of a number of state legislators. And the city refused to consider it until a petition forced them to vote on it publicly. And that happened Tuesday night this week, two days ago by the time this podcast is published. And after several, I think most of the council members, including Mayor Dan Pope, you know, expressed their deep commitment to the pro-life cause and their respect for all life. They voted unanimously to not turn Lubbock into a sanctuary

city for the unborn, mainly citing constitutionality reasons. Most of them fell back on Roe v. Wade. I put up at the top of the article, near the top of the article, one council member's more stringent legal analysis. She referred to a Fifth Circuit ruling that we actually wrote about. It's linked in the article that struck down, well, ruled unconstitutional Texas's dismemberment abortion ban. And that was just last month. So this one particular council member actually brought in some current and sharp legal reasoning to explain her opposition to it. And like I said, for the most part, the city council at large, largely argued that it would conflict with Roe v. Wade, and it would conflict with the Texas Constitution and the Texas Penal Code.

There's some opposing legal argument at the bottom of the article. The activist who brought it, Mark Lee Dixon, director of Right to Life East Texas, gathered some attorneys, including Dustin Burroughs, a state rep from the Lubbock area, to pen a letter, you know, pointing out or arguing, I should say, that the pro-life ordinance does not conflict with the Texas Constitution or the U.S. Constitution. And, you know, it was written with Roe v. Wade in mind. So what it does primarily is, you know, with regards to Roe v. Wade, it allows the city to enact an abortion ban, but only after Roe v. Wade is overturned. So what that looks like is that the city can impose penalties in the event that Roe v. Wade is overturned, in the hopes that it is overturned,

by the hopes of these activists. And currently, in the cities that are abhor excuse me sanctuary cities for the unborn what the ordinance does now is hold abortion providers liable to the relatives of the aborted child so that's that's kind of what they would call the immediate enforcement mechanism it would allow the relatives of the unborn child that was aborted to sue abortion doctors or providers. So, you can read the back and forth legally in the argument or in the article, excuse me. We've got links to the relevant sections of the Texas Constitution and Penal Code and some background on there. So, go check it out. Yeah, and especially now with Justice Amy Coney Barrett being on the Supreme Court, it definitely becomes more likely, may not be likely still, but it becomes more likely that, you know, a challenge to Roe v. Wade comes before the court and, you know, creates this situation where these ordinances, you know, actually become effective. Right. And these have faced a legal challenge before, but like you pointed out,

the only sanctuary cities for the unborn in Texas right now are very low population towns and they have no abortion providers in town limits. So while the ordinance is enforceable in these towns, I guess the most sympathetic way to look at it would be as a deterrent, because there's nobody that the ordinance could possibly punish in these towns. So the lawsuit that they faced wasn't actually with regards to the 14th Amendment basis for Roe v. Wade, but more of a First Amendment argument that criticized the language of the ordinances for classifying abortion providers as murderers. And I think Daniel wrote about how this lawsuit got dropped, but when this lawsuit got dropped, both parties walked away thinking that they had won, and it didn't quite amount to much except for, I think, some subtle legal changes in the text of the ordinance. So Lubbock would have been a historic new leap for this ordinance because there is a Planned Parenthood in Lubbock right now.

Got it. Okay. Well, thanks for following that, Isaiah. I'm sure it won't be the last time. This week we saw the last of the concessions for the final openly contested races or races that had yet to be decided in the in Texas, mainly for the state and federal legislatures. But after Justin Ray, Republican candidate for House District 135, conceded to his opponent, rosenthal who's the incumbent democrat um now we see we know what the both the state and the federal um legislative makeup will be and um you know that allows these um you know these legislators either current legislators or legislators to be to begin planning for whatever respective session they have, whether it's the 87th

legislative for the state House and Senate or whatever Congress is going to do, which Daniel, you may have a better idea of that. But we kind of see this is kind of the end of, at least as it concerns Texas elections specifically, the end of election season. It marks the end of that. Now, obviously, we still have the issues going on at the federal level with all of the contested presidential races in given states. But here in Texas, we now have a clear picture of who is going to be representing the citizens of Texas across the states. And so we have a piece on that up.

If you want to see the various, the various concession statements, I'd go, I recommend checking that out. But yeah, so now we, now we kind of see what's coming down the pike. Isaiah,

I'm coming back to you. You have been following something going on, the state board of the last couple days. It has been a two-day hearing, basically? It's going to stretch even longer. Stretch longer than that? Yeah. Okay. Why don't you tell us what you've been watching, anything notable you've seen there? Right, so the State Board of Education is having its meeting right now Both as we speak and as y'all listen Because it lasts that long And as we speak right now

You know, in the land of yesterday for y'all If you can follow that They still have not voted on the part of the TEKS That has gotten all the headlines Which is health And the relevant part of that is sex ed The TEKS, if y'all don't know Stands for Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills. And it is a fancy acronym that essentially refers to the curriculum that the state writes for public schools to teach. And they've already had one first reading meeting on this back in September, I believe, and we wrote a piece on it.

And they elected at that time, the state board, to not include a lot of the demanded new language that many of the testifiers were calling for, which mainly would include terms of LGBTQ inclusion, the language of consent, and for some of the testifiers, though not as numerous, language on procuring abortions and information about abortions. And so the State Board of Education at this initial reading decided to not put this into the curriculum. And we're kind of having the same go around again, but the difference now is that their official meeting is this week and they're going to vote on it. Good. So it was on the State Board of Education's agenda on the first day of their meeting to vote on the health teaks. And then it ran long.

So they had to push it to Wednesday, which is the day that we're recording. And as we record, they're still talking about it. By the time this podcast is published, there should be a vote out, hopefully. But, yeah, hopefully there'll be a vote out. These things tend to drag on and on and on and on. Yeah, and they have good reason for it because, you know, Kevin Ellis, the head of the board, understands, as he mentioned, that there are a lot of people watching this online. They've been kind of hanging on the edge of their seats. And for all these hours of testimony to boil down to some 10-minute discussion briefened by the fact that all these board members are just wanting to go home, that wouldn't be fair to the topic that has garnered the most attention.

So they're pushing it back to allow for more discussion on the topic. I don't think that they're going to accept these new changes just because they didn't at the first meeting. But, you know, we'll see. Yeah. Something else to keep in mind with this for added context is that this is the State Board of Education without the new elected member. i think it's just one that

one election um uh two weeks ago whenever that was um rebecca bell metro i think it was sbo district five right and um she's a democrat and uh we've written about her before you know i think it'd be safe to assume that she would be supportive of these changes. Maybe not all of them writ large, but at least the basic sentiment behind them. And so this vote is taking place before she takes office. Right. And, you know, well, maybe that'll the result of this of this policy may change come next year when they vote on undoubtedly vote on this again or something similar so that's added context to it um daniel i'm coming over to you uh you've got a piece in the works on a cps legislation which is particularly relevant for you because of all the cps related stories you have covered um so surprisingly this year has been very few yes i mean it was a big

deal back uh last year it was actually the first story that i wrote about uh in june of 2019 yeah it's 2020 don't let me forget that back in june of 2019 well hopefully not for much longer yeah well i've heard the sequel is more exciting so i don't know we'll see um back in june of 2019 when i first started my job the first story that i wrote about was about a young boy drake pardo being removed from his family uh kind of under unusual circumstances this was a cbs case that dragged on for another four months uh finally, in October, he was reunited with his family. And then that case came to a final close in December of 2019. And since then, there really hasn't been a lot on CPS stuff that we've written about necessarily. Now,

I'm sure there's plenty of CPS stuff going on, especially during the pandemic. But with the coronavirus, things have shifted to other priorities. Back in 2019, a year ago from today, legislators were definitely, this was like one of their high priorities was CPS reform. And looking at the family code and seeing how you can institute ways, especially from Republican lawmakers, we're looking at ways that you can increase due process rates for parents and families and whatnot. Now, with the coronavirus pandemic, that's kind of fallen out of the spotlight. A lot of other things have taken much more priority.

I think the focus has just been elsewhere. That's just how it's been. Now, that being said, there has been a bill filed or pre-filed in the Texas legislature by State Senator Brian Hughes and State Representative James Frank, who are both chairmen of some committees that would oversee legislation like this. And what their legislation does is brings a lot of reforms to the family code a lot of changes that would they say would add more due process rights for parents create a deadline for final orders and parental termination cases and also updates the definition of neglect in the family

code and so you know looking at the the definition of neglect you the family code. And so looking at the definition of neglect, one of the things it does under the current code, the term a substantial risk of whether it be physical harm for a child or other kind of bodily injury for a child, like language, a substantial risk of that is used in terms of neglect. The new language proposed by these two lawmakers would replace a substantial risk with an immediate danger. So kind of changing that a little bit. It also adds a little bit clearer of a definition of the term neglect. Whereas under current code, it just says neglect includes these things.

This actually defines it by saying neglect means an act or a failure to act by a person responsible for a child's care, custody, or welfare, evidencing the person's blatant disregard for the consequences of the act or the failure to act that results in harm to the child or that creates an immediate danger to the child's physical health and safety. And then another part of defining neglect that it does, it also adds in what is not neglect. And they say that something that's not neglect is allowing the child to engage in independent activities that are appropriate and typical for the child's level of maturity physical condition developmental abilities or culture um so you know some things that that a child might do you know a 12 year old might do that maybe a five-year-old wouldn't where you know you might say that that's neglect and the parents like no like this is just

what 12 year olds do right um it wouldolds do. It would kind of narrow that scope a little bit. So that's one of the things it does. Basically kind of restricting the discretion of the CPS agents, right? At least tying it more firmly to what's in code rather than just them making a judgment call. Yeah, it clarifies the standards that they should be acting by. Now, in addition to code, the CPS agents also have their own handbook that they use.

It has their own rules and stuff that they do. Now, this is actually amending the family code, the statute, and something that's a little bit more legally binding than just the handbook. And so it also clarifies for courts, like, what is the standard for neglect? And if CPS comes in with this and they look at it and you're like, well, you know, maybe you could argue that that's a risk, but that's not necessarily an immediate danger. They can kind of have a little bit more of a distinction there. So I think it's intended to help out courts more too in ruling on these cases.

And so some other ways that it does it is it adds some more due process rights for parents. So in some situations, it actually amends the family code so that parents who might be more in poverty and they don't necessarily have the money to afford an attorney to represent them, that can be afforded to them. So that's another thing that it does. Another thing, it creates a deadline for the final orders. So I need to go back and read the code a little bit more or read the the legislation a little bit more to understand exactly where this is uh fitting in what it does

add a 90-day limit um to having a final order and parental termination got it okay uh so that kind of you know gives the courts a a deadline that they have to work by. This is a little bit tighter rather than just continuing to postpone this. And the family is wondering like, well, when are we going to actually have a ruling on whether or not our kid is going to come home? Right. Whether or not we're still going to be the guardian of our child. Um, so it adds that in. Um, so, you know, this, uh, Hughes and Frank Hughes and Frank released a statement.

They said, it's undeniable that children are traumatized whenever they are removed from their homes. There are, of course, occasions where removal is necessary because of an imminent threat to the health and safety of those children. However, it is equally true that too many Texas children are removed from their homes unnecessarily and the rights of these children and their families are trampled on. This harm stays with these families forever. Our legislation will clarify standards for the Department of Family and Protective Services caseworkers, protect the due process rights for parents, and ensure families here in Texas remain united when possible. So that's legislation that they've introduced. Now, you know, of course, this is, there's hundreds and hundreds of bills that have been already pre-filed um you know and i think that you

looked at another one of those right oh yeah before we move on to that though i the only question i have for you is back when this was a priority and um obviously you were following it extensively how much appetite was there among legislators to address this? Obviously we see two legislators filing this bill. But back then, how much have you seen? I mean, it's hard to say, to gauge, especially when I was coming in new to Texas, new to the Texas legislature, learning the members and whatnot. But I do remember that there were several dozen legislators who signed on to briefs supporting the Pardo family. So, you know, most of these were Republicans, but there were several Democrats who are also looking for reforms to the system. There's obviously a lot of talk about criminal justice reform or more broadly in, uh, not just Texas, but the country.

A lot of those are coming from the left, from Democrats who, uh, see low income communities in, in who might just not necessarily be the American dream family with a white picket fence. But they have problems that they're struggling with and they want to still have a family. And so both Republicans and Democrats are looking at ways to succeed in reforming the system so that there's a way. I'm sure that there will be some legislation that passes for sure now. Whether it will be this or something else, we don't know. Got it. Okay. Well, thanks, Daniel. To now transition to myself, which might be a breach of decorum. Another issue that will absolutely

be a topic this coming session is, once again, property taxes. That is not going away at all, despite the quote Super Bowl session that was had in 2019. There's been so much talk on what may come down the pike for this. There's various, not quite proposals, but suggestions that have kind of materialized. And there's one thing for sure that property taxes in Texas are still among the highest in the country. And there's plenty of room for reform and relief. And so last session, of course, the legislature limited, they reduced the percent increase limits down to two and a half percent for ISDs and 3.5% for cities and counties. That was certainly something. And part of the way they did that, and part of that effort was injecting this kind of property tax buy-down of especially school districts, portion of school finance that they have to contribute

and therefore buying down those taxpayers' bills. And it was $5.1 billion. But coming into the next session, there have been various proposals or suggestions itself back in after they, literally right after they signed this legislation, they said, you know, the next step is appraisals. And will we see any, um, any effort to reform and fix the appraisal system? And, you know, Texas is a very in demand state to live in, especially, um, you know, in the, in the bigger cities and the suburbs they're in. And so as demand increases, the value of these properties will increase as well, and it has quite a bit.

And the other thing especially, though, is that these appraisal increases are not necessarily increasing proportionally to the taxpayer's ability to pay. And that has been a big concern by many legislators. One thing that stuck out to me when I was looking through those hundreds of bills filed in the last week, the state rep james white has a a bill i think i might have discussed this last week on the podcast but it would limit appraisal increases for homesteads from uh 10 is the current limit for a homestead and he would that would limit it down to two and a half percent and so a pretty substantial decrease now it would still be able to increase, which is, of course, going to happen. But this would seriously shrink the ability for appraisal districts to increase values of property and thus reducing or at least restricting the growth of property tax bills from year to year. Another thing that I think will definitely play a factor into this session has to do with defunding the police. And Governor Greg Abbott, he,

after the city of Austin cut $150 million from its police department budget, he and a bunch of legislators, mostly Republican, I believe it was all Republican, came out and said that, you know, we're going to advance legislation in the 87th legislature to kind of punish these localities whose cities mainly that quote defund their police and the way they'd punish them is by placing a freeze on their property tax revenues for for the next fiscal year or it may extend beyond that they haven't really there no legislation has been introduced yet so um yeah but with the governor behind it i would be hard-pressed to believe that it's just going to kind of disappear from the legislative consciousness.

One more thing that I think will also play a role or could play a role is, you know, this disaster loophole. And I've written about this extensively since we first discovered it in April. Within the disaster code, there is a provision passed through SB2 that allows taxing entities. Actually, it's in SB2. It's not in the emergency code, but it's related to that. It allows taxing entities, whether it's cities, it's limited to cities or counties, to increase their property tax collection up to 8%, which was the old threshold, in the same fiscal year in which a disaster was declared. And so obviously Greg Abbott, he issued a statewide disaster. And so that applies everywhere. Now there's been some pushback from legislators, specifically Paul

Bettencourt and Dustin Burroughs, Paul Bettencourt in the Senate, Dustin Burroughs in the state house. They were the two main movers of the property tax legislation last time around. And they have stressed, and Attorney General Ken Paxton has weighed in on this, so has Governor Greg Abbott, that the loophole applies only to physical damage. And to be clear, the provision was instituted with the intention of something like Hurricane Harvey, physical damage to a property, to an area. What we've seen with coronavirus is more economic damage and specifically, you know, the ability for property tax payers to pay their bills because, you know, how many people have either been furloughed significantly throughout this or lost their jobs entirely because of the state and local shutdown orders.

So I could see something coming down the pike with that. Nothing, Representative Burroughs and Senator Betancourt didn't really indicate any specific legislation, but they mentioned that some, an option that could be explored is, uh, requiring a proportional decrease in a locality's taxing, uh, tax rate the following year after they implement the, um, you know, the disaster loophole rates above the, um, the new voter approval limits. So those are, uh, those are a couple of things that I'm looking forward to following when the legislature convenes in January. Property taxes, not going away.

The government still is going to be knocking on your door trying to many cases, especially in more Democrat-held cities and counties, they're increasing it substantially back to the levels before SB2. So, we'll keep an eye on that and we'll see where it goes. So, Isaiah, for the last topic of the day, you have been, you're writing a piece, or you wrote a piece last week on Representative Steve Toast's bill concerning sex changes. Yeah. You want to tell us about that? You missed out on an opportunity for a smooth transition between me and Daniel, because his bill, House Bill 68, which he pre-filed, would have been

the section of the Texas Family Code that defines child abuse to include procedures that are involved in sex transitions. So mainly that's the removal of healthy tissue like mastectomies, the prescription of puberty blocking hormones and other kinds of sterilization surgeries and surgeries to change the genitals to conform to what the opposite counterparts look like. It's very extensive. I encourage you to go look at the text of the bill and you'll expand your vocabulary. But Toth actually said that the younger case that you mentioned, Daniel, inspired his bill. In his words, he said, I was mortified to know that you could take a seven inspired his bill. In his words, he said,

I was mortified to know that you could take a seven-year-old and put him on hormone-blocking drugs. I was horrified to know or to think that a judge would allow this. It's ridiculous in my mind that the legislature even has to give guidance or create a law to protect a seven-year-old from a parent that's trying to transition a seven-year-old. I mean, that's ridiculous. So, for those of y'all who don't know not holding back words there at all no no um he was he was very uh

impassioned um in the case of this child his mother contended that he identified as a girl and pressed for transition procedures the father disagreed and said that he acted as a girl and pressed for transition procedures. The father disagreed and said that he acted as a normal boy around him. The mother emphasized that she was not seeking a medical transition, right? And that's what Toth's bill would actually, that's when it would kick in, you know, if it were to become law, because it doesn't apply to psychological affirmation therapy or things that don't alter the body. But anyway, in support, he said that he believes most children believed to have gender dysphoria decide to not commit to these kinds of transitions and surgeries and procedures by the time they reach adulthood.

And he also said that he plans to call a number of people who received these treatments in childhood and regretted them to testify before the legislature. Okay. Well, we'll keep an eye on that. That will absolutely be a watch topic come January 12th, whenever the legislature convenes. So thanks, Isaiah. Now we'll move on to our fun topic. Now, this is a fun topic, at least in my opinion, unlike that quote, unquote, fun topic that

Mackenzie had us do a couple of weeks ago. Gentlemen, let's discuss taxes. So, you know, Thanksgiving is coming up for our listeners. Just heads up. We will be off next week, not having a podcast. And so right now we're going to talk about Thanksgiving and what we like about it. It's my favorite holiday. I know Mackenzie loves Christmas and just frankly will not stop talking about it.

On my podcast, we are going to talk Thanksgiving. So, guys, what what are your favorite? Whether it's food, traditions, just hanging around watching the Cowboys lose to whoever they play. It's all right. The Detroit Lions do the same thing every Thanksgiving. I really wish there was Thanksgiving music. Okay. Dude. Because everybody like, you know, Halloween comes along.

No, more like October comes along and everybody starts playing Christmas music. It's like there needs to be something to make Thanksgiving a little bit more prominent. Yes, I agree. I think there is a tiny, tiny amount of Thanksgiving music in that category. Like I'm mainly thinking of the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving album. Not quite as good as the Christmas album, in my opinion, but still masterful by Vince Giraldi. And I can't think of anything else that's Thanksgiving-y.

Yeah, there's not like a unified sound or tone to it. Whereas like the radio comes on, you know if it's Christmas music or not. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's the same way that you know something as a Christmas movie movie except die hard maybe but i'm not gonna go there don't open that can of worms yeah let me pose this question to you guys when you go to get food on thanksgiving are you someone who has to carefully separate each of the food items or do you just pile it on like the agent of chaos you are well through

childhood my mom every year would see me get in line as close to the front as i could get and naturally then she would sink her talons into my arm and tell me demand nay that I would get to the back of the line and not pile my plate so high. So if I just had my way, I would pile everything possible that the plate could physically hold. But, you know, I mean, in childhood, that wasn't allowed. So I had to be very polite in my portions and just go back to the line like five times. Say what? Is it allowed now? You know, I'll have to test it out.

Yeah. Let us know how it goes. Parents have a way of just kind of reverting back to the way that they would treat you as a child whenever you're in the house again. And children, I think, we offspring have a way of just kind of going with that flow. Even with, I know that like on certain subjects I do is anyway, we'll see. I don't know. It's like in the moment, my instincts just kick in and all of a sudden I'm 12 again.

I'm like, dang, I got to get to the back of the line. Got to, got to stop like taking both turkey legs this time. You mentioned favorite traditions uh-huh my dad and my uncle brad have a competition every year with turkey and also usually one other kind of meat so often we'll have i mean we'll always have two turkeys and maybe two racks of ribs or you know he'll bring a chicken or something so it's it's a competition that's good for everybody really the winner isn't decided very officially but nonetheless we get two turkeys every year it's pretty that's fine and the winner gets bragging rights essentially yeah and it's it's always pretty contested yeah so i don't i don't know how official any of these results really are

but um you know i take my time okay when i choose okay fair daniel any traditions uh to answer your question about the plate oh yes that's right yeah that's the important question here the most important one i think that there's a golden mean i think like you don't have to you don't have to mix all your food together but you don't have to be like so frightened that your green beans are touching the sweet potatoes. Like that's okay. Okay. But they should be like, you know, still generally kept separate.

But like if they're touching, that's not a big deal. I don't know about with those two particular items though, because green beans are just swimming in that juice, which I don't want to touch anything other than green beans. Like that just, that would taint the sweet potatoes or, or God forbid the rolls. Like if that could soak into the roll flesh, that would, that would suck dude. Green bean juice and anything but the green beans.

But overall, I take your point. Okay. What are your thoughts on that, Brad? Oh, I pile on there. Yeah.

Including the sweet potatoes. That doesn't surprise me. I hate sweet potatoes and you know that. So's why i'm asking yeah no yeah thanksgiving is a strict no sweet potatoes zone that's sad that is no it's glorious because you know what's better than sweet potatoes mashed potatoes and i put a freaking mountain on my plate of those things okay mashed potatoes are great but sweet potatoes are i mean i don't know if i have a strong opinion about which one is better but it doesn't surprise me at all that you hold to this extremely controversial opinion about such a well-loved item so when we had our

staff thanksgiving meal last year and i brought the sweet potatoes i didn't need a dang one wow not one nope tater sorry daniel dang i am not very picky about most things but sweet potatoes I didn't eat a dang one Wow Not one Nope Potato Sorry Daniel Dang I am not very picky About most things But sweet potatoes Is something that I will Not touch Dang dude

I think they're pretty good Now are you guys White quickly Before we end Are you guys White meat or dark meat Dark Yeah dark

It's just juicier Yeah Well we are in agreement on that So I think All three of us Yeah So I don't Like if it's just juicier yeah yeah well we are in agreement on that so i think all three of us yeah yeah i don't like if it's just white dried out meat like what's the point yeah i don't get it mac probably appreciates the bland flavorlessness of white meat i think if she were here she'd be

the one defending i really hope she listens and hears that and then texts us in an angry rage no if she does listen to that and hear it, she should tweet it out. Okay, let's see if she doesn't. Put that to the test. All right. Well, folks, thank you for joining us, and we'll catch you whenever we convene again. Thank you all so much for listening.

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