The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - November 21, 2025

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

Show off your Lone Star spirit with a free "Remember the Alamo" hat with an annual subscription to The Texan: https://thetexan.news/subscribe/The Texan’s Weekly Roundup brings you the latest news in Texas politics, breaking down the top stories of the week with our team of reporters who give you the facts so you can form your own opinion.Enjoy what you hear? Be sure to subscribe and leave a review! Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast.Texas 2026 Congressional Redistricting Map Shot Down by El Paso Federal Court‘Nobel Prize for Fiction’: Federal Judge Issues Fiery Dissent to Texas Congressional Redistricting RulingU.S. Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Asylum Seeker ChallengeIllegal Alien, Salvadoran National Arrested in Texas for Alleged ‘Repeated’ Sexual Assault of Minor SponseeTexas Department of Motor Vehicles Updates Photo ID Requirements for Vehicle RegistrationCongressman Chip Roy Proposes Freezing All Immigration Into U.S. Until ‘Certain Objectives’ are MetFederal Grand Jury Adds Terrorism Indictments Over July 4 'Antifa' Attack on Texas ICE FacilitySpecial Election Runoff for North Texas Senate Race Set for January 31Abbott Designates Muslim Brotherhood, Council on American–Islamic Relations as 'Foreign Terrorist Organizations'Abbott Calls for Investigation Into 'Sharia Law' Islamic Tribunal in DallasTexas Sues Round Rock, Leander ISDs for Not Displaying Donated Ten Commandments in Classroomsand more!

Well, howdy, folks? It's McKenzie here with Mary Elise. We're adding Cameron on another edition of the weekly roundup week from today will be Black Friday. So I want to remind folks that we have a 50% off Black Friday promo going for subscriptions to the Texans. So make sure to go and get that before it's too late. Folks, like Texan.com. Say that again. How much? How much do they get that?

50%. 50? 50. Oh, my. Wow. You don't even have to go to the store. Oh, my gosh. This is a huge opportunity.

Pick it up. Can you believe? You know, I'm giving a 50% off subscription for Christmas to all of my family members, all of my friends. You know, unfortunately, they're still not subscribed. Maybe this will do it for them. Maybe this will do it. That's right. But, folks, it is our biggest by far sale of the year.

So make sure and go take advantage of that. it'll be going for a couple more days post i think it'll go through cyber monday so just make sure take advantage of it and keep an eye out it'll drop before black friday so keep your eyes peeled um gentlemen in the austin office y'all holding down the fort okay over there um we're keeping things tidy enough you know there's there's stuff you know around the office maybe a errant coffee cup here or there you know we we haven't ran out of plastic forks just yet um you know okay so we're doing good that's always the first thing to go coffee is running low we're going to have to ask jaden to order some more okay okay as long as you've got some provisions yeah i think we'll

need the energy and the caffeine to keep up with all these crazy stories that are happening it's true it's true and mary alice has taught me today what a sourdor coonia is ahead of thanksgiving so read my newsletter i'm going to be including some of that in there but mary alice thank you for opening my eyes to something that's seriously unreal i'll also say when i asked for everyone's favorite thanksgiving foods you said sourdoconia copia and everyone just kept going no one asked anything there were no questions posed i just assumed everyone knew what it was i had no clue and I think I might petition my family to add it to our rotation. So I appreciate all that you bring to our lives, Mary Lees, but especially the Saur-Durcunicopias. Especially the cornucopia. Especially the cornucopia. Well, let's jump into the news here.

It has been a huge week, and the elephant in the room is the congressional redistricting decision. And so, Brad, I want you to kind of break this down for us and walk us through what happened this week. Yeah, finally. about two weeks after I thought it was going to drop, it finally drops, and we are already past the beginning of the filing period with which candidates have to file for the offices. Obviously, there's a big question mark over what the heck the map is on the congressional side, which does have a cascade effect down ballot

with potential state reps going for congressional seats. Do they go, would they jump back? there's a question in Texas 35 about that with John Lujan, we'll see. I know this is early to jump in, but with the Doggett and Kassar. Doggett and Kassar, yeah. Doggett is no longer dead politically.

Yeah. He's no longer in an early retirement, for now. For now. So to cut to the chase, the panel at the El Paso District Court, which was made up by a two circuit court, court judges and one district judge they finally ruled on the congressional map and they ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and joining the state from using the new projected five seat GOP gain congressional map next year and going into this both sides I was hearing were really undecided how well how they they felt they didn't know which way the panel was going to go right and it was a two-and-one decision the majority opinion was written by Judge Jeff Brown, a former Texas Supreme Court justice.

And it sided with the plaintiffs. It's found that the Republicans illegitimately considered race when drawing these maps. And, of course, we talked about before the whole case the Republicans were making in court was, no, this is a political redraw. The reason they're making that case is that precedent. under the 2019 decision in Rucho found that political gerrymandering is non-justiciable. It's not something for a court to even consider. It's out of their purview.

It's entirely a legislative thing. The problem is when you come in with Voting Rights Act issues, that is when things deviate from justice solely political redraw, and we saw that play out here. Well, in this opinion, they were leaning a lot on the DOJ letter. Is that correct? Correct, yep. And so the gist of what Brown wrote was, quote, the public perception of the case is that it's about politics.

To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 map. But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 map. The biggest evidence for that that the panel pointed to, was the DOJ letter. This was a July 7th letter sent to Governor Abbott and Attorney General Paxton from the Trump administration DOJ. Right.

From Harmeet Dillon. And in that letter, it asserted that five districts, I think it was, constitute unconstitutional racial gerrymanders in a weird manner. Yeah. And it points to the Petaway case that we've talked about before, which found last year, this is a Galveston case, ultimately ruled on by the Fifth Circuit, that coalition, majority minority coalition districts no longer need to be maintained

in order to comply with the Voting Rights Act. Basically, they found that the political differences of blacks and Hispanics are so different now that they don't constitute a singular minority in terms of political interest. And so now you can't bring any claims on Section 2, the coalition districts. You can't bring any claims against redistricting maps under that. The VRA still stands, though, at least in part, and we'll see where the Supreme Court rules on Callais, which would take down the rest of the VRA as it pertains to this topic.

Well, it's interesting. The decision here was relying a lot on that deal. DOJ letter because what we were hearing during the committee hearings during your coverage is many of the Republicans who were attempting to argue in favor of the map redraw for saying this is not about race at all this is about partisan affiliations but did any of the things that were said in the committee make its way into their opinion did they rely on any of those talking points or it was just all the DOJ letter there were some there were some of Todd Hunter who authored the bill citing C-VAP numbers, citizen voting age population statistics that delineate what's a majority minority district. So like a majority Hispanic district, a majority black district. He listed those off. So let's step back a second.

Let's do the timeline again. The Padaway ruling comes in, I think, August last year. Then you have Robin Armstrong, who's the R&C committee man, he's now a Gallison County Commissioner. He starts saying, like, hey, we need to redraw all the maps in Texas in light of this ruling, because it was a massive, significant ruling. Change the game on redistricting. So he's shouting from the rooftops, hey, we need to redraw.

We start getting closer to legislative session. And from what I understand, the first utterance from the White House about redistricting to Texas came from – or came in December, maybe late November. Okay. Now, the reason, the onus for that is that, first of all, the margin, the majority, Republican majority in Congress is very slim, for a combination of different reasons, but also it's just a slim make-up politically. However, New York redistricted in 22 or 23, which then made Republicans lose three congressional seats. So that was an episode of mid-decade redistricting that doesn't get talked about a lot. Right. So in the political tit-for-tat, it began there.

Okay. It comes to Texas. I hear rumblings about it early on. It kind of dies off. I don't think the Speaker or the Lieutenant Governor wanted to touch it when they were trying to navigate what was a very unforeseen session. Didn't know how it was going to go. They get to May, and I first hear, that it's happening,

the White House is pressuring Texas to redistrict the congressional map in order to level the score against New York. We see, comes out, get a little bit more, Abbott puts out the list of the special session call and redistricting is on it. And in that, he invokes this DOJ letter. In hindsight's 2020 here, we see how the court ruled, but that DOJ letter was not only entirely unnecessary because it was an attempt to provide political cover. The thing is, you could redraw the maps whenever under the Texas Constitution. Texas has not limited itself like California has. So they didn't need it, but they did it anyway to try and provide political cover in light of the Padaway ruling.

The other thing is, though, the DOJ letter got the PEDAway ruling wrong. It stated that these districts were unconstitutional and must be disbanded. That's a directive. The Pettaway ruling is more permissive. You don't need to preserve these in order to comply with federal law. So not only was it an ill-advised political move, it was errant legally. Interesting. And that was the biggest chink in the armor for the state's case.

And they knew it going into this. They knew that this was the biggest vulnerability. And it wasn't just the letter itself, because the letter itself, standalone, doesn't really do anything. But what the plaintiffs did and ultimately proof to the judges is that there was a link between the DOJ letter and action. They citing Abbott statements, I think one statement from the speaker in which they invoked the DOJ letter as justification for doing the redraw. And it blew up in their face for now, for now. Well, this Texas congressional redistricting has set off a domino across the entire country. So is there any thoughts to, with the court striking down the implementation of these new maps,

going to have an effect in these other states? Like California is going to redraw? Is this going to have any effect on what they're trying to do? I don't think so. It's a logical question to ask, right? Because California redistricted to cancel. out Texas is right right but they're moving forward yeah they're not first of all I should say this is going to the Supreme Court okay and it will go in expedited fashion

from what I'm told probably Monday this thing is before the court wow because they have to because the filing deadlines coming up yeah it's also possible if this thing drags on a bit that we push the entire primary back well that's possible it happened in 2011 yeah Texas is primary got pushed back now that was a standard redistricting cycle not mid-decade but still it happened but from there the court could either reverse it and uphold the maps or affirm the lower court's ruling and the understanding who knows what happens now a lot of stuff has happened but the understanding going into this from both sides of council was that whatever the

judges ruled in this panel would be upheld by the Supreme Court. So how are these individuals who are candidates filing under the presumption that the maps are going to be implemented? How are they sort of feeling about this? Because I know you've talked to Briscoe Kane. Yeah. What did he say? He said he's moving forward, full steam ahead. He's not dropping out of the race for the new CD-9. Yeah. He was going to retire from the legislature anyway because he, according to what he said on our podcast yesterday, he had a self-imposed term limit.

So that wouldn't affect him. John Lujan's the other one that comes to mind in San Antonio in the Texas 35 race. And that one, I've heard things back and forth. I don't know which way he's going to go. But if he does go back down to run for House, There are already a bunch of candidates that have declared for that. Yeah.

So do they stay in? Do they drop out? What happens? Yeah. No idea. The other aspect of this that was used against the state that was ruled against the state other than DOJ letter was what's called the Purcell doctrine, where courts are generally advised not to change the rules of an election, which includes the lines, too close to the election.

And so Brown argued that we're already in the filing deadline. This map has enough questions, legally speaking, in terms of race. Let's just use the current maps. Now, one interesting wrinkle of this ruling is that the panel conceded that the current maps are legit. Because before this congressional, the redistricting happened, there was a long-running lawsuit years long over the current congressional maps and all the other maps in the state, where Democrats and their allies are arguing that those are illegitimate and illegally drawn based on race.

But in this ruling, Brown basically issues a secondary ruling that the current maps are legit. Interesting. So at the very least, there is that. Okay. But the Purcell doctrine came to play here, and once we get to the dissent, which we're all wanting to talk about, there is an angle on the Purcell stuff that I want to mention. But overall, this is going to the Supreme Court. The balls are still in the air. It is a more conservative court. 5-3, I think, is the general makeup. But it would take a lot, even so. to overcome both the DOJ concerns, letter concerns, and the, and the, the, the, the, the, the, the, it's just the fact that the court issued the ruling. Yeah.

Well, I'll let you get to it in the December, but it is interesting about the time period in terms of how close this map would be implemented in regards to when the election is set to take. place, because there are some things that happened during the session that caused this extended period of time between when they were called to redraw the map to when it was passed. And that's exactly invoked in the dissent. Yeah, I'll let you talk about it. Heads up, this Black Friday, the Texan is giving you our biggest deal of the year. For a limited time, get a full year of independent Texas-focused journalism for just $48. half off our regular annual subscription.

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Now, back to the news. Yeah, let's jump into the dissent then because very shortly after this came down, I think the, obviously huge news. And then this dissent came down and it was like Twitter went ablaze with different excerpts of incredibly scabing and fiery quotes from this judge Sherry Smith dissent. So Brad first, and at the end of this, I want us to each pick our favorite portion that's the spiciest. But Brad, walk us through exactly what this dissent does and what the point is. Yeah, so first of all, dissent is just there to – it's for there for two reasons. One, to lay out a case for appeal, and two, to provide some level of disagreement in writing with the majority opinion. So Judge Jerry Smith, a Reagan appointee, is disagreeing with the majority of the court, which is one, I think Obama appointee.

appointee and then Jeff Brown is a Trump appointee he was appointed in 2019 and it was scathing to say the least he issues this preliminary statement that is

just molly whopping Brown in his alleged conduct in issuing this ruling saying that he delayed things he didn't give sufficient notice If you know it, if you paid attention that when the decision came out, there was no dissent, which is rare.

They normally come out together. And Jerry Smith said that the judge sprung it on him. There was pernicious judicial misbehavior. Yeah. Basically sprung it on him at the last minute. After waiting, you know how I said we were expecting this two weeks ago. Yeah. Sprung it on them then or now instead of issuing it back then.

And that, when we thought it was coming, it was still a few weeks after the trial ended. So there was a lot of time, a lot of wasted time. And both of the opinion and the dissent were well over 100 pages long. So this was an incredibly in-depth, extensive set of rulings and decisions. So the opening statement from Smith is pretty much just a Jeff Brown sucks. Yeah. And the way he handled this is the worst, from what Smith said, the worst I've ever seen in my 37 years on the bench.

So once you get past that, and of course there's a lot of the... There's a lot of personal beef. Personal beef, and the stuff that catches the headlines, a lot of it was in the opening statement. But then he does lay out his case, his disagreement on the merits. And the big part of it is, in Smith's view, this is all political, and therefore it's non-justiciable. And the only reason anybody ever draws maps in a certain way, particularly these days, is to gain a partisan advantage. The question is, it's a second-order question, was there something else at play that you went awry?

of in drawing the maps. But the original intent of any map, whether it's California, Illinois, Texas, Florida, is to gain more seats in Congress for the party that controls it, right? That's Smith's case at root. Well, can you explain a little bit about there is all these mentions of George Soros

in this dissent? What was that about? So there's actually a footnote, I don't have it in front of me, but there is a footnote where he, where Smith explicitly, addresses this, but George Soros was invoked. I think the first line he was invoked was

George Soros is the winner here and the people of Texas and the rule of law are the losers. Now, the reason he was invoking that is not a oh my God, George Soros thing. It was to add more proof to his case that this is all political. Right. That George Soros wants Democrats to win, of course.

his prerogative and so he's funding these legal efforts against maps in order to advantage Democrats because that's who he ideologically aligns with so I saw a lot of hand-wringing on Twitter about that specifically and it sounds like oh my god Soros you know just right wing judge

getting mad that he lost and invoking the boogeyman while he was doing it for a reason and that reason was to show how shot through with politics this is. Right. And in his mind, that eliminates any other problem. And obviously, Jeff Brown disagrees, right? But that was the invocation of Soros. So you mentioned at the top of this that a dissent can be used in the appeal process as justification for that. Are you anticipating when we see the appeal as it reaches the Supreme Court

some of these similar arguments made in this dissent made in the appeal that the state sends to the Supreme Court? Absolutely. 100%. You know, the plaintiffs who won this case will make the same case and they'll point to the ruling that the DOJ letter

at the very least, in the statements thereof show race was considered and therefore Republicans have no room to complain about this. And as a political maneuver, it was so dumb. It was just not needed. Maybe that's just hindsight, but it was clearly not. People were saying this from the beginning.

Like I was hearing as soon as that came out from some of the Republicans in charge of drawing this map, what the heck are they doing? This is going to kill us. Because their whole case is the Rucho case that political gerrymandering is totally fine as a question of law. Well, I found the footnote you might have been thinking about with the Soros connections here. I think it's interesting to just read from it here. I'll read from a quote. I suppose someone will say that in making these comments about the Soros connections, I'm expressing a political view, not the proper role of a federal judge.

To the contrary, as I say above, the political branches engage in policy and politics. It's our job as judges to let that happen, but it's also our duty to recognize the societal and political effects of what we do regardless of whether we approve of those downstream results he goes on to talk more about the political dynamics that he says are inherent in the litigation of redistricting cases and so just speaking to your point right that the soros angle of this is just to explain the political effects that are involved in congressional redistricting in the in that process. And the political themes that are imbued in this that you cannot get out of it, right? So, yes, to answer your question, the Attorney General's office,

when they file their appeal with the Supreme Court will, basically take Smith's dissent and apply it there, it was pointed out to me the Purcell angle to this. Remember Purcell was the ruling that courts should not affect the rules of an election too close to the election. The argument Smith made, and I know this is going to be made in the appeal filing, is that what you were alluding to, the things that happened during the legislative session that cause a delay, i.e. the quorum break, the two-week quorum break,

that that delayed things enough, that the Purcell, thing is even a question. Like in that argument, Purcell shouldn't be a question because we should have had the map two weeks earlier. Right. And which would have expedited things and had a ruling before the filing deadline opened. Right. So that case is going to be made. I don't know if it's going to work. I have no idea. Well, it's both the left and the right in this case shooting themselves in the foot. The Republicans with the DOJ letter and Democrats with breaking quorum. Both could harm them in the ultimate decision here. I would add one thing to that in that we have political motivations and legal cases countering each other. Right. And political

motivations and actions. Because Democrats succeeded in the extent that they got other states to redistrict to cancel out. Now that's a political thing. Yeah. But it could, in this case, undermine their argument on the Purcell doctrine. Is that enough to overturn the lower court's ruling? No idea. But if the Supreme Court justices are friendly to Smith's case about this is all political, like let's call a spade a spade here, we know why they redraw the maps. If they are amenable to that, but they're not wanting to be seen.

as taking a sledgehammer to a lower court if they don't have to which has happened before then they can find this end around through that that Purcell doctrine angle right the court makes just decide no the map's fine clearly it was political partisan motivated the DOJ letter didn't have any effect on this or they might find in agreement with Jeff Brown and argue that the DOJ letter is something that Republicans cannot escape

as ill-advised as it was at the time, and still is, that fact pattern is not advantageous towards Republicans. And the AG's office admits it. Jeff Brown said it in his

ruling that the AG's office came in and said, this thing is so dumb. It's also riddled with errors. Meanwhile, the governor and other officials are invoking it as justification for doing the redraw. So the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. And maybe that causes too many problems for the court to ignore. It's just so interesting because this really is a ginormous story.

As it's set off, like I mentioned, political dominoes have fallen across the country, California, other states, attempting to redraw their maps in reaction to what Texas is doing, all based upon a single letter. And that letter is being a thorn in the side of Republicans in this case. But it's just so interesting. What happens in Texas, you know, leads the country. And it may decide who controls Congress next year. In a manner that we didn't think was going to happen.

because let's say Republicans miss it by three votes, three seats, well, if this ruling stays the same way, that's three seats that they could have had, that they wouldn't otherwise have. So there's a lot of implications here, and that's why this is so demanding on both sides the top-level interests. Well, this might take us too far afoot of what we're talking about, but in regards to even how Republicans decided to redraw this new map, they were leaning heavily on Hispanic support for Donald Trump during the last election.

Yet, as we've seen in polling, that support has sort of softened a bit. It's tenuous, yeah. Yeah, so even if this map does hold up, those districts aren't, you know, guaranteed to go to the Republicans. If this map isn't upheld, that could potentially give a new opportunity for Republicans in Texas be like, okay, we've seen new polling, we're going to redraw the maps in a different way

to give them support through different demographic groups that are in support of Republicans. So there's a lot of implications here. Yeah, and then last thing I'll add is that we may be back here in 27 drawing more maps, depending on how Callais goes at the Supreme Court probably ruled on next. year that won't affect things for the 26th cycle but it is being talked about coming back and drawing not just redrawing not just congressional maps but state legislative maps too

well so there you go ma'am thank you bradley you guys killed it but let's talk through these um this dissent it's so scathing what are the the highlights for y'all in terms of just the the one-liners i mean to start off like while y'all gather your thoughts the first line is a quote from All About Eve, Fasten Your Seatbelt is going to be a bumpy night. That is the first thing in this dissent, and I think it's indicative of the rest of the contents. But what stood out to y'all? My favorite was The Opinion is caught in an illogical straight jacket from which it cannot escape. I just like the image of that in my mind.

Okay, this is a little bit longer than one line, but I really enjoyed. us. He said, found it interesting. He said, in the interest of time, this dissent is admittedly disjointed. Usually, in dissenting from an opinion of this length, I would spend more days refining and reorganizing the dissent for purposes of impact and readability. But that approach is not reasonably possible here because these two judges have not allowed it. The resulting dissent is far from a literary masterpiece. Oops. Well, I'll just go from there, because that's what I was going to say, that picking up where Maryless left off, it's far from a literary masterpiece, and then he says,

if, however, there were a Nobel Prize for fiction, Judge Brown's opinion would be a prime candidate. Wild. There are biting dissents, like there have been biting dissents before, where really the ruling is attacked and very harshly disagreed with, but this is totally different. Yeah. This was personal in many regards, and I don't think I've ever seen anything like that before. Yeah, and I will say, too, I mean, it's easy to write off a dissent like this is, okay, this will be petty legal jargon or difficult to read, and honestly a lot of dissents are just very interesting to read, and sometimes the tone of the judge comes forward in like a very distinct kind of way, and this is obviously one of those.

But the first page or two is kind of running through timelines of how this worked out and, you know, Judge Brown and how, like, where each judge was, even in their life when this was going down. It's wild to watch or read through all of this. And it's very dramatically written, of course, but it's gripping in a lot of ways. And Cameron already highlighted this part, but, I mean, this is sentence number three in this dissent, or excuse me, four. I also need to highlight the pernicious judicial misbehavior of U.S. is your judge Jeffrey Vincent Brown. Just skating right off the bat. We know where this is going. Right out the gate.

He's just right out the gate. Yeah. Any other highlights or takeaways, y'all? No, we'll see what the Supreme Court does. It should happen quickly. Yeah, it needs to for the sake of, you know, constituents and candidates and office holders. So, yeah, we'll see how. how long this takes, but thanks gentlemen for running through that, Brad, for your coverage.

Cameron, let's talk about the U.S. Supreme Court in a different arena here. There's been an update to a very interesting legal challenge to some issues related to asylum seekers. Give us this update. Yeah, like you mentioned, the U.S. Supreme Court is agreeing to take up a case that addresses issues of asylum seekers when they reach U.S. ports of entry. And in this case, it's in regard to Nome v. Al Ocho Lotto and it was filed back in July 2023 against the then Biden administration and it involves two immigrant rights groups challenging the federal government's

quote waitless system for asylum seekers at points of entry along the southern border and the turnback policy for those attempting to enter the country. So this is all related to different statutes within the Immigration and Nationality Act. Most explicitly in regards to what it means when someone, quote, arrives in the United States. And there's been a number of different rulings already and different updates to the INA since July 2023 and even in years prior under the first Trump administration as there's been this ping ponging back and forth about how to handle the southern border and these asylum

seekers. So I lay all that out in the piece. It's a bit too much to get into right now, but the justices at the U.S. Supreme Court are going to be answering the question of whether an alien who has stopped on the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexico border arrives in the United States within the meaning of those provisions that I just laid out in the INA. So this will be very interesting. Another wrinkle in the entire southern border controversy. in regards to how to handle both asylum seekers and illegal immigration. Thank you, Cameron. Well, let's stick on that issue.

Mary Least for coming to you, two individuals were arrested in Texas recently. Give us the details of their case. Yeah, the charges involved in this case are pretty disturbing. So it involves a criminal legal alien and then a Salvadoran national. They were arrested in Texas recently, and it was for allegedly, repeatedly, sexually, actually one of the men's minor relatives. So this was a little girl, I believe 12 years old, who was sponsored by one of these individuals,

who I believe was her grand uncle, and so they were arrested for charges involving sexual assault. One of the individuals has been taken into custody for immigration-related violations, and that's in, and he's in the Montgomery County Processing Center. And then he, so he was transferred there, and then now he's been sent over to the Harris County Sheriff's Office. So Montgomery County and Harris County have been collaborating pretty closely here with this arrest.

So there was a press release sent out by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement a couple days ago on Friday. And it wrote about how one of the individuals hadn't given sponsorship of this, his grandniece, after her mother had smuggled her into the country back in 2014 while President Obama was in office. And then the individual was given temporary protected status in 2024, so that's under the Biden administration, of course. But his status has since been revoked. And the other individual who was also arrested for this repeated sexual assault of a minor was first taken into custody in the woodlands on November 4th, and that was the Montgomery County Constable's Office that orchestrated that arrest there. There's a couple of disturbing details about this story,

one of which is that the girl had escaped from these two men with assistance from two women who lived in the Houston area, but then the women actually falsely said that they were rescuing her from being abused. This is what the press release from ICE states, and that they went on to treat her in all sorts of horrible ways and forced her to perform manual labor for them. So she was being, she thought she was being assisted and being let out. But unfortunately, these women have had different intentions.

And so they've both been arrested. That was in early October, and their charges involved felony injury to a child, invasive, visual recording, and unlawful restraint in a couple different counties have been working together on that one. Something I have heard from folks talking about kind of the sponsorship program under the Biden administration is that maybe we'll see kind of more cases of this where we have maybe some individuals that were given to different sponsors, and there was potentially not any follow-up or maybe not as much vetting as there should have been. That's what some people had issues with this sponsorship program, and this particular one was sponsored by a grand uncle, and of course that was a horrible situation. based off of the allegations. So we'll see if hopefully there's not more instances of this,

but yeah, this was happened in Texas just a couple of days ago. While this is happening in our state, Mary Leaves, thank you for your coverage. Cameron, let's come to you. This was another big story this week that kind of got swallowed up in the midst of the redistricting news, but there has been an update to public outcry

about illegal immigrants potentially being about to, you know, able to register their vehicles here in Texas. Tell us about this new guidance. Yeah, there's been lots of public concerns that have been raised over the past few weeks regarding illegal immigrants registering their vehicles in Texas. And we actually were able to obtain a directive, a proclamation, a bulletin, let's say, that the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles was going to ensure compliance with state law. So this wouldn't, uh, not happen. So a the bulletin from vehicle titles and registration division director and that Quintero outlines clarified identification requirements for both initial

motor vehicle registrations and renewals. It also states explicitly that an applicant for initial registration or renewal must present certain photo identification. It goes on to state later in the guidance that it instructs counties and dealers to ensure compliance by stating that expired passports are not acceptable for motor vehicle registrations and we were able to speak with a source that told us that there will be rapid and aggressive enforcement of this initiative and I talked I mentioned the public outcry and concern over this it's been really highlighted

by state representative Brian Harrison who has made multiple public appeals for something to be done about this issue and he actually said earlier in the week that he was able to receive confirmation that this was going on. So a huge update here on something that first started as public concern and then actually being addressed through state agency directives. So very interesting update here. Absolutely. I encourage folks to go read Cameron's reporting at the texan dot news.

Get all of it. Cameron, thank you. Mary Lees, let's talk about a Texas Congress. planning to introduce a very interesting immigration-related bills soon. Tell us about it. Yeah, well, I actually, a couple minutes ago, I saw that the congressman has introduced this bill. So we wrote this piece when he had been kind of explaining on Benny Johnson's talk show, this bill he was planning introduces his congressman Chip Roy, but he has officially introduced it as of just within the hour. He was speaking about this bill with Johnson about that he would like its main goal would be

to freeze all immigration into the United States until there's certain objectives that are achieved in the country and he mentioned ending the H-1B visa system and he also focused on responding to the advancement of Sharia law. He focused on that and wanting to, say, get a handle on that from his perspective

before there's more immigration into the country. So he talked about that he would have introduced as sooner but the government shut down, of course, has thrown all sorts of things and to disarray, but he has officially introduced this bill. He said, this legislation will be a freeze on all immigration until those certain goals are met. He mentioned reforming things like chain migration and diversity and ending H-1B, getting birthright citizenship dealt with.

The H-1B visa program has been, I think, a very hot topic, especially like at the federal level for folks discussing maybe sort of, reform that we need to do for H-1B visa programs. You know, some folks would say it doesn't need reform, and some would say that it's being abused by companies to hire low-wage foreign nationals instead of American citizens. This was kind of the argument that Chip Roy was presenting and that we should be prioritizing American workers

in the H-1B visa program, which has been abused. One bill that was talked about on a talk show just shortly before Rory was talking about this was Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greens and she announced that she would be filing a bill actually to aggressively, she said, phase out the H-1B program permanently

and she was speaking about it in kind of similar terms as Roy was saying that it's a corrupt method for facilitating she said the mass replacement of American workers Congressman Roy also mentioned a bill that he has previously filed that he felt

was related. It's called preserving a Sharia Free America Act and its main message is that it says you can vet people for their adherence to Sharia law. And this is a quote from him. He said, why are we importing any human being that is adherent to Sharia law, which is totally contrary to the Constitution and our values in Western civilization? He said that he's going to be pretty flexible with this bill.

He's open to different ideas and amendments, ways of different goals that we can put into this bill, objectives that have to be met before immigration can continue. and he said it will be named the Paws Act. He said, he questioned on this show, he said, how many Chinese communists, people who are Islamists, who want to remake America, he mentioned different issues

that he recognizes people living on the public dole that are living off of welfare. He said, let's pause all of that and explain that's why the bill will be named this, which he just introduced this morning. I think we'll probably talk more about Sharia law and that's come on a lot recently in the newsweek, but this bill is officially files. We'll see where it goes. Absolutely. Well, Mary

Lisa, that's a perfect transition and lead-in to this next story here. Cameron, you have been following the governor moving to designate two groups as foreign terrorist organizations. Walk us through what's happening here. Yeah, so this started off first with Abbott issuing a proclamation to designate both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American Islamic Relations or care as foreign terrorist organizations and transnational criminal organizations. I'll just read a bit here from what he said, quote, these radical extremists are not welcome in our state and are now prohibited from acquiring any real property interest in Texas. And in this proclamation, he runs through different aspects of the Texas Penal Code,

Texas Civil Practices and Remedies Code and Texas Property Code to enshrined his proclamation in the statutes that are listed there. So I go through, I provide some background for people who are unfamiliar maybe with these organizations and some of the allegations that Abbott is making in terms of their connections with some of these global terrorist organizations as the justification for this proclamation. So that was the first domino to fall here. The next one that came out was he made a announcement via a letter that he was asking both district attorneys and Colin and Dallas counties and also sheriffs to look into different entities, he says, are purporting to illegally enforce Sharia law in Texas. So I know Mary Lees mentioned the Sharia law aspect of what's going on with some of our congressional representatives. This is Abbott doing something similar here.

And he identified explicitly the Islamic Tribunal in Dallas, which he says, quote, purports to exercise jurisdiction over all aspects of life, even over non-eclassical legal disputes, and to subject them to Islamic. jurisprudence and its Sharia or law. And so there are some details I include in the piece about how this Islamic tribunal describes itself on its website, talking about the types of disputes. They do oversee and some of the alternatives they do offer. But this is just the second thing that happened this week in regards to Abbott, taking a greater focus on issues that he perceives are related to Islam in the Muslim faith here in Texas. There was also an announcement that Abbott was going to be directing Texas Department of Public

Safety to launch criminal investigations into both the two groups I mentioned, the Muslim Brotherhood and care. And so lots of moving pieces over this. week regarding how Abbott is taking a greater focus on some different Muslim advocate organizations here in the state and launching investigations and asking other county-level authorities to conduct investigations. So this is just a big first few steps here. I'm sure there's going to be more that comes out over the coming weeks. Absolutely. Cameron, and thanks for that coverage and we'll certainly keep an eye on all that's going down there. Let's chat, Brad, about a couple of special elections that are now have their dates set by the governor.

So the governor issued proclamations setting the runoff for two special elections. Congressional District 18 in Houston, which is the Sylvester Turner seat, and an SD9 in Tarrant County, which is Kelly Hancock's former seat. It's set for January 31st, and these were two of the big things we were watching during the November election this year, the off-year election. And now we have finally an answer when they're coming, January 31st. There'd be a lot of attention paid, especially to the SD9 race. But, of course, Democrats are also eyeing and fighting within themselves about the CD-18 race. That one is Christian Menefi against Amanda Edwards in that the winner will get to finish out Sylvester Turner's term. And then...

How much is remaining? I mean, the next term starts the beginning of 27. Right. So through the next year. Now that seat's been open for like 10, 11 months. Or at least by the time it is filled. be open for 10 or 11 months. Politically speaking, the reason is because Republicans didn't want to give Democrats

another seat in Congress. Now, you can argue whether that's fair or not, and probably not fair, but what's fair in politics these days, right? So, cynically, that's the reason. In SD9, of course, there was the internal Republican fight that became a proxy fight for. casino gambling. Well, now it's just Lee Wams gone as a Republican against Taylor Remit, the Democrat. The seat favors Republicans, but it is a special election and a runoff special election. So it's weird upon weird in terms of election consistency in what we

normally think of going into an election. So watch for those. Those will be a nice treat ahead of the primary, unless that gets delayed, which maybe it does, I don't know, at this point. There you go. January 31st. January 31st, thank you, Bradley. Cameron, coming back to you, a group that attacked an ICE facility has had their charges updated. Give us the details. Yeah, a federal grand jury indicted nine alleged, quote, North Texas Antifa cell operatives last week on charges including rioting, providing material support to terrorists, and

attempted murder in connection with a July 4th attack on an ice facility in Alvarado. Seven additional individuals were also charged with providing material support. I'll just read a statement here from the acting U.S. Attorney Nancy Larson saying, quote, this is the first indictment in the country against a group of violent Antifa cell members. I mentioned that because back in October, there were two individuals. who were the first to be federally charged with terrorism-related offenses in connection with the same attack on the Alvarado-IIS facility, and the charging document alleges that the Antifa group mentioned here brought 10 different firearms to the attack.

And this is a development building upon President Donald Trump and his issuance of an executive order in September that designated Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization where he also directed federal agencies to begin to investigate, disrupt, and dismantle any and all illegal operations connected to Antifa. So just a big development, at least in regards to how actions by federal authorities and here in the state are being related to executive orders issued by the Trump administration. And it's a big development also because it is the first where we're seeing an executive order like this enacted in regards to Antifa.

So big development here. I'm sure I'll keep an eye on this case as it moves along. Cameron, thank you. Mary Lees, we'll come to you for the last story here. There's been further litigation surrounding a 10 commandments related law. Give us to details. Yeah, this is a law that was passed during the 89th legislative session and it's had all sorts of litigation around it

that we've talked about before here on the podcast, but this is Senate Bill 10, which was authored by State Senator Phil King, and this is a law that requires the display of donated copies of the Ten Commandments in school classrooms. So the state of Texas is suing two different school districts, Round Rock and Leander, ISD, saying that they are failing to comply with this new law, alleging that they are intentionally refusing to comply with this law. So Texas Attorney General can Paxton file the suit against them and then their respective board of trustees on Thursday.

And he's seeking injunctive relief to get the ISDs to obey the law ultimately. And so within the lawsuit, Paxton is saying that the ISDs had received donated copies of the Ten Commandments. They met the new law standards, but the districts then refused to display them. He also noted that they received an email from Cynthia Hill, whose general counsel for Round Rock ISD on September 15th, and within that email, Paxton alleges that they confirmed that Round Rock ISD would not be complying with the law that they did not intend to, despite receiving the copies of the Ten Commandments.

We unfortunately were not able to get in contact with Hill by the time we published, but like I said, this law has faced a whole plethora of legal challenges, and one of those was actually cited. within this suit. I've mentioned before, it's the Rabbi Nathan versus Alamo Heights ISD, and that lawsuit actually was successful in blocking this Ten Commandments law from going to affect

in 11 different school districts, and so that was cited within the suit, or excuse me, it was cited within the email from the general counsel explaining that they would not be complying. And so Paxton says within lawsuit that presumably these ISDs are choosing to defy the law based upon,

upon this injunction issued by that judge for the 11 school districts, where he had found that SB 10 is, quote, plainly unconstitutional under the First Amendment. Paxton is arguing that the state of Texas is likely to succeed on the merits because it has the right to maintain its own laws. And he says the defendants are aware

that they are breaking this law. So it was filed in Williamson County's Judicial District Court. And it's actually about two weeks. after he'd filed a very similar lawsuit against Galvest and ISD on similar grounds, arguing that they're refusing to comply with this law. So I'll keep an eye on this lawsuit as it develops, but it's, like I said before, it's very interesting to watch these laws be made

and then to see the legal challenges that were, you know, threatened on the house floor specifically to see them playing out now. Absolutely. A lot of those conversations on the house floor, on the mics, really do indicate what will happen. after laws passed legally, all sorts of different challenges. And some of those conversations added to records for very specific reasons. And that was a whole other fight on the House floor.

We could talk about another day. But Mary Lees, thank you for your coverage there. Let's move on to the tweeteries section. Brad, why don't we go to you? The rat race is ongoing. The rat race of the US Senate campaign. And constantly we see polling pop up here and there. Seeing a ton, shows all kinds of stuff.

Seems to be a closer contest right now than it was the Republican side than it was back in April. However, a new poll dropped from the establishment-friendly camp. Legit pollster, Chris Perkins, who we had on the podcast with Ragnar Research, they did the poll. So from a reputability standpoint, it's legit. Doesn't mean the poll isn't off. Stipulations all the way down. But it was interesting, first of the fact that it's gauging general election.

So, of course, one of the cases that Cornyn's making is that I will win a general election easily against whoever Democrats nominate. Ken Paxton will not. And that's part of his case for why Republicans should vote for him. So Chris put out this poll, and it shows matchups between Cornyn, Paxton, Colin Allerad, and James. of Tolerico, the two Democrats in the race currently. It shows, Cornyn, 47% to Allred, 40%. Cornyn against Talarico is 46% to 40%. Paxton against Allred is 43% to Allred's 44%.

So he's down one in that head to head. And then Paxton and Tala Rico were even at 44%. Now that's stipulated, there's also between 12 and 14% undecided on every one of those so those are people that will break late make their decision at that point we're also a long way off yeah right a lot can change between now and then but we are seeing these general election polls crop up as a political maneuver for the primary so it's pretty clear that Paxton would have a tighter race than Cornyn against the Democrat question is

is it close enough that he loses he argues no Cornyn argues as possible long way out but that's the case being made who are these polls for are they for the public or are they for journalists or are they for super PACs or yeah donors for donors they are for particularly at this stage they're intended to jog lose some money right and say hey donors here's the case here's why you need to give even more to John Cornyn so he wins the primary over Paxton because in their mind they don't want to spend a much money in Texas in the general election they want to spend that elsewhere right so that's what these are for and they're for our intrigue right since we cover this all the

time Mac is muted I was saying all sorts of really insightful things so I'll just have to save that for next podcast Cameron, let's go into you. Well, there was a punchbowl news story that said House Republicans had banned Rep Dan Crenshaw from traveling internationally for three months after a alcohol-related episode during a foreign congressional delegation. Well, there was a response to that punchable news story from Dan Crenshaw himself. He called it a click-bill news.

story. He was booked to go overseas, which was fully approved by House Ethics from October 1st, October 6th of this year. It was canceled right before their departure due to the government shutdown, but not due to any so-called, quote, travel ban. This is the fact. People can pull receipts. Once again, we are dealing with the usual media playbook of publishing sensational stories based on anonymous sources and incorrect facts. Well, there was then more back and forth here about punchball news calling it a big problem with this clickbait tweet Crenshaw was borrowed from international taxpayer trial for 90 days by the chair of the committee well our friends over at current revolt wrote up a little story about this we're saying sources are also saying that speaker Mike Johnson voted against removing Crenshaw from a panel he was part of but Crenshaw was ultimately removed anyway Crenshaw was reported as the punishment unfair and blown out of proportion.

So who knows where the truth lies in this story? Are we ever going to find out? Probably not. But it still is an interesting thing to see this back and forth between Punch Bowl news, Crenshaw himself and now current revolt having their own store sitting on this story. It's very interesting dynamics. This isn't the first time that Crenshaw has thrown a jab at Jake Sherman and Punch Bowl over something reported a couple weeks ago.

there was Jake reported something that was said in a caucus call yeah that he had readouts given to him on Crenshaw said it was fake news Sherman said bet well again we'll never know who right but it's just fun to see it's developing right yeah certainly love to see the social media hits back and forth it's always spicy when it's not you isn't it? Mary Lease, coming to you, Adair. Well, Donald Trump, President Donald Trump, has now signed the, I believe it's called the Epstein Transparency Act, which was passed by the House and Senate this week. So it's pretty huge. I believe it gives a DOJ 30 days to release whatever files there are, documentation. So we'll see what happens. But this has been a long

time coming, obviously, wrote about it a little bit in the 40. Just the dynamic leading up to this has been a little bit insane, but President Trump has not signed it, so we'll see how the DOJ reacts to this. No kidding. Well, I'll just mention this. I thought the most interesting thing, maybe explosive you could call it, to come out so far, was there was evidence that was produced that showed Epstein was actually texting a delegate during a committee hearing yeah did you see this Mary Elise I did I haven't read too much

about it just kind of the basic headline but I think it was a democratic member who is yeah the delegate from the Virgin Islands and the Washington Post actually put together a really interesting video on this where it shows the text message exchanges on the screen while the committee hearing is going on and you can see the delegate looking down at her phone as these text messages are coming in. Epstein asking this delegate to ask a very specific question and then you hear the question asked. So just interesting stuff to come out of this. I don't know how crazy some of the revelations we're going to be, but I know people are wanting them. Absolutely. Thank you both for that little insight. Well, guys, we're so close.

close to Thanksgiving. Reminder, 50% off. Subscriptions to the Texan. Make sure to go take advantage of that. As soon as that happens. Cameron, do you know how much it is? What's the percentage? 50%. Oh, my gosh. It's wild. Giving it away for free.

It's basically just charity at this point. Go on, folks. Come and get it. But we will be back next week. We'll be recording a truncated version of the weekly roundup, so stay tuned for that. And folks, enjoy the rest of your week. Thanks for catching up with us in the weekly roundup and we'll chat with you on the next episode thank you to everyone for listening if you enjoy our show rate and review us on apple podcast spotify or wherever you

listen to podcasts and if you want more of our stories subscribe to the texan at the texan dot news follow us on social media for the latest in texas politics and send any questions for our team to our mailbag by dming us on twitter or shooting us an email to editor at the texan dot news tune in next week for another episode of our weekly roundup god bless you and god bless texas You know,