The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - October 14, 2022

Episode Date: October 14, 2022

Want to support reporting on Texas politics that doesn’t include the spin? Subscribe at https://thetexan.news/subscribe/ Or get a FREE “Fake News Stops Here” mug when you buy an annual subscription: https://go.thetexan.news/mug-fake-news-stops-here-2022/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=weekly_roundupThe Texan’s Weekly Roundup brings you the latest news in Texas politics, breaking down the top stories of the week with our team of reporters who give you the facts so you can form your own opinion. Enjoy what you hear? Be sure to subscribe and leave a review!Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast.This week on The Texan’s Weekly Roundup, the team discusses: A judge vacating Biden Administration Rules Allowing Transgender Bathroom Use and Child Gender ModificationThe Fifth Circuit ruling the Biden Administration’s ‘Pause’ on Federal Land Drilling May ContinueThe New York City Mayor Lashing Out as Texas Sends Thousands of Noncitizens to the Big AppleThe GOP Focusing On Public Safety in Harris County ahead of November$21 Billion in Local Bonds on Ballots Across Texas600,000 Illegal Immigrants Evading Capture at the Southern Border Houston ISD Challenging the Texas Education Agency in State Supreme Court over an Attempt to Oust the BoardWells Fargo Receiving a $5 Million State Grant to Build a $455 Million Campus in IrvingSan Antonio Firing the Police Officer Who Shot an Unarmed Teen After Mistaking His Identity

Happy Friday, folks. Senior Editor Mackenzie Taylor here on the Texans Weekly Roundup podcast. This week, the team discusses a judge vacating Biden administration rules allowing transgender bathroom use and child gender modification. The Fifth Circuit ruling the Biden administration's pause on federal land drilling may continue. The New York City mayor lashing out as Texas sends thousands of non-citizens to the Big Apple. The GOP focusing on public safety in Harris County ahead of November. $21 billion in local bonds on ballots across Texas. 600,000 illegal immigrants evading capture at the southern border. Houston ISD challenging the Texas Education Agency in state Supreme Court.

Wells Fargo receiving a $5 million state grant to build a $455 million campus in Irving. And San Antonio firing the police officer who shot an unarmed teen after mistaking his identity. As always, if you have questions for our team, DM us on Twitter or email us at editor at the texan.news. We'd love to answer your questions on a future podcast. Thanks for listening and enjoy this episode. Well, howdy folks. It's Mackenzie here with Brad and Hayden and Hudson and Rob. On another episode of our weekly roundup podcast, gentlemen, welcome back to the pod. Hudson, we have some sad news this week. You are moved here to Austin to work for the

Texan. You're moving back to San Antonio to be closer to family, friends, etc. So we're going to miss you. I'm going to miss y'all, man. It's going to be but this is your last podcast, so we'll send you out with a bang. What that bang will be, I'm not quite sure. Maybe these kolaches on the table.

Maybe talking about those bears we talked about last week. I think that's probably what the bang will be. That's quite sure okay maybe these kolaches on the table maybe talking about those bears we talked about last week i think that's probably what the bang will be that's going to be a great way to close it out well wonderful okay gentlemen well after that let's go ahead and jump into the news here we have uh some content here to jump into and hudson you're going to be the first one to kick us off a federal federal court struck down multiple Biden administration rules. Explain what those rules were. So, yeah, the first rule, it was the same decision that both were struck down. Very interesting.

But the first rule was an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission rule that prohibited employers from firing their employees based on the actions, dress, or other conduct related to that individual's gender identity or sexual orientation. So essentially under this rule, an employer cannot dictate how an individual should dress, what bathroom they should use if that bathroom is the opposite of their biological sex, and they cannot dictate other conduct of employees based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. So the EEOC came to this rule by using the Supreme Court decision from 2020, Bostock versus Clayton County, and that established that under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, employers cannot discriminate against

employees' sexual orientation and gender identity, including that as one of the protections under that Title VII. But the decision clearly states that this is merely related to the individual's actual identity and not their associated conduct as it relates to their role as an employee of a business. So this is how the court viewed the issue, and they ruled in favor of the plaintiff's Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the state of Texas. The court agreed that there indeed is a difference between being transgender or gay and the conduct associated with that. An employer now cannot be forced to allow people to use restrooms that do not match their biological sex and can dictate the dress code of their employees a little more. OK, so what was the second rule that was struck down? So the second rule is a Health and Human Services Department rule that was issued in direct response to the actions of the state of Texas. So earlier this year, Governor Greg Abbott issued a directive for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate cases of child

gender modification as child abuse. So following this order, Ken Paxton also released an opinion that corroborated this notion that child gender modification was indeed child abuse. So the HHS retaliated by issuing a rule that claimed that denying a child access to these procedures and these medications likely violated Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act. So this refers to the ACA's prohibition on discrimination under all protected categories, similar to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And they've also tried to add in sexual orientation and gender identity into this into this into this section 1557. So but the court did not agree with this whatsoever. And they claim that HHS did not have sufficient evidence to connect their rule to section 1557. The court labeled the rule actually arbitrary and capricious. Quite some strong words there. Yeah. Hudson, thank you for your coverage.

Bradley, we're coming to you. A long running lawsuit over a Biden administration executive order came to a head this week. What happened? So the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a previous lower court ruling concerning the Biden administration's pause on new and renewed leases for oil and gas drilling on federal lands the district court had paused the pause saying that it lacked any congressional say but the appeals court said the lower court failed to adequately define what a pause is in this context ordered by the white house and remanded the case back to district district court which means it's not over um it'll continue to be fought um likely the district court will just issue a new opinion on it issuing the same order and more clearly defining what they

mean by a pause in this case um it has this executive order was released the week that Biden took office. And so it's been in the courts for about that long and still no resolution to it. OK, so what's the broader Department of the Interior to kind of set a moratorium on new leasing agreements for oil and gas drillers on any federal land. And in Texas, there is not a huge percentage of federal land in the state, but there is some. And the American Petroleum Institute, obviously, they are opposed to this. But they estimated that if kept in perpetuity, the executive order would would cost about one hundred and twenty thousand oil and gas jobs in Texas. Overall, though, this is one of multiple items from the Biden administration that is kind of at loggerheads with the oil and gas industry. The Biden administration has a goal of reaching net zero emission status by 2050 and reducing emissions below 2005 levels 40% by 2030. Now now it's also important to note that we're already

halfway there uh to that 40 percent number um just by mainly by natural gas supplanting coal generation and so that's without any of these huge um policy changes by the biden administration another order that occurred the same week that this one did when he first took office was cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline permit. And so those have kind of gone hand in hand, but overall the Biden administration is trying to kind of push forward the country away from using fossil fuels as much as it does. And obviously that has driven uh quite the recoil from uh the industry that the country relies on so much we haven't heard about the keystone pipeline in a

hot minute i feel like it has not been in the news lately well because it's dead um at least for now i think last i heard the developer of it was trying to um was trying to figure out a new way to go about uh the same project but as it was then constituted and for years constituted it's it's not uh no longer in existence no longer um uh in operator in the project development stage um we actually talked about the keystone pipeline with wayne christian on the podcast that will go out next week so uh we'd talk about that the project development stage. We actually talked about the Keystone Pipeline with Wayne Christian on the podcast that will go out next week. So we'd talk about that a little bit. Awesome. Well, good teaser there, folks. Make sure to tune into the pod. I mean, every week we always talk about such fun stories on the pod, but particularly as election season

ramps up, we'll have more and more interviews with elected officials and candidates. We interviewed Democrat Luke Warford, Wayne Christian's Democrat opponent, just a few weeks ago. And so now the incumbent Republican was in office and Brad did a great interview with him. So make sure to listen to that. Bradley, thank you for that coverage. Hayden, Texas and other states have sent non-citizens to New York City to alleviate the economic burden of illegal immigration. How has the New York City Mayor Eric Adams reacted to this? He declared a state of emergency last Friday because of the program that Texas has launched, as well as other states, to send thousands of non-citizens from the Lone Star State to New York City. He said that 17,000 non-citizens have flooded into the city's homeless shelters and

services, requiring free meals, free beds, and other resources that the city of New York is required by law to provide due to their right to shelter laws. These are people who are not legally permitted to obtain work, so they legally cannot provide for themselves, and the government there is required to provide for them. He said one-fifth of the people in New York City's system are non-citizens. That is an overwhelming portion of the taxpayer dollars in New York going to people who are not even citizens. Not only are they not residents of New York, but they're not even citizens of the country. Adams did call it a crisis and said it is burning through our city's budget. He said he expects it to cost New York City $1 billion before the end of the fiscal year.

Texas has not sent all 17,000, but most of those were sent by Texas and El Paso. One of the things he said during the news conference declaring the state of emergency was notable. He said, quote, our right to shelter laws, our social services, and our values are being exploited by others for political gain. New Yorkers are angry. I am angry too. We have not asked for this. There was never any agreement to take on the job of supporting thousands of asylum seekers. This responsibility was simply handed to us without warning as buses began showing up. There is no playbook for this, no precedent, end quote. And of course, that's the argument that governors like Greg Abbott and Ron

DeSantis have been making since Biden took office. That is that illegal immigration is imposing an economic burden on Texas and Florida and other states that has not been asked for. And Abbott has been seeking to draw attention to that by sending illegal immigrants who have federal paperwork and are non-citizens to these big city jurisdictions so that they should shoulder some of the economic burden. Got it. So has the governor responded to Adam's comments? In a statement that they sent us on Monday, his spokesperson said, quote, the true emergency is on our nation's southern border, where small Texas border towns are overrun and overwhelmed by hundreds of migrants every single day as the Biden administration dumps them in our communities. Instead of fear-mongering and complaining about a few thousand migrants in his sanctuary city,

Mayor Adams should call on President Biden to do his job and secure the border, something the president continues failing to do. Governor Abbott's invitation is still open for Mayor Adams to visit the border and see the actual crisis firsthand, end quote. And she also called him an absolute hypocrite because he is essentially saying that New York City can't handle this. Texas has sent 8,100 non-citizens to Washington, D.C. as of last Friday, and 3,100 to New York City, and 920 have been sent to Chicago. The city of El Paso with its busing program has also sent a thousand non-citizens since August. Got it. Well, thank you for your coverage of that and very fascinating to watch this political discourse, particularly in that

the policy differences between these cities that are where these non-citizens are being sent are so different from here in texas and i do want to add he said the mayor said that they are helping all of them but they are asking for additional resources from the state of new york and from the federal government because of the of the amount of people that are being sent there at one time and he also said that the entire country should be stepping up to the plate and it shouldn't just be New York City that is required to shoulder this. But one more fact that I want to add on top of this is this is 17,000 people out of the millions upon millions of

people that live in New York City. And he has said before, the New York City Council is almost more like a state legislature. So this is a very large jurisdiction. But in September of last year, there were 30,000 illegal immigrants converging on Val Verde County, which has a population of about 36,000 residents. So if you take the proportions and compare them, this is an overwhelmingly less serious of thousands of people crossing the border illegally so certainly context that's necessary to understand what's going on here in a broader sense so hayden thank you so much for that um brad as we near the november election candidates are firming up their messaging for this home stretch i feel like it actually has been quieter than a lot of other general elections in the past that's just my interpretation there's no

presidential election on the ballot so yeah it's very true but midterms usually can get pretty spicy right um so for republicans the you know they're focusing heavily on public safety especially in harris county and one poll shows that that may be paying dividends what's going down so a poll commissioned by the defend texas liberty pack uh PAC is run by former state rep Jonathan Stickland, funded by conservative mega donors Tim Dunn and Ferris Wilkes. That PAC has played a lot, especially in the primaries, their GOP primaries this year, and now they're getting involved. I think we talked about this last week on their increased involvement on behalf of Governor Abbott, maybe more so just against beto o'rourke in the governor's races but they put out a poll this week that showed democrat beto o'rourke only has a two point lead over abbott in harris county now it's notable because abbott lost the county by six in and I believe four in his previous race in 2014.

A reason why the margin may be so small in Harris County is because of the focus Republicans have made on police funding and lax bail policy affecting public safety and the crime rise. Holly's got a lot of coverage on this stuff, whether it's on the county judge race between Alex Miller and Lena Hidalgo or just the general crime trend down there. So check out her stuff for more information on that. But this poll showed that Republican Alex Miller was up four points, is up four points on Democrat Lena Hidalgo. And those is a very big deal yes and from my

observation um you know defend texas liberty pack has put out a lot of polls this year and we know that you know polls can be uh they can be accurate they can be wildly inaccurate they have seemed to um be pretty accurate in their polling and mirroring a lot of the more establishment polling firms such as University of Houston, Mark P. Jones, what he puts out. So I think it's not worth just throwing away immediately and it's worth asking the question why this is showing such a close race in harris county and i think the um uh those two issues police funding and the bail policy uh are really they're helping miller um and they're helping greg abbott and both of those candidates have really campaigned on those in harris county

obviously miller's campaigning in harris county but abbott himself has gone down there and done multiple press conferences about uh lax bill policy and police stuff um in that county and it's the state's largest county and in addition to the head-to-head matchups this poll found that a majority of respondents agreed that bail reform has quote increased crime in harris county and that police funding should be increased. There's a fight over the county's budget for constables down there right now. Again, Holly's got more coverage on that. But this is definitely a trend and it is the preeminent. The public safety is the preeminent issue in in the elections down there right now. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, going back to 2018 and these previous years where Democrats just wiped the floor with Republicans, it'll be very interesting to see what happens in this midterm election. And we really don't, I mean, we don't know. And Beto O'Rourke is certainly fundraising heavily. He certainly is putting up a big fight against Governor Abbott, who, by all accounts for several years now has been a very strong republican leader for the state in terms of electorally right and he's really kind of brought

a lot of down ballot he hasn't had a close selection no absolutely not and that was an entirely different story um and the governor certainly is more embattled previously having had several formidable primary opponents as well there's a lot going on and it really will be interesting to see where all the chips fall because a lot is at play yeah and harris county is somewhere that o'rourke should win uh pretty handily if he wants to have any hope of unseating incumbent um he's tried to which is an uphill battle to be sure absolutely um texas is what an r54 state based on our ratings um so that right there gives abbott an eight point advantage yeah um but o'rourke has much of this campaign

gone to rural areas that are republican strongholds and seems to be a strategy to try and cut into abbott's advantage in those areas because you know the vote occurs across the whole state not just in harris county and not just in um you know amarillo or um the the rest of the panhandle and so um if the strategy behind that would be if he can make gains in those areas reducing the typical windfall of votes that the republicans get that abbott gets in those in those places and he can count on his typical return in let's say harris county then it might put him within spitting distance but if harris county is not what it should be for beto um then uh you know that's going to erase any gains that he might make in rural areas. So this is a very interesting note to follow, and I'm not sure what it's going to turn out

to be on election day. Harris County is a blue county. It has been that way for a while now. But these two issues seem to be turning a lot of heads and um we'll see how much uh legs they give to uh miller there and abbott cutting into whatever lead beto has there absolutely well thank you, thank you, Bradley. Hey, listeners, if you enjoy our podcast each week, subscribe to The Texan. We're not funded by corporate interests or big donors, so we rely on the subscriptions of everyday Texans to keep churning out news. When you subscribe,

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I want to call out Daniel Friend, who is the mastermind behind our marketing strategy here at the Texan. Former reporter, now he's our marketing media media manager on repeat every time i say this little blurb in our podcast he wants me to say that subscribe so that we can feed brad because he goes he wants me to say you think brad's grumpy on the podcast well imagine him not having food to put on the table imagine a hungry brad subscribe to the texan that's what he wants me to say i wanted to win some bonus points with you brad since i rake you over the coals every podcast so i thought i'd out daniel and place the blame on him instead of you know coming just at me for no reason at all i mean you could have gone with uh subscribe that way brad can feed winston oh yeah please appeal. Please. This is this is our direct appeal.

Please subscribe so that Brad can feed Winston. If you don't know Winston, we should put him up on our staff page because we have a photo of him with our background. The Texan background. It's awesome. It's a really sweet little Wheaton Terrier and he's adorable and he has health problems and needs that bills paid. Oh, man. Subscribe, folks. there you go okay pretty sure most of brad's paycheck goes directly to the vet and to whoever takes care of winston i just have a direct deposit every on the second of every month into the vet it's just a retainer the

year of the vet on the retainer oh Well, folks, thanks for listening to that. Bradley, we are going to chat with you about the news. Next month, there will be over 150 bond proposals from local governments on ballots across the state. Talk to us and give us some details on some of those. So the single largest proposition is Austin ISD's $2.3 billion item to fund building repairs and security upgrades. The second largest is Lamar Consolidated Independent School District. They have one on the ballot for $1.3 billion for building construction and more buses. And so many of these entities will have multiple propositions on each ballot, some of them up to five at least that i

recall looking through and the reason for that is you know they separate items for things like building schools from those for like building stadiums and that way and there's an electoral strategy there that way they're not they don't all go down in one if you have let's say a very unpopular stadium project that doesn't drag down the other ones right um but also it's just different spending and it i mean in my opinion it's appropriately done that way because um you know if you're trying to shove $2.5 billion with all these different purposes that are not really alike at all, that's not really a good way to go about things. So that's why they split them out. But some of them just have one item on the ballot.

Some of them have five. But it's important to know that every one of these, if approved, will result in a property tax increase. They wouldn't be on the ballot if they didn't. And nearly two-thirds of the items are from school districts, which collectively total $15 billion of the overall $21 billion in debt that is on the ballots. I list out every one of these data gotten from the Bond Review Board from Texas. And you can see the entity that's requesting it, the amount, the proposition number, so you can see if they have multiple on the ballot and the purpose. And so I would recommend you check that out.

Awesome. Well, Bradley, thank you. Hayden, we're coming back to you. A recent report stated that hundreds of thousands have evaded arrest by border agents. Give us some details about your story. You know what's weird? I've been doing this podcast for like two and a half years now, and I still get stage fright before every one of my segments. Really? I do. It's weird. Oh my gosh. But Fox News reported that one of their sources said there were 600,000 gotaways during fiscal year 2022. And that is in addition to the 2.5 million nationwide enforcement encounters with illegal immigrants, 2.2 million of which were on the southern border. That doesn't include September's numbers, which are forthcoming, that will probably be published in the coming few weeks. And that will shed more light on the overall picture of illegal immigration in fiscal year

2022, which there were more enforcement encounters last fiscal year than in any year previously recorded by the Department of Homeland Security. And Republicans have been taking full advantage of that fact politically in the past few months. It's an issue that pulls well with them. And as we get closer to the general election, most of their campaigning and campaign rhetoric has focused on that. There were only about 389,000 gotaways in fiscal year 2021. So it is definitely an increase if the Fox report is true. And that includes people who were somehow detected by Border Patrol, but not detected in the sense that they were their identity was uh was known and they were able to arrest them they this is an estimate of the number of people who were able to get over the border and border patrol knew about them but couldn't track them down and arrest them and hundreds of thousands of people i said, well, we'll talk about that in a second, but that is the population of a small state of 600,000 people and gives a picture of the overall magnitude of illegal immigration. How else has the Biden administration been releasing non-citizens into the country? There is a program that the Biden administration has used called

humanitarian parole that allows individuals to be admitted into the country and bypass the normal asylum process when there are extenuating circumstances and emergencies that justify it in the federal government's eyes. According to a report last month by ABC News, there were only 11 people total granted humanitarian parole into the US before August of 2021. But from August 2021 to June of this year, a quarter million people were paroled into the United States, and many of those people were from Afghanistan and Ukraine, and everybody knows why. So that is about the population of the city of Irving, and that is a program that the Biden administration has used that was not previously used.

And it first became known when Fox reported last year in October that about 160 non-citizens had been paroled and given notice to report and let into the country. The Transportation Security Administration also said earlier this year that illegal immigrants are allowed to use arrest warrants as forms of identification at security checkpoints. And they do not even use immigration status as a, that's not even a box that they check in their screening process. And I thought it was important to place all of that information in context. And these numbers were only released because the federal government was required to provide monthly updates to the federal judge that was considering the lawsuit against the Remain in Mexico policy's cancellation. So that's why these numbers were available. ABC reported that the last numbers that were available were in June, and that was the last update that was provided to Judge Kazmarek in the Remain in Mexico

suit, which Texas and Missouri ultimately lost that because the Supreme Court is allowing the federal government to cancel that policy. Wow. Well, Hayden, thank you for providing all that context. Very important. And I think a lot of mainstream outlets either just fail to report or just gloss over a lot of these details. Thank you for covering that so thoroughly for our readers and our listeners. Hudson, we are coming back to you, my friend. Houston ISD is suing the Texas Education Agency to stop them from replacing their school board. Shout out to Holly Hansen, who's covered this issue extensively. And thank you, Hudson, for picking it up this week. Give us some background on where the case is at. So HISD has a number of schools that are consistently graded with a D or an F on TEA performance ratings, which essentially evaluate how well schools are doing from year to year. So consistently receiving a lot of bad grades on multiple schools. Wheatley High School, in particular, has received F grades

for around a decade until this year, actually, where they got a C. But additionally, the HISD board has been accused of multiple legal violations, including violations of the Texas Open Meetings law and cronyism, giving contracts to friends and other colleagues. So given these issues, TEA Commissioner Mike Marath has pushed to oust the board to replace him with a board of managers. The lawsuit is three years running now and has reached the Supreme Court of Texas. So at issue is whether TEA Commissioner Mike Marath has the legal authority to oust the board. When the legal challenge began, the laws on the books did not clearly allow for the total replacement of the board. It was pretty vague with the wording with that. But given this, the courts initially sided with HISD and granted them a temporary injunction stopping the takeover of the board and allowing

them to continue their superintendent search rather than have that be stopped and have the board get essentially get fired. However, the move had had bipartisan support from the Texas legislature as the and the Texas legislature passed a bill in 2021 that clarified the commissioner's authority to go through with the plan. So it also allows him to grant district level privileges to a chosen conservator who would oversee the district in place of a superintendent. That was another issue in this case, as HISD claimed that Marath could not appoint a conservator to oversee the entire district and to stop their superintendent search. Okay, so if the commissioner has legal authority to replace the board,

what was the issue at hand during the meeting? So, HISD lawyers did not think that the law was enough to grant Marath the authority to replace the board, and they also believed that it was not relevant to the injunction at hand in the issue because the injunction, they said that the injunction was in place prior to the new law being passed. So the hearing to that day was to discuss the previous law in regards to this injunction. HISD asserted that the court only needed to use prior information before the new law and the TEA should file a new motion for dismissal

to be heard in trial in a new trial court. The justice raised justice's raised concern about totally ignoring the new law in regards to the suit, but seemed to seem to give a little credence to HISD's claim that the TEA needed to file a new motion in court to get the injunction scrubbed. But there was no decision reached at the hearing. But we'll hopefully see what happens in the next couple of weeks there. Well, thank you, Hudson. Bradley, let's go back to chatting with you here.

Governor Abbott announced a new economic development update here in Texas. Give us an update there. So Wells Fargo announced it will build a $455 million campus in Irving to consolidate its 3,000 employee workforce in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The state will provide a $5 million grant through the Texas Enterprise Fund, the largest award since 2019. And the company estimates the project will create 650 new jobs although they didn't specify whether that's like temporary construction jobs or if it's new permanent jobs with the company um but it should be up and running by the end of 2025 got it well thank you for covering that for us we'll keep an eye and it's always interesting to watch how this uh these grants

are doled out to different different companies so we keep an eye on that. We thank you for that. Hudson, we're coming right back to you. San Antonio has been in the news a lot this week, both on the state and you really just hate to see on the news. But last week, a San Antonio police officer attempted to apprehend someone that he thought was an individual who had evaded him the previous day. The officer was in his first year on the force. He walked up to the car of the man who was eating McDonald's in his car and opened his door and ordered them to exit the vehicle. The individual, 17-year-old Eric Cantu, then put the car in reverse, hitting the officer with the door of the car. And as Cantu was putting the car in drive, the officer pulled out his gun and opened fire on Cantu, unloading his magazine. Cantu was hit multiple times and is now on life support at a San Antonio hospital. The cop was fired from the police force

a few days later, and the police union will not represent him as he was in his probationary period on the force. And to be clear, there was also a 17 year old female in the passenger seat as well, who also suffered injuries, correct? Yes, she is. She is OK, not not in in critical condition, and she is not in the hospital right now. OK, will the officer be charged for the shooting? Yes, the officer has now been charged with two counts of aggravated assault by a public servant, which is a first degree felony. And he has since turned himself into law enforcement and he bonded out a couple of days ago. But this is a very unfortunate and sad story and something keep looking at.

Yeah. Well, thank you for ensuring our readers understand what went on there. Rob, we're going to come to you, my friend, and have you, um, chat about some of the stories from our regional reporters that have, um, been written by either Kim or Holly and Rob, you're our assistant editor. You read these stories way before even I do. So you are well versed on these issues. So why don't we go ahead and talk about, um, a piece from Holly Hanson here that has caught quite a bit of attention. Well, thank you. I'm supposed to be well versed on these issues, but I'll do my absolute best. Okay, thank you. I'm supposed to be well-versed on these issues,

but I'll do my absolute best. Okay, do you also get to the point where you've read so many stories that you don't remember anything about them? Pretty much, yeah. If we're reading somewhere between five and 10 stories in a day, and at the end of the day, if you asked me to tell you what happened in the news,

I would not know what it was. I would not know either. Okay. I have this sometimes, I'm calling my parents driving home from work, and they're like, what happened today? And I'm like, I don't know. I don't remember. I don't remember at all. my parents driving home from work. They're like, what happened today? And I'm like, I don't know. I don't remember.

I don't remember at all. I feel the exact same way. Or when somebody asks me to talk about y'all's stories like on the radio or something, I have to prepare. I have to go back and reread them because I don't remember what was in the stories. Anyways, there you go. Curious about whether you actually have that happen to you as well so i'm glad i'm not alone indeed indeed not alone um so the harris county's judges race is ramping up between lena hidalgo and alexandra del morel miller

miller raised 4.9 million dollars uh compared to hidalgo's 1.15 million dollars on this recent funding hall out raising the incumbent by a factor of four to one she also spent about 3.5 million compared to hidalgo spending just over 500 000 that's a factor of like seven to one so miller is definitely raising and spending a lot more money than hidalgo is um both of them receive small and large donations sometimes as low as like one or four dollars. Mueller has been endorsed by the LaPorte Police Officers Association and the Houston Police Officers Union. So she's getting support from law enforcement. And Hidalgo has been endorsed by groups like the Way to Lead Texas PAC and the Jane Fonda Climate PAC, as well as union groups such as the american federation of teachers so there's a bit of a uh a bit of differences between the kinds of groups that are starting to endorse these

candidates uh the houston chronicle editorial board also endorsed miller which came i think which is shocking yeah i think it came as a bit of a surprise to people but uh it's definitely an interesting read as to their their reasoning why um hidalgo also on tuesday when she left harris county commissioner's court early claiming that she was ill she was booed as she left the room several people had showed up to speak on law enforcement funding issues and uh she left because she claimed that she had been ill and she had to leave the uh the meeting early um several republicans in uh harris county commissioner's court have also been boycotting the meetings in order to prevent them from forming a quorum to vote on a proposed

tax increase so it's interesting seeing what what's happening in harris county commissioner's court there's always something and we might have a new harris county uh judge seeing what happens come november so who knows polling is so hard to place any sort of validity on of results but you never know and it is an indicator of trend so we'll see what happens come election day and fundraising is a big indicator as well so interesting to watch that and great reporting from holly make sure to go take um some time and read those pieces even just about the commissioner's court and the boycotting before the tax increase it is quite something and there's always drama going on in harris county um related to the houston area is the texas central high-speed

railway between dallas and houston our amazing reporter kim roberts has done an incredible job and kind of become the um just the go-to gal for this issue and has been following it since the get-go what updates has kim provided on this project so in september uh late september over 90 texas landowners sent a letter to texas central which is the high-speed railway uh project these landowners were frustrated um because recently the texas supreme court ruled in texas central's favor that they have eminent domain uh rights these landowners' lands that they're trying to get so that they can build this railway. The landowners have also been frustrated with an apparent lack of progress and leadership on the issue as the CEO of Texas Central, Carlos Aguilar, recently resigned. They're worried about an issue of lack of funding. You know, the landowners are wondering if this project is even going to happen at all and whether or not, you know, their lands are going to be going to be taken from them

for a project that's going nowhere. In response to this letter, Texas Central's attorney sent a letter back saying that the landowners questions had no legitimate purpose. He was basically saying that these questions were not relevant. You know, they can't share everything as part of certain business practices, right? So it was an interesting exchange of letters between these two groups over whether or not really Texas Central has a future. The landowner's letter also suggested, Kim reported this, that they might pursue a Rule

202 investigation of Texas Central, which would allow them to either depose Texas Central orally or in writing to, quote, investigate a potential claim or suit. So this is a project that's been going on for a long time now. You know, these landowners have been putting up a fight and it'll be interesting to see what happens if Texas Central is going to make some some more definite progress in the future. Or maybe if these landowners are going to be able to prove that they can't, it'll just be interesting to see. Absolutely. And Kim, make sure to go read Kim's reporting on that issue. Very thorough and intensive reporting from Kim Roberts.

So great stuff. Thank you, Rob, for covering that for us. Let's move on to the tweeter-y section this week. Bradley, why don't we start with you? The thing I noticed this week was down in the Texas 34 race between incumbent Myra Flores and incumbent Vicente Gonzalez. I think we talked about this race last week a bit, but there was a picture floating around of an ad that Gonzalez's campaign ran against Flores, and it had a doctored photo of Mayra Flores on it. And it doctored by, it just, it looks like they drew on eyebrows, like angry eyebrows on her picture just to make her look more menacing. Now this is something campaigns,

maybe not going as far as doctoring photos, but finding the most unflattering photo that happens quite a bit, obviously doesn't make it right, but it is common. Now this kind of takes it to a different level. It's, now this kind of takes it to a different level um it's they put it in like a black and white um film and they it's a picture of flores holding a looks like a an ar ar pistol but um yeah they basically just took her eyebrows and stretched them down to make her look angry

and menacing very strange yeah caught a lot of flack uh fox news picked it up um was this was this a um a campaign like was it paid for by do we know whether it was paid for by his campaign or if it was like a pack who did it on his behalf like because that happens a lot is a pack will send out a mailer on behalf of a candidate or even just against their opponent without the candidate's knowledge of what's being sent yeah it was it was from gonzalez's campaign okay there you go yeah and that does not mean like the candidate oftentimes may not know what's being sent out but the campaign anyway a lot of times they do you just don't know you don't know yeah and it just really illustrates how um uh kind of brutal and uh heated this race has been it's probably the most watched in texas um especially with it's now rated a toss-up as i talked about last week and so it's really

up for grabs and um both candidates are really campaigning hard and both parties the that both the um the nationwide gop and the d triple c are involved heavily in this race spending a lot of money um it's it's basically profile folks as well like yeah two very different politically people like two different two people who are very different politically but at the same time have pretty big profiles yeah um for very different reasons gonzalez has been in office for for years and flores is currently in office because she shockingly won the special election. And about that special election, Gonzalez recently said that the election was stolen.

He was more referring to... That's quite something. Yeah, he was more referring to the money that was put in from outside Republican groups. That election frog. Election frog. Oh my gosh. Election election frog oh my gosh election frog oh my gosh um not election fraud but just a lot of money being dumped in is what he yeah that seemed to be what he was getting at but that's not exactly what he said he did say election frog

we'll go on the record yes ribbit so yes this race is something to watch and it just continues to to get more and more personal absolutely thank you bradley hayden what did you see all i can think about is frogs right well i hope that that helped with your stage fright it did okay good um i saw a tweet from insider that and i didn't read the whole thing. So just full disclosure. Well, I read the tweet, but not the article that was linked to the tweet. If you didn't read the whole tweet, that's a whole other level of not being able to. Yeah, that's that's taking it to extremes. But it is about a micro nation in Nevada called the Republic.

And I don't know if I'm pronouncing this right. The Republic of Malasha. And it has 35 people in it. Is that different from the people's republic of malasha yeah i guess so maybe they're split off from the civil war back in the 80s yes probably um and it is a little self-proclaimed country in nevada and they use cookie dough as their currency stop or they they use the value of cookie dough as their currency stop or they they use the value of cookie dough as their currency okay so not just like trading sticky cookie dough to buy their their currency is i don't remember what it's called i'm looking at the twitter thread to wonder if it's pegged to the dollar it well no it's pegged to the value of cookie dough

and what is the trading value of cookie dough? I don't know. Hayden's not prepared for these questions. I'm not the PR representative for the Republic of Malasha. But it has a president who describes himself as a benevolent dictator. And

he asked the interviewer to call him Your Excellency. These pictures of him, it looks like he bought his sash off of Amazon. It does. And this country has its own flag. It has its own Navy that I kid you not is composed of two kayaks in a lake. Stop.

Are you serious? And he says he basically ignores the United States, even though he said they're dependent on the U.S. for economic reasons and they buy all of their stuff at Walmart. So it's not like a cult. It's just a nation. No. And when you read religious when you read. No, it's not religious or anything. When you read the quotes from him, it doesn't sound like he's crazy.

It just sounds like he's having a really good time with this and he he said in and some of these quotes he was like we're having a lot of fun and he said that they basically have dual citizenship with the u.s he said quote otherwise we wouldn't be able to go to walmart and we'd all starve to death and quote stop and he calls um he says they they pay taxes to the u.s and any benefits they get from the u.s government he is it said in this tweet he jokingly refers to it as foreign aid and then it has a picture of a sign marking the boundary between the usa and the republic of malasha oh my gosh that's amazing yeah wow well, that sign is something else. That sign does not look like it was got off of Amazon. That looks like hand painted or something else is on here.

It says the time zone is 39 minutes ahead. Okay. The 35 citizens are all related to this guy. This number, he said, also includes the family's three dogs. Wow. dogs wow i think we should specify that the uh molossian currency the valora is subdivided into 100 foot trues and is pegged to the relative value of pillsbury cookie dough specifically specifically okay that makes me really want like just a bite of cookie is that a per unit price of cookie dough or a like a package uh seems to be seems to be who knows okay well hayden that made my entire day and i pity the man who will be going next

hudson because that was really actually i don't because hudson also has a really fun story i want to talk about okay good news last week you talked about the fattest bear week yes where are we at you know they uh they had to fight through some election fraud of their own uh i yeah election frog um but but so there there were like 10 000 votes apparently that were like a were like bots or whatever and so they had to get rid of those because they were skewing the count which was really unfortunate for our free and fair democratic elections of fat bears. But bear 747 won which I think is aptly named a big boy. He seems, describing him, he is a brown bear, a grizzly bear, and he is very round. And I think he's, they guesstimate that he is over a thousand pounds. And so you can kind of guess kind of how big that is.

That's pretty, pretty big. That's half a ton. This bear weighs half a ton. Legitimately half a ton. But yeah. My favorite headline, because I looked it up. It's an NPR headline. Scandal rocks fat bear week, but the contestants are unperturbed.

That's literally an NPR headline. Also, I love that the bear's name is 747. Yeah. Such a good name for a fat bear. Last year's winner was Otis. That's right. Are people mad that Otis didn't win again what are people people were mad i don't i don't know about all the the lore behind all this okay so well this bear you should look up this bear he definitely looks

very i mean he's just he's just fat he's just big i cannot be healthy for him. Okay. Well, thank you, Hudson, for that update that made my day also. So many good, fun tweets this week. Rob, we're coming to you on something that's more just ridiculously crazy. Talk to us about what you are going to talk about. Indeed. So for a little while now, there has been a defamation suit against InfoWars founder Alex Jones over claims that he has defamed the families of million to the families as well as to an FBI agent that he defamed, claiming that they and their children were actors and that the shooting was fake. The families had been harassed for basically a decade by fans of Alex Jones and

believers in this conspiracy theory. Some of them had to move multiple times if i recall correctly so uh it's a it's a huge jury sum though i mean this is nearly a billion dollars for a guy who has an estimated i think they estimated in court somewhere around 270 million dollars in the bank so which is honestly even more than i would have thought that's a lot of money that he has in the bank supposedly yeah so we'll see how much of that actually makes it to the uh to the victims in this case we'll see how much of that money is going to go to them i don't see how he can pay that off or we'll see if info wars goes totally bankrupt or something but it's definitely been a very interesting uh case to follow and um yeah it's it's it's already generating quite a bit of discussion online

yeah absolutely well definitely check out those tweets folks they're i'm picturing alex jones just googling side hustles to pay a billion dollar judgment maybe he'll have to sell that like tank he drives around austin now i know we've we might have talked about this before but that huge infowars truck i think we should turn it into a huge texan truck the texan should get that truck and drive it around that'd be pretty cool maybe we'll buy it from alex jones not that we're in any way comparing ourselves to infowars no not even close yes let's be very clear i just wanted to make that abundantly crystal i got excited about a truck thank you hayden um yeah spicy stuff okay i got a tweet this week as last weekend i went to acl austin

city limits the festival um which was something i i don't know i'm not a big festival person i'm sure that's shocking to all of you but i'm just not. But ACL is definitely more family friendly in a lot of ways and also not family friendly. It's like a mix of crazy festival goers and the smell of weed and also like families who came down from Georgetown to have their kids watch artists that they like. So it's a very interesting conglomeration of people. And it was it was pretty fun to experience. I went on Saturday. On Sunday, I was not there, but Kacey Musgraves performed very notably. She sang one of her big... What song even is this? I

can't even remember which song this is of hers. I can sing it in my head, but I can't remember the title. But she said a classic line from her song and called out Texas junior senator, which I thought was very interesting it was the lyric goes because everyone knows someone who kills the buzz every time they open their mouth and then she yelled ted cruz and the crowd freaked out and of course then um texas journos had a lot of fun with that and yeah it made its rounds on twitter to say the least but interesting stuff i think there were multiple artists as well that called out ted cruz over the course of the weekend which is

interesting very very interesting but they all love coming to austin they all love coming down for acl but that's my tweet okay let's talk about a fun topic this weekend i'm going to california with my sister for her bachelorette party. We're going to Santa Barbara for kind of a chill girls weekend. We'll eat a lot of food, maybe go wine tasting. It'll be delightful. She doesn't know the itinerary, but it'll be really fun. But I wanted to say California really is, I think, the prettiest city in the U.S.

Excuse me. I can't speak today. California is not a city. It is a state. It is a full-on state the most populated state in the union um regardless i really do think in a lot of ways it is the prettiest state but it's almost still illegal to say that as somebody who lives and loves texas lives in and loves texas the people's republic of california there you go maybe that's the

clarification needed for uh texas customs is already processing your deportation paperwork okay saying that's good to know i figured i i mean it deservedly so um there's a car waiting for you outside but like i mean what other what other state oh my gosh i mean what other state has just that level of beauty like that beachfront the weather california has the range wineries and literally everything like the range but i would say just like overall i'm probably gonna have to go with like colorado oh yes i'm probably gonna have to give them the the title because they have just a lot of cool stuff pretty much everywhere around the state um and or maybe a new england a new england state just because of the vibes just because of the vibes um maybe like a new

hampshire vermont or a main like the leaves in the fall kind of vibes is that what you're talking about yeah like the scary stephen king vibes oh i've actually only been as far up north as Pennsylvania in New England, which I think Pennsylvania still counts as New England. Anyway, I'm not quite sure. Maybe it's not far enough north. Okay. So Colorado,

I think that's a great, a great one. I love Colorado. Hayden, do you have an opinion on this? Yeah. Hudson stole my answer. I was going to say,

well, not Colorado, but New England. Oh, I don't picture myself staying in Texas forever. Yeah? Could you move to New England? Is that someplace you think you could live?

That's where I would more than likely want to go. I could see you starting a maple syrup farm in Vermont. A maple syrup farm? I can totally see Hayden having the Carhartt jacket and going out and tapping the maple trees. You know what I'm saying? Can you handle the cold i would prefer it a lot more than this 90 degrees in october bs that we've been dealing with the past few weeks i was going to say this is something that the one thing the one thing that

the north definitely has over the south is that we uh they have these things called seasons where like it gets colder and then it gets warmer again and like the leaves change color sorry i just knocked you there were you saying we as in the north because you were still identifying as a hillsdale student no i'm did i say we you said you said the north the north we like yeah you said we oh i meant to say something that they still have over the south i i when i said we i probably meant. I just, I can't talk no good. Well, that makes two of us.

Um, Brad, what do you say, Michigan? I'm going to go to bat for Michigan. Yeah. Yeah. I think,

um, especially Northern Michigan is, um, extremely underrated Traverse City, Mackinac Island um hell i think where hillsdale is in southwest michigan it's beautiful the only place that is kind of a a knock against it is detroit yeah which i have a fondness for but it is objectively disgusting would you say right along with its sports teams.

Would you say Michigan compares to, like, Colorado, though? I've never been to Colorado, so I don't know. I think Minnesota's better than Michigan. Really? Yeah. The boundary waters, you know, all the lakes. I've been to a lot of football games in Ann Arbor, which is kind of central.

Oh, I've heard that's gorgeous. And in the fall, leaves actually changing colors it's beautiful yeah um so yeah i'm gonna say michigan okay very good rob did you did you already say which state you thought was the prettiest in the u.s also i'm getting hiccups now this is great i'm trying to think right now because i spent several years in michigan and michigan is a very um very nice state honestly the the natural environment you get there the the snow was great i would love waking up to like freshly fallen snow covering everything which is an experience that you don't get as much in texas or hopefully and when you do the power grid so hopefully that will

not happen again to the point where it'll cause power grid collapse. But in terms of prettiest, I do quite like Texas when I'm driving around the state, you know, and I can just sort of drive through and I see all the wide open skies and everything. It's very, very nice. Yeah. I visited Oregon a few weeks ago and in Portland, Oregon. And it's kind of it almost made me claustrophobic when i finally got back to texas i was like oh i can see because of all the trees was it the trees the trees the hills it's a uh it's a weirdly designed city it is very weird i have i have a big affinity for portland in a lot of ways um and it's history but it is but i understand if you're not used to the

pacific northwest having grown up in seattle it is very it can feel claustrophobic when you have texas that's just flat and wide open with a bunch of not as many tall trees um well gentlemen thank you so much for joining us um enter brad saying he's contractually obligated regardless we are so um grateful to y'all for listening to us blather about the news each and every week and about other things like fat bears. But thank you for listening and we will catch you on next week's episode. Thank you to everyone for listening. If you enjoy our show, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you

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