The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - October 16, 2026

Episode Date: October 16, 2026

 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.Mental Health Facility Denies Talarico's Stay Alleged by Online InfluencersTalarico Challenged on Major Issues like Abortion, SAVE Act, Israel in CNN Town HallUH Poll: Talarico Leads Paxton by 22 Points in Harris CountyFormer Staffers Square Off in Race to Replace John Lujan in Texas HouseSen. Gutierrez Faces Abbott-Backed Republican Challenger in West Texas Senate DistrictIncumbent Cuellar, Challenger Tijerina Face Off in Redrawn South Texas Congressional DistrictAbbott Appointees Stock State Supreme Court Ballot for the First Time EverTransgender Organization Denies Sending Text Messages About 'Trans Kids' Days Before Early Voting BeginsVIDEO: Texas Attorney General Candidate Mayes Middleton on Local Prosecutors, Open RecordsEnjoy what you hear? Be sure to check out our articles at The Texan and leave us a review!Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast.

I think it is interesting. Jubilee is the company that does those like one conservative talks to 20 liberals kind of video and stuff like that. So it's, I think it's great to see an online company like that. Yeah, as you said, Marylees, make it too. I guess you could say the big leagues in terms of CNN. But I also want to say it kind of sounded a little bit like the start of a joke there, like a Catholic professor, a veteran and a rabbi all walking to a town hall. Well, good morning, folks. Welcome back to another episode of the Texans. weekly roundup podcast. I'm the Texans senior editor Rob Lausisus, and joining me today are reporters Mary Elise O'Bar, Meredith Dyer, Isaiah Mitchell, and Steve Kapuska. I hope everybody had a better rivalry weekend than I did this past weekend. I love that you're committed, Rob, to wearing that burnt orange polo, like he said you would. No, exactly. For the duration of football season,

that is what I will be wearing. No matter the outcome. For everybody. podcast, no matter the outcome, even when it's extremely, extremely disappointing. Anybody do anything especially fun this week leading up to the, before we get into the news? And there's a lot of news to talk about, but anybody do anything especially fun? Yes. However, I'm trying to remember what it was, so I'll have to go back to you because I have a hard time to remember what I ate for dinner last night. but I can feel like a memory deep within something fun I did over the weekend.

You remember having a good time doing something? It's like a vague memory. Yeah, I have a vague feeling of fun. Okay. Which, yeah, that's really all I want out of a weekend. No, you know, that's a good point. As long as they're having fun, even if you don't know why, I guess that's still pretty good.

Better than what some people have. It's true. It was my nephew turned three. So we had a three-year-old birthday birthday birthday birthday. Three old birthday party, which is always a lot of fun. And so we had to take his little cousin over there and they rocked a world around. There you go. That does sound like a good time.

The reason why I ask, of course, is because this past weekend also had a bit of craziness occur regarding Texas' U.S. Senate race, which was fun for some people, funny for others, was this massive rumor that got started that State Representative James Tala Rico. who is the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate was in a mental health facility for at least some period of time. This rumor got started. I think it was on Saturday or Sundays when it really got started. And then it snowballed from there. And then it all kind of sputtered out. So Mary Elise and Steve, y'all wrote a story about this. Sort of tell us what kind of happened and what do we know at this point?

Well, what is it that people call this time of year? It's like the silly season or just this time leading up to the election where everybody on both sides of the aisle seem to kind of be losing their minds. And it's just, you know, you get so close to the election. So many things are flying around and lots of, you know, scandals or, you know, new headlines are being released and some of them are more accurate than others. but yeah so this was this rumor that representative james tallarico had been flown to ohio to admit himself to mental health facility um his campaign had said that and um and is stuck with the fact that he was recovering from the flu and and you know i don't don't want to miss any spots in this timeline so steve can fill in any gaps but um he had shared that he came down with the flu

on September 30th. And then that was when we had that event where that Steve was going to attend where it was the U.S. Hispanic Business Council was hosting that kind of candidate interview for the U.S. Senate race. They had just done with Ken Paxton.

But Talarico ended up kind of calling in because he was there virtually because he was down with the flu. And then he had last been seen at an end-person event, I think it was maybe four days before. And then as kind of time progressed, speculation was all over the place about Talarica's condition. And then Paxton kind of brought it to the forefront of conversation when he asked at a campaign rally. He said, quote, where do you think they hid that little socialist?

And, you know, they had begun, his campaign had begun to pick up on the fact that Tala RICO had been MIA for a couple of days by then. And so they jumped on that pretty quickly. And then they started sending out and all these press releases about you know, Tayloriko's assumed condition, potential condition. You know, they were saying 12 days of radio silence is raising obvious questions.

And then, you know, of course, allegations that always too weak to handle the pressure, you know, they said, is James Talafrico still running for U.S. Senate or has a mere thought of having to defend his own records, him scrambling for a fainting couch in search of emotional support? So this quickly became fodder

for press releases from the Pakistan campaign and other Republican operatives. And then we saw, it was big breaking news. There was a ex post made online where Talarico was seen at ACL, the music festival in Austin. That was October 9th. That was the first time he had been seen since his diagnosis. And of course, his team is maintaining that he had been sick with the flu during his absence. And something I point out in our piece is Talariker does have to have. type 1 diabetes, which has been a big part of his campaign. He's tied that into a lot of his

health care policy conversations, but that is known to make the flu generally more severe. If you have type 1 diabetes, the flu's going to take it down a little bit longer. So, yeah, and then we saw different posts being circulated by different influencers online, showing some flight logs, alleging that he had been flown to Ohio to a mental health facility. there are a lot of different facts that didn't quite line up. So the first post that really kind of amplified this was Caroline Wren, a Republican fundraiser, was posting screenshots of a flight that had taken off in Austin and landed in Ohio. But if you look at it and these screenshots showed that this flight returned to Austin

in the morning of October night, so that would line up with television. RICO being seen in ACL, but it had taken off the day before, so that didn't quite make sense for, you know, if he had been on that flight. You know, you can read the piece to kind of see where the facts lay. But also, something else I'll mention is this mental health facility that people were alleging that Talerica had been seen at was, or that he had been admitted to, was where Harris County judge, Lena Hidalgo had indeed been, had read. received several weeks, I think, of inpatient treatment for clinical anxiety and depression. That was three years ago. This was the same facility where she had gone as a lot of people were kind of pointing to it and referencing that stay that Hidalgo had, that stay that period of time where that Hidalgo had spent

at this specific facility. But, yeah, Steve, you can fill in the gaps I miss there with this wild story. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, on top of all that, there were several things that didn't really add up about this, about, about this theory. One of those is that the plane in question that was being looked at here, people looked into the owner of this plane. And it turns out that, like, he is a Republican. So, so, like, it's quite strange that he'd be helping out Palo Rico. Something else, I believe what the allegation is. is, is that the day that Talarico supposedly checked out of this mental hospital was October 10th, which would have been the day after he was at ACL. So that timeline, like, it doesn't make sense.

And, you know, things have came out since then that have really made it even more clear on top of the mental hospital saying, you know, Talarico was never here. of the New York Times posted a story I'm saying that they have a video footage

of Tala Rico at his home during the timeline in question and one of the project editors of the story I think his name is pronounced Ryan Amateur

he just posted on X earlier in the day and I quote never lied I just doubled down on wrong information, unquote. So, I mean, I take from that what you will. And also, frankly, if I was struggling with my mental health, I don't know why I'd visit Ohio of all places.

Yeah, I think the connection came in supposedly that this was the same location Lena Hidalgo went to. But, you know, I don't know why she selected that location. Well, that is the location she went to. I mean, supposedly that Tala Rico also went to. but I know why she chose that location in Ohio, but yeah, the idea that this plane took off

and it landed like, well, near where that facility is. It all seemed a little flimsy to begin with. But yeah, I did see the tweet comparing his name. I don't know if it's amateur, like amaker or something.

I'm not sure quite how it's pronounced, but it does kind of invite, I think, the comparison. Something that I forgot to mention was that the individual that you were just referencing. He did make two phone calls to the facility to try and confirm if Tala Rico was indeed a patient there.

And his first call that was made, he pretended to be Tala Rico's cousin. And he told the employee on the other line, he said, you know, I'm not sure if he's checked out yet. I was going to send him a letter in the mail. Like, can he confirm he's a patient there? And then the employee said, I think it's a four-digit code, said, you know, we can't give any information unless we have that code. and then he kind of pressed further. He was like, well, okay, if I send a letter and he is not there, where the letter just be sent back to me and just like, yeah, that's how it should work.

But if he is there, you know, it'll just, he will receive it. And so then he made another call on the night of October 10th. So October 10th would be a day after Tala Rico had been cited. And then he fabricated, according to him, a patient code on the second call, just a couple of minutes after he'd made the first one. And he said, he just gave him like a random code. And the employee said, you know, I don't see the name here. Maybe he's been discharged.

And then they put him on hold for a couple of minutes. They said, okay, I'll go look at another computer. And they said, yeah, we don't see his name. Just repeated that several times. And then he kind of kept pushing. And then she said, oh, it looks like he was discharged this evening. That's why I don't have it. So you can make your own, you know, analysis about what she might have meant by that.

But obviously this individual kind of took it and ran with it, that specific line that she said there that looks like he was discharged. That's why I don't have it. And that would have meant, I think, like, Steve was saying that he was discharged the evening of October 10th. So that's a day after he was seen at ACL. Yeah, I don't know about y'all, but if you've, I'm sorry for interrupting you, Mary Louise. Oh, no, you're good. Go ahead. I was just going to say is it kind of sounds to me like the person on the phone was kind of like, okay, okay, okay. Oh, well, well, he's not here. So that must have been it. I guess that's what happened.

Because like, if you've ever had to work a job that requires you to answer the phones, I think, you're just like, what can I do to get this person off the phone, right? It's kind of what you have to learn how to do after a while and kind of tell them, tell them what you have to tell them to get them off the phone. The idea that such a high profile person as like probably the most famous U.S. Senate candidate in the country that they would just give out confidential information about this guy is a little bit. In my opinion, that's a little bit hard to believe. I also like the some people saying like, well, it doesn't really matter what happened because it's still kind of suspicious anyway. I don't know. I just, I thought that that was funny. Isaiah, it seems like you had something to say about that.

I was only going to say all the things you're saying, you know, that like the tone of the woman did seem to imply a bit of exhaustion and a willingness to just give whatever answer would in the phone call, like you were saying. Yeah, and something else that other people observed is that, like,

there are other people named James Talarico that are not the person running for Senate in Texas. So, like, there are other explanations there. Yeah, and Texas and Ohio, right? So it's all just very funny.

We are definitely, I think, I would concur with you, Mary Elise, that we are in silly season right now and mud-slinging season. You know, I think that the, I think that the pro-Paxon people, though, did get what they wanted out of this, which was just to create controversy. I doubt that this will have some kind of massive backlash for Paxton or something. I doubt really that a thing like this that lasts for about a half a week is going to have that big of an effect. But it does kind of remind you of the Eric Schmidt stuff from that congressional hearing where he thought that he had caught Jack Smith. He's the former director of the FBI, right? I believe, yeah, former FBI director, Jack Smith. No, Department of Justice.

I think, yeah, I think he was Department of Justice. Okay, yes. The Department of Justice, special counsel, not director of the FBI. I'm thinking of Robert Mueller. But Jack Smith thought Eric Schmidt, Congressman Eric Schmidt thought he caught him in this massive lie about where he was, but only because he was, it was because he said he was at a hawks game, but he meant that he was at a hawk eyes game. And there was some, there was just some whole kerfuffle about it. And I think it kind of, it looked a little silly. But, um, Mary Elise, you also followed James Talariko's town hall that he was on CNN on Wednesday night. Tell us about kind of what he said there. Did he talk about this whole thing at all? Yeah, he did. He referenced the whole flu mental health facility situation. And honestly, there were a couple laughs from the crowd and then also the moderator and himself.

Everyone was taking it pretty lightly. Neo-who's asked about it and he said, well, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but he said, I had the flu and I did what I think someone with the flu should do and stay home for a couple of days and not get other people sick and rest, etc. This was a fascinating town hall. It was hosted by CNN, but also alongside Jubilee Media, which I think is really interesting to see, just kind of as a side note, to see CNN partnering with Jubilee Media who's been really successful recently. Kind of like one of these alternative media, at least in the way that they like format. their interviews and their debates and stuff.

It was interesting to see them kind of team up on this, kind of more of this considered legacy media outlet, work together to produce this town hall. So they did say at the very beginning that the moderator Aaron Burnett, she did clarify that, you know, we invited Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to participate in this, but he never responded to us. And she said just to be clear,

the invitation is still open. So kind of kicked off with that. But the room was set up very interestingly. They had, I was in three sections and in the middle. They had about 20 independents and then to the left, about 20 Democrats and to the right, about 20 Republicans. And, you know, first they started out with, they had polled the crowd before on what are your top issues that you are have in mind when you're voting this cycle. So they had asked them before and so then it showed kind of a graph on the screen. And so first they asked the respondents who had said the economy to raise their hands and they could ask him some questions from the crowd and they had the mic brought to them and ask him about, you know, how are you going to address this issue? And then they moved on to,

you know, they moved on to corruption, which was another topic that some people are really focused on this cycle and they were able to ask him some questions about that and then they switched the format and they had kind of a debate situation going on so they invited folks who disagree with talariko about a specific topic to come up and tell them what they disagreed with him about and discuss that and i think that was probably the most interesting part um because everyone's you know even when you just you ask a politician about oh what are you going to do for the economy they have usually a pretty set answer for that. And it's not quite as interesting, but you have a voter come up and sit across from this individual and say, I disagree with you about this. What's your response?

I think that captured a lot of people's attention. And personally, I found it very interesting. One of the individuals that came up was a Catholic professor, and she said, she identified as an independent, and she said, you know, I actually agree with a lot of, you know, democratic positions, but she said, you know, as a Catholic, I'm a one-issue voter and the issue is abortion. And she said, you know, essentially I disagree with you on this topic. And he was, you know, very, very friendly towards her. And they discussed the topic. And he kind of reiterated several times that he thinks that where they land on this issue is,

I'm not that important, but that they have some common goals and you try to lay those out. He said, you know, we want less unwanted. or unexpected pregnancies, et cetera. And then he also said, you know, I think that the, you know, the Bible does not address abortion. And then she kind of pushed back on that. And she's referenced the Ten Commandments. So that was one really interesting moment that happened there. Another fellow came up who is a veteran and he was a Republican.

And he told Al RICO, where he asked him, like, where do you stand on the Safe America Act, the voter ID issue because that's really important to me. And he said, you know, to Texans that have been polled on this, it seems like it's generally a popular issue. It's something that most Texans support is what the individual was saying. And Tala Rico actually said that he hadn't read the legislation. So he said as a policy wonk, I don't really want to give my concrete opinion on this topic. But, you know, then he gave just a general response about that he does want, eligible individuals to be voting in our elections,

but we have to make sure not to discriminate. And then a couple other issues that he was asked about were immigration. Israel, a rabbi came up and was asking him about his stance on Israel and just our foreign policy regarding Israel. That was one of the topics and also gender modification and his past record on, you know, whether he supports or not gender modification,

for children. There was also an individual that came up that asked him about specifically, do you want to abolish ICE? He said, you know, I've never wanted to abolish ICE and they kind of had a conversation about immigration and his stance there. So there's a lot of very hot topics and some social issues that we don't usually see being a part of this election cycle came up. It was, I think, an interesting opportunity for everybody. It was also, I think it was a unique experience seeing Tala Rico in this format because, you know, he holds a lot of rallies and town halls where there's kind of a, you know, there's a set speech that you give. Then you take photos with people.

But this was a lot more interactive and there was some debate and there was some pushback against him. And some people telling him to his face, you know, I strongly disagree with you on this and him kind of pushing back as well. But we'll have a piece out on this pretty soon so you can read. a little bit more about the event that happened on Wednesday night. I just wanted to add, I watched quite a bit of it back, and it is a very, it was a very good look for Talarico to face people so clearly and allow them to speak to him in that way, and it's definitely something that obviously we were always talking about how people want Ken Paxton or Tala Rico and his camp and others have called for him to come forward and do

debates and it really, I feel like it really highlighted the difference and the absence of that. And also, regardless of what you believe about these statements he's making, he sounds very different from, it just sounds like a very different person almost. And so I'd actually saw CNN was fact checking and talking about some of his statements, which is interesting because normally that would be a station that would not do that actually. And so there were some things were so different sounding and different that it's a lot of there is a lot of discussion online about kind of like what is the true statement and it is interesting to see people really diving into fact checked those and I think even though he was being fact checked and even at one point the moderator

quoted him about what he said about capitalism and wanting to dismantle it and his response was very very different than that statement he essentially said that that previous statement had been taken out of context. But I think even though he's being fact-checked and some people were pointing out, oh, you had a much more kind of progressive stance on this before. I think it was just a great look overall, though he was addressing those topics. And that would probably, I mean, I guess we'll see this election. But I think that that probably will outweigh and positive benefit for him just showing up

and answering those topics, even if you've got folks pointing out some inconsistencies. Because if some people, this is their first impression of Talleyico or one of their first, they haven't followed him for years, they haven't seen him speaking on the House floor, different things that the Republicans have brought up. Like we keep saying, it was a good look. And the optics were great. And when you hear someone admit that they're wrong as well, whether you want to believe that what they're saying now is true or what they believe in the past is what they're going to go off of, that is also a very positive, like, humble thing that when someone does that. And so I remember as I watched it, I was like, this is a great, great thing that he did. So we'll see how it plays out. Yeah. It's interesting, of course, because, you know, Tala Rico has a history of making fairly left-wing statements on social issues in his time in the Texas House. But the average person does not pay attention to the state legislature.

So it kind of doesn't matter, right? Because it's just, yeah, as you said, the average person, this will be like the first thing they see of them. and they might like the impression of them. I think it is interesting because Jubilee is the company that does those like one conservative talks to 20 liberals kind of video and stuff like that, right? So it's, I think it's great to see an online company like that. Yeah, as you said, Marylees, make it to, I guess you could say the big leagues in terms of CNN. But I also want to say it kind of sounded a little bit like the start of a joke there,

like a Catholic professor, a veteran, and a rabbi all walking to a town hall. with an Austin Democrat yeah yeah interviewed people afterwards i don't know if you watched all of that mary lees but they interviewed the people that they talked to you afterwards and asked them how it affected their votes and i remember one woman who was an undecided voter and this is an example like we're saying if you're not following all of this like we are where we're just on x all the time with our whole our life our livelihood is like invested into this she said you know talluriko's saying that Ken Paxton is against data centers. I didn't know that. And so regardless of what that statement means to you and whether you believe that or not, just one statement from someone, she's like,

I'm going to vote for Talarico now. So it's just interesting, like, those opportunities to get up there and say things where people are just, they're wanting to hear and wanting you to tell them, almost tell them how to vote a little bit. Yeah. Well, real quick, before we get into the next big topic of some of these big, like, legislative races, that are going on, I wanted to touch on this poll that Holly wrote about in Harris County. A new poll of likely voters found that Tala Rico was leading Paxton by 22 percentage points in the biggest county in Texas. So this was about 2,700 likely voters. It's a very nice sample size for just a county.

That would be a good sample size for the state. That's a great sample size for the county. And it said that 58% planned to vote for Tala Rico, 36% for Paxton, 2% for libertarian Ted Brown. He is still hanging in there and 4% unsure. So about 2% of Harris County likely voters said they did not know enough about Paxton to have an opinion on him. And 3% said they did not know enough about Tala Rico. So a very enviable 2 and 3% who are somehow blissfully ignorant of everything that's going on there. Something interesting to note here is that in 2024, Colin Allred beat Ted Cruz in Harris County by 11 percentage points, even though Cruz like won across the state by about 8.5 percentage points. But so it's interesting to see here that Tala Rico's lead is a lot higher than Pax. Tala Rico's lead over Paxton is a lot higher in this poll than Allreds was over Cruz just two years ago. And so Holly talked to Professor Mark Jones, who was one of the people who worked on this survey.

And he said, you know, Harris County is about one seventh of the electorate in Texas. So, I mean, that's not a small number. And he said that if you extrapolate this data, it would suggest that Tala Rico is ahead somewhere between like one and three percentage points. And Abbott is, yeah, Tala Rico is ahead by like one to three points. And Greg Abbott is ahead over Democrat Gina Hinojosa by about three to five points. So I would recommend to everybody check out the poll piece because there's a lot of interesting stuff going on there.

And as well as the piece about Fort Bend County that we just put out last week. but highly recommend everybody check that out. But of course, the U.S. Senate race is not the only race on the ballot, even though it gets the majority of the oxygen in the room. Isaiah, you wrote a couple of pieces this week about state house races. So tell us what's going on in the race to replace state representative John Lujan. It's interesting because even like before and after redistricting, the district just has a bit of a wobbly partisan history. And so we, some listeners might remember redistricting that took place last year. That was for Congress.

The Texas House districts were redistricted in 2021 and they took effect in 2022. But before that happened, Lujan won in a special election in 2016. And then he lost the seat in a regular election after that. And then he won another special election in 2021, again under the previous map. and finally secured a general election win in 2022 under the new map. But the results that Lujan achieved in, for example, in 2022, he won with 51.8% of the vote. And in 2021, he won with 51% of the vote and maybe a little change. And so the results really weren't that different under, you know, between the old map versus the new map, which is kind of interesting.

because in terms of voting performance, the old map was a lot more democratic than the new map. And so it's just got kind of an interesting history in terms of its partisanship. But the Lujan is leaving the seat and the people running to replace him on the Republican side. His name is George Borago, former TPPF guy, and also an alleged staffer.

And the Democratic side, Christian Caranza, who is a veteran of several Democratic, campaigns, including Hillary Clinton's presidential run, and Gina-Rotees-Jones' campaign for San Antonio Mayor. Also, Wendy Davis, she worked in a campaign for her own point, too. And so it's kind of interesting that these two staffers are now entering the spotlight as candidates for the seat that a lot of people are watching. So at this point, George Borago is a real estate agent, and like I said, he used to work for

TPPF. When he was a staffer of the ledge, he worked in the office of state rep, J. him Lazzano, who represented a district that included Kingsville. And while he was at TPF, Barago took a pretty leading role in the plan to establish education savings accounts. And so that education was really his big issue there at that think tank. And he was endorsed by the Texas Homeschool Coalition Coalition and the American Federation for Children Victory Fund accordingly.

He also has the endorsement of Governor Greg Abbott. And he won the March GOP primary with 53% of the... to vote. Luan also, by the way, did not formally endorse a candidate in the Republican primary, but he said that he would commit to supporting the nominee in every way possible. So Fabrego, his big priorities are lowering the cost of living, which is number one, keeping criminals off the street, protecting children from fentanyl, cutting property taxes, banning boys from competing against girls and raising pay for teachers. So pretty conventional, traditional, Republican values on that side. and on the left we've got Christian Caranza

her six priorities begin same way with lower living costs but after that we get affordable health care strong public schools and into corporate tax breaks a category that she called respect for every Texan and veterans support and in both of these campaigns

there's been some interesting less important in terms of substance and platform blanks and stuff like that but some interesting drama that's taking place So Karanza ran against Lujan in 2024, and the Bear County GOP drew attention to the fact that she had changed her name from Thompson just months before announcing her run for office in this Hispanic majority district in San Antonio. And so there was threats of litigation. Karanza responded that she decided to take the name Karanza to honor her mother and that the name Thompson belonged to her father who left the family. And so she wanted to take her mother's name out of respect for her.

Barago, in August, current revolt, which is a conservative news site, dug up some social media posts that Barago posted when he was 16, that included a lot of profanity and mentions of doing cocaine and other stuff that doesn't look good for a campaign. And Barago apologized, and he called the post crude and immature, but also pointed out that he was 16 at the time. So we've had a little bit of drama in this race, which is always, kind of fun. But, you know, my takeaway from this was that we've got this district that was

redistricted to look more even, and we've got pretty squarely partisan candidates competing to represent, you know, this district that doesn't really have much of a deep blue or red tinge at this point. Very interesting. Yeah, that was, this is kind of going to be the problem for I think our generation as we sort of grow into further adulthood is that, you know, social media existed when we were teenagers, when people use their real names and stuff like that online. So having statements about you doing cocaine might come back to bite you in the butt if you have something like that. But to talk about another interestingly kind of close race in a district that's, you know, more competitive. Mary Elise, You wrote about Texas Senate District 19 where the Democratic incumbent is facing a Republican challenger. Tell us what this election looks like for state senator Roland Gutierrez. Yeah, this one's maybe a little bit more low profile, but it is an area where it has kind of a recent record of a partisan flip. So that does make it interesting.

And of course, this is for a Texas House seat. But so we've got this Republican who is backed by Governor Greg Abbott, Marcus Cardenas, and he's challenging the Democratic incumbent, Roland Gutierrez. And this is in, sorry, I misspoke when I said it was a House district meant to say. This is a Senate district 19. And this district in particular, it has miles of, hundreds of miles, not just miles,

of the Texas-Mexico border. And it's kind of this West Texas district. So he, Gutierrez, has represented this district since he, was elected in 2020. So he started his term in 21, but he was elected in 2020. So he is, you know, being challenged by this small business owner, Marcus Cardinas. And SD19, so if you look at our Texas partisan index right now, we have it rated at D53%. So that's per the 22, 24 cycle. So, you know, Democrats have six point advantage there. But in 2017, there was a special, election, state Senator Pete Flores actually flipped the district. So that was after his Democratic

predecessor resigned. This individual had resigned after an 11 felony conviction. And then so Pete Flores had flipped it from that Democratic representation to Republican. And then Gutierrez did defeat Flores in 2020. And that's when actually the Senate GOP lost its supermajority. That was before the 87th legislative session. Something that Goudierrez in particular has kind of been in the spotlight for recently, you know, as an elected candidate, he has been addressing the controversial federal big-bend border construction. He's been really in the middle of that, that whole fight. And that, you know, that had pushed back from both sides of the aisle.

That was a controversial subject for both parties, the construction happening there in the Big Bend Park. He opposed it and he was, you know, Democrats saying we all want border security, but he's saying that Texans don't want a wall where one already exists. Of course, he's referencing the region's natural assets in Big Bend. Also, I think we covered this maybe last podcast or one before, but a federal judge did order a halt to the border construction in Big Bend. So that was a big one there for the activists and lawmakers like Goodyear's who were opposing it. He's also had a pretty significant hand in the response and the aftermath of the Yuvalde shooting.

That is one of the cities within SD-19, so that's one of the reasons he was really involved in this. He was a big advocate for gun control reform, so red flag laws wanted to raise age to 21 to purchased semi-automatic rifles. And this was particularly after that Uvalde shooting. He ran for U.S. Senate in 2024, which some folks might remember. And he was challenging Democratic rep Colin Allred. And then, of course, Allred was the one that ultimately went on to the general to challenge Senator Ted Cruz in the general election.

Switching to Cardenas, he is a small business owner. He really, he mentions that a lot throughout his campaign. He really kind of focuses on that. He describes his life as a true Texas success story. His website describes how he, as it explains kind of his, that success story, it says that he left college and joined his family's plumbing business after he tragically lost his brother in 07. And then he went on to build a company Vertex Concrete. And he talks about how that company, has been serving the district for over a decade. And he was endorsed by Abbott back in February to run against Senator Gutierrez. And that was when he was running against another Republican in the primary, Robert Mark Jr., which we covered, of course. So, yeah, this is a little bit more of a low profile race. But if you live in Senate District 19, it's pretty important to you. And just if you're Texan in general, of course, it's an important election.

So, yeah, this, we'll keep an eye on this West Texas race. And we'll see, you know, does have that recent record of a partisan flip. But again, the Democrats do currently enjoy a six-point advantage. So we go one or two ways, of course. Yeah, lots and lots of flippable districts this time around. I mean, the House, the Senate, West Texas, not only West Texas, but also South Texas. Steve, you wrote a piece this week about Henry Quayar, the embattled congressman of TX28, who's had quite a bit of drama-lama stuff happening over the past years. So stuff involving

Azerbaijan, gold bars, presidential pardons, and a Republican challenger who himself used to be a Democrat running against a Democrat, many people thought might become a Republican. Tell us what's going on in South Texas. Yeah, yeah. Actually, it's very interesting. There was news just yesterday, actually, that national Republicans are now pulling out of Texas 28, presumably because they don't think it's winnable anymore. And the history behind that is kind of interesting. So in the, it used to be that, it used to be that Texas 28 was a reliably Democratic seat.

Hillary Clinton won it by about 20 points. But the improvements that Trump made in the Rio Grande Valley in 2020 and especially in 2024 really put the seat on the map for Republicans. And it was one of the seats that was targeted in the mid-decade redraw. and it saw the new version of the district had it existed in 2024, it would have voted for Trump by about 10 points, which is up from the five points of the old district. But what was kind of interesting is the way they accomplished that is they took out parts of, they took out areas that were near San Antonio and they added more border territory. And what's so interesting about that is if you add up the votes that Democrats are running for U.S. House Scott throughout Texas, the new district is actually a bit more Democratic leaning than the old district. So what the Republican redraars were probably thinking is that Trump's strength would translate down ballot and that would lead the seat to a flip.

and it seems like that hasn't really materialized yet. The district, you know, it's about 75% Hispanic, and that is a group that swung very strongly to Trump in 2024, and now looks, I'll be swinging very strongly away from Republicans in 20206, and so, of course, that's going to have a very outsized impact in a district like this. and especially matters because Quaylor is very much an entrenched incumbent. You know, he's been there for a while. And also he is one of the more, he's one of the more moderate House Democrats.

When you look on issues like, you know, guns, trans-trenched rights, he even voted, he even voted for the Save Act. And so there were some Republicans who thought that he might be a candidate to switch parties. And speculation around that really increased after President Trump pardoned him on many of the charges, well, all the charges that he was facing in regards to bribery and being an unregistered for an agent and things of that nature. But Quaylor has not switched parties. And Trump has not been very happy about that. He's called a congressman disloyal.

And he's been very strongly backing the Republican candidates, Tano Tizurina, who in many ways is, you know, he's the sort of politician that Republicans had wanted Quilar to be. In that, like, you know, he's Hispanic. He was elected as a Democrat in South Carolina. Texas is the he's the judge of a web county. And he basically said, you know, the, the Democratic Party, it's become, you know, too liberal. It's become too weak on immigration.

And I feel more at home with the Republicans. And I think a lot of Republicans, you know, because he was sort of following the trajectory of the Rio Grande Valley at the time, a lot of Republicans hoped that he'd be able to appeal to those voters who had voted for Trump in 2024, but at the same time it also voted to reelect Henry Quaylar. But at this point, it seems like Quaylar is more likely than not to win. Yeah, I think the whole bit, you mentioned for disloyalty, which in Trump's mind is kind of the original sin, right, for not switching. parties for getting this pardon. But yeah, I remember when that, when that news broke about the

charges against him, it was a pretty big newsday for the Texan. But I also remember when we recalculated our Texas partisan index for TX28, you know, to say, okay, so what is, what does it look like now? You know, if you're taking the way our TPI works is we take the two most recent elections and we sort of combine all of the election results to get like a general vote share of Republicans versus Democrats. It actually went from D-51% to D-53%. And when we published that, I mean, some people were like, what are you guys talking about? They made it more Republican favorable. And it's because they kind of only took into account, it seems, the 2024 election results where Trump like way overperformed relative to other Republicans in that district. So

TX28 might not be a Republican pickup after all if you're going to take like the most popular Republican and only the most popular Republican to sort of calculate making it more GOP favorable. And something that I forgot to mention is that something is that another way that the redraw actually helped out, actually helped out Puehlar is that the parts of the district that were taken out around San Antonio are where is a primary challenger from a 2022, Jessica Dissneros, I was strongest.

So not only did the redraw not really hurt him in terms of his prospects in the general election, it's actually made it a bit more favorable for him in the Democratic primary as well. Interesting. Meredith, were you also going to add something? I was just going to say, kind of wrapping it up that we saw Tano Tierra at the Democratic Republican Convention where he was very, his line was the Democratic Party, I didn't leave them, they left me. And he is just a character. He had the big cowboy hat.

He's like kind of a larger than life type of guy. He was like almost preaching at one point about Jesus. He was just really getting into it. And so he, I just, whether he secures his victory or not, it'll be interesting to see if he does anything else in the future. Because out of all, all the different people we saw. I remember him sticking out to me as just a very memorable person. Very nice. Well, that's a lot of legislative races we've talked about, but that's not the only kind of races that are going to be going on. Isaiah, I see you're getting excited here because the next story we're talking about is your story about the Texas Supreme Court elections, which is pitting a bunch of Governor Greg Abbott appointees against veterans of the Third Court of Appeals in Austin. Tell us about

Scotics. Yes, it's an interesting race, and it always is because the Constitution is interesting. But in this case also, we've got a full slate of Abbott appointees, which has never happened before. So Abbott took the oath of office in 2015, and since then, we've had several elections for the Supreme Court of Texas. They serve staggered six-year terms, and there are nine members on the court, and so they're not all up for election in every cycle. But this year is the first one in which all four of the incumbents were appointed by Abbott. And so the incumbent justices on the ballot are the chief justice, Jimmy Blacklock, and justices James P. Sullivan, Kyle Hawkins, and Brett Busby. And so I should also note that these judicial races in Texas are partisan. And so all of these incumbents are Republicans.

They're all appointed by the Republican governor Abbott. And four of them, or three of these four, are facing challengers who are justices on the same appellate court, the third court of appeals in Austin. And the fourth Democratic challenger, Judge Kristen Hawkins, is a district court judge in Harris County. So if you've been paying attention to Texas news for a long time, especially judicial challenges involving state law or state agencies, then you've probably heard the third court of appeals come up. And that's because for a long time, a large share of challenges to state law, you know, they involve a state agency. And so, and those agencies are based in Austin. And so those cases wound up in the third court of appeals, which covers Travis County and, you know,

a lot of others as well, but all the really big important cases, right, are involving the state and these parties that are based in Travis County, you know, these state agencies. And these, because these judges are elected by qualified voters in the area that they serve, and because that area for the third court of appeals is really dominated by the Austin Metro, we wound up with, we wind up, you know, presently still with a very Democrat heavy Court of Appeals in this third court. And so that made for a pretty frequent clash between the Third Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court of Texas. So there's some interesting history behind that that you can find on our site. But yeah, we've got like this unified line of Abbott appointees versus an almost as unified line of Democratic justices from this court.

Now, the Third Court of Appeals no longer has primary jurisdiction over these big constitutional cases that involve the whole state. A little while ago, the legislature created. created the 15th Court of Appeals, which is the only one that is not bound to some region. And so the 15th Court of Appeals covers the whole state, and it's tasked with these big cases that involve questions of like statewide constitutionality, one of the big state agencies, things like that. And as you might expect, you know, as you hear this history, it was a pretty partisan effort for the most part, not entirely. There were Democrats who voted for it in the Texas House, but it passed totally on party lines in the Texas Senate. And it's to the advantage of the

Republican state government because now these cases that involve these big constitutional questions, which means that they can lead to statewide court orders prohibiting an agency from doing something, right? These will go through another court of appeals that is elected statewide rather than elected by primarily Austin area voters. So we've got some more information on each of these candidates here. A lot of the big cases that they've been involved in that wound up in the news for both sides. So go check it out if you're curious. Very nice.

I think it's interesting as well that not only do we have so many Austin Democrats running for statewide positions in Texas, but now we have even more Austin Democrats running for Supreme Court. you know, Austin Democrats, this is like their year to shine. So I think that that's, I think that that's very interesting. But of course, once these elections are set and done, we're going to be getting into the 90th legislative session next year on January 12th. And I know everybody already has that marked on their calendars and is very excited for the 140-day non-stop sprint to signy die. But Meredith, you have been writing recently about Texas Education Freedom accounts

tell us sort of what we can expect in the 90th legislative session. So Texas Education Freedom accounts were huge hot topic last session. They were the main issue. They were an emergency item. It was the priority to pass that. And it did. And so the $1 billion program, which has been touted as the largest in the nation, with the largest waiting list and all of those things.

celebrated by its supporters is in it's happening right now children are now and private schools homeschools receiving and using those funds um but it's not going away obviously it will not be the number one issue because we all know that property taxes is going to potentially keep us past that 140 day mark you were talking about and um we know that data centers affordability there's so many other things that are really important right now. But TEFA, which I made a note in my, I was like tweeting about it. Apparently everyone used, like people used to call it TIFA and now they call it TEFA. And that like changed somehow. Most reporters were like, when did that happen? So TEFA is not absent from the conversation. It finds its way into ads. It finds its way into these

different panels that these places where, you know, candidates and representatives and senators are speaking into their committee meetings. So it's going to be there. It's, and it's honestly going to be pretty, I would say, it's going to get probably pretty ugly because it now there's, there's data from who received it. There's data for a lot of this is going to be in the article. It's a pretty long, deep dive. So, but they're getting data back and they're also calling for accountability and saying, is this effective? Is this the most efficient way to use these funds? So what I do in the article is kind of take a little bit of a trip down memory lane to remember how this passed, what the vote was, making a note of, you know, they're going, they're talking about can, how many house seats can Democrats get? Obviously, any of those, most of those are going to go towards the idea of repealing or taking away this program, not towards expanding it. And then I also kind of review that there were some Republicans that weren't like a handful of them that were not satisfied or happy with voting for it,

but did vote for it under pressure. They've shared that and wrote about that, spoke about that. So as we go back to revisit it, seeing how it's done, the idea is how many seats are the Democrats going to have? How many more votes will they get? How many Republicans change their mind on this or turn now that they've seen what it's done in their district? And so we just kind of go through who's celebrating it. What are they saying about it? And then what kind of issues are going to come up? Things like efficiency and testing, homeschoolers that receive funds don't take a test. So that's come up. The issue that happened with the lawsuits regarding Muslim schools and how that was kind of walked back and taken care of. But it will come up. It has come up again. And then different things like the amount. Yeah, like I said, who's using it where it's going to. And the amount that's going towards students that are already or were already in private schools, which was one of the arguments in the first place against it. So if you're like, okay, I know we have this, but what happened in the past and what will happen in the future, take a read, take a tour, take a little trip down memory lane, and then get ready for,

it's an emotional, it's an emotional topic. So it'll probably be a pretty emotional debate in the 90th about it when it comes up. What's up, Isaiah? I was just going to add that this is one of those topics that really splits both parties. And not necessarily like on half and half for each one, but we've got, we've had Democrats who side with some Democrats who side with some of these education bills. And we've also got some Republicans who side with more traditionally pro-publicate Democrats in pretty vehement opposition to topics like this one's a cool choice, probably the most divisive of all the big education topics that we're, come across. Yeah, definitely those rural representatives and senators will talk about we don't have a lot of private schools or any in our in certain areas. How is this going to be helping? Another issue I

bring up in the bill is like, or in the bill, it's not a bill, it's an article, but in the article is the idea of people are questioning how much, you know, the verbiage is, how much money is this taking away from public schools, which those are speculations and there's already declining enrollment. So that's kind of like a really challenging question to ask, but they are asking it. There was a group that had a press conference that's alleging that it's like $294 million, kind of breaking it down by how many students are leaving each area. And so they're asking about, yeah, is this taking money? And that'll be, and then Saul just gets in with property taxes and school funding and finance and everybody's going to be really calm about it, right? Right, guys? They're going to

calmly just vote and move on, and they're not going to have crazy arguments until all hours of the night. But I'm excited to kind of see, will it expand or not? Like, will Don Hafein's Comptroller Don Hafein's put in a budget request for $2.3 billion. And so that's more than double what they're doing now. So that's a big amount that's going to, people aren't just going to let that go by. Absolutely. And of course, with all of the public education, education stuff going on. I think as we brought up, this is just going to connect back to property taxes. I mean, which school district maintenance and operations taxes make up the majority of your property tax bill. So education, it's like the perfect issue. It has the somebody think of the children issue. It has property taxes. It has absolutely everything. And I, of course, think of the children issues always have a lot of traction. And speaking of to round out the podcast, Mary Elise, a, A series of text messages went out over the weekend because we didn't have enough happening over the weekend, right? If I recall quickly, it was over this weekend, claiming to be from the Transgender Education Network of Texas talking about, quote,

bathrooms and beyond for trans kids. Tell us what's going on with these text messages and what this organization is and how they were or were not involved. Yeah, this is another sort of odd situation that naturally is happening to States. before early voting kicks off in the general election. Yeah, like you said, these texts, one of them went out on Saturday, and then the other one went out on Wednesday. Somebody I know had, you know, lots of people online were sharing them, but also someone I know had received them.

I didn't personally receive them. But anyways, these text messages were directing you to a legitimate website, the Transgender Education Network of Texas, their statewide advocacy group. They say they focus on advancing gender diverse equality and they work against social legislative and corporate discrimination. That's kind of their stick.

But the first text that went out read New School Year. Here's your complete guide for, excuse me, here's your complete guide on bathrooms and beyond for trans kids at school. And then it did link to a PDF that is on this website, a transgender education network of Texas. and it just describes different legislation that's been passed that might impact this topic and detailing who fines apply to. How do you follow the law?

But what are some aspects of the law that don't apply to you? So then we saw this group actually came out and they said, these texts are not from us. They weren't authorized by us. They also said that they don't represent the official position or communications of the organization. And so that was their, you know, they denied association with it. There's been a lot of speculation around the origin of these messages.

You know, we will continue to look into that to see, you know, maybe if we can find the root or the sender of these messages. Because, of course, they went out just a couple days before early voting started. There were two different phone numbers that they came from, but it looks like the code was associated with Midland, if I'm not mistaken. But yeah, check out this piece. You can read a little bit more about the PDFs that it linked to because these are legitimate resources listed on this legitimate website. But the issue here is that this, you know, that this organization says they did not send out these texts.

Also, one of the aspect of the story was shortly after these texts went out, a GOP lawmaker, Representative Jeff Leach, he asked Attorney General Ken Paxton to launch an investigation into where these texts came from if they're violating the law and also how these different addresses, your phone numbers were collected by whoever the sender is. So we'll see if that investigation happens. And after the group came out and said, you know, this wasn't us, Representative Jeff Leitz said that, you know, he asked for the investigation because he wants to know who is behind this, essentially.

So we will be keeping an eye on that to see how this story develops, but this is also just a part of that, this crazy season where you just are so close to the election. And there's all sorts of campaign texts coming out, some of which you just aren't sure who the cinder is. But if we, if we can figure that out, we will let you know. Well, thank you very much, Mary Elise. It does tie back into our U.S. Senate race, of course, with Leach asking Paxton as Attorney General to look into this. Because, of course, you know, he is still the Attorney General. He's not, he might be a candidate, but, you know, he still does technically have some OAG duties. But speaking of OAG duties, very last thing here is I wanted to plug an interview that our reporter Holly did with State Senator Mays Middleton, who is the Republican running for Texas Attorney General to succeed. Haxton in November. He is running against Democratic State Senator Nathan Johnson. And so Middleton and

Holly talked about public safety related issues like local district attorneys and Governor Greg Abbott's plan to create a statewide prosecutor, as well as some open records issues at the office of the Attorney General, which is sort of a perennial thorn in Holly's side, I think. So definitely I would recommend checking out that interview along with all of our other interviews that we've been doing with candidates leading up to November because they are all absolutely fantastic and keep an eye out because we'll have more coming in the future. So thank you to everybody for listening. As always, you can catch the next episode of the Texans Weekly Roundup next Friday morning on YouTube, Spotify, wherever you get podcasts or the texan.News. So thank you to everybody and we'll

catch you all next time. Thank you to everyone for listening. If you enjoy our show, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you want more of our stories, visit us at the Texan. 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. News. Tune in next week for another episode of our weekly roundup. God bless you and God bless Texas.

Thank you.