The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - October 22, 2021

Episode Date: October 22, 2021

This week on The Texan’s “Weekly Roundup,” the team discusses the end of the third special session and calls from elected officials for a fourth, more lawmaker retirements, tuition revenue bonds for public universities, attrition in the Austin Police Department, local news workers fired due to their vaccination status, a progressive group in Austin leading the charge on many of the city’s controversial reforms, all 8 propositions currently on the ballot, and the latest in the whistleblower lawsuit against Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Happy Friday, folks. Senior Editor Mackenzie Taylor here bringing you this week's Roundup. Today, our team discusses the end of the third special session and calls from elected officials for a fourth, more lawmaker retirements, tuition revenue bonds for public universities, attrition in the Austin Police Department, local news departments firing employees due to their vaccination status, a progressive group in Austin leading the charge on many of the city's controversial reforms, all eight propositions currently on the ballot, and the latest in the whistleblower lawsuit against Attorney General Ken Paxton. Thanks for listening and enjoy your weekend.

Hello, folks. This is Mackenzie Taylor with Daniel Friend, Hayden Sparks, Isaiah Mitchell, and Brad Johnson. We've already had an eventful time prior to this podcast. I think this podcast will prove to be eventful as well. I think it will. Yeah. This is going to be a rollercoaster of emotions, this podcast. Yes, for many people at this table. Any thoughts, Daniel? No. roller coaster of emotions this podcast yes for many people yeah yeah yes any thoughts daniel no hey daniel how's your computer doing brad that's just salt in the wound it's just salt

technical difficulties are no one's friend we'll just put it that way right daniel that's right perfect okay well hay, we will start with you. We have a lot to cover this week, as we always do. Let's talk about the third special session finally coming to a close. We've been watching the legislature all summer, and finally they decided, hey, let's peace out of Austin for a little while. But let's talk through the comments that the speaker made as the Texas House was gaverelling out. Well, for those who are just catching up on Texas politics, we have a unique legislature, and many state legislatures do this. But one thing that sets Austin apart from DC is our

lawmakers are not down here all the time working on legislation. They have jobs and things that they do back in their districts. So they're not in Austin all the time. on legislation. They have jobs and things that they do back in their districts, so they're not in Austin all the time. And this past Tuesday, they gaveled out their third special session, which are 30-day max sessions called by the governor in addition to the 140-day special or regular session that occurs every two years. And the Speaker of the Texas House, Dade Phelan, as he was presiding over the last day of the third special session, which lasted until shortly after midnight on Tuesday, he had an interesting conclusion to the third special session. And he said that he sent a strong signal that he was ready to be done until bill filing

for the 88th legislature, which begins in 2023. And bill filing usually begins around November before every regular session. So if Phelan had his way, according to his comments the other night, lawmakers would be finished for about 12 or 13 months from now. In fact, his exact words were, for some of you, this marks the end of your experience in the Texas legislature. And for some of you, this is the beginning of your experience in the Texas legislature. I want to thank each of you for your hard work and your dedication and commitment to the Texas House. End quote. This sounds like a send-off to the members whose terms are expiring in January 2023. And Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, as well as Senator Donna Campbell, as they were gaveling out on the Senate side, sent similar signals wishing their fellow senators a happy

Thanksgiving and a Merry Christmas. Of course, this would not preclude a special session occurring between the holidays and sometime next sometime next year but that was the speaker's attitude was that we're wrapping up we're finishing up thank you for your service and we'll see you in 2023 peace out here we go here come the holidays what were some of the features of the third special session this special session was the first full productive session special session since the regular that wrapped up in may because the first two sessions were at least in part occupied by a quorum break by democrats because of the election integrity protection act the first special session nothing got done which and that occurred in july and then

in august about half of that session was eaten up by the quorum break but in this session the from an electoral perspective, the most consequential item lawmakers considered was redistricting. They redrew the lines for congressional districts and state legislative districts and passed new maps that will undoubtedly be the subject of litigation and possibly will be used in elections moving forward for the next decade until the 2030 census. But from a social issues perspective, one of the most reviled bills by Democrats was the so-called Save Girls Sports Act, which was the bill that was passed by both chambers requiring student

athletes in Texas to compete based on biological sex. This issue was the venue for a lot of emotional issues. Of course, you know, the mental health of LGBT individuals and the future of public school sports and whether or not female athletes feel comfortable in locker rooms, things like that has become a political football and this was the venue for that. They also passed additional restraints or additional restrictions on the use of dog restraints, hopefully. A random addition. Right. It was very random. It was a bill that Abbott vetoed for a technical, really a technical reason, not a philosophical, or well, it was a philosophical one, but it was a small point. But everyone agreed that, you know, we want to deter

animal abuse, just we want to do it the right way. And that was kind of the attitude behind the authors of this legislation. And then Brad could speak more to this than I could, but they also considered COVID-19 relief dollars and additional ARPA funding. So those were some of the highlights of this third special session. Certainly. Well, thank you, Hayden, for that. Daniel, now we have a post-signing eye of the third special session. We are still hearing calls from legislators about the issue. Redistricting completed. Are we done? Are we done for this year in terms of legislating? You know, that is a great question. One that has been on a lot of people's minds. I went into the Texas Capitol on, see, this would be Tuesday morning, shortly after Sine. You know, I kind of strike up a conversation with him and, you know, ask him if things have calmed down.

And he said, like, yes, it had dramatically calmed down after signing Dai, even within those few hours. But then he said that there were rumors that there might be a fourth. So that was, you know, immediately after signing Dai, the first thing that I heard was the security guard at the Capitol basically saying there could be another session coming up. And then, of course, in the press conference, that's kind of one of the things that they're pushing for is vaccine mandate prohibitions on private companies was something that was added late to the special session agenda by Governor Abbott and didn't actually make it through the legislature. I don't think it actually didn't get voted on in either chamber, in the Senate or the House. So that was an issue that they were pushing to be called for another special session. Now, obviously, this is something that we're unsure of,

but in terms of what the lawmakers actually said at the press conference, did they give any indication on a timeline? Yeah, so I asked them if they had heard anything about a potential fourth session. Obviously, they were calling for it, but had they actually heard something that the governor wanted to do? And Representative Jeff Kasin, one of the members there, said that he had heard rumors that there could be another special session. And he said the specific timeline that he was hearing was in January. And then Senator Bob Hall also said that there could be another one just based on some other political pressures. But that he also agreed that it wouldn't be any time soon. You know, the members want their Thanksgiving and Christmas break.

And so it could be a little bit after that so january makes sense as a potential time uh that it could be what kind of political pressures might make that happen so one of the the big ones of course is the uh the elections that are coming up in march that's when they're currently scheduled for uh if everything goes according to plan uh barring some crazy litigation or a surprise veto from Abbott on the maps, which would be weird, but, um, so the primary elections will be right then in March and there's some political pressures. This is the first time that Governor Abbott is really facing a, uh, significant primary

challenge. Um, and so he has, you know, three, uh, well-known primary challengers who are running for office who are pushing him on certain issues that didn't get through the legislature, like the vaccine mandates, like the increase in penalties for illegal voting after that had been, is the election audit bill, which Governor Abbott never actually added that to the special session agenda. But the Texas Senate actually moved forward on that legislation. That is something that former President Donald Trump has been pushing for. And he even threatened Dade Phelan with a primary challenge if he didn't see that through. So there's definitely all those political pressures at play. Well, thank you for covering that for us, Hayden. Let's zoom out. Now, that's what Daniel covered, what some conservative legislators are saying in the Capitol.

But let's talk about state leaders, those who have a little bit more sway in terms of what can actually come down the pipeline. Where are each of the big three, the Speaker, the Governor, and the Lieutenant Governor, where are they on these issues? Well, it's important to remember, piggybacking on what Daniel said, a lot of these things starts with the grassroots and what individual conservatives have to say, and then it goes to the more influential voices echoing what the grassroots say. But Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who of course presides over the Texas Senate, is facing a Republican challenger, Tracy Bradford, who announced just recently. And Patrick prides himself on being a conservative bulldog and likely wanted to take the chance to

call for a special session. So Patrick is the only one of the big three who has explicitly called for a fourth special session. He said in a tweet on Wednesday, specifically that he believed a forensic election audit and reinstating the felony penalty for illegal voting should be on the agenda for a fourth special session. And like I said, this would be one of the last few opportunities for him to continue really padding his conservative transcript ahead of the GOP primary. But as far as Speaker Phelan goes, as I mentioned earlier, his inclination is more to let sleeping dogs lie and wrap it up for this legislature, whereas Governor Abbott has not made a definitive statement. I think it would be fair to say that Abbott has been open to making big moves at the prompting of his conservative

colleagues before. You know, he announced the, well, colleagues and foes as well. He announced the border wall after the GOP primary heated up, and he has added things to the special session agenda for other special sessions at the prompting of the grassroots conservatives. So while Abbott has not made a definitive statement and it was even reported that he was asked directly and really shrugged off the question the other day, it very well could be that he chooses to take Phelan's posture and let things stand where they are. Or he could decide more in favor of Patrick's perspective that it would be better to continue shoring up those conservative victories ahead of a primary. Now, talk to us about this illegal voting penalty downgrade that the lieutenant governor mentioned and why it's an issue? Well, this is really a political problem of the GOP's own making, because in the Election Integrity Protection Act, which Abbott signed really about a month and a half ago, the election

integrity law decreases the penalty for voting illegally in an election from a felony to a misdemeanor. It's important to keep in mind this provision of the election integrity law hasn't even taken effect yet. Now, this could have been put in place to fend off criticisms that the election integrity law was draconian or excessive or unreasonable, especially in light of cases of people who have been sent to prison for voting illegally. So, that may have been part of the motivation for this. But Speaker Phelan had no compunction about the policy change. And Patrick, as he has done many times this year, blamed the House for putting this provision in there. And I think that's one of the reasons he specifically mentioned it

should be a fourth special session agenda item. But this political snafu of really of the GOP's own making could be on the agenda for the fourth special session if it is called. Now talk to us about who else has added to this call for a fourth special. What other groups have jumped in the fray? Shortly after, really hours after Patrick sent that tweet that he wanted a fourth special session, the Republican Party of Texas led by Chairman Matt Rinaldi, who incidentally is a former state representative himself, a Republican from Irving, said that there were a number of items that should be placed on the fourth special session. The Republican Party, a state Republican Party sent out a detailed memo, or not really a memo, but a press release saying there were several items they wanted placed

on the call, including a prohibition on gender modification surgeries on children, which were the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services opined in August constitute child abuse, in fact. And so those two things are that that is on the list. In addition to reversing the illegal voting penalty downgrade that we discussed a moment ago, a forensic audit of Texas elections and a prohibition on vaccine mandates by government or private entities, which of course has been a hot button issue for weeks, if not months now, especially in light of many private companies in Texas, including airlines, rolling out their vaccine mandates for their employees. So that quite possibly could be the highest profile issue is the potential ban on vaccine mandates. Absolutely. Well, thank you, Hayden. Brad and Daniel, we're going to come to both of y'all now to talk about two retirements that happened this week. Let's talk first about the Senate. What happened to Kel Seliger? In a political sense, he died. Maybe. Who knows? He could run again. He could come back.

He could run for—the filing period doesn't open until November. Late November, early December is the window for candidates. So he could potentially file for the seat again, but he did announce that he was not going to run for re-election in SD31. This announcement came after there was a little bit of quabbling in the Senate over the maps. He said that the new Senate map was actually drawn to favor someone else running for the district down in the Permian Basin area rather than him who lives up in the panhandle. So, you know, there was that. There was also a big kind of news that broke a few weeks ago

when former president donald trump weighed in the race and actually endorsed uh this opponent who they said uh who he said that the maps were drawn to favor as well so um there was definitely that situation at play he's also been in there for 17 years there have been uh previous primary challengers uh he narrowly avoided a run off last primary election in 2018 um so that's kind of the situation he said that he's he's stepping down he has a granddaughter who's very very vocal according to him um so i guess probably more time with his family unless he decides to run for something else you know state local level we don't know down the line certainly and this is the this is a senator who is often the swing vote in the senate

or republican who would occasionally side with democrats on some major issues and um you know the lieutenant governor and senator seliger certainly had a strained political relationship in that regard so it'll be interesting to see how this affects the makeup of the senate um brad talk to us about uh Dan Huberti. So Representative Dan Huberti also decided he's going to retire. He'd been in the House for six terms, and he played a big role in a lot of education stuff. That was his big issue. Specifically, he was the one that carried hb3 in 2019 the school finance

bill um but after i was argue a tumultuous year for him um he has decided not to run for re-election back during the regular session um he was cited for dwi he rear--ended a truck or a driver in a truck in front of him on his way home from the legislative session, was arrested and sought help. He got, went into some sort of program, lasted for like a week and his family life and um this uh for the for him to run again would be too much he said and so he decided to retire um that makes at this point like 14 people that were retiring weren't running for re-election i should say in the legislature the legislature in the tex, in the Texas House specifically, which for redistricting, I'm not sure how it relates historically, but it's certainly quite a few compared to every other year. So just another person that has decided not to return next time.

Well, thank you for that, Bradley and Daniel. Isaiah, we're going to come to you. Another issue that has been on the forefront of the special session talk is tuition revenue bonds. What are tuition revenue bonds? to pay for renovations and new buildings. And strictly speaking, as the name might imply, schools are meant to pay back this borrowed money from the revenue that they get from students paying tuition. However, what actually always happens, the standard process, is the state gives them the money to pay back the debt, which makes the name tuition revenue bonds kind of a misnomer. And that's why they changed the name to Capital Construction Assistant Projects

in the bill they just passed. So tell us a little bit about that bill. So it's Senate Bill 52 by Senator Brandon Creighton, and it's going to give public universities about $3.3 billion to pay for new buildings and renovations. And again, this is paying for the debt that they'll accrue from borrowing money to pay for these new projects. UT and Texas A&M, in that order, got the most money out of the 10 major universities that were included. And those are the TAMU system, UT system, University of Houston system, Texas State system, UNT system, and Texas Women's, Stephen F. Austin, Texas Tech, TSU,

and TSTC. And UT got the most, TAMUu is second place those are also the only two schools to benefit from the permanent university fund a separate endowment and one of the largest in the country but again on the other hand they also have the most students so i won't i won't read you all the amounts i was gonna read you the amounts for everyone give us like a give us like the top for texas uh for ut so the ut system is going to get $834 million or a little bit over that. And the TAMU system is going to get $727 million. Wow. Now, what were some of the arguments for and against this bill? So the house sponsor was Greg Bonin. And when he presented it, he noted, well, I'll just give you his words. He says, we have more students than we've ever had before, and the state continues to grow.

Our campuses are becoming more and more congested, and they're educating more and more students. It actually passed the House by a fairly wide margin, 131 to 8. One of the eight members that voted against it was Representative Matt Schaefer, who was able to give a lengthy argument against the bill since he was presenting an amendment. And his amendment would have reduced the amount given to each of these universities by however much they raised tuition since last year. So if they raise tuition $1, then this would reduce the bond that we guarantee by $1, right? So his argument against the bill was that the cost of higher education has been skyrocketing. And this is just more money that we're throwing after a federal COVID relief that schools already got. So those are kind of the arguments for and against.

And it split, I mean, you can surmise, you know, who aligned with Schaefer in the House. Jeff Kasin, Brian Slayton, and several members of the Freedom Caucus joined him as the other seven members who voted against it in the House. And there was actually only one senator who voted against it in the Senate, and that was Bob Hall. What's interesting is that earlier this year, the head of the Texas higher education coordinating board told a Senate committee that virtual learning was going to be a more permanent addition. Yeah.

And I should add that this was months ago and this was before a lot of new studies about virtual learning came out that have kind of put a dent in that prediction. But nonetheless, at that time, Lois Kohlkorst and Paul Bettencourt both were pretty skeptical about the need for new tuition revenue bonds, again, at that time months ago, if learning is going to be remote. But they both voted for this bill. Well, thank you for following that Isaiah. Brad, let's go to you and talk about some Austin police attrition. The city is currently embroiled in a, in a big political fight over its police department and the cuts made by the city council last year. But at the root of it is a retention problem within the department. Give us a brief overview of that problem. Yeah. So they're down roughly 350

officers from their staffing level two years ago. The current staffing level is 1506, 1,506 officers. That's due to 200 vacancies. That means positions that have been authorized by city council that are not filled. They have 104 officers on leave for various reasons, whether it's being sick or under internal investigation. Like if an officer-involved shooting happens, they automatically go on paid leave. But then on top of all this is 150 positions that were eliminated during the budget cut that you mentioned in 2020. That was part of the broader initiative by the city council. And so a big problem with this is they're losing lots of experienced police officers. Many of them are leaving law enforcement entirely.

Many of them are also going to other departments who are, some of whom are paying worse than Austin, but these officers are deeming it's a better place for them personally because they're not having to deal with, you know, a city council that is, you know, politically driving a lot of this stuff that the cops oppose. But also the community relations, we've seen a lot of, and this kind of ties into what we'll talk about later, but there's been a lot of rebellion within the community, at least among certain circles, against what cops do and what they stand for.

And so all of that is kind of combining into this staffing hemorrhage that is occurring within the department. Officers are spending thousands of their own dollars to leave the department. The function of that is that once you hit 23 years, then you can retire from the Austin Police Department with a full pension. And so, they're kind of buying forward years of service, that way they can leave now. And so, people are buying three years worth of service, that way they don't have to sit it out another three years. One one person i was told

paid literally two hundred thousand dollars of their own money to do that and so um it's a massive problem and the chief chacon now permanent chief joseph chacon has acknowledged that it's a problem although i asked him at his press conference, there have been discussions about how internal leadership is contributing to this bleeding of officers, 15 to 22 per month are leaving. And he said he's heard those concerns and acknowledges it. But he also says that we've had more applicants to the cadet academies than ever before. The problem is it takes 46 weeks for an officer to go through the academy and graduate into where they can be sent out on their own. So there's a big time delay on what this is. Meanwhile, there's a bunch of officers leaving.

So they haven't really figured out what to do with it and we'll see, um, how it goes from here. Talk to us about your conversations that you had with some former, um, you know, Austin police officers, what factors contributed to their leaving the department? Uh, multitude of things. One thing I mentioned was the city council and their attitude towards the police department. They specifically, you know, the defunding of the police department, the $150 million budget cut that has contributed those 150 positions has contributed to officers being overworked, their specialized units being disbanded and having to be moved back to B Patrol, which they haven't done in years. You have currently, I think this past week, only one shift was fully staffed within the Austin Police Department. Everyone else was understaffed and many seriously so.

And it's just putting a stress on everybody. I mean, if you had to work in an environment like that, even just whatever your regular job is, that would be a stress on you. And eventually you wouldn't be able to take it anymore. And so officers are reaching that point. A couple of factors were is the promotion system within the department there's a lot of um adherence to uh demographics uh you know the color of your skin plays a lot into uh especially at certain times like if they if they don't haven't met the ratio for the number of hispanic officers or um the quota yeah um people higher up in the ranking, then the person, someone that is Hispanic will move up more likely than someone who's not.

And according to one of the officers, that happened quite a bit. Just the general handling of the fifth floor, whether it's officer involved shootings or the protests and riots of last year. Um, it's, it's caused a, a lack of faith in the leadership of the department. And then another one, um, that I think is particularly relevant at the moment is the racial sensitivity trainings. Uh, one officer told me that, uh, she was going through this before it really ramped up this year, which we've covered the $10,000 a day groundwater training stuff, the imbued in critical race theory.

Back then, it was still, she said, officers sitting there being told they're racist. And she was Hispanic. So this is department-wide. It's not like they're sitting all the white officers in a room, uh, which wouldn't necessarily be good either. But, um, you know, this is all contributing to the desire of all these officers, many of them to want to leave and sometimes leaving thousands and thousands of dollars on the table. One guy left and he didn't have enough money to buy forward. And so he left on the table lots and lots of money. Talk to us about, you know, where does the department go from here? We have Proposition A on the ballot, which reminds

listeners what that is, but talk to us about next steps. Proposition A would set, among other things, the main factor of it is setting a minimum staffing level of two officers per thousand. Right now, at least the last figure I heard, APD is sitting at 1.2. So that's a pretty big jump they'll have to go. And so that's going to happen next week. We'll see how that plays out. We saw Proposition B, the homeless camping ordinance, win in resounding fashion. I'm not sure that it's going to be just like that. It might be closer. That's at least that's the kind of feeling I get, but you don't know. You don't know how it's going to turn out. The department is also in a wait and see mode on that. If it passes, council will then have to authorize a staffing level.

I'm not sure exactly how many more officers it is, but a staffing level higher than they currently have. And so they'll then have to reach out and get applicants. Can they bring in applicants that actually want to come? Do they just replace everybody with the cadet classes that are coming through? Generally, those are, at least so I'm told, you start with 100, generally end with about 60. Now that can give and take per class, but that's going to take some time to replace, even if you just go based on those cadet classes. And so we don't know. Now the APD chief, Chacon, on Prop A itself,

he has tried to remain neutral. Now, Mayor Adler has said multiple times that Chief Chacon opposes Prop A. He has denied that. He said that to me at his press conference. But there's clearly an expectation by the city council that he does not support this otherwise they would not have supported him becoming permanent chief so um i have a feeling he'll remain silent but afterwards whichever happens uh you know it will be his department to direct one question i'm seeing signs around the city that say, you know, vote no on Prop A so that funding is not taken from libraries and parks. This is an off-the-cuff question. I'm not sure if you know the answer, but where would the funds come from in that regard? Is it about parks and libraries? Well, it depends on who you ask. The people that

oppose Prop A, yes, it is uh the people that do not it's absolutely not so it would come out to about uh 50 million dollars in a an additional funding on the low end of the estimate now there's disputes on the city's estimate whether that's accurate itself but um 50 million dollars out of a 440 million dollar department um department budget is not insignificant but not like you know it's not double the the uh sorry half the the current budget yeah but the city of austin also has a 3.2 i think roughly billion dollar budget taking out austin energy and so that's you know 50 million dollars is kind of a drop in the bucket to that. You also have the council planning to spend, I think, the latest figure I saw was close to $500

million on homeless stuff. You clearly pull it from there. And I'm sure the city of Austin is awash with tax revenue. It is a booming town and it is very, very expensive to live here. So I think the argument that, uh, city, that, uh, city libraries and fire departments will be stripped to pay for this is, um, wishful thinking. And even if it would happen, then it would be the city council deliberately making that decision. And that's on them. There you go. Well, Brad, thanks for covering that for us, distilling it down so we understand what's going on. Daniel, we're going to come back to you. We've heard a lot about airlines in regards to vaccine mandates this last week,

but another company that has been aggressive about this issue owns local news companies. Talk to us about Gray TV and what they've been doing. You know, when you go and you turn on your local news station, it's not likely that that's an independent station. It's usually typically owned by a larger media organization. And one of the largest media organizations across the country is Gray Television television i've heard different figures about how many stations it owns but it owns a lot of stations and there's several local news stations in texas that it owns including one in lubbock and one in sherman texas serving those different regions of the state i would say their their names but i always get the letters confused so i'm not going to try doing that.

That makes sense. But Great Television, a corporate entity, it's based in Atlanta, Georgia. It has issued its own internal policy requiring employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19. This is something that they issued, I want to say it was kind of in September, October, kind of throughout that they had different stages of when certain employees would need to be vaccinated and whatnot. But this is something that they had been pushing. And so they have been doing this rather forcefully. And so many employees, as a result, have ended up losing their jobs from great television.

They've been fired, had their employments terminated. And we've seen this in several TV stations in Texas, but not just in Texas, across the country. This is something that the company has been doing. Got it. Now talk to us about what kind of exemptions we're talking about here. So when the company first announced this policy, the employees told me that they have been, they sent out a notice saying that they were going to provide different exemptions that you would see for, you know, medical reasons, or they would provide other accommodations. One of the things that the Biden administration has said they would want to see in

businesses that have more than 100 employees, pushing them to require vaccinations. They also, the Biden administration has said either vaccinations or requiring weekly testing. And that was something that the great TV had said they would offer accommodations for people who might not be vaccinated, but they could come in and be tested on a weekly basis. That's what they told employees at the beginning of this policy. But it turns out that they've basically been using these requests for exemptions as a list of who to fire. People have been requesting exemptions and then they get a notice back saying that their exemption has been denied, that their employment is going to be terminated if they don't get a vaccine. And so that's kind of what the employees are facing. Talk to us about the medical exemptions.

What's the policy there? Yeah, even for that, there was a reporter up in the Sherman area who had been there for several years. And he had COVID earlier this year, recovered from that without any problems, without any complications. But he was also allergic to several ingredients that were in the vaccine that he had had an allergic reaction to for a different vaccine several years ago. And so he talked to his doctor about it. His doctor signed off on the exemption saying, you know, this is something that you shouldn't do. You shouldn't get this vaccine. So he sent that to the company and the company rejected it. And they said, if you're not fully vaccinated within 48 hours, we're going to fire you. So even for a medical exemption, let alone a religious exemption or whether someone just doesn't want to get the vaccine,

would rather take a weekly test, they're refusing all those accommodations. Now I tried reaching out to Gray Television, and they did not respond to me. So, don't know if what, they haven't said anything public about it. So, we're just hearing what we know from employees who have been fired and are now speaking out against the company. Got it. Now, has the Attorney General's Office taken any measures against them under the Governor's executive order? So, I reached out to the communications director of the attorney general's office and didn't get a response. We haven't actually seen anything public from the attorney general's office if they're enforcing the executive order that Governor Abbott issued prohibiting employers from issuing these kind of mandates. So there's not really any enforcement that we're seeing

take place. You know, whether there's some conversations going on behind the scenes and some phone calls and whatnot, I don't know about that, but we haven't seen anything publicly. Well, thank you, Daniel. Isaiah, let's talk with you about a pretty unique story here. Some new details came to light that could taint the results of countless trials in Brazoria County courts. What happened? In late August, the criminal DA of Brazoria County, whose name is Tom Selleck, coincidentally.

Which I think is the best thing. I just love that. He told the public that, quote, irregularities may have occurred in the Brazoria County District Clerk's Office's Assembly of Jury Trial Panels. And the next day, the clerk Rhonda Barczyk retired, and the day after that, the county commissioner's court held an emergency meeting to replace her. As it turns out, Barczyk had been sorting potential jurors for these panels by their race and where they lived. The way the process normally works for criminal jury trials is that the secretary of

state will send randomly created lists of people in the county that qualify for jury duty to these county clerk offices. Then by law, the district clerk is supposed to randomly pick venirees. The jury panels, which is the panel of potential jurors from which a jury has been picked. Before Barczyk assembled these panels, she made four stacks. White Perlin residents, white non-Perlin residents, non-white Perlin residents, and non-white non-Perlin residents. And obviously this is less than random, which is what the law requires. So the Texas Rangers are investigating the issue, and I just saw earlier that one man convicted of murder

by a Missouri County jury trial has already asked for a new trial. And we could see more of that going forward. Right. Well, thank you for covering that for us. Definitely an interesting story. Brad, let's go back to the topic of Austin. You wrote, and just for listeners, definitely go to the texan.news, read both of these pieces. These are great long form pieces that Brad wrote about the issues happening here in Austin,

specifically relating to public safety. worth the time to read. But you wrote a kind of a profile piece on the group chiefly behind the police department cuts of last year and other big reforms in the city too. They're behind a lot of these more progressive reforms. Tell us about the Austin Justice Coalition. So the Austin Justice Coalition has been around since 2015 it was started by a guy named chas moore he's a an activist in the city um ideologically he describes himself as a liberal a radical um a progressive and an afrofuturist uh so he's got quite an array of what is that do know? We were discussing this the other day. It's the best I can see. It stems from like a science fiction book of,

basically think of Wakanda and Black Panther. I think, am I getting this right? Yeah. I was telling him my primary exposure to Afrofuturism was Sun Ra, the jazz composer, and his beliefs are kind of intentionally absurd so i don't know necessarily what it would mean for somebody to put it in there and seriously in political terms but um but the word's been used in that context right like sun raw claimed that uh he traveled asked by astral production to saturn and um you know it has anything to do with yeah so i don't know political stuff yeah themes of like egyptian ancestry and how that's the future of technology and things like that yeah so i love how isaiah knew that i think so he had the best definition of anybody

when we were talking about yesterday so um he was a student at UT, grew up in Houston. While at UT, he said that he experienced some racial incidents like blackface or the defacing of an MLK thing. But he said that drove him to start this group to try and push certain policies such as the main one, it's all under the criminal justice umbrella, but the big one was drastically reforming the police department. And that is the biggest impact they've had so far. This group is kind of part of a web of progressive activist groups. They all work together. AJC, especially because of what they did on the police cut they kind of are the talisman of the overall grouping of these organizations but they each of them work together constantly on all this stuff they worked on the homeless camping ban They worked on the homeless camping ban. They worked on the PR bond ordinance

from 2017 that I've written about. And so, they're behind a lot of this stuff. And Chas Moore himself has a very close relationship with Mayor Steve Adler and Councilman Greg Kassar, two of the most left-wing members on the council. He counts them both as friends and confidants, at least as he told me. And so, this group is very, they have their claws in everything that goes on. And you know, you can't look at what's going on politically in Austin and not see the work of the Austin Justice Coalition. They've been very successful. I think whether you oppose them or are on their side, you can clearly argue that they have been successful at what their mission is. And so they're going to be around for

quite some time, I think, but we'll see after this election comes next week, we'll see where they stand in the stature of the community. And certainly they're involved in this Prop A fight that we've already alluded to early on. And we're involved in the homeless camping ban fight that happened earlier this year. What did they say about the coming election? So I spoke with Chas Moore. Credit to him for talking with me. I think that was i was not expecting that i should say um but he told me that he's obviously against it he's against restoring the police staffing level he said prop a is a kind of last ditch quoting is a kind of last ditch effort by the super right

wing conservative republicans to make their daddy trump proud. This whole proposition is all BS and is based in fear and right-wing conservatism. It's very similar in more crude terms. It's very similar to what Mayor Steve Adler said in his state of the city address this year, blaming the discussion about this issue on right-wing misinformation. Now, it's important to note that Save Austin Now, which is the main group driving this, they're the ones that circulated the petitions, they're not just made up of conservatives, let alone Republicans. There are not enough Republicans or conservatives in Austin to make up enough of the voting populace to swing an election like Proposition B in May.

And Chas acknowledged that. He said, you know, it's not just them, but they're the ones, he says, behind the advocacy, which is also not accurate because there are, there's, Save Austin Now was founded by Matt Makoviak, GOP, Travis GOP chair, so a Republican, and then Cleo Piotrczyk, a Democratic activist and a mom. So right there, you have more than just Republicans and that holds true throughout the organization and the voters who support them. So right off there, there's that. But about the election and if the result doesn't go his way, I asked him, what does that mean for the Austin Justice Coalition and himself? He said, if we lose, then it means people really didn't buy into any of the stuff I've been saying for quite some time.

It means that I may become irrelevant. I think if it wins, then we have a slight identity crisis on our hands. He then went on to talk about how if they win, maybe Austin, at least in his eyes, is not this progressive haven that it kind of gets the reputation of being. I think that's probably overselling it a bit. It would just be a rebuke of this one policy and maybe the more extreme policies that the city council is enacting. Austin is still very much blue territory. Every one of its representatives are Democrats. So, um, but he may well be right that, uh, it would have a, it may have a serious impact on his influence moving forward. Now, how do those opposed to the Austin justice coalition say, or what do they say about the

organization? Um, well, they spar constantly with them.'s a it's a no hold no holds barred um kind of discussion on this topic there's a lot of uh vitriol going back and forth um the ajc is accused of being a very very far left group trying to ruin the city um they are definitely a very, very far left group. And specifically the police themselves, the groups that support them like the Officers Union and the ones that are specifically inclined towards them, they're very fearful of future two, three years down the road of this policy, this kind of policy in the Austin Justice Coalition, continuing to have the influence that it does. One last thing. One police officer, former police officer, Dennis Ferris, he told me that about the Austin Justice Coalition, they are the puppet masters, they're paid for chaos. His son is a police officer currently with austin he said i'm definitely deathly afraid that i'm going to get the call in the middle of the night about my son because of

the climate these people have created speaking to the staffing shortages and the problems that has caused on the police department so there you have both sides if you want more in-depth look at it i recommend you read the piece and uh yeah that's what we got thank you brad great reporting hayden let's talk about the uh the ballot propositions that folks are making decisions on as they go and cast their vote prior to the november 2nd election either in early voting or on election day itself um but talk to us about some of the more controversial propositions on the ballot? Well, as you mentioned, early voting is already underway. It began on Monday and will last until Friday, October 29th. And then election day is on November 2nd. So we have a little bit of time for Texas voters to consider these ballot propositions. And some of

the more controversial ones that the legislature has proposed concern gambling and transportation bonds by counties. Now in the state of Texas, the way the Texas Constitution is amended is the legislature proposes amendments and then there's an outlarge election statewide where these propositions require a majority vote. Unlike in some states where people can petition, circulate petitions and propose amendments more organically and democratically. In Texas, it has to originate in the legislature. Lawmakers propose amendments, and that's what we're voting on. So one of the more controversial ones that the legislature has proposed is legalizing charitable raffles by organizations sanctioned by two specific groups, the Professional Rodeo

Cowboys Association and the Women's Professional Rodeo Association. Both are headquartered in Colorado, if I understand. So this would not legalize gambling at rodeos, charitable raffles at rodeos across the board. It would grant special privileges to these two organizations to conduct charitable raffles at their events. Of course, we've had little movement on legalizing gambling in Texas this year. This is really, other than I think they tweaked the definition of bingo a little bit, other than that, this is really as far as expanded gambling went this year. And of course, opponents believe that this would just get the ball rolling on legalizing more forms of gambling,

and it would further dilute the prohibition on gambling in the state of Texas. Of course, you know, proponents would suggest that this does have a charitable component and reflected in the legislature's approval of the Texas lottery and the lottery's contributions of portions of its sales to education and veterans causes does reflect the charitable component that is often present when the Texas legislature looks more favorably on gambling. So that's proposition one, the gambling proposition. Proposition two would make it legal for counties to finance transportation projects in, quote, unproductive, underdeveloped, or blighted areas in the county. This would just add counties to a portion of the state constitution that already allows cities to do this. So arguably, it would place residents in unincorporated areas on the same playing field as residents of cities. I know I live in an

unincorporated area. I live in Travis County, but I don't live inside the city of Austin. So this would give bond powers to counties. Of course, many people choose to live outside city limits specifically to avoid things like this, but arguments in favor of bonds include economic development and even racial, what is called racial equity at times. And it does stipulate that counties cannot add, they cannot use more than 65% of a tax increase to pay back bond debt. And these bonds by counties could not be used to pay for toll roads so that those would be two stipulations on counties using bonds those are a couple of the more controversial measures now what are some of the you know less controversial measures that folks will be casting

ballots on um i i was real creative in how i divided these up more controversial less controversial i like it a and b so these were more widely favored um a few of these were unanimous proposition three would keep the government from closing religious services for any reason virtually any reason you know during the pandemic lots of county judges said that you couldn't have in-person church services. And quite frankly, a lot of people found that to be creepy for the state to say you can't have church in person. And so that passed the House 108 to 33, and only two senators, Nathan Johnson and Sarah Eckhart, voted against that in the Senate. So it was pretty widely favored. Proposition 6 would make a constitutional right for essential caregivers,

for residents of long-term care facilities, state assisted living, or state facilities for disabled individuals, etc. Only one lawmaker voted against this in the Texas legislature, so that was widely favored. Props seven and eight would provide tax relief for the surviving spouses, ages 55 and older of disabled individuals who were receiving a limit on property taxation. You would extend that to their surviving spouses, again, widely favored. And then Prop 8 would provide property tax relief, expanding property tax relief for individuals whose family members were killed as a result of non-combat related injuries. Currently, that provision only applies to people killed in combat. And then Props 4 and

5 concern judges. It would add eligibility requirements for judges and would also extend the jurisdiction of the State Commission on Judicial Conduct to include candidates running for judicial office as opposed to only elected judges. So, those were also widely favored. And those eligibility requirements for judges would be for Supreme Court, Court of Criminal Appeals, and Courts of Appeals. Judges would have to have been practicing attorneys with no revocations or suspensions on their licenses for 10 years, or service as lower court judges combined with their legal practice for a minimum of 10 years. And then district judges would have to have at least eight years of experience under their belt as either a practicing attorney with no suspensions or revocations on their licenses or a service as a judge or a combination of both. So those are the eight propositions that will be voted on on November 2nd. Look at you go, Hayden. Thanks for breaking that down. And folks, we have all that information at the texan.news.

Daniel, let's talk about a controversial subject that has been on the forefront of, well, the news cycle for almost a year now. A whistleblower suit against Attorney General Ken Paxton in his office has been pending in court. What's the latest on the case? Yeah, actually, it's been over a year, depending on what when you're starting. The whistleblower allegations came out around the end of September last year. And then there was a whistleblower lawsuit after there was some pushback against those employees inside the office. And that was filed, I believe, in

mid-November of 2020. And so that case has been lingering through the courts for quite some time. They have been caught up on just the basic question of whether or not the whistleblowers have the authority to file a lawsuit under the Texas Whistleblower Act. And so that was something that was brought in question at the trial court. The trial court said that the case could continue, but the Office of the Attorney General appealed that decision to the appellate court, the Third Court of Appeals in Austin. And now that court has actually released a new ruling, siding with the trial court, saying that the case can continue. The Office of the Attorney General tried to argue essentially that the Whistleblower Act doesn't apply to the situation of Attorney General Ken Paxton, since the act was meant more for the actual institution instead of an elected official. So, you know, if it was an employee of the office,

that was kind of the allegations been made against instead of the attorney general himself, who's in elected position. The court really didn't buy that argument. You could kind of tell just by the way that the judges asked the questions when there was an oral hearing on, about a month ago,

exactly now, there was an oral hearing and the three justices or three judges in the court of appeals, they seem to kind of push back against the OIG on that argument. And eventually now they've released their opinion against that. Got it. What's next? You know, like I said, this has been here for a year. It's probably not going away anytime soon. There is still one more route of appeal for the Office of Attorney General, and it wouldn't be surprising if they exercised that and appealed this decision from the Third Court of Appeals again to the Texas Supreme Court. And there it could linger for quite some time as well. Just on the timeline of everything,

it's kind of important to note that the case was appealed to the third court of appeals back in March. So it's been there for, what, I think that's like seven months now, quite some time. Even if the Office of the Attorney General does appeal this again to the Supreme Court, there's a good chance that it could linger there for a little while and we're still not even at the the merits of the case itself we're kind of stuck on the standing issue so it could it'll go on for some time i i expect absolutely and probably into the election season is you know that's a whole different uh ball of wax there thank you daniel well gentlemen um we have a very big um oh my gosh i'm looking at our fun topic submissions here and they're pretty interesting i'm gonna go with this last one here topics you wish you understood what's a topic you

wish you understood anybody isaiah you're the one one that put it in there. Oh, that's sad. You got something. Nice one, Zay. I do have something. There have been some allergies going through the office, and I was hit first and swiftly infected everybody else. And when I was suffering from them, Brad offered me some Zyrtec,

and I asked him, okay, how much does the bottle say I have to take? And Brad said, oh, it's just an antihistamine. I usually take like two at a time. And the bottle says take one at a time. And so I thought, why does everybody else seem to have an understanding of the chemistry that goes into these pills? Because I hear, oh, it's an antihistamine. That doesn't tell me, I don't know what that means. It could be a different language. Antihistamine doesn't tell me, oh, it's totally safe. You can't overdose. I don't know what that means it could be a different language antihistamine doesn't tell me oh it's totally safe you can't overdose i don't know what that means but every time like i don't know i'm getting more frustrated as i talk about this it's like i don't know i want to take a pill and i say oh how many can i take it's like oh it's just

you know a bioflavonoid you can take 30 of those things but you want to watch out for is the identical looking uh so you wish you had a medical degree is what you're saying well not even that it's like everybody else seems to understand you just want to know about drugs yeah it's like everybody else has read these the tiny print on these bottles it says i don't know i just well i don't understand where y'all pick up this knowledge you can know exactly how many antihist to take before you die. Where do you learn this stuff? Life.

Yeah. You could. I'm sure every one of us went to school with a kid who frequented in drug trafficking, whether it's just basic stuff like that or serious stuff. So you could ask that kid. Well, the thing I wish I understood was the planetary deciding process like how do you decide what's a planet because i'm still stuck on pluto being downgraded to space rock status the most convincing argument i've heard about that and i don't know if this is true or not maybe it was just some random internet post but apparently pluto has a moon that is basically the same size as pluto which at that point i feel like

i either make them both planets or maybe they're not well this is reminding me of psych anybody else watch psych a long time ago yeah gus is like uh what does he say about pluto uh that's messed up yeah oh yeah you Pluto? Uh, that's messed up. Yeah. Oh yeah. You hear about Pluto? That's messed up. That's his pickup line.

Yeah, exactly. I've heard of both ways. So I was, I've heard of both ways. I was told, uh, by an astronomer back in high school.

And we went to, just casually fraternizing with astronomers. No, we went on a school trip to the, uh, whatever that term of the big giant telescope they have the big dome guy yeah um the astronomer told us that it was kind of a conspiracy to demote pluto from a planet status because you had whatever the board of the of astronomers that

decided these things that vote on them uh they were divided up. And the ones who said Pluto is a planet were slightly more than the other ones. And so the ones that believed Pluto is not a planet just waited until all of the guys who believed Pluto should be a planet left the convention of astronomology and then voteduto out of being a planet and so that's brilliant smart tactician undervalian underhanded just garbage it is that too so i'm beating the pluto is a planet drum for you know till the end of time wow this is fun is there any topic you wish you got better understood you know i have a roth ira it's uh through charles schwab i abandoned robin hood like right right as the pandemic was starting they had that whole mess up with robin

hood and i was like i'm getting rid of this and i got a roth area very happy i did that good life decision made lots of money during the pandemic it was great um but i still don't that sooner i i still don't really understand the stock market as fully as i want to like it just boggles my mind that there are people out there willing to buy a stock immediately. How do these transactions happen so fast? I just wish I knew more about the stock market.

And you can game it. You can intentionally buy more stock to value it higher and then sell it out. Is that called short? I don't know. Have you guys watched The Big Short? Have you guys ever watched that movie? It's's a really great movie but i watched it about the one with steve carell uh yes and um yeah yeah a lot of a lot of people it's on my to watch list

i haven't i think i started it once and i got like five minutes and i got bored yeah i think you find it much more interesting now it's it's good, and I watched it, and I finished, and I was like, dang, that was a good movie. And I probably understood 33% of it. You know what I mean? Not 33.333. No, that would have been too much for me. Yeah, okay, stop.

Because even with the simplified explanations in that movie, even with them breaking down, it was still super complicated. It was still complicated, yeah. Because they're trying to explain what happened in the 2008 financial collapse and they like they use all these analogies that were really good but it was still hard to understand and i feel like i have a better understanding of what led to it and i still would not be able to explain it to you at all i could not regurgitate any of the information that i supposedly you know absorbed and i think there's also still debates going on about what

exactly led to it yeah i think the movie i haven't seen it but from what i've heard the movie portrays like one one perspective but other people would say other factors well even the idea of shorting something like i only understand that like so much right so even like if that was not what led to that crisis the whole process i still would not be able to explain to you as a standalone you know process but the amazing thing is you have these random dudes on the internet that not only know how the process works but are smart enough to figure out when someone is shorting when a big wig is shorting a certain stock then they can then go undermine that short

and that's just i'm convinced that those people that's all they do all day like that they're sitting in and you know their room or a basement somewhere and that all they're doing is working on that you know not to throw shade on anybody but i feel like that you really have to focus on that for intensely for an extended period of time to be able to maneuver around that. The other thing about it is, as a reporter following state politics, I know where to go to get the primary resources. I know where to go to get a bill filing and see what happened, how the legislative process worked. I have no idea really where to go for the primary sources for understanding the stock market and businesses i know the sec has some some documents out there i don't know how to sift through those

and i also don't know how um how my thoughts just go away when you start a sentence speaking of banking i want to know why oh my gosh amazon why Amazon or whatever company it is can take money out of your account instantaneously. But when they screw up and they owe you a refund, it takes seven to ten days for them to give you your refund. Hayden, are you speaking from personal experience right now? Are you feeling a little bitter about this situation? Not too bitter. personal experience right now are you feeling a little bitter about this situation i i'm not too bitter but when you said oh my gosh right before i started talking i thought maybe i am maybe i am bitter exuding bitterness over this issue i just feel like if they can take money out of your

account they should return they should return it in a similar fashion when they owe you a refund as an addendum to daniels you could i would also throw in the federal reserve other than just you know driving ridiculous inflation since its inception i don't really understand what the heck the fed does other than you know decide how much money is printed and gets into circulation but they have all these like technical things that they do also and they do do a lot of technical things that's very true a lot of technical goes right over my head all the government bonds and yeah i just liked that brad said they do a lot of technical things yeah it's a very technical term

it's a very technical term yes very specific very technical um well that's really good i don't understand how we can speak and i literally was thinking about this while we were recording i don't understand how we can speak into a mic our voices can be recorded at the recording this pass through these cords thing what's i don't understand i don't understand electronics that's another thing yeah yeah i just don't understand how what i'm doing right now is being captured and recorded on a microphone and then transmitted through i don't understand i well i don't get it there's a simple explanation you live in the matrix true that's it blue pill red pill you know but then that just pushes the question further hey how did the matrix work you know that seems and what would happen i don't get it if you took both the blue pill and the red pill a new movie's coming out maybe they'll answer that question

wow yeah i remember one time i i made this pickup too because i was trying to i was just trying to make an electric instrument but it was acoustic and anyway so you've got like the regular pickups for electric guitars and these acoustic pickups are called piezo pickups and they just turn the sound waves into electrical signals that sends it to the amp and that is the most detailed explanation i could find for how piezos work and i think what what magic is it that turns the sound into the signals how does that work without a magnet and and the most i could find was like oh there are crystals in there that do it and i think this just sounds more magical what is it what do you mean crystals are turning the sound into electricity how does that work so i'm with you on that i don't i mean i don't know how microphones work i don't know how pickups

work in a lot of ways technology is indistinct from magic and yeah I think that's deep. It's amazing. It's amazing what it can do. Well, I'm going to think about if an EMP hit and none of us would know how to

do anything. Kind of like when we had a giant freeze and everybody's power went off. Well, this has been great.

Boys, glad we talked about that. Thank you all so much. Folks, thanks for bearing with us. Have a wonderful about that thank you all so much folks thanks for bearing with us have a wonderful week thank you all so much for listening if you've been enjoying our podcast it would be awesome if you would review us on itunes and if there's a guest you'd love to hear on our show give us a shout on twitter tweet at the texan news we're so proud to

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