The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - October 23, 2026

Episode Date: October 23, 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.Here’s a Look at Campaign Finance Numbers in Texas' Top Congressional ContestsVIDEO: Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows on Get Out the Vote 'Strike Force'Redrawn South Texas Congressional District Features Republican De La Cruz, Democrat GarciaDemocratic State Rep. Mary Ann Perez to Face Republican David Flores in Latino-Heavy HD 144Incumbent Democrat Penny Morales Shaw Faces Republican Amanda LaBrie for Houston-Area House DistrictRepublican 15th Court of Appeals Incumbents Seek Re-Election for the First TimeVIDEO: Texas Supreme Court Candidate Chari Kelly on the Judicial System, Checks and Balances, 2026 ElectionVIDEO: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Candidate Holly Taylor on Criminal Justice IssuesEnjoy 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.

Almost like a less goofy Theo Von sometimes. Like he's giving these little sayings and phrases and just the way his cadence is. Yeah, it's not necessarily like one cohesive essay. It's more of a like there's like two lines he reads that could be. Fortune cookies. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

He's like, clip this everybody. I don't know. I just, I don't know what the world is coming to where I can't listen to movie and television actors about who I should vote for. I don't. Well, howdy, folks. Welcome back to another episode of the Texans Weekly Roundup podcast. I'm the Texans senior editor Rob Lauchess. And joining me today are reporters Mary Elise O'Barr, Meredith Dyer, Isaiah Mitchell, and Steve Kapuska, Meredith. I believe you and I are the only ones who are good enough citizens to have early voted so far. What did you see when you were standing in those long, long, long lines?

Well, I actually skipped the long line somehow. I went to, I was coming back from Lubbock, which I'll talk about in a second. And I found a place on the way. And I thought at 615, like I'm right at the end. I'll just see if there's a line. Because I've heard about all these long lines, right? And we're getting the numbers back that people are coming and voting. And like, I don't know if it's record breaking, but it's like so much more than previous elections. So I went to this like bingo spot that was, and I'm newer to Austin. I don't. even know exactly where it was outside of north of Austin. And there was like no one there. There was three or four people in the line. And the lady that was the poll worker said that the whole day the line had been wrapped around like this bingo hall. She said an hour and a half. Then she said an hour. I think the point was that it was long. I think that they had had waiting all day long. And then at the end towards dinner time, I just came and pretty quickly just zipped on up and voted. So I think I randomly got lucky there. Yeah, I wish that I had been that lucky, but unfortunately we were, it was, I stood in line for just long enough that the sunburned that I got from the Texas Florida game over the weekend, I think probably got re-reburned. I got like my second coating.

Because even though it's gotten cooler, I feel like the sun is way worse now than it was in July. I don't know if any of all have just stood outside for a little bit recently, but it felt like I was holding my face close to a fire. like the entire time. It was really uncomfortable. So, you know, I was born and raised in Texas. So I'll say, it's not that I'm not used to it, but I didn't like it. Probably felt worse because of the sunburn. But it was a long line. And at a certain point, they make you put your phone away.

So like, what are you supposed to do? Talk to people in line or something? It's terrible. As a skincare, girly, I will just say that's where you got to wear SPF every day, just in case you get stuck. You know, that's the problem. I forgot my voting sunscreen. That's what I should have kept in my in my bag, I guess, that I take with me to vote with all my other voting equipment.

Bring my own voting sticker in case they run out. I have my actually I voted early sticker right here. It'll show up. There you go. It's actually blurred out because this is the fake one that I just mentioned that I made. so it won't even recognize it as real. But speaking of things that you can't recognize as real, is anybody else seeing the new Nathan Fielder Elizabeth Holmes documentary?

You can see everything. You all seen the trailer for this one? Yes, I went and watched it. I think it was actually the first day. It was in theaters with my husband. And my mind was blown. It's truly, it's insane. You watch it.

And I'll just say that the, the person who's watching the documentary, like you are deceived several times yourself. And by the time it ends, your mind is just, you're so confused about what you think, what just went down. It's, yeah, it produces a lot of good fodder for conversation afterwards because there's so many different, the conversations that happen are confusing moments or something that you catch later on. But it was really well done.

As far as, like, cinematically, the shots were really beautiful. and a lot of very close-up shots to people's faces, a lot of pores that you could see. But that added kind of like a fun dimension to the documentary or movie. I definitely, I feel maybe I'm so out of it. My, what's the word, exposure to Nathan Fielder before was actually

at first as an actor in The Curse. Did anybody watch that? I don't know if it was HBO or what it was, but it was Emma Stone and him in like this really random TV show. And so I didn't even know he did documentaries. He's very awkward in the TV show as well. So it really, it's a very, it's very similar to his vibe.

And then I had watched the Hulu Elizabeth Holmes show as well with Amanda Seifred. Syfried, how do you say your name? So I'm very excited about this to, but I didn't understand that he was this like renowned awkward documentarian. Wait, you've never seen Nathan for you? No. Oh, yeah, it's so funny. Where is that?

I've seen clips now. Now that the algorithm is feeding me things about him, I'm like, okay, he's been all over the place doing all these interviews and shows and he's very awkward. Where was Nathan for you? I don't remember, actually. Because it's been a while since I've watched it. And my wife also hates awkward humor. I don't really love it.

But Nathan for you is too funny. But it's been a while since I've watched it. it. Interesting. Yeah, I know I'm going to watch it. I'm excited. Well, I saw people saying that she like meets his level of craziness that he puts on in doing this interview. Like he's like, oh, I'm going to be this kind of weirdo interviewing her. And then she's like twice as much of a weirdo as he could hope to be. And is that true, Mary Elise, that they like, he basically met his match. He met his match. Yeah. And also something else, I'll mention that was a really cool experience was being in the theater.

There were several times where everyone as a group was laughing or gasping. And that was really cool. It happened several times. But because I think some of those moments where it was kind of like he met his match, there would be a really kind of funny, awkward situation where everyone was die laughing. Yeah. That sounds like a good time. I'm seeing it this weekend.

So I guess in the next podcast, if we, don't run out. If we run out of election things to talk about somehow, then we'll have to share even more thoughts about the movie. But speaking of election related things, we, thanks to our assistant editor Henry, who was gracious enough to pull all of the campaign finance numbers from the Federal Ethics Commission for Congress for our war room. Go check it out if you haven't seen it. We now have, the war room is fully updated with all of the campaign finance numbers for not just U.S. Senate and U.S. House, but also for all of the statewide races and for a big swath of legislative races, state board of education, various judicial races, all kinds of good

stuff. But Mary Elise, you wrote this week about some of the big campaign finance revelations that have come out. Tell us, you know, who came out on top and, you know, what does this sort of say about the state of the election? Yeah, well, of course, it's interesting to look at these reports because you kind of see where these races are currently standing and where they're headed, even though money isn't everything. It also sends a message about, you know, where donors might think that a race is headed, especially when you ever see these big groups and where they're choosing to funnel their money in or you see a race and you see how much cash on hand they have. But this specific October quarterly report, it covers a window that goes from the beginning of July to the

end of September and then they were technically due on October 15th, although of course, the reports all kind of rolling in different times, but roughly around October 15th. So, yeah, like Rob was saying, we covered in this piece specifically some of the more contentious congressional contests that are happening here in Texas, these races, just seeing, you know, where do they stand financially. one theme that I found interesting or one commonality that I noticed was in four of the South Texas districts or races. The Democrats did out-raised Republicans. So that was in 1535, 28, and 34.

And so these South Texas races obviously are very important for both parties and they're being watched pretty close. closely. I think Steve has covered this a fair amount in the 40 and in other coverage. But, you know, because we saw President Donald Trump, he was so successful during the 2024 cycle where he got that Latino vote. But then also we have these districts that were redrawn. So we have interesting races there because of the redistricting that was redrawn. That was redrawn to favor the GOP. But this election is going to show if, you know, just how successful that was for, you know, benefiting Republicans. So yeah, in those four South Texas area districts, we saw Republicans be outraised by Democrats. So one of those were in CD-15.

We've got Representative Monica Dela Cruz, and she's up against Bobby Blito. He raised about three times as much as her. We reported about $3.25 million raised, and then she raised about $1.27 million. and then his cash on hand is sitting at $1.37 million, and then she's got about $800,000 there in cash on hand. And then her brother, of course, is running in CD35, Carlos Dela Cruz. And he's up against Johnny Garcia. And this is one of those redrawn districts.

This is also a South Texas district. Currently represented by Greg Kasar, Representative Greg Kasar. but the redrawing kind of moved out of Austin down to near San Antonio. And then it flipped it from a deep blue rating. It was D77% to leaning Republican R-55%. And that's per our Texas partisan index. And we have all those ratings listed in this piece if you want to check out, you know, where these districts stand as far as their partisan rating.

But there, Carlos Dela Cruz was outraised by Garcia. Garcia raised about $985,000 and then reported about $500,000 in cash on hand. And then his Republican opponent, Carlos, Monica's brother, he's also endorsed by Trump, raised about $843,000 and it has like about $500,000 in cash on hand. one other very interesting district in CD28 where incumbent representative Henry Quayar is being challenged by a former Democrat in Webb County Judge Tano Tierra. He easily outrace Torena. He raised a little over $760,000 and then Tierra came in with $379,000. And then Quayers got about a little over a million. and, excuse me, in cash on hand.

And T-Rena's sitting at about 200,000 cash on hand. Don't want to bore you too much with the numbers. Those are all listed in the piece. But in CD-28, something is interesting here. There was recent reporting by the Texas Tribune that indicated that Republicans at the national level were hesitating to keep funneling money into CD-28. And that kind of indicated that it may be queer,

was in a good position, at least from the perception of these Republican leadership. The Congressional Leadership Fund actually polled millions as they reported that would have been attacking Quayar and then instead they moved it over to CD's 15

and 34. 34 is one we haven't mentioned, but his representative Vincent Gonzalez, going against Eric Flores, the Republican. So they kind of re- rechannel that money

designated it for instead OK, CD15 and 34, so obviously that signals a little bit more of a focus on those districts and just in general that they don't want to just spend a ton more money and I'm trying to

oust Quayar. So of course, this is going to be you know, these races you've got their, you know, South Texas is very interesting. It'll be very interesting to see the results because, you know, the Latino vote and everything that's tied up with that considering President Trump's immigration policies and kind of how that has affected these South Texas

areas, but then also we've got these redrawn areas. So always interesting to look at where these numbers are at, especially with us being so close to the election. Like we were saying, early voting is already underway. It finishes next Friday. So it'll be a week from when you're listening to this podcast and then, of course, the actual election days on November 3rd. But I recommend you check out Steve's piece on the Senate contest where he looked at how much Talarika raised in Paxton. So, of course, like none of these district races really hold a candle to the amount that these congressional districts are raising. But these races obviously are very important and determining, you know, which party is going to hold a majority in Congress.

And they'll kind of define those next two years under Trump's presidency. Well, thank you very much for breaking that down, Mary Elise. Yeah, campaign finance, I think, is one of those things that's like maybe flies under the radar for a lot of people. But it is quite interesting. And Steve also wrote a really good piece a little bit ago breaking down the fundraising for U.S. Senate that I recommend everybody go check out because James Tala Rico is raising a lot of money. But in order to push back against that, Republicans are doing get out the vote efforts. And Meredith, you were in Lubbock. You made the what feels, I think, from Austin probably like a 36-hour drive to Lubbock out in West Texas to attend the start of House Speaker Dustin Burroughs's Speaker Strike Force to get out the vote, get out the vote bus tour.

So tell us about that. I, well, I'm a weird one. I actually, it was only six hours and I do really long road trips. We've talked about this before. It felt pretty quick, actually. And that's a very straight, flat, like pretty simple driver. You can just put the cruise control on and listen to stuff. But yeah, I went out to Lubbock.

I have driven through, but I've never stayed there before. So it was interesting to be out there. And when you're covering politics and you hear these places reference, it's good to have like a picture in your mind of where it's at. So it was out there. It was at the windmill museum out there. So there's all these windmills, windmills out there, which created a really interesting backdrop for pictures. And yeah, Dustin Burroughs is starting this, I believe it's 26 stops until October 30th. And he had the big bus out there. He had the names of all of the house reps that are in these areas that he's stopping to reinforce and help their campaigns. And he really emphasized that it's not just go and talk a bit, but they're going, they're

blockwalking with the people. They're, I don't know if they're doing phone calls, but they're doing actual campaign work when they go into these areas. So it's not just a little stop and wave kind of thing. And it was interesting. I was just talking with him about the stops that they're making, observing the areas that they're highlighting. There were quite a few stops, like a quarter of the stops, are in the DFW area,

but specifically kind of near Collin County and Tarrant County, which are areas that a lot of people have their eye on and are watching what's going on with that. We're covering those areas as well at the Texan just because they've been traditionally like Republican strongholds that are under more pressure this time around and definitely feeling that. He's making quite a few stops in the Houston area as well. And yeah, just chatting with him about why he felt the need to go do this. So yeah, check out the interview. I did ask him about next session, a couple of things. We asked him quickly about property taxes. He mentioned that he had some different ideas than Abbott and Patrick. Obviously, when I asked him what they were, he was too soon to share that. But it was interesting. I'm curious about that. So then the follow-up question of that was how long did he think this property tax fight or issue or however people are phrasing it is going to take. And he said, he's calling it no special sessions. So all of the reporters and staffers and where, I mean, fingers crossed, obviously, but that would be great because we've heard a lot of jokes and a lot of comments about this dragging long into the year. So we'll see if that is true, if he is predicting the future or not. So check it out.

It's on the Texan, a little quick little video interview. Absolutely. I don't know if you all remember when we had four special sessions in 2023 and the two of them, which went into like the fall and the winter, I believe one of them went into, December. So that was, I remember, correct me if I'm wrong, somebody, but didn't, was it, what was his name? Was it Charles Perry or was it Brad Buckley? Somebody who mentioned like, oh, we're going to be here till December. And then it was at some event when Burroughs was like, no, we're going to be, we're not going to be here. We're going to be leaving at May, something like that, because Sinney Die, the end of the session next year is May 31st, I believe.

So we will see. But yeah, I highly recommend everybody go check the piece out. Also check out the piece that Hannah wrote this week about Republican Congresswoman Monica Dela Cruz in her re-election bid against Democrat Bobby Polito, the Tihano music star. That's been a really interesting piece to read about. But Monica Dela Cruz's brother, Carlos Dela Cruz, is running for a redistricted congressional district this year. the district that used to belong to Congressman Greg Casar and Mary Elise, you wrote about this. So tell us about this race. Yeah.

I mentioned it a little bit when we're talking about finances just now, but this is one of those districts. It's also a South Texas district, but also redrawn congressional seat. And so we've got this matchup between this President Trump endorsed candidate, Monica Dela Cruz's brother, Carlos Dela Cruz. And then a Democratic nominee who's really been heavily backed by national and Democratic leadership. And yeah, so it's one of those contests that's going to define both, you know, the success of the geopolities 2025 redistricting. And then also it's going to be very closely tied in with the Latino vote just in South Texas in general. So like I said, he's running against Democratic candidate Johnny Garcia.

It's currently representative represented by Greg Khazar. And that seat, you know, is pretty heavily impacted by its redistricting. The rating went from D77 to R55, so pretty drastic jump there. Dela Cruz was endorsed by Trump back in February. He was running against state representative John Lujan, who had actually voted for the redistricting that impacted the seat during the 89th legislative session. But he ultimately won against Lujan, of course. He has focused a bit on, primarily on his two decades of service in the Air Force. And then also his experience is a small

business owner. And he's been very vocal about kind of blasting that Trump endorsement, like front and center. On his website, he describes himself as a Texas Trump conservative. So he's not shying away from that endorsement. He's really embraced it. Both Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson have recently been in Texas. They travel to Texas to rally alongside him and others, of course, but as he's trying to, you know, secure the seat. But then we also see on the other side, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, they've been very focused on Garcia. he actually was recently added to what they call the red to blue program. I guess not super recently.

It was before the primary. But that essentially just provided more resources to his race in this largely Republican area. And also just kind of signaled this intention of theirs to focus on his race and getting him across the line. He actually won against this pretty controversial other Democratic. primary opponent. Maureen Gelando, she had been rejected by the party for they were alleging this anti-Jewish rhetoric that she was saying should essentially like separate her from the party. So there's a lot of controversy around that, a lot of the things that she was saying. And ultimately he won with 64% of the vote and that may run off.

Another Democratic leader that's been focusing on Garcia is House Minority Leader, Hakeem Jeffreys. He's actually expected to this week, I'm not certain if it's happened yet, but this week he's expected to campaign alongside Garcia in Texas. So Jeffreys is making the trip down to, you know, target kind of this district as a Democratic focus. signal their intent to get Percy across the line. He's focused on his experience as Bear County Sheriff's Deputy. He's made that kind of like a central, he's described as kind of like a central rule during his campaign messaging to Texas voters. And he specifically talked about law enforcement,

his law enforcement experience and saying, you know, that experience will help equip him to be committed to San Antonio resident's safety. And that kind of gives him an edge up. in that specific area. And then he has endorsements from, you know, Qasar, who is representing this district currently, um, representatives Joaquin Castro,

Lloyd Doggett, Lizzie Fletcher. Um, and then also James Tolerico has endorsed him. Um, so this is, you know, an interesting race where you've got the national levels of either party is really

focused on either candidate and has been very intentional about supporting either one, Carlos Dela Cruz and Johnny Garcia. So we'll keep an eye on this race, of course, as we see who wins ultimately on November 3rd. Absolutely. And we'll see, you know, really what the effects of this redistricting were because one of the big things I've always tried to, you know, stress whenever we talk about this is that this was drawn using largely like the 2024 election data where Trump overperformed relative to other Republicans. So we really don't know if that's going to translate to a victory in a lot of places. For example, I believe it was the 28th Congressional District that, according to our TPI, actually became more Democratic, not less Democratic, in terms of the vote share relatively of Democrats to Republicans.

So we will see in a challenging environment how that turns out. But, you know, speaking of other races, you know, it's not just Congress, of course. We also have a lot of state legislative races. In fact, we have 150 house races, but we'll only talk about two here. Governor Greg Abbott pledged last year that he was going to turn Harris County dark red. Steve, tell us about how that's going in a couple of these Harris County area Texas house races. Oh, thank you, Rob. Well, I mean, at risk of understatement, it's not going very well.

Harris County, of course, is very disproportionately non-white compared to Texas as a whole. And what we've seen in polling in large part in the run up to the midterms is that non-white voters are trending more or trending a disproportionate amount towards Democrats. And so you would really see that have an outsized effect in Harris County. And that's something that we would expect to see in these two races that we're talking about here. These are HD 144 and HD 148.

These are Democratic seats. They've been Democratic seats. And what they have in common is that they are very working class and they are very heavily Hispanic. They're in Harris County, of course. H.D. 144 is about 75% Hispanic and HD148 is about 56%. And both of these districts were in previous cycles, I'm a double digit, a Democratic seat. Hillary Clinton, I would have won them by double digits, Joe Biden would have. In 2024, as Trump improved with with SPACs all over the country,

he would have actually won HG144 by about three points, and he would have lost HG148 by about eight points. So what the thinking here was was that these were kind of reach seats for Republicans if those improvements with the SPACs had had. had held or even expanded. And that, of course, has not happened. And so something to think about for each of these races. H.E.144, the incumbent is a state rep Marianne Perez.

And the larger problem for Republicans in this seat is not so much her, but it's the Republican David Flores, who's been under a kind of cloud of a controversy. he had a DUI arrest earlier in the year and the body cam footage from that arrest actually came out and in that footage he was saying racial slurs and he was actually telling the cops about his endorsement by Governor Abbott and of course Governor Abbott after that came out

actually pulled his endorsement of a fours in that race so he was probably not very happy about that so taking all of that into consideration, it would seem very, very unlikely that Republicans flip that seat. In H.D. 148, the Republican Amanda LeBrie does not have any of those problems, you know, thankfully for Republicans. But the Democratic incumbent Penny Morales Shaw does not have any particular issues. And of course, H.D. 148 is a more Democratic-leaning seat overall and is likely to be even more so this year. So it would be a major surprise if Republicans win that seat as well. Yeah, thank you for breaking those down, Steve, because I feel like a lot of these little House races don't, sometimes they go unnoticed.

But like this is an instance, as you were saying, that a lot of Republicans felt pretty bullish about, winning over more seats in Harris County. And it just looks like it's not, it does not look like it's going to happen. Anything can happen. And obviously local vote trends can often break away from state trends, which often, of course, break away from national trends.

We'll just have to wait and see. But yeah, highly recommend everybody go check out those articles. Steve goes into a lot of really good detail. But yeah, we will see in Harris County, as we always will, 15% of the state, not a small amount of the electorate.

And also check out Holly's article that we wrote about last week, talking about the lead that James Talleyco currently has in Harris County and what that might say about statewide trends in general for him. Turning next to you, Isaiah, you have done a lot of court judicial related stuff recently, quite a bit of it. why don't you start by telling us about what is the 15th Court of Appeals? What do they do? How long has it been around? And sort of what's what does it, what does it mean for Texans? Well, the 15th Court of Appeals has only been around for a couple years now. And it was created in the 2023 legislative session. And so it began accepting cases, you know, soon after that session concluded. And the cases, the jurisdiction that it has is limited to, cases involving state agencies. And so that also implicates, you know, big constitutional cases. And it also, I believe, accepts cases from the business court. But for us, Politico's,

the important thing is that we've got this new statewide court elected, you know, by the statewide electorate that focuses on issues of state constitutionality. And also for all these things, I have to tip my hat to Matt Stringer. I am standing on his mighty shoulders, is he had some great coverage of all these races before he left. So big thanks to Matt for getting us a lot of good coverage of these courts and now these elections. But the 15th Court of Appeals is going up for election for the first time. So the three justices who are on the court now, the incumbents were appointed by Governor Abbott just to get the court started.

So it's the first election cycle for this court. Before the court was created, most of these cases that involved the state government were routed through the third court of appeals if one of the parties appealed from the trial court. And third court of appeals is based in Austin. And the partisan history of the third court of appeals, like any office, has varied over the years. But it's based in Austin and it's elected by an electorate that is dominated by the Austin metro area. And so it tends to be more liberal, especially since 2018 when Democrats really, swept the court. And, but, you know, Republicans have batted around the idea for a long time of

a statewide court that could take on these kinds of constitutional cases. Because as you might expect, and we talked about this a little bit in the last podcast, we talked about the Supreme Court of Texas. But as you might expect, the third court of appeals tended to disagree with the Supreme Court of Texas, which is more Republican, on a lot of big, important cases. So now those cases are all routed to the 15th Court of Appeals, which, like the Supreme Court of Texas, is elected by all Texas voters, and it's not a regional court. So it's an interesting election. It's the first time, as I said, that these justices will go up for election. So, yeah, it'll be interesting to see how that shakes out. I got the chance to interview Shari Kelly, who's a Democratic candidate for the Supreme Court of Texas.

she is one of several actually Democratic candidates who is running for the Supreme Court of Texas and also presently serves on the Third Court of Appeals. So a lot of these justices who formerly took on these constitutional cases in the Third Court of Appeals, they're no longer tasked those for the most part anymore. Now they're running for the Supreme Court of Texas, which is interesting.

So I thought it was an informative conversation with Justice Kelly, so you can check that out to learn a little bit more about the Third Court of Appeals. about the 15th Court of Appeals and about the Supreme Court of Texas and the relationship between all these courts because it's important for issues of the state constitution and state law and whether the state can enforce some of its most controversial laws, you know, the ones that tend to get challenged in court. I also got the chance to interview Holly Taylor, who is a Democratic candidate for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. And so Texas is one of a very small number of states where our appellate system forks into two, you know, at the top of the pyramid, basically. I guess it's no longer a pyramid at that point. But we've got the Supreme Court of Texas, which takes on civil cases, you know, the Constitution and all that stuff.

And we have the Court of Criminal Appeals, which is the Court of Last Resort for criminal cases, as you might expect. and that court, you know, it tends to end up in the news a lot whenever we've got, for example, a death row inmate appealing. That ends up at the court of criminal appeals. And so Robert Robertson was probably our last big, high-profile death row case. Before that, there was a case of Melissa Lucia, Lucia, another death row inmate. And the court of criminal appeals gets those kinds of cases on its docket. The court of criminal appeals also issued a decision a few years back. pertaining to an election integrity law that in this decision, the court basically found that

the state attorney general is part of the executive branch, not, and so it doesn't have the same powers as a local prosecutor, a district attorney. And the practical effect of this decision was that Paxton could not exercise prosecutorial powers in enforcing election law, you know, as a criminal offense. And so Paxton put a lot of money and a lot of effort into the next Republican primary, which is 2024, and successfully replaced, or helps replace some incumbents on this court. So it's also gotten a lot of attention on that front. And in the interview with Holly Taylor, we talk a little bit about that.

So if you're a podcast person, go check those out. That's Shari Kelly and Holly Taylor. and we're also reaching out to candidates on, you know, in the Republican Party and in other races as well. And so we will let you know if we're able to snag any others. Well, thank you for breaking that down, Isaiah, but I want to ask, are these races for the Court of Criminal Appeals different from the other judicial races in Texas this year? They are. So the 15th Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court of Texas, those are both all incumbents this year. And, you know, like we said, this is the first election cycle for the 15th.

For the Supreme Court of Texas, that's not always the case. We talked in a previous podcast about how this is also the first year in which everyone on the ballot for the Supreme Court of Texas is an abbot appointee. And, of course, that's also the case for the 15th this year. So it's a full slate of abate appointees for the Supreme Court and also for the 15th, and they're all incumbents, they're all running for re-election. On the Court of Criminal Appeals, we actually have two open seats. So it's a bit unique because it's the only statewide judicial election where the incumbent is not seeking re-election.

And so there are three seats on the Court of Criminal Appeals that are going up for election this year. And it's place three, place four, and place nine. Again, these are all statewide races, statewide elections. So that these don't represent a particular district or anything. So the number of the places isn't really relevant. But we've got three places going up for election. and two of those three are open. And so we go into the candidates who are running for those spots in the article

and which endorsements they've got, which always gives you a good sense of, you know, who's backing whom. And the one incumbent who's running for re-election is Judge Kevin Patrick Yerey. And Yere is an interesting judge because he's descended from the court in a few big major cases, including Texas v. Stevens, which was the one that we were discussing earlier that prompted Paxton to really get involved in the next Court of Criminal Appeals race. And so Yiri was the lone dissenter in that case, and he's also the only incumbent seeking re-election this year.

He also really strongly dissented from the court's decision to grant habeas relief to Alan Andre Cossi. And Alan Andre Cousy is the man who was convicted of murdering Anita Byington and Austin in 1991, and he ultimately received a $2.5 million payout. out from the state last December with the help of Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza. And so I should specify, Uri dissented from the court's decision to grant Haybeast relief to the applicant in this case without setting the case for oral argument. And so in his dissent, Yeri says that, you know, the court should set this for oral argument

and have a more adversarial process for this like they would for other cases. And that was one of his more, that's just one of his more forceful dissents that you can read. and it's a relevant case because this murder case and the litigation that ensued were a big part of a hearing that we talked a lot about because it went on for a long time in the Texas Capitol a little while ago. This is one that Holly covered, but the whole hearing was about prosecutorial discretion. It really just focused on Garza in Travis County and Garza famously did not show up for the hearing. one of the victim Anita Barrington's family members did show up and had a lot of things to say about how Travis Canny handled the case

and so this case was the legislature is really paying attention to it and um, Yeri was a dissenting voice in the court of criminals court of criminal appeals decision and how they handled the case. So, and he's the one incumbent running for reelection. So go check out the piece for some other, you know, background on major cases that these judges have litigated before and other big issues that the court tends to take up. Thank you very much, Isaiah. I was not very knowledgeable about the entire judicial court system until I was able to watch your interviews and read this piece. So I actually have a

somewhat functional understanding now of how all this works. I appreciate that. Mary Elise, I noticed that you pulled for your tweetery this week, an interesting thing that was noted by a reporter online about President Trump's Republican endorsements that he specifically listed on a truth social post. Tell us who he did or did not mention. Yeah, it was reporter Aaron Torres that caught this first, but Trump was sending out a series of true social posts to different states. It would start out all caps, the great people of insert state, get out. and vote for in a long list of all the people to vote for the Republicans. So this one, of course, was to the great people of Texas.

But the two nominees on there that were not listed was both French and Nate Sheets, which is very interesting. But he told people to go out and vote for every other Republican other than Bo French and Nate Sheets on the statewide tickets. So, you know, there's, I'm curious to hear y'all's thoughts on. on why that might be. And I'm assuming that was intentional. I mean, I would imagine it is.

I mean, it's also entirely possible that the Railroad Commission and Ag commissioner races just don't rise to his concern or whoever. If he had like a DC staffer working on this that they just straight up forgot to include that or something. Or they went, you know, railroads. Who cares about railroads, right? Not realizing that it's oil and gas. I mean, they have land commissioner.

They do have, you know what that is. Well, Trump cares about the Alamo a lot. We know that much for absolute certain. And the wall. And the wall. Actually, you know what? That is a really good point. That might very well be why he thought about that was the, all the border construction.

Yeah, I mean. Those two races have just gotten the most interesting. I don't know, random little bits of coverage on spicy or controversial things about them. We know Sid Miller's been very upset and will not vote four and eight sheets and he's going around and hanging out with Clayton Tucker and that's been a big thing. And he wasn't, you know, he didn't get the endorsement from Abbott, but he did get the endorsement from Trump, Sid Miller. And so that kind of makes you look into that race a little bit.

And then obviously Bo French has just kicked up a storm and created something for that seat that has never happened before. Which, speaking of which, Isaiah is supposed to be right now at a debate that was supposed to happen between the... Oh, true. Yeah, what happened, Isaiah? Why aren't you? Why are you here with us and not at that debate? Yeah, as they say, this is really inside baseball. So, you know, it's not necessarily something that merits, like, a news article of its own, at least for, you know, the way for our standard. But yeah,

there was supposed to be a debate in Dallas between John Rosenthal, the Democratic candidate for railroad commissioner and both French, the Republican. And this was announced

a long, weeks and weeks ago, and people were anticipating it, talking about it. John Rosenthal was publicizing it a lot, looking forward to this debate.

And it was going to be hosted by the DFW Press and Media Club, formerly called the Dallas Press Club. And it's, we learned recently that it's not happened, anymore.

Rosenthal still plans to make an appearance, and he'll just be flying solo, so it'll be more of an interview form, I suppose, rather than a debate. And everyone is speculating about what happened. Did French agree to it and then pull out? Did Rosenthal's campaign just claim that French agreed to it,

kind of putting pressure on him? Did the DFW Press and Media Club claim that French's campaign agreed to it? you know, was this an innocent snafu or is there some kind of intrigue of what we don't really know. The timing was so interesting because it was like days, like less than a week before he said, oh, no, I never agreed to that, which we know he's chronically online all the time. So I'm not making a statement about who made the statement of whether he would be there, but the idea that he didn't know about it or didn't understand is like hard to believe

because he is a fixture on X. And so it was kind of interesting. Yeah. And I mean, in all humility, I have to admit that I learned about this word of mouth from Brad Johnson, you know, our esteemed alum. And I told him,

because when we all met in Austin a few days ago, I told him, yeah, I'm looking forward to this debate. And he said, I guess you haven't read the bullpen this morning. And I said, nope. And he said the debate's not happening. And so, yeah, it was like, it was just days before when I was saying,

yeah, you know, a couple days from now, we're going to have to, you know, head up to Dallas Vist debate. Nope, not going on. So, yeah, it was abrupt. It was kind of short notice. The one bit of data I can contribute to this is on October 9th, I got an email from the DFW Press Club inviting me,

and it was an ass email, so inviting people to a series of candidate debates and interviews, and that's how I phrase it, on Texas statewide and Dallas County races. It starts this Friday and runs through October 23rd, and so it's got some other intro material there and then it gives a schedule and it says Friday, October 9th at 4 p.m.

Sarah Eckhart, the Texas comptroller race and I thought well that's today and is Don Huffinds also going to be there and it says the Republican nominee has been invited and I think like I doubt that Don Huffines is just going to decide on a win to roll up to this debate who knows where he was at that point because now he's the incumbent at this point,

so he's working in Austin. And with any of these races, it's not really to the incumbent's advantage to appear at all. And so this was going to be the one debate between statewide R&Ds, and now it's not happening. But, I mean, it's kind of like, I mean, we're facing this as we try and stack candidates

for these podcast interviews. It's really not to the advantage of an incumbent Republican to, expose yourself for these kinds of public appearances and it's greatly to the advantage of a challenging Democrat to go for these debates

and things like that. So all I can say is I got an email from the DFW Press and Media Club I'm sure they do great things but all I can say is that like it felt a little hasty to say oh by the way in three hours

Sarah Eckhart's going to be here if you want to pop in and how finds might also be too so I wonder whether something like that happened with both French I don't know not to cast dispersions on whoever's, you know, put it together these events in Dallas because it's a public service to try and get these candidates to appear before the public.

And you mentioned it earlier that we ask both candidates always to come on and do interviews and for all of our writing. And what we're getting is responses from, not from the incumbents or the Republicans as often, just because, like you said, does it, is it to their advantage at this point to do those things? And so if you've seen like a trend or a pattern where we have quite a few of the Democrats or whatever, it's just because that's part of the political operation right now. And anybody that can get time in front of people and speak to them, especially if they are not in the majority party or they're, you know, they're the underdog or something like that. They're going to want to do that.

So, yeah. I mean, it was pretty momentous when Greg Abbott mentioned Jeannie Hino's name in the first place. I remember when people pointed that out, oh, Greg. haven't mentioned her name. Because if you're in a really strong position, like a three-term, you know, one of the longest serving governors, at this point, the longest serving incumbent governor in the country, then why would you dole out name recognition to your opponent? You know, and so you want to hoard that exposure as an incumbent candidate and as a challenger, you really want to, you know, claw back as much of that as you can. And so, of course,

all the, all the Democrat challenges are, you know, eager to do these kinds of debates and public appearances. Yeah, I was also notable when Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick finally named Vicky Goodwin whenever that happened. I remember some people were like, oh, what that's, I don't know if he's done that in recent cycles, but you know, kind of getting our name out there. Yeah. Timing wise, and you guys might, I don't know if we have this off the top of our head, as the polling's been all over the place, and I know there's a lot of discussion about the sample sizes for some of these polls and things like that, obviously we don't live and die by them at all.

But to see polls where Bicky Goodwin or Hina Hosa come out ahead of Abbott or Patrick, I'm wondering if the timing of mentioning them came as some of these polls started to pop up where it was like a little bit like, oh, yeah, that doesn't, you know, that hasn't happened before or I don't know if anyone remembers the timing of that. I don't remember any...

I don't remember any specific timing, but speaking of like other polling news that happened this week. I think we also should talk about the elephant in the room, which is that the polling group Wedgwood, which was a,

I believe it was just founded, it was founded very recently, this national polling group that had been cited by a lot of outlets, came out and said on social media, saying, we were a social experiment to see how,

you know, if news, organizations are going to cite our data, which of course people have pointed out, and their Twitter account's been deleted, by the way, I was just checking as I was saying that, because people were like, you were charging a lot of money for polls. And now you're just admitting that you faked your data. You know, this is pretty bad. Some people are like, no, they were faking their data. They were making money off of it. And now they're trying to cover it up by saying it was like a social experiment. Other people are like, no, maybe they really was a social experiment. But either

way. It seems like it's going to be, it seems like this will be an interesting bit. I feel like just with polling in general, it's, it's valuable if polls show like consistent trends, but polling in general these days is such a mess. What with the phenomenon of, you know, Trump voters who just don't respond to polls, which leads conservative Republicans to be consistently undercounted, fake pollsters, you kind of have to wonder who's trying to do this to get calshy, numbers to move a certain direction. You know, it's,

well, it's like having any knowledge of anything can be kind of like insider trading if you know where to go to place a bed on like Kals to your polymarket. So I think it's, I think it's fascinating. Even I believe in Michigan, people have been saying that like they've been citing these Wedgwood polls

in favor of the Democrat, Al-Sayed. So it's like, is that going to have an effect? Well, like a straight up fake polling company have an effect. have an effect on the whole election, we'll have to see.

I did want to mention, by the way, really quick about Sid Miller. He recently came out with an op-ed titled, Nate Sheets cannot be Texas Agriculture Commissioner, where he talked about some of the stuff that happened in Sheets'

personal life, and he also said that he hadn't done enough to push back against data centers. It is very interesting to see Sid Miller, who had been the guy, who had the famous picture of himself, you know, on a rhino hunt, right, with sitting in like a hunter with his gun and everything. Now coming out and he's campaigning with the Democrat, Clayton Tucker, you know,

so pushing back against Nate Sheets. I think it's fascinating, especially since Miller and Abbott have kind of, they've, you know, butted heads before, but, you know, it's Republican unity, right?

it's just great to see at least it's not boring that's the thing at least from the reporting perspective it is not boring to see all of this stuff happen but I mean in Clayton Tucker he's not like a super moderate Democrat either he used to be part of like Bernie Sanders

organization so it's it's just very interesting when did the op-ed come out I'm sorry the op-ed let's let me see here the op-ed came out I believe October 19th, so that would have been Monday. Because I know that we've discussed in the past, I believe Sid Miller bringing up those personal things about Nate Sheets, which he had brought up, like Sheets has addressed them with his family and his church and his like, I don't know if they're the same allegations about things from his past.

But that's just so there's some below the belt things there that just seem, especially if someone has already addressed them and gotten through it and worked through them on a personal professional. spiritual level with their group. And I was at an event where Sheets, was I at the event or was I watching it? Now, they all blend together where Sheets like pointed to people like, these are people that helped me work through all of those issues that like Sid Miller is bringing up. And I completely, like he's not denying any of them or saying that they're good things at all. So it's just such an interesting choice to keep hitting someone over the head with something that they've already repented from in that way. And the way Sheets responded was, I mean, he's said a lot of things, but he pointed out that at the beginning of this race, Clayton Tucker said that he was running as a reform candidate to end Sid Miller's whole legacy, right? And he accused Sid Miller of being really corrupt and making these bad decisions and all that. And now Clayton Tucker seems to be capitalizing on Sid Miller's turn as a way to present himself as more of a moderate, you know. Anyway, yeah, it's an interesting dynamic.

Strange bedfellows, those two are buddy-beddy all of a sudden. It's just great. How many Republicans do we have now, or how many people in general do we have who like lost the primary for a big statewide race who are now like, there's no way I'm endorsing the person. I mean, we had Jasmine Crockett with James Talleyco, although she did say in that one video that she was endorsing him. I think the video that came out recently it was like her like just recording on her phone she was like of course I'm endorsing Tala Rico which she had not done up to that point

John Cornyn still not a fan of not a fan of Ken Paxton Sid Miller not a fan of made sheets yeah it's just been very interesting to see and then Sid Miller or sheets calling Miller like the most corrupt figure in the Texas government something else great that I think if you're on if you're on social media a lot on Twitter

is that whenever you see like any of this like infighting between Republicans, for example, when Tony Ortiz tweeted out about the email sent by outgoing

Ag Commissioner Sid Miller with this op-ed, Ted Brown, who is the Libertarian candidate in Texas for U.S. Senate, was like, Texas voters should check out

the libertarian, Austin Kelly for Ag Commissioner. He's always there to say, you should check out the libertarian candidate. So I would say I commend him for always being there to say, hey, look at the libertarian.

I'm interested to also see if the vote share, if Tala RICO wins, will the vote share that Ted Brown gets be larger than the vote share that Tala RICO wins by if he wins, which would imply that he would be a spoiler candidate potentially. I think that that would be a very interesting development. Now, of course, I will mention this, that Steve and I currently have a bet going about he believes that Tala RICO, is going to win in November, based on the day that he's seen. I still believe Paxton is going to win, but I'm very interested to see Steve how our bet goes. Anybody else have any other bets going on in the office right now? I don't have a bet, but I was just going to add when you're talking about

third parties, if anybody saw the backlash against Matthew McConaughey encouraging people, like, independence and like celebrating them and definitely people were jumping on board. I'm trying to remember, I don't remember the oftening. I think there were some elected officials that were like, kind of like, what the heck? Because they would assume, I think it was from the Democratic side, they would assume that the people he's addressing would go towards the Democratic Party. Or why not endorse Talarico is another question that people were throwing out there. So that was interesting to bring up the whole third party independent discussion kind of right

before everybody's about to vote. He was also getting mocked quite a bit, I think, because it sounded like an AI generated text. Sure. Which who knows, but. He speaks in a way ever since, you know, he wrote that book. He's always, he's kind of always like he's given a almost like a less scozy Theo Von sometimes. Like he's giving these little sayings and phrases and just the way his cadence is. Yeah, it's not necessarily like one cohesive essay.

It's more of a like there's like two lines he reads that could be. Yeah, Tom bites. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. He's like, clip this, everybody. I don't know. I just, I don't know what the world is coming to.

to where I can't listen to movie and television actors about who I should vote for. I don't know. It feels like the moral core of America has just been truly hollowed out if I can't even trust people whose job is to pretend to be other people for entertainment. So I don't know. I guess that that's a pretty interesting similarity with politics. But speaking of AI voices, Isaiah, I see you just wrote here on our podcast docket, rescue calls being replaced with AI.

I think to wrap up the podcast, can you tell me what that's about? Oh, one of my friends quote tweeted, somebody else's tweet, ex post, whatever, about whoever it was said that they used to get all these calls from the younger siblings, nieces and nephews, what have you, about how to do this and that.

And those are drying up because people are just asking whatever their favorite AI is about it. and I think that's kind of sad. That's my commentary. I feel like it's sad that, you know, people are just asking Grock about the washing machine instead of calling their mom or, you know, or what have you.

How do the moms feel about that? It's a good point. That is a good point. It depends. Depends if it gets called from the reasons too. That's true. Well, you got to imagine that like, they don't want to be called every day about random stuff,

but they would like to be called every once in a while, you know, to ask for help with something. Every once in a while. Well, I think that'll about do it for this episode of the weekly roundup. You can catch us every Friday morning at the texan. News, YouTube, or wherever you get podcasts. Next week is going to be exciting because it's going to be the podcast that comes out right before the November election.

So we will have lots of good nuggets of election-related information for you all. So thank you very much for, listening 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. next week for another episode of our weekly roundup.

God bless you and God bless Texas.