The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - October 4, 2024

Episode Date: October 4, 2024

Show off your Lone Star spirit with a free "Remember the Alamo" hat with an annual subscription to The Texan: https://thetexan.news/subscribe/ The Texan’s Weekly Roundup brings you the latest news in Texas politics, breaking down the top stories of the week with our team of reporters who give you the facts so you can form your own opinion. Enjoy what you hear? Be sure to subscribe and leave a review! Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast.This week on The Texan’s “Weekly Roundup,” the team discusses:It's Anyone's Game in the House Speaker Race: Smoke Filled Room Ep. 848 House Members Announce Support for David CookTexas Stock Exchange Announces Executive Leadership Team with Gov. Greg AbbottSmall Town, Big Problems: City of Marion Faces Financial Disarray, Paralyzed CouncilHouse Democrats Issue Letter Urging Removal of LGBT Provisions in NDAADock Workers Strike Across Country, Port of Houston Faces ShutdownTexas Maternal Mortality Data Shows Most of Increase Came Before Dobbs, Contrary Tim Walz ClaimDemocratic Federal, State, and Local Texas Officials Urge DOJ to Monitor Upcoming ElectionCozen O’Connor Public Strategies - The Beltway BriefingListen for of-the-moment insider insights, framed by the rapidly changing social and...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

and when I was talking to him on the phone, Cameron and Rob were sitting in the office, and all of a sudden they hear me just go, holy crap. Is that the word you used? The reason is, no, that's the... It was probably a little bit harsher language. Yeah.

A little bit, yeah. Yeah. And hey, it fits, because Glyden told me that the computer server that backs up the city, the police department, and more is stored in the bathroom of City Hall. Howdy, folks, and welcome back to another episode of the Weekly Roundup. I'm Mackenzie DeLulo, Senior Editor at The Texan. And we have Brad. We have Cameron.

We have Mary Elise. We've got a full house today. And we've got varying different headphone offerings that we have. We've got the over-ears. Brad has some sort of, I don't even know how to describe what Brad has, even though he wears them every single day. Mary Elise is a bird. Oh, yeah. And we're set.

But that's my big takeaway from those first 30 seconds is the difference in headphone. Yeah. Well, Brad does wear those headphones every single day. Brad, how long have you had those headphones? every single day brad how long have you had every single day and when did you make the switch to deciding to go with the behind the ear uh earbud because there's many different variations so i know i threw two questions at you but take them whichever way you want. I've had these since I've maybe like a year into this job.

And I can work out with them. They don't fall out of my ears. I also hate the over-the-ear ones because they hurt my ears. So I refuse to go to those. And I'm too cheap to buy AirPods. Well, those are Beats, aren't they? It's a combination of excuses.

Oh, they're not? No. No, they're cheap Amazon knockoffs. Probably made in China. One of my favorite things about Brad is his look of surprise when you ask him a pretty normal question. Like, why are you asking me this question to start a podcast

with come on i think so cameron i'm with you and i know cameron's also just supporting me because that's what i chose to bring up at the front of the pod so cam thanks for always having my back with the follow-up i appreciate it if you're as good as it gets if we're doing headphone talk at the start here i have gone through a variety of different headphones um over the past probably five six years i used to be all about these uh like little mini headphones you know like the in-ear ones yeah i would run through like a pair of these i don't know every four five six weeks because i work out in them and if they're not waterproof the sweat will damage them and so i was just buying knockoff amazon earbuds like every six weeks and then i was showing you i got these fancy new bone conducting headphones and these have been a game bone yes these have been a game changer so you you put it over your ear and there's nothing that actually goes inside of your ear.

It, the sound vibrates from the front right here and you can hear it when you're running or cycling or whatever outside, you can still hear things. So it's much safer as well. Oh, that's interesting. I had no clue the science behind this whole situation also i'm realizing how uninteresting this is for our listeners because viewers can only really see

what we're talking about here mary lee should i interrupt you were you gonna say something well i was gonna ask a question that would further the headphone conversation but since that's boring maybe i'll just save that just do it throw it out there veto veto okay i was just wondering it looked like cameron's the ones he um pulled out the boeing conducting ones or something uh they looked like they were the same as brads are they not good question those ones yeah brads have like a little wire mullet i think cameron's are a little bit more like more plastic or just harder like more structured but same style wire mullet that is one way to describe that i think that gives folks who are listening a pretty accurate

picture of how that works, like a wire mullet. Yeah. Man, I wish I could grow a mullet. That'd be awesome. Lord in heaven. Well, on that note, folks, let's jump into the news. If you've not listened to our latest episode of Smoke-Filled Room, we published it this week.

It went out on Monday. Brad and I chatted all things the speakers race. And I remember a couple of weeks ago, Brad texted me and we were a few weeks out from our deadline to record. And he said, we've got to talk about the speakers race. And typically on Smoke-Filled Room, we cover two or three different topics. There's usually one kind of lead in, one main topic. It could be something that's a little bit more evergreen, text ledge related, looking

back on text ledge history, and then add in some hot topics, some polling, some tweets, whatever it is that's hot at bit more evergreen, text ledge related, looking back on text ledge history and then add in some hot topics, some polling, some tweets, whatever it is that's hot at that particular time. This week, this edition, we quite literally just talked about the speakers race and we could have gone on

for a long time. I think we'll probably do at some point another episode on the speakers race because we have a lot more that we could have gone into. We had multiple topics we didn't even get to

and we went for over an hour. So definitely go check that out. we have a lot more that we could have gone into. We had multiple topics we didn't even get to, and we went for over an hour. So definitely go check that out. It's a great episode. Brad's been at the forefront of all the speakership reporting, and it's certainly worth your time to go and listen to it. Anything to add, Brad, on that front? No. Yeah, it was a pretty thorough discussion.

There were, of course, things we didn't get to touch on, but this is not going away. And I think the main takeaway I have is that this is anybody's ballgame at the moment. And that is proving to be correct, so far at least. So far at least. I think it's fair to say that in Austin, this is the race people are watching even more so than perhaps any of the general election races. This is a little bit more pertinent to the business down in Austin. If you look at a statewide demographic, I think the crews in Allred is probably leading a lot of those discussions in terms of what's being watched most and looked forward to the most.

So very different. Very different, but I just want, I cannot overstate the importance and the importance of this race and the high profile nature of what's going on in the speaker's race right now. So it's a great behind the scenes look at what's going on. And we talk a lot about the meeting that took place between all members, essentially all members of the Reform Caucus and a few adjacent members as well. Brad, you talked or you wrote a piece last Friday. This news dropped. So let's talk about this. We didn't get to talk about in the roundup last week. Some news that had to do with the nominee that emerged from that Reform Caucus meeting, David Cook. What happened? The amount of frustration that coursed through my veins when this dropped at almost 5pm on a Friday.

I had an Oktoberfest thing I was going to so I had to bang this out really quick. But add that to the fact that we had just recorded our hour and a half long speakership discussion

how dare the speakers race interrupt your oktoberfest festivities brad i'm i'm how dare it that's the more important problem the slightly less important problem was we had a whole episode that we talked about oh there hasn't been you been a list put out of support for David Cook. And then, of course, there's a freaking list put out after we don't close enough to the weekend where we don't have the ability to adjust anything. The episode had already been recorded. But enough griping. Close to 5 p.m. on Friday last week state rep david cook the reform caucus endorsed

candidates released a list of 48 republican house members and nominees who are backing him for speaker each person on there is counted they were among those that voted for Cook in the final unanimous round of voting after John Smithy had dropped out. So that's where they're getting this 48 number. I think if I remember correctly, about six of those were proxy voters. And so that puts those in person there, 42, 43, depending on how many proxies actually voted in that final round. So they put out the list. You can read it on our website at the texan.news. Notably, there were two members added that were listed as confidential on the sheet. Now, I have a pretty good idea of who those two are.

They have not put their name out yet on this, but I do know that, say, Rep. Gary Gates was at this meeting, and he is not listed on this, at least explicitly by name on this list. And along with Pat Curry, who's the HD 56 GOP nominee. So my guess is those two confidentials are those two guys. But, you know, I assume as we get closer and if Cook starts to gain momentum, those confidential items will become explicit names on the list. So you'd have to ask each of them what their justification is for going confidential. But this is preliminary. This is not a, I have the votes list of 76. This is I have a majority of the GOP caucus. And we're only going to gain from there now. Maybe they do. Maybe they don't. We'll see. You know, this, they were

doing it. They did the meeting as early as they did to try and get ahead of the as we sit here on October 3rd, the caucus retreat that's happening, I think in Bastrop this weekend. And they were trying to get ahead of that. So they have this group of support to then go with more votes when everyone's together. It's going to snowball. This is what we talked about in the Smoke-Filled Room episode. It's going to snowball one way or the other at some point. Which way that goes, I don't know.

But this is a very formidable list of support, more specifically opposition to Phelan. Doesn't mean it's going to end things. It hasn't ended things yet. And if you talk to some of these members, a lot of them are pretty skeptical about whether they can actually pull this off just because of the natural gravity towards 76 for Phelan, provided he gets the whole Democratic caucus. So that's an uphill climb for these reformed caucusers, but it is the most

formidable group of opposition we've seen for a sitting speaker in a long time. And, you know, they're swinging for the fence. I should also note that some of these members, one that comes to mind specifically, who we'll talk about in a later segment, Steve Kennard, you know, there's no guarantee they're elected. Kennard is in a very difficult race. And I'll talk more details about that race in a bit. But, you know, this number might shrink based on the November election results. Absolutely. I think that's what we're really looking forward to is seeing, okay, how does the electorate respond to some of these issues? And with Trump on the ballot, what are we dealing with in Texas? What will the margins be? Cruz and Allred, right? All those things play into this race for speaker. So we'll keep an eye on that for sure. Top races to watch kind of dovetail into that foreshadowing that you just gave the listeners. But you compiled your list of top races to watch next month. Wild that we are almost no to the day.

Essentially, we are a month out from Election Day. What are some of these races? If you're looking for a political podcast that goes beyond the headlines, check out the Beltway Briefing. I'm Howard Schweitzer, CEO of Cozen O'Connor Public Strategies. Every week on the Beltway Briefing, our team of former Republican and Democratic presidential appointees, Capitol Hill veterans and political advocates shares behind the scenes perspective that cuts through the noise. If you want the inside scoop, subscribe now to the Beltway Briefing here or wherever you get your podcasts. So I think I listed out 11 or 12.

You know, the Cruz-Ola Reds, obviously number one in this state. We've beat that one to death on this pod. So I'm not going to go into too much detail on that. But it will affect a lot of down ballot races one way or another. I don't know which way that's going to go, but we saw in 2018 Beto drive a lot of Democratic friendly turnout. And that caused 12 seats in the House to flip, two in the Senate to flip. So it has those implications. You also have the presidential at the top of the ticket that will drive a lot of

this down ballot as well. But looking at smaller races, you have two in the Rio Grande Valley, congressionals, I should say. Texas 15, that's Monica de la Cruz, the incumbent Republican against Michelle Vallejo. That is a rematch of the 22 race. And I actually just saw this morning Politico playbook put out a an internal poll from House Majority PAC. That's the Democratic PAC. That showed Vallejo down three points to De La Cruz. This district is the closest one, partisan-leaning-wise, in the state on the congressional level. So Democrats believe they can flip this, and that's one they're gunning for heavily.

Then you have the other one, Texas 34. That's incumbent Democrats, Vicente Gonzalez against former Congresswoman, Myra Flores. This is another rematch. And that one is getting a lot of this, House Majority PAC as well. And these are two of the most watched congressional races in the country. It's not just Texas. So on top of that, you have the theme of South Texas. Republicans have been putting a lot of stock in making gains in South Texas. So they want to try and continue that. And with Trump on the ballot, if we're going to extrapolate from 2020, there's a good chance that they grow their returns there. Does that mean that Flores wins? I don't know. The district is not friendly to her in terms of a partisan leaning perspective, but she outperformed that partisan leaning in 22

despite losing so maybe she builds on that that's certainly possible then another one this is i think this should have the the most exclamation points behind it of any of these races sd27 also in the valley that is uh incumbent democrat morgan lamontia against republican challenger adam hinojosa another rematch from 2022 uh lamontia's family is they own one of the largest beer distributors in the in the state so they're very very wealthy and they're self-funding she's raising other money too but they're loaning her lots of money. And that will continue. Hinojosa also is going to get a lot of financial backing. We saw Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick create this Senate Leadership Fund. I assume he's going to put a lot

of his own money into that, which will then be used to push Hinojosa's candidacy in the valley um the behind the scenes implications for this is if patrick can win this seat if hinojosa and patrick can win the seat that'll increase the cushion that patrick has between the gop majority and the super majority line needed. So that gives some more leeway for Patrick to push some of his ideal priorities through the Senate. You know, there'd be less of a risk of, let's say a Kel Seliger type of Senator objecting and causing all kinds of rankles and problems. There's that. Another one in the Valley, HG 37, Republican

Jenny Lopez against Democrat Jonathan Gracia. That is one Democrats believe they can flip. Another one they think they can flip is in Williamson County. HG 52, that's Caroline Harris Davila, Republican. And she, Williamson County is, went to Beto in 2018. Cruz started his,

started his tour of the state there. So it's very important to them. And she faces,-Dowell faces Jenny Burkholz. A lot of Democrats think they can at least make that really tight. I'm not sure. We'll see. Then you have 70, Collin County. That's the one that Steve Kennard's in against incumbent Mahala Placer. That's a very Democratic friendly district based on, uh, I think both habit and Trump lost that by pretty significant margins. So that is a huge uphill climb for Kennard. And frankly, I don't, I don't think he can pull it out just because of the math there.

Uh, district, this can be very hard for a Republican with little name ID to win, even with Trump at the top of the ticket. Then you have 118, HD 118, John Lujan against Kristen Carranza. That's very contentious already. We saw Carranza put out a leaked recording of Lujan talking about abortion in the context of if his hypothetical daughter had been raped and what would they do with the baby. He said, I think as a family, we would keep the baby. Now, of course, that's been taken and pushed out in messaging from Democrats. Lujan was not making a comment on statewide policy, but it is, of course, going to play into this race and i'm sure we're

going to see that on mailers and in tv ads and then you have hd 121 also in bear county this is one this is a sneaky flip opportunity uh this is markle hood republican incumbent he say he faces He faces or he defeated Steve Allison in the primary backed by Abbott. And he faces Democrat Laurel Swift. This is one Democrats think that they could really be competitive in, even though it's been a safe Republican seat for a while. But LaHood is, you know, not the same kind of member or potential member as Steve Allison or the guy who held it beforehand, Joe Strauss. So this is I have some more in the list. I won't go into any more. There's a lot at stake in these races, and each one is going to be affected by those at the top, particularly. Yeah, Cameron. So I wanted to ask you this.

I was listening to a recent podcast Kevin McCarthy did, and he talked all like fundraising and how super PACs work, individual donations, how that affects elections. But he also mentioned something about the current moderate voter, about the middle of the road person who could go either way. His assessment, he was talking in terms of the presidential election that people are already decided. It's about driving low propensity voters to the polls. Whoever does that best is going to win. He thinks people already have their minds made up. Do you see that similarly on the statewide elections, these local elections, that people probably already have their minds made up? It's just about getting the people to the polls?

Or do you think there's still an opportunity to change people's minds, whether it be voting Democrat or voting Republican? Basically, what he's arguing there is that it's essentially become a base election. He's probably talking about the presidential race, right? I don't think that's the case down ballot. All Red has, or has had until recently, it might have changed in the most up-to-date polling, but we haven't seen that yet, has had a lot of undecided voters. People either don't know about them at all or don't know what to think about them. And we've seen Cruz and All Red in a race to define All Red for those voters. So that's going to affect a lot. And then you look further down ballot and there's just

very, very large numbers of undecideds. For example, I didn't talk about this one, but it's in the article. HD 112, that's Angie Chen Button against Avery Bishop, Button's the Republican incumbent. And there was a poll put out by an internal from Button's camp, and it had her up, I think, 11 11 on Bishop but the undecided was 17 so you know some of that's going to be taken up by under vote people just aren't going to go all the way down the ballot that'll happen a lot but um in these lower ballot races, there are a lot more undecideds and it's a lot more important to, you know, define your opponent rather than just drive out the base, um, and get out the vote.

You know, it's, that's always important as well, but get out the vote for the undecideds that lean your way as well, as well, other than, you know, just your base. To Brad's point, I think it's important to note that there are opportunities for local candidates to one, door knock, actually be there in person so that undervoting doesn't happen, right? So if you have a voter, Republican voter, who's typically just there in the generals, has no idea what's happening in their district, in a primary, who their state representative is at the state capitol, you have an opportunity as a local candidate to campaign aggressively so that folks know who you are. And instead of just voting for Trump and Cruz at the top of the ticket, if you're a Republican,

saying, hey, I met this guy, Steve Kennard, let me go down, find his name on the list and vote for him, right? So that's a lot of the game that's being played with the local races. I'll also say with some local races, if you play your cards right, there's room for crossover voting, right? Where you have maybe somebody who comes to your door, you're like, I vote Democrat, but I liked this guy. And maybe I agreed with him on an issue like criminal justice reform or something along those lines where you can find some commonality. So there are opportunities for crossover votes that largely depends on the district too. But I think in local races, it's a mix of being at the whim of whatever the campaigns at the top of the ticket are driving and also having an opportunity to appeal to your microcosm

of voters in your district. So there's a lot that goes into play there. And you know, in a district, a House district that's a lot smaller, especially if it's geographically condensed, you as a candidate can actually knock most of those doors. Like door knocking actually moves the needle. And it moves the needle in an unbelievable way that you would. Yeah. It really matters.

Right. These are tens of thousands. Especially as a candidate, right? Yes. Yeah. The candidates who wear out tennis shoes. No,

the candidates who wear out their tennis shoes and have to buy multiple pair during an election cycle are the ones that are going to fare the best on election night. Just the way it is. You know, an example of that, I remember the HC 47 primary back in 2020. And that was the five-way chaotic primary. And it is a primary. So take that for what it's worth. But Jennifer Fleck won that primary. And that kind of came out of nowhere because I don't think she had any money.

She did not have a lot of exposure, at least in the traditional media sense, like TV ads and whatnot. But she won by quite a bit because she knocked just a crap ton of doors. And, you know, it works on that smaller level. It really does absolutely well we could talk about that all day long maybe it'll be another smoke filled room episode after the general um cam we're going to come to you you attended a texas stock exchange announcement this week certainly something we're watching super closely this was really really interesting what did they talk about what did did they announce? Give us the details. Yeah. So this is something we've reported on in the past because

it was just, it was a bit unexpected, at least for me. I wasn't following this very closely until I saw the announcement, but yeah, there was a press conference where Governor Greg Abbott and a number of global business leaders came out to Austin at the governor's mansion to announce their executive leadership team. And what was very interesting is some of the notable names were former acting general counsel for Charles Schwab, Jeffrey Brown, Jonathan Ross, who is the former technology officer at KCG Holdings, and then also former Texas governor and U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry. He was there during the press conference. They were announcing who was going to be a part of this executive leadership team. They did end up taking some media questions. And one of the big

points for starting up this stock exchange was the issues surrounding ESG that we've seen Texas really push back against. But ESG is still a really big thing that occurs with big companies. It has its effect on the New York Stock Exchange, and it really is a global sort of movement. So it affects the stock exchange overseas as well. So I made sure to ask, hey, is there going to be any barriers for listings or for people who want to invest in companies if ESG is involved in any way with the Texas Stock Exchange? And James Lee, who's actually the founder of the Texas Stock Exchange Group, he said the exchange is apolitical. And then Abbott went on to say that, quote, there is a reason why we are number one for doing business, and that is because we make it easy as possible to do business in the state of Texas. The same thing goes for the Texas

Stock Exchange. So yeah, just a big announcement. It's some of the other points that they mentioned is they are going to start, they're going to begin their registration with the SEC. And so they plan on having their first trades on this new stock exchange by the end of next year and launch listings as early as 2026. So, yeah, just some updates there. I'm sure there'll be more news that comes out regarding the Texas Stock Exchange in the coming weeks. And we'll make sure to get something up about it. Absolutely. It's so fascinating to think about this launching. It seems so, I don't know, so far away in so many ways, because we've heard about this for a little

while now. It's a huge endeavor. It is a huge project to make something like this go live. The fact that the end of next year, that's still a long ways away. It's over a year, but still the fact we would have that, you know, the Texas Stock Exchange live at that point is crazy to me. Yeah. Well, they're going to be headquartered in Dallas. You know, people make trades on stock exchanges virtually, but there's going to be a headquarters in Dallas. And Dallas for a number of decades has really been the epicenter of business in Texas. So putting it there is really, I think, a strategic decision because with how Texas is trying to position itself as this economic hub, especially in Dallas, but also in Austin, having a stock exchange headquartered in the state,

I think is going to provide a lot of advantages and benefits for businesses that really want to be in a state that is trying to promote business by reducing regulations and barriers to entry for not just big businesses, but small businesses as well. So it'll be, it'll be interesting to see how this all plays out. The contrast is super clear. And I think, you know, starting a stock exchange in Texas sends a pretty clear message. So we'll definitely keep an eye on it. Cameron, thank you. Bradley, let's talk about a wild piece that you published this week about a small town in Texas. We kind of joke that each reporter at the Texan at one point or another has a small town that they're covering with some wild behind the scenes stuff going on. You found your town.

Let's talk about Marion. What the heck is happening in Marion? Oh boy, did I? So the city of Marion's new fiscal year began on Tuesday, and they have yet to pass a budget or a tax rate. Sounds like, you know, that's kind of bad, but that's not that much, right? Oh boy, does it get crazier. There has been, they've been mired in tumult and chaos for at least a few years now. Previous mayor, Victor Contreras, resigned amid sexual harassment accusations. Various council members have resigned over the last couple of years. And as of March, one of the only three remaining people on council, including the mayor stepped down. So that left just three, one of the only three remaining council members stepped down.

So that just left two councilmen and the mayor unable to hit a quorum. So they couldn't pass anything all summer, including the budget and tax rate. Well, they, earlier this year, they tried to call a special election in May or a local election in May to fill the seats. Well, they missed the deadline, so there was no such election, and all those seats remained vacant. Shortly after that, on July 1st, the mayor and the city secretary resigned. The mayor in his resignation letter took some swings at the mayor pro tem, one of the councilmen members, Abigail Mayberry,

and he accused her of basically trying to run the city herself. This was in response to her asking questions about financials that are pretty sticky. And you can read all those details in the piece. But he signed, this is just peak local governments, part-time politicians. You know, like he finished his resignation letter citing The Breakfast Club and I forget, another movie. And saying his name is um daniel loyola and he just said he signed it off jhl out and that was it it's unreal he resigned yeah he resigned the city secretary also resigned uh the background of this is that Loyola defeated Mayberry for the mayoral position by two votes back in November of last year.

So he left the office. Mayberry started looking into the financials more. He came back into the office under the holdover, the state's holdover provision until the seat can be filled. He is technically still holding the seat, whether he resigned it or not. He convinces the councilmen that resigned back in March to act for this budget meeting. They show up. He tries to ram through a budget and a tax rate, but the budget that he proposes is missing a bunch of numbers. They don't have actual numbers for this fiscal year. So the two council members that had been on the, they said we can't pass a budget and a tax rate without with partial financials so um that's where that's the most recent update there but there is just so much to that the more i put pen to paper on this thing

the more crazy layers that i peeled off it was nuts i think rob when he first when the draft first was submitted by you rob Rob was not fully up to speed on what this story would entail from a detailed perspective, right? He knew it was coming, did not understand all the nitty gritty. When it came in, what did he say? He's like, this reads like a soap opera

or something like that. It was like a tabloid. It's wild what's going on. We haven't even delved into the bank accounts. So what's going on with the bank accounts in the city, the fiscal side? Yeah. So for years now, it's a jumbled mess.

Mayberry actually described this. It looks like the city's doing fine on the outside, but when you open the box, it's a tangled mess. Trying to find the end of this rope is impossible. So after looking into this, they found that there was $16,000 missing from the municipal court fund. The city has been using the municipal court fund and the utility fund to basically subsidize the general fund. And they look at credit card records and the city's credit card has been used for things like Walmart, Sam's Club, and my personal favorite, Kentucky Fried Chicken.

They brought in a paid auditor, a forensic auditor, and they paid him $35,000. Well the work product he produced was not a report, it was a one and a half page bulleted list memo. Initially the water clerk, Amber Palacios, she resigned. She told me my morals and values don't line up with things happening over there right now. I didn't want to stick around. Another crazy insight here is what came from Blyden. And when I was talking to him on the phone, Cameron and Rob were sitting in the office and all of a sudden they hear me just go,

holy crap. Is that the word you used? The reason is that, no, that's the, it was probably a little bit harsher language. Yeah. A little bit.

Yeah. Yeah. And it, Hey, it fits because, um, Gliden told me that the, the computer server that backs up the city,

the police department and more is, uh, stored in the bathroom of city hall. And as Blden put it, I could turn to the right and piss on the server and take out the city police department and more. Oh my gosh. This entire situation is just nuts.

And I won't go into this part. I have a whole section on it in the piece, so go read that. But on top of this, there's a knockdown drag out fight between the mayor and the guy who runs a local youth sports organization. What the heck? This is just. This is plainly a mess. And the city is is reeling. It's only a thousand person town. So everything's personal in this.

And, you know, as you can probably suspect, the Facebook comment sections and the message boards in the community are just rife with people fighting and yelling at each other. And maybe I already said that the mayor's friends are uh threatening her um the mayor is accusing her of bullying him it's just insanity yeah and you think maybe perhaps mismanagement would be more difficult to come across in a town this size it turns out that's often not the case it's just not it's even more complex sometimes on these very localized examples. Brad, are state or officials or law enforcement looking into this at all?

So Blyden told me he called the FBI, called their municipal fraud fund or fraud unit or something like that. I called the fbi and they said they can't confirm or deny any investigation but i heard from somebody else that the fbi interviewed them so safe to say they are looking into this where where they do anything about it i don't know i also confirmed that the the rangers texas rangers not the baseball team. They have received complaints and are looking into it themselves. Again, what they do with it, I have no idea. But this is such a jumbled mess that one of the suggestions that I've heard from people involved in this is just dissolving the city government and handing it over to the county. The county and county judge do not want to deal with it so please please do not

do that um there is an election in november neither may vary nor blyden are on the ballot there are nine new candidates running so there's a very good chance that we have just entirely entirely new not very good chance of a guaranteed chance of entirely new council other than the mayor so what that means i don't know but this this entire story was just insane and that's best and it will certainly warrant certainly warrant follow-ups at certain points. So be on the lookout for it. And folks, this is, as I do with all of our pieces, say this all the time, but this is a piece I certainly recommend going and reading in full. Go to the Texan.news, read it in full, get all the details.

It certainly is something else. And I think will be a continuing story that Brad will be following up on quite the saga. Brad, thank you. Cameron, I want to ask you a question. Would you mind showing our listeners or those who are watching the pod, what you might be drinking out of right now?

The vessel that you have chosen. Fake news. Ah, stops here this is a news stops here official incredible unbelievable merch folks if you don't own a fake news there you go official merch and if you don't own one i'd encourage you to go to the texan store pick one up today it'll ship right to your house. It's pretty awesome. Cameron's modeling it. Yes. Oh, look at that. That's exactly what you will look like. Just as cool, calm, collected as Cameron. If you go buy a fake news stops here mug from our store right now. But I have good news. If you want free merch, we have an offer for you. The Texan is commemorating the 189th anniversary of the Battle of Gonzales with this exclusive offer. When you sign up for an annual subscription to The Texan, anytime between

now, Friday morning when this podcast is released, and Sunday evening, midnight, October 6th, you will get a free come and take it cap that is unbelievable. It's awesome. It has certainly been one of our most popular merch items and we used to offer it with subscriptions and are bringing it back for this purpose because it was so popular. You will certainly get it shipped right to your house if you go and subscribe to the Texan right now with an annual subscription. Go do it. It's worth it. Support our team. Make sure Brad can feed Winston. That's the pitch every time. But seriously, support our team. Go to thetexan.news. We are funded exclusively by our subscribers and certainly take this endeavor very seriously.

Go support it. We celebrate Texas history at the Texan. Unlike a lot of news outlets, it's important. And I also say we published, as we always do, a Texas history piece commemorating the battle of gonzalez this week by matt stringer certainly worth going and checking out as you're subscribing to the text and after you subscribe go read matt's piece some great texas history there for you mary lee's finally we are coming to you my dear you're working on a piece we're going to stick with election coverage, you're working on a piece. We're going to stick with election coverage here. You're working on a piece covering the House race in House District 34. Tell us about it. Yes.

Yeah. So this is following Democratic Representative Abel Herrero. He decided after a decade to give up his seat in House District 34. So there's particular attention that's been drawn to this race in South Texas because it has a lot of potential to swing from blue to red this November. So it has a barely Democratic majority. The Texas Partisan Index gave it a rating of D57 back in 2022, but now it's just over halfway Democratic with a D, 54 percent. So this district consists of a portion of, I believe you pronounce this, Nueces County. And so in it are Brownsville. OK, that's right. All right.

So it has Brownsville and Corpus Christi in it. And it covers a population of around 700,000 and their median age is about 30. And both of the candidates running for the seat are from Corpus Christi. So the Republican candidate is Denise Villalobos and the Democratic is Solomon Ortiz Jr. And Solomon received 72% of the Democratic primary vote in March. He ran against Roland Barrera. He won the prime, oh excuse me, Denise then won the primary in March without any party opposition. She was actually endorsed by Governor Greg Abbott in September. He described her as the

quintessential example of the Texas miracle. And a key policy difference between these two candidates that I think will probably heavily impact this election are their different stances on school vouchers and school choice. Ortiz has said, I don't believe the taxpayer should foot the bill for sending our children to private schools. He said you cannot have a strong public education system in Texas if you siphon money from it to pay for private schools. So he's been endorsed by three members of the board of Tolosa Midway ISD. So three members of the ISD endorsed him.

And contrastingly, Abbott said the Villalobos will ensure that we provide school choice to Texas families and guarantee that the next generation of Texans enjoy the same freedom and opportunity that have propelled her career in South Texas and I asked Villa Lobos about what she thought about the district's potential to flip from blue to red. And she responded and said, you know, I'm less focused on blue or red or on the party label of the person who represents us in Austin. She said she's more interested in the policies that the person will pursue on behalf of this community. So stay posted as we follow this race. It's going to be an interesting one to watch. I love when it gets to the time of year where we really are pivoting toward election coverage. And Mary leads, this will be great information for folks in that

district to be able to read and digest before they go to the ballot box. Thank you so much for covering that race for us. Cameron, coming to you. Let's talk about some federal news here. House Democrats have signed a letter pushing back on certain provisions in the NDAA related to LGBT service members. Tell us about it. Yes. So for those who are unfamiliar, the NDAA is the National Defense Authorization Act, and it has become a contentious issue. Like you mentioned, there are several provisions related to LGBT members of the U.S. Armed Forces. And now 162 Democratic U.S. House members have penned a letter to both the House and Senate Armed Service Committee chairs to oppose those provisions. So for some background, the House version of the NDAA was passed back in June, which included amendments to prohibit material that promotes, quote,

radical gender ideology, the funding of, quote, gender transition procedures, and drag show, drag queen story hour, or similar events. There has, at the time the House passed that version, the Congressional Equality Caucus issued a letter to, quote, condemn those amendments. The Senate version of the NDAA also includes a, quote, restriction on performance of sex change surgeries covered by TRICARE, the health care program for the U.S. military. And now, like I mentioned, we have this letter opposing many of those provisions. Every House Democrat from Texas signed their name to this letter, except for Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez. And this was a, I actually worked on this piece with Brad a little bit because there's some interesting wrinkle here.

One of the congressmen who signed the letter is Rep Colin Allred. As we all know, he's running a high-profile campaign against Ted Cruz. Allred has sort of tried to fashion himself as the more moderate, pragmatic candidate in this race, but Cruz's team has criticized Allred for signing onto the NDAA letter. So some back and forth between Cruz and Allred in regards to the NDAA, and we'll see what happens here. I don't know how effective many of these letters are, but there's a lot of names signed to it, a lot of high profile

names. And I think the impact it can have on the Senate election between Cruz and Allred will be interesting by the fact that Cruz has really tried to position himself in this campaign as a champion for women's sports and trying to keep female spaces, female spaces, male spaces, male spaces, and pushing back against the quote sort of woke ideology that's infected many different institutions. And this is another example with how this NDAA was initially fashioned to accommodate many of those ideas, but with these amendments trying to push back. So lots of little different wrinkles once you start to peel back some of the layers. We'll see what happens. I'm sure if it goes either way, either passed or signed into law and initiated, there will be more updates to come.

Absolutely. Cameron, we're going to stick with you here. There's a huge national story happening that also has a lot of impact on Texas East and Gulf Coast ports came to a halt as dock workers went on strike after failed contract negotiations, a tale as old as time. Give us the update. Yeah, this was something that was sort of percolating underneath the political zeitgeist as we saw on Tuesday, it really came to a head when the International Longshoremen's Association initiated a widespread strike over a dispute centered on wage increases and protections against automation with the United States Maritime Alliance and the ILA failing to reach an agreement despite last minute negotiations. The ILA president, Harold Daggett, he put a press release out saying, we are demanding $5 an hour increase in wages for

each of the six years of a new contract. So for those unfamiliar, that would be a total of $30, a pay increase of 77% over six years. And it was previously reported that the USMX had offered a pay increase of 50% over six years. The interesting aspect of this, which was mentioned about the contract breakdown was in regards to automation or semi-automation. They want, the ILA wants airtight language protections against automation and semi-automation. And once you sort of dig into this, like I mentioned, this has been sort of hovering over, uh, the, uh, the trade workers, uh, the dock workers. And there has been, there was some interesting comments that came out from, uh, Harold Daggett previously. he said in a video, quote, I will cripple you and you have no idea what that means. He said this a few weeks prior to the strike.

He went on to say, quote, these people today don't know what a strike is. He was emphasizing the impact a strike could have on the U.S. economy. And we actually have a quite large port here in Texas the port of Houston it's actually the largest Gulf Coast container port and the Houston ship Channel complex is actually the top ranked U.S port in foreign waterborne tonnage and the activity at the Port of Houston helps generate more than $439 billion in statewide economic value and $906 billion in nationwide economic value. So very interesting that this is happening right before an election. You know, they've been negotiating this for a long time. It's a six-year contract. I don't know if, it, no idea if they align the contract negotiations that happen during an election year,

who knows. Um, but, uh, there's gonna be some election implications for this. Uh, there are There are different acts that Biden could enact to get dock workers back to work. He has said he doesn't plan on enacting those. And the conversation around union support, really signaling worker protections, trying to garner some of those votes in the upcoming election. Both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump and their campaigns have tried to signal solidarity with unions and workers in some sort of context. So we will see what happens if either something occurs with the current administration with President Biden, or if this strike drags out for a few more weeks into the election, what happens if a Donald Trump presidency occurs or a Kamala Harris presidency occurs, how they will act on this, but ports incredibly important, especially with the amount of goods that are shipped overseas and

funneled through these ports into the interior of the United States. Billions and billions, hundreds of billions of dollars are moved through these ports and goods. So very interesting story here. Once we have updates, I'll make sure to get them out to everyone. As Cameron always does. Cam, thank you. We have two more stories, guys. We're nearing an hour, but I want to hit them. They're both important. So Mary Elise, let's talk about the vice presidential debate. Obviously, huge national story this week. Lots of reactions to J.D. Vance and Tim Walz up there on stage talking about all sorts of issues. But you specifically looked into Walz's claim about Texas's maternal mortality rates on Tuesday night that he made. Tell us what you found.

Yes. So during the vice presidential debate on Tuesday night, Tim Waltz made the statement that we have seen maternal mortality skyrocket in Texas, outpacing many other countries in the world. And he was saying that this was a case after Texas's pro-life laws took place, took effect after the overturn of Roe v. Wade. So I looked into Texas's maternal mortality ratio, which calculates the number of maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. And it reported that Texas increased in 2020 and 2021. But this was a spike that the Texas Maternal and Mortality Review Committee of the Texas Department of State Health Services attributed mostly to COVID-19. They said that if COVID-19 related maternal mortalities had been excluded from the data, that Texas's ratio would have been actually decreased from 2020 to 2021. So that's interesting to note. However, this is what likely Waltz was referencing. There was an exclusive analysis published by NBC News recently

based off of data collected from the Gender Equity Policy Institute. And it showed that the maternal mortality rate rose 56% from 2019 through 2022 in Texas. And the methodology of this data is unknown and is relatively exclusive, but, um, it is important to note that their numbers did include COVID years showing that 22, 2022 was not that far behind 2020s maternal mortality rates, which indicates that most of the increase occurred before the Dobbs opinion that put Texas's abortion laws into place that triggered Texas's abortion restrictions. And then as for his statement that Texas is outpacing other countries, I dug a little bit into that and I found other countries such as South Sudan and Nigeria have maternal mortality rates that are over a little 1,000. And in Liberia, Somalia, and Afghanistan have a rating

that's in the 600s. And so if Texas was on this list side by side with other countries, it would be ranked pretty close to 115th place out of the 168, excuse me, 186. So that was interesting to look into. I definitely recommend reading the piece. You can get all the numbers. Absolutely. And certainly good to go down data rabbit holes when these kinds of claims are made, regardless of who the candidate is, right? This is something that when our state is talked about on the national stage, let's dive into it. Let's figure out what the numbers actually tell us. So certainly a piece worth reading for Mary Elise at the texan.news. Mary Elise, thank you. Cameron, let's hit this quickly. Before we get into our tweeter here, you know, we all got a lot of tweetery to discuss this week. A coalition of federal, state, and local Texas officials asked the DOJ to monitor the upcoming election. Tell us about your story. So this letter, it points to Harris County, Dallas County,

Tarrant, Bexar County, Travis County. In particular, it also points out Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxson. As everyone knows, Harris County has been fraught with a number of issues related to its elections. Multiple contests against certain elections and criminal complaints have all been filed. And what this letter is essentially saying, they're expressing concern over the upcoming election and calling on intervention from federal officials, particularly the Department of Justice, to oversee these elections that are going to be occurring in 30 days or so. So what's interesting, though, is it actually points out that some of the things that Abbott has done in terms of clearing up some of the voter rolls, this letter points out that it could disincentivize or not encourage people to go out and vote. So

critical of some of the actions that Abbott and especially Ken Paxton, who has launched investigations into multiple counties due to upholding some of the election integrity law that Texas has passed over the past few years. What's interesting, I'll mention here, signatures from eight U.S. Congress members, including Rep. Colin Allred, two Harris County officials, two Tarrant County commissioners, one Baird, Dallas, and Travis County official, each eight state senators and 26 state house members all signed on to this letter. So large coalition of both federal, state, and even local officials here. And yeah, I just think this letter is just highlighting the fact about how important people are seeing this upcoming election is as voting you know people start heading to the polls just to see how it all goes down

it's it's happening it's happening it's happening cameron thank you for following up on that story for us we appreciate it and shout shout out Holly. Holly Hansen certainly covered different aspects of this whole development for a long time and Cameron picked it up and killed it with his story. So thanks for covering that, Cam. Let's move into the tweeter-y section here. Brad, let's stick with the election talk here and share with us your tweeter-y this week. Yeah. So I saw a snippet of a Hunter S. Thompson book tweeted out by Jasper Sherrod with the Tribune. It's just wild illustration of what the month of October is like for campaigns, and I'll read a bit of it. October in the politics business is like drowning in scum or trying to hang on through the final hour of a bastinado punishment. The flesh is dying and the heart is full of hate.

The winners are subpoenaed by divorce lawyers and the losers hole up in cheap motel rooms on the outskirts of town with a briefcase full of hyper hypodermic needles and the certain knowledge the next time their name to get in the newspapers will be when they are found dead in a puddle of blood in the trunk of some filthy stolen car in an abandoned parking lot very vivid wild um he ends it with yeah he ends it with uh talking more about how brutal the last home stretch is. And he goes, there are never enough seats on the last train out of the station. This is October for, you know, we hear talk a lot about October surprises. Things get brought out. You know, I mentioned the clip of Lujan

in the HG118 race. That, I don't know if that was released exactly in October, but it's basically the same thing. You know, campaigns hold their, their worst dirt of other candidates for the homestretch in order to influence, uh, voters most when they're about to go to the polls and, you know, it can be pretty effective. It has been in the past. And, you know, we saw in 2016 the James Comey press conference that seemed to kind of sink Hillary Clinton's candidacy, although we didn't know it at the time.

Hindsight is, of course 2020 but you know we're only as we sit here uh 17-ish days from the start of early voting which begins on october 21st and so imagine the the things some of these campaigns are whipping up and um you know start with cruising all red but you know even more in some of these more personal races down ballots where the undecided is nature is so heavy um you know there's gonna be a lot of haymakers thrown and we'll see if they land but yeah that uh that book is that that snippet by thompson is in a pretty good book um that uh just discusses campaigns and what they're like so yeah there's that ending on ending the week on a great upbeat note yeah our twitter this this

week is certainly not the most upbeat of uh of segments we've ever had on our podcast. Maybe I'll go so we can have Mary Elise go at the end. Also, Cameron's frozen, so I'm unsure if we'll get Cameron's Twitter here. But he's looking very demure in his little frozen photo there. Very thoughtful. So we'll see if he comes back. But Mary Elise, we'll save you for the end because you're just a little bit more lighthearted, a little bit, you know, a little less rough. But I'm going to go ahead and talk about some big news here. It's tangentially related to Texas politics. But of course, Sean Combs, known as P. Diddy, has been in headlines across the world, across the nation for all sorts of heinous accusations, all sorts of crazy things that are happening on that regard.

We'll get into a little bit of it here and be as delicate as we can. But the tangential relation here to Texas and Texas politics is, of course, Houston lawyer Tony Busby representing 120 people in lawsuits against Sean Diddy Combs. Busby held a press conference earlier this week, I believe it was on Wednesday, and will now be representing more than 100 people in separate lawsuits. All these lawsuits plan to be filed over the next 30 days. I think we'll be learning a lot of information about what's going on here. Of course, this is a worldwide story, but Tony Busby is who represented in large part Ken Paxton, our attorney general here in Texas, during his impeachment trial in the Senate last year, last summer.

So this is a name that all of us in and around Texas politics are incredibly familiar with. And seeing him at the forefront, literally lead counsel for this entire effort for these alleged victims of Diddy to come forward with their stories is a pretty wild change of pace for what we're used to seeing him enter the arena for illegally. Now, of course, he's also been at the forefront of a lot of other big legal fights that do not have anything to do with politics. He's also run for mayor in Houston. So this is somebody that's very familiar to Texans and Texas voters. And so it's very fascinating to watch this. Yeah, there are a lot of accusations being leveled at this music mogul. And essentially,

Busby said, hey, thousands of people came forward and were bringing their stories to us. And of those thousands, we've distilled down 120 people that we're going to move forward with their cases. So we'll be watching this. This is going to be very interesting to watch all of this go down and seeing, again, seeing Tony Busby in this context was wild and seeing him at a press conference that has absolutely lit social media aflame. It is wild to watch and certainly going to be a huge story. Are any of y'all following any of this as far as Diddy goes? I've just seen a little bit about it on twitter i mean it's kind of everywhere right now i just don't know very much it's gruesome it's tough

i saw you just got what 120 more charges tacked on that really yeah well it's 120 people um that will be oh yeah that's did you listen to any part of what I just said, Bradley? You can listen back to the pod. But basically, I won't repeat it for people. But there are 120 people that Busby himself is representing. And those are the lawsuits that will be filed individually over the next 30 days. So it's going to slowly come out and Busby has teased as well, that there will be some very big names,

big Hollywood names that are attached to these lawsuits. They're going after the people at these parties who just were there and watched and didn't do anything and participated in these acts. So it's going to be wild. But Brad, if you want to know more about it, I'd encourage you to listen to the weekly roundup podcast. Thanks for the recommendation. I'm not going to do that. Okay, great. Mary Elise, why don't you, I don't know if we got Cameron. Cameron, if you are around, speak now or forever,

hold your peace. But Mary Elise, why don't you go ahead and chat here? Yes. So I saw that on X right now, it is trending that there was a solar flare that just happened. I don't really know very much about solar flares, but it says it was an X-9 class, which is apparently one of the most intense solar flares to be recorded. And I'm not sure exactly how it would affect the Earth. I think it would affect technology. But I thought that was pretty interesting never heard of that before that's wild i love that oh cameron's back cameron quickly if you're there oh he's blinking if he doesn't speak in the next 10 seconds we are moving on without his tweeter. Oh, there we go. Well, folks, thank you so much for listening to the weekly roundup. We appreciate it and we will catch you on next week's episode. Thank you to everyone for listening. If you enjoy our show, rate and review us on Apple podcasts, Spotify,

or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you want more of our stories, subscribe to The Texan at thetexan.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 an email to editor at thetexan.news. We are funded entirely by readers and listeners like you. So thank you again for your support. Tune in next week for another episode of our weekly roundup. God bless you and God bless Texas.