The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - October 6, 2023

Episode Date: October 6, 2023

COME AND TAKE IT — buy a Gonzales Flag t-shirt here: https://store.thetexan.news/products/gonzales-flag-come-and-take-it-t-shirtShow off your Lone Star spirit with a free Gonzales Flag t-shirt 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: Rep. Kevin McCarthy as the first speaker of the House in U.S. history to be ousted in a voteA lack of additional funding for border security in the U.S. House’s stopgap funding measureA Texas congressman claiming he will nominate Donald Trump for speaker of the HouseTexas’ school choice and border security-focused special session set to begin Monday, October 9Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas waiving federal laws to construct barriers on the border26 state attorneys general questioning Pornhub over a supposed ‘loophole’ in its verification systemThe police footage of Sen. Charles Schwertner’s DWI arrest in FebruaryA Kerr County commissioner being removed from office for his prior felony recordA Texas law over social media content moderation on the docket of the U.S. Supreme CourtThe Texas Supreme Court preparing to hear arguments in a “public nuisance” case over the smell from chicken farms

Happy Friday, folks. Senior Editor Mackenzie DeLulo here, and welcome back to the Texans Weekly Roundup podcast. This week, the team discusses Representative Kevin McCarthy as the first Speaker of the House in U.S. history to be ousted in a vote, a lack of additional funding for border security in the U.S. House's stopgap funding measure, a Texas congressman claiming he will nominate Donald Trump for Speaker of the House. Texas' school choice and border security-focused special session set to begin on Monday. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas waiving federal laws to construct barriers on the border. 26 state attorneys general questioning Pornhub over a supposed loophole in its verification system.

The police footage of Senator Charles Schwartner's DWI arrest in February. A Kerr County commissioner being removed from office for his prior felony record. A Texas law over social media content moderation on the docket of the U.S. Supreme Court. The Texas Supreme Court preparing to hear arguments in a public nuisance case over the smell from chicken farms, the Office of the Attorney General suing Yelp over its labels on crisis pregnancy centers, and the House Board of Managers accidentally publishing Ken and Angela Paxton's Austin home address. Thanks for listening and enjoy this episode.

Howdy folks, Mackenzie here with Cameron, Matt, Brad, and hayden brad and hayden are remote today hayden's feeling a little under the weather and brad just couldn't navigate his way to work so we are uh stuck with we are there you go again brad you care to explain lies the slander i don't think it's that far off of slander. Please explain your side of the story. I couldn't find my way to work today. I'm sorry a massive highway was entirely shut down that prevented me from getting even close to the office.

Further evidence that Mac is a cry bully. See, she's instigating conflict and then objects to our response wow cry bully that one's new i had to replace the battery in my truck this morning and i still made it to work on time well matt you know hmm hmm interesting see i don't know who to believe here i try to remain switzerland so cameron is major switzerland hayden used to to be Switzerland and now he's just entirely turned on me, but that's okay. It's neither here nor

there. Um, he just called me a cry bully. So that tells us where we're at with our relationship. Um, I had a really great relationship. Yeah. Oh, it's so good. Well, Matt, since you made it to work on time and happen to have car issues as well, we're going to start with you today. Oh, boy. Okay. History has been in the making in Washington, D.C. this week with the removal of a House speaker and the process to select a new presiding officer. Give us the rundown. I think it would be fair to say that this major issue was not expected by many of us leading up to the removal vote for U.S. Speaker of the House. It certainly caught a lot of us here in the newsroom and the Texan off guard. I kind of started spreading the word. I was like,

oh my gosh, oh my gosh, this is real, this is happening, there were strong words being exchanged between now former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, with Gaetz expressing his outrage over the federal deficit spending and saying McCarthy betrayed agreements he made to obtain the leadership. Specifically, there were procedural deals that McCarthy had promised not to ever do, including passing omnibus legislation. Now, that's legislation that pertains to a whole bunch of different things and funds all kinds of different areas of government and expenditures, et cetera, et cetera, as opposed to the deal he made saying we're going to have single-subject appropriations

in the interest of promoting transparency. Gates was angered when McCarthy recently struck a deal with the Democrats to pass an omnibus spending resolution to avoid the government shutdown. Now, many believed nothing would come from this. Gates is quite often publicly complaining about things that never go anywhere, for lack of a better way to describe it. And McCarthy had expressed strong confidence that he was going to be keeping his seat and even tweeted out, bring it on, as Gates threatened to file a motion to vacate the chair. Now, that tweet seemed to make tempers boil over.

And, I can't think of any other way to put it, but Gates proceeded to brought it. There's been a lot of great memes about that, too, by the way. Even after Gates filed the motion to vacate the chair, there was a lot of doubt regarding whether McCarthy would not be able to pull the GOP fully behind him and retain the speakership. There was also reportedly a deal with the Democrats to keep him in place should a challenge to his speakership arise. But when the final votes fell on the vote on whether or not to keep him in office or let him go, eight Republicans voted to remove McCarthy along with the full Democratic caucus, and he became the first speaker in U.S. history to be ousted from the post. Absolutely. So now we move to selecting a new speaker. What is that process like? So the rules for the House provide that if the speaker post becomes vacant, a speaker pro tem, which is a person secretly selected by

McCarthy, becomes the acting speaker until the House selects a new one. It was revealed after McCarthy was removed that he had selected North Carolina Congressman Patrick McHenry to be the speaker pro tem. Now, McHenry has instructed both party caucuses to meet during this week, and I believe they're going to hold a candidate forum within their caucuses, etc., etc., and we've seen a couple of congressmen throw their hat into the ring, specifically campaigning for it, along with one congressman who says he plans to make a nomination, and we'll get to that story shortly. Yes, a quite notable nomination to be sure. Matt, thank you so much. Hayden, we're coming to you. What were some of Texas Republicans' thoughts on

the stopgap funding measure that Congress recently passed? Well, we had our regularly scheduled panic over the so-called government shutdown that happens occasionally because the federal government cannot manage to pass a real appropriations bill and a real budget that lasts throughout the year and that they can all agree on. So instead, we have these temporary fixes and extensions. I think the last one passed was what, in the early 90s, Hayden? I don't remember when the last one was, but it seems like for the entirety of 30th to extend funding of the federal government until mid-September. As usual, border security became ensnared in the budget talks. The final vote to pass the continuing resolution was 335 to 91 in the U.S. House. It was passed in the Senate

and President Biden signed it later that day. The Democrats begrudgingly supported it because they did not want to help McCarthy deliver this policy victory and they wanted more Ukraine funding, but only one Democrat voted against the CR because if Democrats had blocked it, it would have made them responsible for shutting down the government. Consequently, the measure passed and the government was kept open for another six weeks. But there was an earlier version of the CR that would have included more border security funding, and it failed with a vote of 198 yays to 232 nays. We had a little bit of a divide in the Texas congressional delegation. Congressman Tony Gonzalez voted against the final version of the proposal, saying he was disappointed that there was not more border security funding in the legislation. However, Congresswoman De La Cruz blamed Republicans who opposed that first

negotiation, and she ended up voting in favor of the final draft, and she did not join those 90 Republicans to vote against it. So we had a divide in the Texas delegation, but she's really laying blame at the feet of those Republicans who opposed that first draft. But she says that there was a promise of a supplemental border security package being considered later. Of course, as Matt just went over, there's been a leadership change since then. So let's talk about that. How did this issue factor into the ouster of McCarthy as Speaker? We attended a media availability with Congresswoman De La Cruz only hours before the House took that vote to remove McCarthy as Speaker. It was a narrow vote to remove him as Speaker, 216 yays to 210 nays.

De La Cruz explained that she was confident in McCarthy's leadership and believed that he was doing well by the party. The U.S. House said it was his disappointment over border security, among other issues, that spurred him to move to remove McCarthy from the speakership. Of course, Democrats were united behind McCarthy's ouster as well, and there are various ways of looking at that. But border security certainly played a role in McCarthy's ouster and the opposition by many Republicans to this final version of the funding extension, which was ultimately passed by Democrats. The lion's share of the votes in favor of this came from Democrats. There you go, Hayden. Thank you so much for your coverage. Matt, we're coming to you with some more

federal news circling back to the U.S. House of Representatives and the effort to replace Kevin McCarthy. A Texas congressman says he plans to make, like we mentioned, a notable nomination and a very non the process of selecting their choices for the next U.S. Speaker of the House. Republican Congressman Jim Jordan and Steve Scalise, I should mention Scalise is the majority leader, I believe, so essentially the number two man under the Speaker, have both thrown their hats into the ring and are actively courting the support of their Republican colleagues for the speakership. However, Texas Congressman Troy Nils is taking another route, says he plans to nominate former president and current GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump to be the Speaker of the House. And this nomination highlights an interesting fact about the qualifications for the position under the U.S. Constitution. Under the Constitution, the Speaker is one of the House's officers, like the Sergeant

of Arms, etc., etc., and it doesn't require that an actual elected member serve in the role. Although by tradition, members have always been selected from amongst themselves to serve as the Speaker of the House, no non-member has ever served in the role. However, during past Speaker elections, non-members have received votes for the job, including the most recent one back in January, where we saw like 15 rounds of voting. Trump himself received one of the stray votes for speakership, thus illustrating that a non-member can become speaker. Several lawmakers have now expressed support for Trump to serve as Speaker, showing that his support is growing, including Congressman Neals tweeted that Representative Ronnie Jackson,

a panhandle Republican, is one of the members throwing their support in behind Trump. And Trump himself has not rejected the idea. Many of you have probably seen his post on Truth Social, which has been carried around and circulated on X, that shows a picture of him wielding the gavel in the speaker's chair with the American flag behind him and wearing a MAGA cap as he presides over the House chamber. Leaning into it a bit. Yeah, leaning into it a little bit. So Trump was asked about this by some reporters, and he said that there's a lot of Republicans who would make good speakers and that he would be willing to help them if they need it

during the selection process to pick a good speaker and help sort things out in the House. So we'll see. He left the door open but also said, you know, I can help y'all figure out who would be the best to lead, etc., etc., and said something along the lines of, you know, at the end of the day, he's going to do what's best for the country and for the Republican Party. If elected, Trump, once again, would be the first non-member of Congress to serve in the position. So we'll keep an eye on the race for the Speaker's job as it develops over this next week and see who ends up ultimately wielding the gavel.

Yeah, absolutely. What a week. What a week. It's very rare. Lots of firsts. Yes, it's very rare that we lead off with like three federal stories right off the bat, but it was a pretty big week in D.C. And it's a fun shifting of the gears since we've been just so consumed here at the Texas politics, everything going on from impeachment trial, special session, all of that sort of stuff, having to shift our focus up towards D.C. and kind of get familiar, familiarize ourselves with some of these nuanced facts so that we can better report on these issues as they arise. Absolutely. Thank you, Matt. Bradley, coming to you. The Texas legislature is set to reconvene on Monday for the third special session of 2023. The trial's over. Here we are again heading back to the legislature. What can we expect?

As of this recording, Governor Abbott has yet to announce the slate of items on the call for the third special session, but he did announce that they will be brought back in at 1 p.m. on Monday. It is understood that school choice and education funding will be on the special session call, along with some collection of border issues. Narrow border items were on the first special session call back in June, but they were both casualties of the property tax standoff between the House and Senate. Something new that could be added is action on Colony Ridge, the Colonia settlement outside of Houston. Four state reps have asked the governor to place among those items on the call the moving colony ridge under a state conservatorship. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick did an aerial tour of the development last week. It's gotten a lot of national attention in the last couple weeks,

and now we'll see if the state decides to act on it. Yeah. So what about school choice? So the Senate is probably likely to push forward a similar plan to that which it passed during the legislative session, a more robust and more expansive program. to push forward a similar plan to that which had passed during the legislative session, a more robust and more expansive program. There were a couple different versions, and eventually the Senate did water down their original version a little bit in order to try and make it something that the House would pass. make it something that the House would pass, but we'll see where they start once we convene next

week. In the House, the issue has a more tenuous path. It sounds like the House's version, and maybe the Senate's does this too, will be a part of a larger package alongside an increase to school funding and teacher pay raises. The idea is to not separate these into individual votes and therefore members that may be inclined towards one, whether it's school choice or teacher pay or school funding increase, but not towards another can hold their nose and vote for the entire thing, getting what they want and sucking up basically what they don't. And that seems to be the strategy. But again, you know, we won't know until the blessed version is, you know, released next week. Absolutely. So big special session slate for sure. Is there anything else that we should be looking

for? Yeah. So Matt and Hayden just talked about the motion to vacate the chair in Congress, and there is likely to be a similar motion in the Texas House against Speaker Dade Phelan. It's unclear exactly who is going to call that, but there is a handful of candidates that have already called for him to be replaced. Some have called for John Smithy to replace him. Smithy has said, of course, that he's not interested in that. But it only takes one member to make a motion to vacate. It's a privilege motion. If the speaker refuses to recognize that member, then it requires 76 members to sign on and challenge the ruling of the chair to force the vote. And that essentially is a referendum on the speakership itself.

Normal challenges to the ruling of the chair only require 10, but in the rules, this specifically requires 76. So if you want to read more about the parliamentary situation and the last time this happened, or the last time it was tried, you can read my piece from last week about Speaker Craddock in 2007. It's a pretty interesting situation. Maybe this speaker decides to play it the same maybe he has something else planned but regardless uh i'd be hard-pressed to believe that we end up without a speaker like congress has next week absolutely and definitely go check out that piece we talked about it last week as well um giving some details on how that process

works thank you br Bradley. Hayden, the feds quietly published an announcement that construction of the border barrier will continue. How will this be accomplished by the Department of Homeland Security? If we thought the Democrats and the Biden administration were ardently opposed to any type of border barrier, it looks like we'll have to think again, because overnight, the Department of Homeland Security posted in the Federal Register documents that were written by Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandra Mayorkas to waive myriad federal laws in order to construct roads and barriers, specifically in Starr County and elsewhere in the Rio Grande Valley.

The laws that are being waived concern environmental protection and conservation, including the Clean Water Act, laws protecting Native American tribes, wildlife, and even migratory birds. This is coming amid the illegal immigration crisis, and there has been an uptrend in illegal immigration across the state of Texas and elsewhere in the country along the southern border. The text of the decision was, as I mentioned, added to the Federal Register. Mayorkas is invoking the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act of 1996 to direct the construction of additional roads and barriers. The Department of Homeland Security is using funds that the Trump administration appropriated for the border wall. One of Joe Biden's main campaign promises was that he would stop construction of the border wall, which he did on day one of his administration. where there has been a detectable uptrend in illegal immigration and where it is urgently

needed and it will be done in consistency with Biden's previous directive to stop redirecting military funds to the border wall project. So it seems the department is trying to address a very real, very practical concern while balancing the promise that President Biden made to avoid constructing President Trump's border wall project. Remind us what the bigger picture is of the illegal immigration crisis at the moment. Well, there were approximately 105,000 arrests of illegal aliens between ports of entry in August, according to data published by Customs and Border Protection. El Paso has been a hotbed of encounters with illegal immigrants lately,

with thousands of encounters reported daily. The city of El Paso, in fact, has a dashboard that is specifically dedicated to reporting information about the border crisis. The city has been scrambling to try to orchestrate housing for these individuals and has even resumed the controversial busing program that Greg Abbott has been lambasted for. People opposed to that call it a political stunt, but El Paso has seen a very real practical benefit of that. There is bipartisan agreement at this point that the crisis requires additional response by the federal government. We know that the Abbott administration has been sending illegal immigrants, non-citizens by bus out of the state into places like Chicago and Denver. And even the governor of Illinois

recently said that he needs help from the federal government responding to this because they've had some 15,000 non-citizens show up in their state. And they are, according to the governor of Illinois, doing their part, but the Biden administration is not doing its part. So critics on both sides of the aisle here. There is also the dynamic of progressives hoping that Biden would nip Trump's border measures in the bud, and it doesn't appear that he has done that, at least completely, because of the practical necessity of trying to control this uptrend in illegal border crossings. Hayden, thank you so much for your coverage. Cameron, we're coming to you. Okay.

Okay. An undercover video revealed a loophole in how users uploaded content to a pornography website and now some attorneys general across the country are seeking answers. Tell us about the details of this story. Yeah, like you mentioned, there was actually an undercover video from an organization called Sound Investigation, so Think Project Veritas style video, which caught an employee from MindGeek, and MindGeek owns the pornography website Pornhub. And in this video, they are talking about this loophole where Pornhub has no mechanism for verifying if the user who uploaded the content to their site is the one actually in the video. So that, along with a lot of other things that were mentioned in this video, has led 26 different attorneys general to send a letter, and this is including Ken Paxton,

send a letter to MindGeek asking them what are they doing to remedy this issue? Because digging into this story, there's been countless cases, including I came across a very long article and expose by the New York Times where they were detailing the countless victims of human trafficking, including minors who have had disturbing videos uploaded to this site. And it seems as though Pornhub has simply ignored it. And the employee on this undercover video admits to this, saying that he spoke to his superiors that this loophole exists. And by his words, they have dismissed him and said, albeit in more colorful language, when he described this interaction that they were saying, just carry on. And they are aware of it,

but they weren't doing anything. So we understand the Texas legislature tried to put in some additional stop gaps in protecting minors from just being exposed to this type of content. They passed, the Texas legislature did, they passed a age verification bill, but that bill was actually blocked in a court recently. So there's a lot of action happening in different states along with here in Texas, and we'll see what happens if this issue is now being brought more into the light. There's a lot of conversation about trying to tamp down on human trafficking victims and protecting them. So this is just another step in a direction of trying to find a remedy to this.

Absolutely. Cameron, thank you so much for your coverage. Folks, it has been a while since I've ambushed you with an ad in our podcast. And I know you've missed our chats about subscribing to get the best news in the state or new merch announcements. Well, today we're back at it with both a reminder to subscribe and a brand new merch drop. If you've been on our website at all in the last few days, you've seen all sorts of come and take it, Gonzales flag t-shirts available. Now, if you subscribe today, you will get one for free. We have all sorts of colors. I believe we have five total colors. They're awesome. They're

beautiful. Go to the texan.news, subscribe today, commemorate the battle of Gonzalez with a come and take it t-shirt. Hayden, we are coming back to you. A story from earlier this year was reanimated when Austin police produced some body camera footage that we had not seen before. What was in this video? The Austin Police Department produced footage from the body camera of the officer who stopped State Senator Charles Schwartner in Austin's Hyde Park neighborhood in February on suspicion of driving while intoxicated. In the video, which is on our website, there's a link to it on our website for anyone to go and view the footage. It's about 50 minutes long. It's really interesting. I would recommend that

our viewers go take a look at it because it was illuminating as to what exactly happened that night. Senator Schwartner was asked to get out of the vehicle, and he was directed to a nearby parking lot so he could be given a field sobriety test. Representative Claudia Ordaz, a Democrat from El Paso, was in the vehicle with him when he was stopped. He was apparently dropping her off at her house. In fact, she told the officer when he started confronting them that they had just pulled in front of her home, and the officer said that they were swerving in and out of their lanes. She claimed it was because the lanes were too narrow. But Senator Schwartner was the one driving the vehicle. I won't regale everyone with everything in the video, but the sum and substance of it is

the officer asked Senator Schwartner to come over to the empty parking lot where Senator Schwartner was given a field sobriety test. It ended with the senator quibbling with the officer over a portion of the test where he was asked to lift his leg and count from zero. And he felt that the test was being prolonged unnecessarily. Finally, Senator Schwartner was offered a breathalyzer test, which he declined, whereupon he was arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated and taken to the Travis County Jail. There was a back and forth between him and the officer who was giving him the test, but ultimately there was no incident or escalation during this arrest. He told the officers he understood they were just doing their job. And he was ushered into the back of an Austin squad car and taken down to Travis County Jail, where he bonded out later that day.

And this arrest happened at approximately 1 a.m. on Monday, on Tuesday, February 7th. Is the senator facing any sanctions? The Travis County County attorney indicated that the charges did not have enough evidence to go to trial and that he submitted to alcohol monitoring. So the case against him was dropped. He's not going to face any criminal charges. I wrote an article earlier this year that I would recommend y'all take a look at. It explains that I spoke with a criminal defense attorney who explained that those who are facing the loss of a professional license have more on the line when stopped for a DWI because they can have that license revoked if convicted. The attorney for Senator Schwartner gave every indication that he planned on fighting

this, but they ultimately did not have to go to trial and fight this out because the county attorney decided to drop the charges. There you go. Hayden, thank you so much for your coverage. Matt, we're coming to you next. A county commissioner was removed from office after it was discovered he had a felony conviction for a burglary stemming from the 1790s. My goodness, he would have really had quite the life he'd lived. My gosh, the 1970s. You previously reported on this case. Give us the latest. A state district judge ruled last week that Kerr County Commissioner for Precinct 1 Harley David Blue's past felony conviction disqualified him from holding a public office and ordered that he be removed from the position. Now, this is actually a story that we've previously recently reported on where there

were two local officials in the state that have past felony convictions. The first one is Hector County Utility Board President Tommy Irvin, who has several convictions also from the mid-1970s for dealing drugs, specifically cocaine and methamphetamine. In that instance, it was discovered he had these felony convictions after serving a couple of terms on that utility district board. And when he was confronted about it, he claimed that he had a pardon. However, the story has evolved, starting out with admitting he never received a pardon and that a lady obtained a pardon for him from the governor at the time, to now claiming that the pardon record is simply lost and has never been able to produce one. Now, in that circumstance, a complaint to the district attorney to investigate and enforce the law was met by a rejection by the Texas Rangers declining to investigate, saying it didn't

rise to the merit of their involvement. On the other hand, you have Ballou, who, when his felony was discovered, the district attorney requested the Rangers to investigate. They promptly investigated, determined that he had a felony conviction for burglary. The district attorney wrote a letter to Ballou asking him to, well, not so much asking as so much demanding. He immediately resigned. Five days later, when he didn't, he filed a removal lawsuit. That was back in May of this year. Fast forward to this past week, you have the judge banging the gavel, ordering that he be removed from office. Now, the interesting thing about Ballou's circumstance is that he claimed he had a prototype version of deferred adjudication. Before that was

actually a thing in Texas statutes where the Tarrant County District Attorney's Office had something called deferred prosecution, and he claimed that he had a deal where after serving 10 years of probation that they'd set the sentence aside. But he was just like in Tommy Irvin's situation where he never produced a pardon to prove it. He never produced any paperwork to prove that he had his sentence set aside, and based on that, the judge ordered that he be removed. Now he's continuing to fight

the case, pledging to appeal it to a state appeals court, and now that there is a vacancy there, the county judge has been reported to say that he's not going to fill the vacancy until Ballou exhausts all his appeals and resolves this issue in the courts. So it's been a very interesting situation. Texas law very broadly prohibits people with felony convictions from serving in public office, and you have these two very interesting comparisons where in one jurisdiction for roughly a year there has been a lack of enforcement and the water board president has continued to serve. The city of Odessa, where the water board gets the majority of its water from, has raised concerns that his felony conviction has nullified the water contracts and is creating a number of legal calamities there.

Yet he continues to remain, whereas in Kerrville, he has been promptly ousted. So we'll continue to report on this as the cases develop. Very timely stuff. Thank you, Matthew. Cameron, coming to you, the U.S. Supreme Court began their new term this month and they have a Texas social media lawsuit on their docket to give us those details. Yeah, a law that was passed back in 2021 where social media companies are required to be more transparent with their users and not censor people over viewpoint, including political opinions. That's the Texas bill. Well, that bill was taken to court in the case Net Choice v. Paxton

is what is on the SCOTUS docket, along with another similar law and lawsuit out of Florida. What has been interesting about both the Texas law and Florida law is they have both been challenged in court and by different judges have had contrasting opinions. And in the case in Texas, the Fifth Circuit sided with the state, and in the Eleventh Circuit, they blocked Florida's law. So this sets up a sort of showdown on what are going to be the governing principles and constitutionality of freedom of speech online, something that is very prescient for many of us who operate our

businesses online and engage with information online. And that's how presidential candidates get their information out now, is press releases put out on Twitter. So we can look at one justice who has been outspoken about his skepticism of big tech and social media, and that's Justice Clarence Thomas. But the rest, we don't know. So we'll just have to wait and see once these lawsuits are brought up on the SCOTUS docket. Absolutely. Very notable. Thank you, Cameron. Bradley, coming to you. The Texas Supreme Court heard oral arguments this week on a case about an East Texas chicken farm. My gosh, what are the details? So a poultry factory in Henderson County is being sued under public nuisance law on the grounds that it has emitted, quote, putrid odors into the surrounding community.

The large-scale chicken farm says it has mitigated odors from its operations successfully. The case before Skodeks is a bit odd. A lower court jury ruled the operation presented an intermittent public nuisance short of the line necessary for a permanent nuisance that come with the ability to halt operations permanently. After the jury ruled kind of in favor of the farm, the judge granted a motion for a permanent injunction against the operation. The appeals court then affirmed the judge's decision and now Skodeks is asked to rule finally on whether the jury's decision supersedes the judge's. I go into more pretty gross detail in the article about what is alleged and what kinds of odors are being emitted from this operation, and just the sheer scale of it is insane.

Like 2 million chickens per year it's producing. It's quite gross, but it's alarming that this is being meted out in a court of law. I wish I was, I wish I had been in the courtroom to see the discussion on discussion about this and the look on the judge's faces when they're having to hear the arguments. But yes. That's where we're at. So what are the broader implications of this? So the state's agriculture industry is watching this closely. Even various ag associations filed an amicus brief in the case as they believe a ruling in favor of the neighbors would seriously damage the ag industry's ability to operate, basically opening the door for many more public nuisance lawsuits to be filed against various agriculture operations for various reasons. The conundrum it presents is a tough one.

On the one hand, the operation is responsible for supplying lots of food to Texas' growing population. And that is, by necessity, dirty work. There's a lot of waste that these chickens produce and obviously it is, uh, a pretty thankless job despite the fact that they, you know, produce so much food. But on the other hand, you know,

imagine if you lived next to this, would you want to be, um, would you want to deal with this? I mean, it's a, it's a fair problem. Uh,

I think it's fair on both sides, the contention that they're making. But it's a classic case of competing interests and the public good versus the private good. It'll be an interesting ruling, I think, whatever the Supreme Court decides. Sometimes when you all bring me story ideas, even if they're a little odd or a little off the beaten path for us, it's like, okay, this is obviously a story. This one, I just, I thought Brad was joking when he brought it to me and I had to look over it a few times. We had a lot of conversation in the office about this because it's actually a really interesting

issue. Yeah. And Brad is not kidding. The sheer scale of the amount of incidents that were occurring, people should go read this article. It's fascinating. It's pretty wild. I will admit we laughed multiple times during the segment that will have to be edited out. So we have a good time with this. Very good. Brad, thank you for your coverage. Cameron, coming to you, another lawsuit, lots of lawsuits today that you're covering for us here. Tell us about what the Attorney General Ken Paxton recently reinstated is doing is going after Y a, quote, consumer notice on crisis pregnancy centers on their business review website. The CEO actually penned an opinion article talking about how him and other business leaders would need to take action. And this was the result of that action.

There was immediate backlash, and after six months of backlash against Yelp, they did remove and put an altered notice on these crisis pregnancy centers. But for Texas Attorney General Kim Paxton, it seemed as though the damage was already done. And Paxton is levying charges that Yelp violated the Deceptive Trade Practices Act by using false misleading or deceptive acts or practices in the conducting of their business. So Ken Paxton getting right back into the action since being reinstated. And he has a lot of experience with different big tech companies. We know he was engaged with Google in a lawsuit. And so, this is just one other big tech platform he's going after.

So, this will be interesting to follow. And we'll update our listeners when more information comes up. Absolutely. Okay, let's go ahead and move on to our last segment here before we move to Tweeter. Brad, this week the House Board of Managers released a group of documents. It says contains evidence that was limited or excluded from the trial. What did it include? Yeah, so that was the reasoning for putting this out there. It was done on Monday evening. One of the docs included was the full transcript of the hearing on Laura Olson's motion to quash efforts to have her testify in front of the jury. Eventually, she was precluded from it.

As we all know, we've discussed that at length. Patrick, in response to, I believe it was Senator, an accusation made by Senator Eckhart, he released about three pages of the transcripts, but this is about two dozen pages. So there's a lot more to read in there. And it had discussions about why Olson didn't want to testify. Her attorney said something about it could cause issues in other legal proceedings. What that means is kind of vague. I don't know exactly, but certainly that was part of the consideration. Another part of the dump was correspondence that showed

Kevin Wood, the contractor who did renovations on the Paxton's Austin home was not paid and still has not been paid at least as of, I think it was late June when the letter was sent from his attorney. Then the one that drew the most attention was the chart of pickup and drop-off locations of the anonymous Uber ride, of the anonymous Uber account Paxton allegedly used to visit Paul and Olson. This document has been among the manager's evidence volumes since mid-August, so it's already in there.

Though in that, it's hidden within like 800 pages of evidence, and this was posted on its own as a singular page. What caused the criticism, the uproar, was that in this release, in this chart, it had the address of the Paxton's home in it, along with the coordinates. Eventually, after a couple rounds of taking the file off and re-uploading it, both the address and the coordinates were redacted, but originally they were not. And so it sparked accusations of doxing the Paxtons in their home in Austin. Like I said, this page has already been available to anyone who wanted it. It had been put out by several media outlets, but it also was hidden in, um, in, like I said, hundreds of pages of documents. So, uh, this kind of, this caused a

back and forth and, you know, just continuing the fallout from the, you know, the, the acquittal and, and the trial itself, uh, will continue to happen. But, um, you know, the house board of managers were not, um, were not just, you know, lying down, I guess. They were trying to stick it back to the defense in some form or fashion. We'll see if there are any punches or counter punches to come from that. There you go. Thank you, Bradley. Let's move on to our tweeter-y section of the podcast. Cameron, we're going to start with you.

Put me on the spot, my friend. Okay, well, on Wednesday, Newsweek came out with an article where they have an exclusive. And this exclusive is that the FBI has created a new category of extremists that it seeks to track and counter in this new category of extremists, according to Newsweek, is Donald Trump's army of MAGA followers. So their reasoning, according to Newsweek, is the anti-government tinge that these followers of Donald Trump have. But as we've seen in the past, the FBI puts a wide variety of groups on these investigation lists. We saw during the conflicts at school board meetings, they were looking into parents, you know, they were looking into Catholics at one point. And so I don't know how serious they're going to take this, but

as we have seen in the follow-out of January 6th and how they've attempted to investigate a wide variety of groups attached to that incident and going after individuals and how a lot of those individuals had varying degrees of involvement in the January 6th incident. And the FBI still went after them. This is at least eyebrow raising. No reason to get too concerned just right now, but just the fact that there is a new category created. Yeah, notable for sure. Very notable. Thank you, Cameron.

Who to pick on next? I don't know why I'm choosing to really draw out the suspense, but Brad looks like he's least plugged in, so I'm going to call on Brad. Unmute yourself. That's what you thought. I did unmute myself. So I don't know about you guys,

but I was sitting there like, What is going on? brad on a delay awkward silence or something i know brad what what's happening i don't know speak i was speaking Anyway, I don't know about you guys, but I was sitting at my desk yesterday in the afternoon when all of a sudden my phone just freaks the heck out. And it was the national alert test that I had heard about, but I totally forgot about it. And yeah, that made me quite angry, but that's it. So this is just a platform for you to have some group therapy.

Yes, yes, that's true. I have nothing more to talk about. Any funny memes you came across? There's lots of conspiracies about the alert system. This is definitely the worst tweet ever. Oh my gosh. We can talk about how people thought the alert was going to set off a chain reaction of those who had the vaccine and turned them into zombies conspiracies wow i didn't see that that's pretty wild oh that's why you came to

my office and acted like a zombie yesterday yes okay that makes a lot more sense i just thought it was just matt being matt oh yeah it was me and rob and everybody else oh everyone yeah pretty much well their impersonations we were all doing the zombie outside the window. Of zombies was not... It was just not as spot on as yours was. Your impersonation made me understand exactly what was going on. I just thought they were walking about the room.

Okay. Well, let's move on before we have more of Brad's speaking. Matt, let's go to you next. Oh, well, I wanted to share some good news love it talk about something that everybody likes to talk about the weather and last night we got a pretty good bit of rain here in austin and in the surrounding area i wanted to share a local uh weatherman posted some of the regional totals.

3.9 inches near Marble Falls, a little over 3 inches at Johnson City, 2.69 near Dripping Springs, and about an inch and a half here in Austin. And I've been seeing all kinds of footage this morning of some creeks that haven't flowed all year with water in them. And apparently Lake Travis is up three inches or so. Wow. Lake Travis needed some water this summer. It was low.

It was so low. Desperately. But the weather outside has been very nice. Great sleeping weather this morning. So it was nice. I hope this is the start of a trend for the next few months I walked out of the house and for the first time this like since you know the winter this year I felt like oh I could have worn a sweater I could have worn a sweater Hayden I want to come to you because

I'm really excited to talk about this next tweeter I'm really excited to although it will involve bullying somebody I don't know. So I apologize. I hate to pile on but it's just too funny to pass up this reporter and I don't know his name because it doesn't say in the tweet, approached Congressman Burchett, who is from Tennessee, and asked him if he supported the government shutdown. And he thinks for a moment, the congressman thinks about it for a second. And he goes, he did not call me. And he's, by the way, just adding this, he's got a really strong southern accent, which for some reason makes this even funnier. And to set the stage, this reporter, and I wear black socks, okay, so I'm not hounding him for that. But this reporter is wearing tall,

black dress socks with short khaki pants and a black belt with a collared shirt tucked in. So he kind of brought this on himself, but the congressman stops for a second. The question was, do you support the government shutdown? He pauses, he goes, he has not called me. And he says, and I do not, I do not support you wearing black socks with short pants and then he just turns on his heel and walks off and the reporter doesn't say a single thing back to him the reporter is just sitting there like shell shocked it was legendary it was hilarious and everyone needs to go watch this clip the reporter just stands there flabbergasted because he was holding his iPhone up

to record his response. And it was just, do you support President Trump's call to shut down the government? He has not called me. And I do not, do not support you wearing black socks with short pants. End of conversation. he literally was wearing like

cargo shorts like khaki cargo shorts with black dress socks just quite the outfit and he's got his hair perfectly combed and a backpack on which i don't know why but it just adds to it. And his shoes are black slip on shoes. Like his whole, his whole outfit is just not off or it's not right. It's off. So, I mean, that's, that's a rough way, uh, you know, to get made fun of because the internet's really making fun of him. The video has almost has more than nine million views. Oh, my gosh. So, you know, it's rough. But I guess if you put yourself out there, you might get made fun of a little bit. It's truly my favorite video on the Internet right now and probably will be for months. I love it. It's incredible. Okay, let's see here. Who have we not gone to? Just me? I think it's just me. Okay. My tweeter-y this week is a tweet from Patrick Svitek from the Texas Tribune. Shout out Patrick and the Trib, giving us a little bit of insight into what 2026 could look like. We haven't even really gotten into the nitty gritty of the 2024 election cycle. But Patrick wrote on Twitter from the blast this evening, Vicki Goodwin, a Democrat state rep from Austin,

gauging support for Lieutenant Governor Ron in 2026. She, in the blast, said, I feel pretty strongly about stepping forward if it feels right. She represents House District 47. It was a seat that flipped from Republican to Democrat in 2018. Paul Workman previously held that seat and is a very strong Democratic seat now. And Dan Patrick at our event earlier this year confirmed that he would, in fact, run again in 2026 and was planning to. So who knows? There could be some Democrats lining up, especially after the impeachment trial. But again, political memories are short and this is quite literally three years away. So we'll see what the big issues are when they do, in fact, run again. Gentlemen, I want to I want to ask you real quick before we wrap up our

pod. Have any of y'all ever owned chickens and or known somebody who's owned chickens, held a chicken, chased a chicken? Brad's story made me think of this. I'm saying this because growing up, my neighbors had a hen house. They had like three or four chickens. And at first, I loved them. I loved going over and chasing them picking them up all this but eventually it just is kind of this stinky little bird dropping area and i just didn't like it anymore and chicken droppings really get in your shoes in ways that it's just nasty like it's just a kind of a nasty area And some chickens are mean. Like, they'll chase you. They'll try and peck you.

They got some anger in them. I didn't keep chickens, but I have wild turkeys, and they're very low maintenance. You have wild turkeys, like... They're very clean. I call them my mountain chickens. Okay, but they aren't your... Like, you don't have them in a pen. They just...

They're wild turkeys. They're just on your property. They just hang around. Got it. I don't have to feed them. Well, yeah. Exactly. That's like saying... I don't have them in a pen. They're wild turkeys. They're just on your property. They just hang around. Got it. I don't have to feed them? Well, yeah, exactly. That's like saying I got some raccoons that get in my garbage. Do you actually own them?

No, he doesn't actually own them. If they're just roaming free, are they even yours? When they're on my property, they are mine. He has access to them. No, when they are on my property, they are mine. He has access to them. No, when they are on my property, they are mine. What about when they're on your neighbor's property? Then they're his. So what you're saying is they're wild animals.

Yes, I said I have wild turkeys. So if they come onto my property, they're mine? They're literally implied to be wild when I call them mine. The question was about domestic chickens well you acquitted them like that's the same thing they're not similar acquitted them acquitted acquitted acquitted equated okay it's similar have you thought about domesticating these turkeys? I have thought about them.

Okay. Can you domesticate them? But I'm offering it as a superior alternative to keeping domestic chickens. Is just buying land and having wild turkeys on it. Buying land and having wild turkeys. What if we don't have the ability to buy land or the flexibility to go out to west texas and have a big plot of land then i guess you're gonna have some stinky chickens okay there you go well i'd love to have some chickens yeah but i live in a tiny apartment and by the way you're talking about all the poop and the smells yeah that brad covered for us earlier yeah those putrid smells i don't i'm not gonna make a

great neighbor if i put some chickens underneath uh the awning on my balcony so yeah our neighbors every once in a while we'd hear like a severe and blood curdling squawk either like late at night or early in the morning and we'd run over to our neighbor's place, and a raccoon would be dragging a chicken over the fence. It's very brutal. I just, this just came into my mind, an emotional support chicken. That way I can get it into my apartment. I bet you could. Free eggs.

Another random thought. All this discussion of chicken is making me hungry. Yeah. Okay, I Googled emotional support chicken and it's just like stuffed chickens. I need a live chicken. Yeah. It can also be like a guard dog, but...

How to train an emotional support chicken. Hashtag DIY. I've heard there's certain breeds of chickens that make good pets. You can pet and hold and all that sort of stuff. You can cuddle with a chicken. Yes. Hayden, out in East Texas, did you ever have chickens?

Did you ever, you know, have access to them? We did not have chickens. Although we did have raccoons that would come to the back porch and eat the cat's food. Ah, classic. Are there any other big wild animals out in East Texas? If we had chickens, the raccoons probably would have brutalized them.

They were already coming for the food. They would have seen greener pastures, bigger opportunities. Well, this kind of took a turn. I used to have raccoons. Okay, when you say, Matt, when you say you have animals, it means you have pet animals or you've contained them in some way or trained them in some way.

You don't just, like if a deer goes across your property, you don't have a deer. Well, I mean, they're just kind of always there. Yeah, because they live in the wild, and the wild is partially your property. Uh-huh, and yeah. Cameron earlier your property. Uh-huh. Yeah. Cameron earlier told me. They're a fixture of our place.

Cameron earlier told me to bring this energy to the pods. I'm trying to do that for you. No, I'm digging it. Yeah. Well. The energy of this pod has definitely been unique. I will say that. Well, what's the Disney character that sings

and all the birds and animals just come to them? Snow White. Snow White. We have our own Snow White in the office here. Matthew Stringer. He steps out onto his balcony and starts singing. Same thing. Raccoons come and deer and wild turkeys.

They probably come because I throw a can of corn out. A can of corn. Well, it's an empty vegetable can that I use to scoop dry corn up with and throw it out. I'm not just like a can of, got it. Brad, do you have anything to add to this conversation as you're typing in our chat here? Do you care to share with the class? Sure, yeah, yeah.

You know, there's a flock of swallows that live on my house and you know using that's logic i i have swallows so i just wanted to put that out there you know brad how does it feel to be raising a family of swallows are you wait Wait, are these African or European swallows? I am feeding each one by hand through a baby's bottle. That's how domestic these swallows are. And then they turn on me.

And every time I walk outside, they dive on me. But, you know, I still have swallows. Well, this is a fact. Yeah. Okay, well, Brad has a flock of swallows. Matt has a myriad of different flocks of wild animals. And this has been a great podcast. It has been absolutely chaotic, folks.

They are European swallows, not African swallows. Brad, I was trying to wrap this up. That's the important question. Oh, brother. Okay. There's also a wild donkey, but he's very, very tame. He'll let you pet him when he comes up. A wild donkey? Yeah. Have you named very tame. He'll let you pet him when he comes up. A wild donkey?

Have you named him? Yes. What's his name? Jack. Jack. Aw. Makes sense. Appropriate.

But he's very, very tame and comes up for treats and things all the time. Well, I'd like to meet him. He would probably be nice. Yeah, bring him into the office. We bring a lot of animals into the office, only dogs, but... Bring Jack in. Bring Jack in.

Okay, folks, I am wrapping this up. We so appreciate you listening to this crazy, chaotic podcast, 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

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