The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - October 9, 2026

Episode Date: October 9, 2026

 The Texan’s Weekly Roundup brings you the latest news in Texas politics, breaking down the top stories of the week with our team of reporters who give you the facts so you can form your own opinion.New Fort Bend County Poll Shows Talarico Leading Paxton by 18 PointsSan Antonio Showdown: Trump Rallies for Paxton, Other GOP Candidates One Month OutAngela Paxton Expresses Support for 'Republican Ticket' in New AdThis Means Culture War: Republicans Still Campaigning on Social Issues as Democrats Pull BackDeadline for FDA Update on Review of Mifepristone Arrives, Texas Lawsuit Hangs in BalanceAbbott, Hinojosa Trade Jabs on Support for PoliceAbbott Raises $20 Million, Hinojosa $13 Million in Latest Fundraising ReportRosenthal Outraises French in Railroad Commission Race After Lagging Through SummerDeath by U.S. Army Firing Squad Approved for 2009 Fort Hood GunmanEnjoy what you hear? Be sure to check out our articles at The Texan and leave us a review!Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast.

This was an interesting campaign trail stunt that took place outside of Denton. Pretty epic. That's awesome. Okay, I just Google James P. Sullivan. Do you know that that's the name of Sully from Monsters, Inc? That's like all that comes up. Yes. I didn't know that was like that name.

Interesting. I just hear that evil owner of Monsters Inc. James P. Sullivan. Every time I read his name. That's funny. Put that thing back where it came from, or so help me. Well, howdy folks. Welcome back to another episode of the Texans weekly roundup podcast. I'm the Texans senior editor Rob Lauchess. And joining me today are reporters Mary Elisa Barr, Meredith Dyer, Holly Hanson, Isaiah Mitchell and Steve Kapuska. So I hope everybody is having, I'm not going to ask, how's everybody doing? And then have everybody answer at once because we just have so much news to get into this week. So much has happened.

And I think the best place to start is probably at the beginning. So, Holly, there was a new poll that just came out for Fort Bend County specifically, not for the whole statebook for Fort Bend County. Tell us what was in that poll and what implications it might have for the midterm elections across the state of Texas. That's right, Rob. We've seen a lot of people get a little worried about this poll. It does show in Fort Bend County that Tala Rico is leading Ken Paxton by 18 percentage percent. points in that race for U.S. Senate. Yes, it is just Fort Bend County, but it is a sample size of about 1,200 voters, which is a very good sample size. And what we could take away from this poll is

probably more the trends that we're seeing. So if we look at the 2024 election results for Fortman County, what we see is Kamala Harris winning the county, but only by two points. Trump had made some pretty impressive gains in that tending blue county for quite some time. And Ted Cruz lost in that district or that county, but by only eight points. So when you see an 18 point lead for the Democrat here, what you're trying to find out is what the trends are. Yes, it's not a statewide poll, but I spoke to the pollster, who is Professor Mark Jones. He's been polling for a long time, probably one of the most respected pollsters in the state of Texas. And he told me a few things about this poll that were interesting.

One thing he said is that if you kind of extrapolate these numbers and you apply them statewide and you look at whether or not this pattern holds up statewide, he said what you would actually conclude is that Tolariko is probably leading by about two to three points. and Greg Abbott is probably leading also by just a couple of points. To note in the Fort Bend poll, Abbott's trailing, Gina Hinojosa, but again, it's a pretty heavily Democratic area. So, you know, a lot of people were saying, oh, it's a Texas Southern University poll, so it's biased. Well, Texas Southern University is, of course, a historic black college in the state of Texas. but they hire Dr. Professor Jones to conduct these polls.

He also conducts polls for the University of Houston's Hobby School and some other entities. So it's not so much the instigator of the poll, the people paying for the poll. It's the guy who's conducting it who does some pretty good analysis. And another thing that Jones looked at in this TSU-funded poll is he looked at that very controversial race for Texas-Rexas. railroad commissioner. And that's where we had Beau French, the Republican, made this very controversial remarks a couple of weeks ago earlier, I guess in September after that UT football game. And they were construed as being very racist, especially towards Indian Americans, people of descent from the country of India. And they have a very heavy Indian population in Fort Bend County.

it's considered to be one of the most diverse counties in the entire country. So they've got a majority of people are some minority group. They're either Hispanic or black or Asian and a lot of what they call South Asians or Indian Americans. And of course, Beau French is trailing state rep John Rosenthal in that race in Fort Bend County by about 15 points. But one little interesting nugget that Dr. Jones told me about is that, you know, one advantage Beau French has, as a lot of people still don't know who he is. They haven't heard about this controversy, even though it made some national news, and I heard it repeated on a national podcast just last week, people talking about Beau French and what they thought of him.

But most people, most voters, still don't know anything about him. And I think it was, oh gosh, I couldn't remember. the percentage now, but it was a significant percentage just didn't know enough about Bo French and John Rosenthal to have an opinion. But when you look at that Senate race, I think it's 4% of people don't know enough to have an opinion of Ken Paxton. So one little bright spot for Bo French, if he still hopes to win this election. Well, thank you very much for break. Oh, I'm sorry, Mary Elise, it looks like you were going to say something. Well, I think that's really interesting what Holly said about a large percentage of voters not knowing enough about French.

Because sometimes it's hard as reporters to accurately gauge, you know, because we're on social media, it's hard to accurately gauge how far these things are reaching these controversies. Are they actually reaching the average voter or just kind of the folks who are chronically online? So I found that to be really interesting because obviously social media isn't real life, But sometimes it's hard page just how close to reality it really is. Yeah. As the saying goes, Twitter is not real life. I know we're supposed to call it X now, but right.

That's the saying. So it's not. You know what I mean? A lot of these voters haven't heard of Bo French. They don't know about this controversy, even if they're a member of that Indian-American population. But we're at the point now where we've got market saturation, where we're talking about Ken Paxton. And I did look it up. It was it was three percent that are unsure in that race.

And about the same percent didn't know enough to have an opinion about Ken Paxton. So, yeah. Holly, I have a quick question about the Beau French, like, name recognition. So him and Rosenthal have, like, agreed that there might be some kind of debate. Obviously, we'll kind of believe a debate when we see it at this point because nobody's really doing enough. But how do you think that will affect his name recognition? or his chances. You know, that's a great question. It's hard to say when people like us, you know, we're so involved in day-to-day politics. We're tracking these things. We're looking at

every single poll and every little misstatement that a candidate makes. But most people have no idea who is the current railroad commissioner. They don't know what the railroad commission does, even though those of us in the news repeated over and over again and what it is in the antiquated name and all of that, they just don't know. I think it has the potential to raise more awareness.

It's just hard to say. But again, people are really, they focus on the presidential race in a presidential year. They focus on the Senate race this year and the governor's race. But most people, when they go to the, polls, honestly, you know, they get down ballot and they're like, I don't know who these people are.

And an interesting factor this year is that, you know, we don't have straight ticket voting anymore. And so what are people going to do as they go down ballot and look at these races? And will they have enough information? You know, a lot of times people just pick the name that sounds more appealing to them. But if, you know, they have seen Beau French's name with a negative connotation, that might trigger something too. So I don't know. That's a great question. We'll see. I'd love to see a debate. Oh, I mean, come on. We need one. I know, and we'll get into other debate stuff in a second. But, yeah. Right. Especially as journalists, you know, we're having to kind of conjure some of these things. But, yeah, a debate is awesome for helping us to inform readers about what's going on. absolutely and i was going to say actually steve we're going to be turning to you with some more sort of general u.s senate news but uh you were at the uh trump rally in san antonio on wednesday night last night you know the day

we're recording this on thursday but before you tell us about that rally um can you tell us what trump said about a potential debate between ken paxton and james tallerico um yeah rob so it was very interesting because a major theme of in Trump's remarks and Paxton's remarks was that was that Tal RICO is hiding, you know, whereas he, you know, Trump actually demanded that that Talrico, you know, stop hiding and debate Paxton, which is interesting because up until this point, it's been a Talarico who's been demanding that Paxton debate him. Paxton famously has not debated any of his opponents in his various races for AG here in Texas in the past. And so it will be interesting to see how exactly Paxton navigates this now.

Very interesting. Yeah, the fact that Tala Rico is now the one being blamed for kind of not doing the debate, I think is fascinating. I think it's funny. Oh, I was going to say, I think it's funny how Trump just, jumped into something clearly without the background of how Talley. And in the movie Mean Girls, there's like a part where someone yells like, she doesn't even go here. And I feel when Trump kind of jumps in and is just like, has no background info that Tullerico has been hounding Paxton for so long. And he has not been responding. It's just funny to read the. Well, tangential to our conversation just a few minutes ago.

I mean, a lot of people just don't know, right? And so they hear Trump say that. They're an ardent Trump follower. And they're like, oh, oh, Tala Rico is refusing to debate. And they may not know that it's kind of the other way around. Yeah. Oh, it's true. But as you were saying, Steve, about this at the rally, you know, this whole Tala Rico is missing message that Paxton's been putting out, which of course, this is why when there was the whole kerfuffle about us going to, what was it, Edinburgh for the U.S. HBC of that.

event and Talarico wasn't there because he said he had the flu and that might be why or maybe it's not. There's rumors floating around that there's some secret reason why he's not visible. But tell us what else you saw at that Trump rally since, of course, the internet was so bad last night. So something that Trump actually said for like an explanation as to why Talariko has been absent is that he said that he's a vegan and he was forced to eat beat for, quote, political reasons. And that's why he was sick. And the crowd really liked that one. But aside from like the usual Trump rally stuff, what was notable about this one for me was, well, two things actually.

First of all, there was no internet. We were like all trying to tweet about it and it was just not working. So very frustrating. But the other thing was that, there were many interruptions by protesters. There were, I'm not sure there's an exact account up there, but the White House press pool estimated that it was about a dozen, and Trump would actually stop his remarks for a while to riff on them

as they were being escorted out. So it was this very, like, bizarre spectacle of these people being escorted out in handcuffs as like you know Trump is like is like calling them ugly so it's very weird but the crowd seemed to love it very interesting yeah I saw some of the videos that you'd posted

on Twitter of those the protesters getting sent out I saw a video of one of the protesters you know somebody who was a rally attendee was kind of hitting them or trying to push them down the stairs or something it looks like tensions were running high now remind me Mays Middleton, in addition to Ken

Paxton, who was there as you, as you said, but Mays Middleton, who's running for Attorney General, was also there, right, along with Carlos Dela Cruz, who's running for Congress. Yeah, yes. Maze Nilton was there. Also, Carlos, Adela Cruz, as you said. Also, Brandon Herrera, who is also running for Congress,

both Herrera and Dela Cruz, their districts are at least partially in San Antonio. So that's probably why they were featured as prominently as they were. Also, present was Dan Patrick. I will say that Patrick seemed comfortable speaking in front of the crowd in a way that I think Milton probably did not. It was interesting, though, because the one person who was out there was Greg Abbott. who said that he had a scheduling conflict. It is always interesting to me when you mentioned Brandon Herrera that that congressional district is so big that it stretches like from El Paso to San Antonio, you know, bigger than some countries.

I just think that that's always funny that it's it's so big. But yeah, so that was, I would recommend everybody check out Steve's tweet thread from last night if you want to see the live updates. As many as could go out before the internet decided to curse us and prevent us from putting more. out, but it's a lot of great updates there. But can you also tell us, Steve, about this ad that recently came out from state senator Angela Paxton, who is currently still the wife of Ken Paxton, though she is seeking a divorce. Can you tell us a little bit about this ad? Yeah.

So it's a very second ad of Angela Paxton speaking directly to a camera where she says, that she is voting for, quote, the Republican ticket, unquote. And what's so interesting is that this is obviously intended as a boost for Penn Paxton, but she does not actually say his name. And that's probably on purpose. She is, of course, in the process of divorcing him for alleged infidelity. I think it does say something, though, about who Republicans think that they need to win over to a Paxton's camp, and that Anzoa Paxon is someone who can speak to people that are like conservative and Republican voters who are not fans of Ken Paxon personally.

I think it's probably fair to, I guess, that that's probably where she is. and what she's telling voters is that, like, listen, I don't like him either, but he's on the ticket, he's on the team, and we should vote for him. And what's interesting is that she's certainly being a lot more of a team player than a lot of the other Republicans who seem not at all interested in helping out Ken Paxton. Yeah, it's interesting. Like with John Cornyn, right, who's doing a lot of campaigning for other Republicans. Republicans, other Republicans running for Senate, but who's not doing it for Paxton, which, of course, is paralleled on the Democratic side by Jasmine Crockett, who I believe did recently come out in a video and say, yes, I'm endorsing Ken Paxton, but in a kind of, kind of flippant way, after a long time of sort of saying that was a racist race. Yeah. I'm sorry. Were you saying someone? What's that Rob? Well, you just, um, you said Paxton. You just said that Crocket endorsed Kent Paxton. So. that would be breaking news, but fake news rock.

That would be hilarious. I wonder if we should leave this in or not. This is kind of good stuff. Honestly, I meant Tala ricko. I meant that Crockett was. I think our listeners took it up. Your fake news, we're ruined.

That's it. Oh, terrible. Yes, it is true, actually. I will say this. Jasmine Crockett has not endorsed Ken Paxton. That is a fact, as of the time of recording. So, but it's interesting, you know, these differences between Democrats and Republicans, because Meredith, you wrote a piece this week talking about the difference between Democratic and Republican campaigning in this election cycle so far about the role of social issues. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, so social issues are not the front and center for either side. Obviously, we know that property taxes, affordability.

data centers, all those things are on everyone's list. But the right, the right, Republicans have not shied away from mixing in and including social issues. It can be something simple, like a comment of someone being woke or something, or it can be a very pointed ad about things like bathrooms, women's sports, transgender issues, like those kind of things, reminding people of passed votes by their Democratic opponents. So they've mixed that in with their economic and kind of kitchen table issues as well. But this kind of, this piece kind of came about because I had gone to Trib Fest and then I went to Texas Values Faith Fest, which are very different and kind of pull from, pull audiences from different sides of the aisle. And their messaging is different. One,

and one, Jean Ahina Hinojosa, Gene Wu, quite a few Democratic candidates were very vocal that they would not they're over or they're not engaging in the culture war issues. Gene Wu had mentioned that those had hurt the Democrats in 2024 and that the Republicans would feel that same thing this time he was speculating. And so there was, I think Hina Hose has gone on a couple of different interviews at this point and said very pointedly that the culture wars are over. She even was asked if she considers herself a progressive, which is something that has been messaged in the past,

but she was saying that she's a populist. And so we also know that James Talleyco has kind of tired of temper some of his previous comments calling them cringe or saying that he missed the mark. So there's that side. And then speaking to, I spoke to Mays Middleton and specifically state rep Brent Money, SBOE chairman Aaron Kinsey, they were all asking them,

what do you think of that? What do you think of the Democrats saying that the culture wars are over? And their response in general was that Democrats don't want to talk about these issues because they had gone, and this is paraphrate, like either crazy or too extreme, which mirrored some of the things that we'd heard at the Republican National Convention of the Common Sense versus the extremism. What was it? Now I'm forgetting what the little tagline was. If I say I once to remind me. Oh, the mainstream versus the extreme. I know there was two streams in there somewhere.

Okay. It rhymed. And so they kind of brought up some of those and were. just pointing out specific issues from the past on those issues of like saying that they don't like basically those if you're um on the democratic side of some of these social issues that's like Texans don't agree with that and of course they would say of course the democrats don't want to talk about that because it's they are so extreme and they could hurt them um so the in the article we kind of just dive into just different things that some of them have said and examples that they used um and

we'll see, I mean, this is what we all end with. We'll see after the election, like, if including those social issues or focusing on them, help them, or if people really are, it really is all about affordability. And those are the places that those swing state, those swing, good Lord, swing, not swing states, swing districts and areas are more affected by because it's so they're going to the pump, they're going to the grocery store, all of those things. And are those the things that are going to win this election this time around? when I think something interesting is also that there is one race in particular that we discussed a little bit earlier where social issues or specifically non-economic issues are playing a big role and that is in the railroad commissioner race where you know beau french has made immigration part of his political brand even if the office that he's running for doesn't actually have anything to do with immigration so you know the way that uh sort of the the presence and role of like Indian American And I even just now, I see a tweet from Abraham George, you know, the former chairman of the Texas GOP, who is himself an Indian immigrant, Christian, not a Hindu, but it was some, it was like a Hindu statue in a river. And he was like, you know, if you're going to live in America, assimilate or go home. So there's this, you know, there's, it's, it's definitely immigration remains obviously one of the issues on which the GOP continues to lead with the American people, generally in polling, you know, people like, well, I'll trust them.

on immigration issues, but that's, you know, I don't know, do you think it's fair to call immigration a social issue? I guess it does, I mean, it relates to affordability. I think it can go both ways because there obviously is the social side of the assimilation and the cultural leading into, and it can go extreme into racism as well. And then you can get the side, obviously, of the safety and not to skip ahead to my plugs, but talking to some of these southern district interviews that we had this week with Eddie Morales, Jr., and, Denise Villalobos who are in the statehouse, they have to talk about those issues in a more practical and like safety. Even for manufacturing, Morales got into some of that, just like that

relationship, that that is very important. Even Eddie Marales said that's something that he doesn't feel people are talking about enough is the border. So it's interesting, and not in a social way, but in a more practical way. Just to comment on the Beau French talking about something that's not in his potential future jurisdiction or not. I asked him about that when I interviewed him at the convention this summer and his response was similar to, I've heard it from other people, even like a mayor that I interviewed about some social issue in fate. It was that they believe that people want all of their elected officials to comment on all of these things and they want to know like all aspects of who they are and what they believe and they want to hear about these issues from everyone.

That is, and once again, we'll see if that wins an election for him or not, but that's a group. And I think that I'm not going to say names, but some of the answers I've gotten from other people seem to fit into that. They believe that it's like an all-encompassing thing now that we need to hear about all the issues from everyone, whether you're going to be affecting that legislation or not. But I just say that's not necessarily a new thing, right? I mean, we've had these arguments in politics for years where you have, for example, a county judge, for example, I've covered a lot of county judge as races and people asking the county judge about a social issue like abortion or transgender rights. And what are the responses has been? Well, that position doesn't have anything to do with that.

although now sometimes we see where someone like a county judge and maybe even there's some avenue for a railroad commissioner to have some sort of policy that might touch on these issues. So, you know, we see some of these people, you know, I've covered Harris County so much so I see this a lot where all of a sudden, you know, these kinds of social issues are very important because it kind of informs how they make policy decisions, whether it's flood mitigation, or, you know, I don't know, services for illegal immigrants. I mean, Harris County has been providing legal defense for people facing deportation for years until it got shut down just a month or so ago. I guess my question would be then about, like you said, they would point to their legislative, like, wouldn't the bet, this is just a, like, you would think, and in the past, maybe people would say, okay, just so you know, this is the area that I would

touch that issue and this is maybe how it would come versus just I think people want to know what I think about everything almost, which is like, okay, sure, there's a lot of things that we don't need to know, you know, I feel like sometimes I've seen certain politicians kind of point it to the, like, okay, this is a federal issue, or we don't deal with this or this isn't going to come up, but in this area here, this is how it would affect it. And this is why it is important that you know about this where sure, there are some like immigration issues, you're not even immigration, but border issues potentially with oil and gas. I don't know.

It's a little, it's stretched, right? Right. Well, it's kind of the new political dynamic, right? It's any elected official is going to touch on every issue possibly. And so we want to know what they think about everything under the sun. Is that healthy? That's in quotes, right? Somebody dies out there.

Yeah. No, absolutely. Well, I just want to say, by the way, everybody should check out the interview that Meredith did with Denise Villalobos and Annie Morales Jr. Two of these South Texas state representatives running for re-election, sharing their thoughts on big issues from Corpus Christi water issues to immigration and border security to, of course, property taxes that both of them talked about. So definitely check those out.

But speaking of another kind of social issue that I think Mary Elise you've written about is something that the Republicans are kind of, they're kind of keeping it at arm's length nowadays. But tell us a little bit about this deadline for the FDA's review on Mifah Pristone and the Texas lawsuit that this review might affect. Yeah, like you said, Republicans definitely are keeping this issue of abortion, specifically chemical abortion pills kind of at arm's length. But there are a few key players who have been really hounding on this issue.

in particular, Senator Josh Hawley and then Senator John Cornyn have been kind of focused on this and bringing it up frequently because this is specifically what they've been bringing up here is holding the FDA accountable for a review that was promised while Trump was campaigning for president, a review of Mithepristone, which is one of those two drugs that's used in a chemical abortion pill regimen that's alongside Mesa Priestel. and this Mipapristone remains approved by the FDA for dispensation, and that's without an in-person prescription requirement. So, you know, it's allowed to be sold online, shipped through the mail. As we know when we covered this issue last session, when the Texas legislature looked to impose some civil penalties on those who are shipping in these pills into the state, you know, that these products are, they're being sent, you know, from online stores and then sent through the mail.

But so Wednesday marked a deadline regarding this issue. So Wednesday, which would have been yesterday, but you're listening to it last Wednesday, the deadline for the FDA to provide a court-ordered update on this review that's been promised of the chemical abortion drug, Mephypristone. And we also mentioned this piece that this is this review is also there's a separate Texas lawsuit that's kind of hinging on this um review so like i said you know trump promised this um and really talked about their plans his plans for this review of the spruce stone to make sure that there was this top to bottom review of the drug um especially considering that the end person dispensing requirement is no longer there um which is something that pro-life movement has been um you know really

raising issue around. We saw the former FDA Commissioner Marty Macri, he in particular was coming under fire for allegedly slow walking the drug review. He did end up departing the agency in May, and now Dr. Heidi Overtent. She's a new nominee for FDA commissioner. She just recently had her hearing, her confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate. And she was asked about this, and she said that the study should be done, quote, in the most durable scientific way possible, and the results communicated transparently. But she didn't give any concrete information about, you know, what's the timeline here for this review? And where is it at currently? But this court-ordered update was, you know, not saying that the review has to be completed by Wednesday. It was saying that

we need an update on this review as of Wednesday. So there's a big loss. suit that was brought forward by the state of Louisiana back in, I guess it'd be exactly a year ago because it's October 2025. And they were challenging the FDA for allowing chemical abortion pills to be mailed up to the state and arguing within this suit that the removal of that in-person dispensing requirement with no medical supervision increased the danger for women consuming the pills and also arguing that it could enable abusers who might force women to take the pills. And some of changes that they were arguing about and that's that's really been the reason that folks are pushing for this review is that Mitha Pristone under the president Barack Obama administration it had there were several parameters that were changed the number of required in-person office visits were decreased to one and allowed non-doctors to prescribe the drug which is significant and then also eliminated reporting of non-fatal adverse events So that was in 2016.

And then in 2021, under the Biden administration, the FDA announced that its enforcement discretion would allow metapristone to be sent through the mail. And then in 2023, the FDA permanently removed the in-person requirement for dispensing the drug. And so that's where you see these pills being allowed to be sent through the mail, order them online. So this case has been, you know, bouncing around. There's been, it's been evolving. a Louisiana federal district court paused the case in April and ordered the FDA to provide an update on Mephipristone review by this deadline, which was October 7th on Wednesday. We also saw Louisiana appeal to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. They asked that the in-person dispensing requirements being reinstated for Mipha-Pristone.

That was granted by the Fifth Circuit, then the Supreme Court paused that order. And that was after two manufacturers, excuse me, two manufacturers of the chemical abortion drugs argued that this pause was unprecedented and just made a couple arguments from the side of business and how this would impact them. So then in this separate case, I mentioned at the beginning that there's a Texas case that's kind of hinging on this review. This case was filed by the state of Texas and the state of Florida, and they're looking to reverse the FDA's approval, Mitha Pristone. and so there was a request approved in the Northern District of Texas for, and this request had been made by the DOJ to delay the case until either this review of Mithipristones completed by the FDA or the date December 1 rolls around. So whichever one happens first. And so until either this review is completed, this review for which an update was due on Wednesday, or if whenever December 1st occurs. So we did reach out to FDA.

We weren't able to get a comment, unfortunately, but you can check out the full piece for some more information. This, you know, of course, abortion, a lot of Republicans are holding this at arm's length, like we said. But there are a couple of folks who like Cornyn and Holly are really focusing on this, and a lot of, you know, pro-life activist groups are concerned about this and don't appear.

ready to let Trump's administration let it slide by. So we'll see, you know, folks continue to keep kind of hounding the FDA for this review. And if this review, you know, when this review is released, and if an update will be released, we'll keep, we'll keep an eye out for that. Well, thank you very much for your coverage on that story, Mary Elise. Isaiah, turn in next to you on another issue that's kind of related in terms of politicians, you know, holding each other accountable, I suppose. That's my segue. What did Greg Abbott and Gina Hinojosa recently say about law enforcement and their campaign ads? And also, can you give us an update into their campaign finance numbers after the reports that just came out this week? Yeah, and I think it also ties into

the issue that Meredith was discussing earlier on social issues coming back to the forefront, right and public safety is one that i think that while a lot of others that were more vogue in 2020 and 2021 have generally cooled off the whole defunding the police conversation is really still smoldering and we had a hearing in the capital a couple weeks ago on well specifically it was on prosecution and even more specifically it was about jose garza who is the d a of travis county and we had a long hearing that we discussed in a previous podcast on Garza's tenure as DA. And in that same week, Abbott and Hinojosa both issued ads bashing the other for insufficient support for law enforcement. That was both of their allegations for the other candidate.

And so it was a topic that was brought into the news, I think, you know, in the first place because of what was going on to the Capitol. Abbott also held a press event where he had the Sinuses Texas backs the blue he addressed a law enforcement association so Abbott was you know had already been planning to draw a lot of attention to it but he had a host a first release an ad that featured her

alongside some other police officers who said that Abbott loves law enforcement on camera but off camera or on our own and her video referenced an article by Houston public media from April about Abbott's warning to the city of Houston concerning the city's ordinance

that prohibited police from holding suspects based on ICE administrative warrants. And Holly actually has got some good coverage on that, but the long and short of it is that Abbott told the city of Houston that the ordinance would breach these agreements with the state that provide the city

with a lot of grant funding for public safety. And so the way Hinojosa presented this in her ad was Abbott threatens to defund police. And then the next day, released his own ad that called Hinojosa a defund the police radical. And he cited her votes on House Bill 1900, which was a 2021 state law intended to keep cities from defunding the police departments and Senate Bill 9 from 2025, which prohibits PR bonds for certain offenses. And Hinojosa voted against both of these. So both of these candidates really trained their focus on law enforcement

after a race that has been largely focused on, you know, economic issues, cost of living, like we were talking about earlier. We also got their fundraising numbers for the last cycle, which stretches through July and through most of September, and we got some interesting results there. Hinojosa reported

13.3 million in contributions and 4.1 million in cash on hand. And by contrast, Abbott raised more with 20.3 million in contributions and 17.3 million in cash on hand. But the background there is interesting because at the beginning of the year, Abbott had 105 million in cash on hand. So he had a huge war chest, and he spent through about a third of it by the end of June when it dropped to about $67 million. And now he's all the way down to $17.3 million.

So he's been spending and spending quite a bit. And far as spending, you know, that spending, Hinojosa, by a wide margin. In terms of actual, in terms of top donors for each of these candidates, we've got billionaire investor, Jeff Gass, who has been paying a lot of attention to Texas, even though he's, I believe, based in Pennsylvania. Capital Funding Group CEO John Dwyer, Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebia, who's had a lot of involvement with the Trump administration,

and Amarillo businessman Alex Fairley. All of these donors gave Abbott's campaign a million dollars apiece. Hina Hose's notable donors include Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, Houston-era Susan Saraphim, who each donated $200,000. And she had also some other notable donations from organized labor unions, including the American Federation of Teachers, right?

That's actually the group that contributed to Hinojosa's largest donation, $250,000. And the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Pack, which came in third among her top donations with a $150,000 gift. Hinojus also received more donations than Abbott. Abbott's campaign finance report, or was a little under 5,000 pages, and Hinojosa's was 50,000 pages.

So that should give you a sense of the numerical volume of donations between the two candidates. That is absolutely crazy. I remember when I was pulling up the Hinojosa document on my computer, it took like 20 or 30 seconds to actually load up just because it was so big. But can you also tell us a little bit about the campaign finance information that's coming out of the Railroad Commission race to bring. it back to this one as probably, probably what I assume is going to be one of the closest of the statewide races that's not for a, you know, federal office in the case of the U.S. Senate race.

Can you tell us a little bit about the fundraising that happened in this race and, you know, who came out on top in this latest cycle or this latest reporting period? So, Rosenthal, the Democratic nominee for the position, came out on top for this most recent cycle. And that reverses the lead that his Republican opponent, Bo French, French, had in the first half of the year. And so, like we've said before, cycle after cycle, the Railroad Commission just provides us with some unexpectedly interesting news every time. And this isn't even, you know, the spiciest news that's come out of this race yet. We all remember Bo French for his Twitter post on the YouTube game that we discussed a little bit earlier. And the big question on everyone's minds is

whether that affected the fundraising for at least this part of the cycle. So after French made that post, Rosenthal got a lot of attention from some national media outlets like CNN. He had a big local appearance on CBS Leap's Texas. And so a lot of attention was drawn to French primarily, but then also to this race and then to Rosenthal. And that attention has got to be good for his fundraising, at least in some degree.

It's only speculation as far as how much. French also fundraised off of that post. If you go to it, his first comment below it is a fundraising link. And so we don't know how much he's raised just off of that post alone. But for brass tax, Rosenthal raised almost $490,000 in the last reporting period. To contextualize this, you know, compare this to Abbot and Hinojosa, who are up in, you know, eight figures, right? So for a statewide race, these are pretty small figures, but it's the Broward Commission.

Not a lot of people know about it. French raised a little bit less, coming in just under $440,000 during the same period. However, French still has more cash on hand. He reported a little over $530,000 in cash on hand, while Rosenthal reported $378,000 in some change. Rosenthal also outspent French in this most recent period, reporting nearly 114,000, thousand dollars in political expenditures to french's ninety seven thousand dollars oh and if we want to get into some of their major donors um the oil and gas industry expectedly is paying a lot of attention to this race so tim dunn who is an oil man but also more generally a big republican

mega donor um he's got a pack called texas united for a conservative majority and they contributed french's single biggest donation of a hundred thousand dollars second place among his Big Gifts went to NGL Texas Pack, and that's linked to an oil and gas company, NGL Energy Partners, which has donated to Railroad Commission races before in the past, and they gave French's campaign $25,000. French's other notable donors include the Wayne Christian for Texas campaign, and Wayne Christian is a sitting Republican member of the three-member Railroad Commission already. On Rosenthal's side, his largest donations came from the Lone Star Project Pack, which gave him separate contributions of $50,000 and $25,000.

He also received a $25,000 contribution from J.B. Pritzker, who also donated to Hinojosa. Well, thank you for breaking down those campaign finance numbers, Isaiah. We'll obviously have more coming out about campaign finance stuff in general, but even though these reports are all due on Monday, doesn't mean they all come in on Monday. So definitely, I would recommend all the readers keep their eyes out for even more campaign finance breakdowns. But speaking of money issues, Holly, you were at a, I think it's, is it fair to call it a rally against a proposed ballot proposition in Austin that would require an audit, right, of the entire, of the entire city. Tell us about this audit proposition I, I believe,

and tell us about, you know, who's supporting it, who's opposed to it, what's going on? Right. So last year, the, this group called Save Austin now helped defeat a proposed property tax increase in the city of Austin. And it was a pretty significant tax increase. It required voter approval. And as soon as they succeeded in defeating that property tax increase, they launched this effort to amend the city's charter. And this amendment would force the city to undergo these efficiency audits. The first one, I think, takes place within about a year of passage. But after that, it would only be every five years. But it's an unusual kind of audit that they're proposing because they require it to be, one, benchmarked for determining whether

or not city spending initiatives or how they affect affordability in the areas, which is, you know, they're kind of playing on this whole, you know, talk word in the elections this year, affordability, affordability. So they want the city to show how these, these initiatives are affecting people's ability to afford living in the city of Austin, which is pretty expensive these days. The other thing is in this audit requirement, it would have to be a third party chosen through a competitive bidding process. And whatever auditor takes on the job, they would have to identify savings that are greater than the cost of the audit itself. So what we had yesterday, and we're recording here on Thursday. So this happened Wednesday afternoon. You had this city union group,

and a number of city council members from the city of Austin and Congressman Greg Cazar all rally right in front of city hall in opposition to this charter amendment. And they have a number of different arguments. I wrote about this last week, but one of their arguments is that it would affect the city's ability to provide services for residents and that it would be unfair cuts to spending. And they also say it includes a conflict of interest because of that requirement that the audit firm find more savings than the cost of the audit itself. But they don't, of course, mention possible conflict of interest between some of these union groups or in opposition that might be affected by any budget cuts. One of the things that was said during this press conference rally, whatever you want to call it yesterday, is it claimed that the audit itself could cost as much as $10 million.

I believe one of the city council members on hand said that it would cost at least $5 million to conduct this audit. But one of the authors, or the author, I should say, of this charter amendment is Bill Aylshire. He is the former county judge for Travis County. He was a Democrat, but obviously probably a little more moderate than some of these progressives that are running the city of Austin and Travis County these days. He's also an attorney. And he told me that he wrote this charter amendment based on the audit that was conducted in the city of Houston a few years ago after John Whitmire became mayor. And that audit identified a slew of inefficiencies, some duplicative programs, excessive administrative bloat. And I think the city was able to cut 120 some odd million from their budget and avoid tax increases for the last few years or significant tax increases, we should say. But so that audit cost $580,000. It was conducted by a well-known international firm that has a base in Houston called Ernst & Young. So it's, you know, a pretty respectable outfit there. But it was interesting to see these claims.

I went down to this rally, took some pictures. It was obviously a very coordinated rally, so they had their practiced chants and responses, kind of a call-and-response thing going on there where a speaker would say something, and the group would say, don't dojar Austin, and they would say don't privatize Austin, and they had a number of slogans that they were prepared for,

there. But there weren't really any people in attendance there to rally with them. The only people on hand to watch this event were basically members of the media and a couple of staffers. So it was kind of an interesting dynamic going on there. I posted a few pictures on X and on some of our other social media accounts. And it's getting a lot of response on. So, social media, but as we mentioned earlier in the podcast, you know, Twitter is not real life. But if I were to guess based on responses to this particular rally, I would say it would be that charter amendment would actually pass, but you never know what's going to happen on Election Day. And of course, Austin, Travis County is a reliably blue county. And we're probably going to see a lot of Democrats coming out

to support Tala Rico at the top of the ticket. The question is, Are they going to go down ballot and seriously consider this proposal to audit Austin's finances? And are they really opposed to it if they haven't heard their congressman Greg Khazar tell them, you know, Democrats need to oppose this? Interestingly enough, one of their tidbit, one of the responses to my tweet thread on this was from someone who pointed out a survey or poll that was taken last summer. You know, it's not an extensive poll. I think it was 800 registered voters, but when they asked them if they supported local government efficiency audits on a regular basis, 90% said they would support that measure. So it seems like kind of a bipartisan, you know, common sense proposal. The devil's in the details, of course. Well, thank you for breaking that down, Holly. And to going to that rally, after all, that was the same day when you were, also at the State Commission of Judicial Conduct. So you were kind of bouncing all over downtown Austin getting all the good scoops. So we do really appreciate that. You bet. It was kind of a

crazy day. I went from that hearing before the State Commission on Judicial Conduct, which you know, we will be writing about if not talking about today. And then straight over to the Austin City Hall. Incidentally, the Save Austin now folks had their own sort of press conference via Zoom in the afternoon later, and we're just countering a lot of the points made by these union groups and some of these elected officials. And I have that in my tweet thread as well. Absolutely. I highly recommend everybody go check that tweet thread out. I think here for our last story of the podcast, Mary Elise, you wrote about the Fort Hood gunman who murdered 13 people 17 years ago at Fort Hood here in Texas has been approved by President Donald Trump for death by firing squad.

So can you tell us a little bit about what happened and sort of and what's going on now? Yeah, well, this is right. This is for this crime that's committed in 2009 at Fort Hood where this individual, a former U.S. Army psychiatrist, he killed 13 individuals. and injured 32 others. And so this was in 2009, and after this, he was convicted on 13 counts of premeditated murder in 2013. That's after he fired at soldiers,

and there was one civilian shot, so a dozen soldiers, and then one civilian was killed, and then 32 were shot, injured. So this occurred back in 2009. I'm sure some of our listeners remember, clearly when this happened. When this occurred, he was ultimately shot and paralyzed from the waist down as a result. He was sentenced to death by a military jury in 2013 after he's convicted on those 13 counts. And then there's been several appeals going back and forth. The Supreme Court denied his Hassan's latest appeal in March 2025, reaching max number of appeals he could pursue under this military code. But it was confirmed on Monday that Pete Hegseth, our Secretary of War, Secretary of Defense, had recommended. And then President Donald Trump had approved that this individual would die by U.S. Army firing squad for him opening fire at Unarmed American Soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009.

After we put out this piece, it was confirmed that he would be executed on December 3rd. So we updated the piece with that. So this will be occurring in December 3rd. And from what I gather, there will be two major news outlets, so we'll be invited to cover this. But that will be taking place December 3rd at Fort Hood, so where this crime originally occurred in 2009. So I'm going to check out the piece for more details on it, but that's just a brief, gives you a brief idea what's going on here. Hassan will die by firing squad after Trump has approved it.

Well, thank you very much for, you know, breaking down that story, Mary Lease. Definitely, definitely very serious. The Texan actually did write a piece on this back in 2019. That was about, you know, commemorating the 10-year anniversary of the tragedy. So thank you for breaking that down for us. As for now wrapping up our podcast here, does anybody have any interesting? tweeting that they saw this week. Anything good? I know Isaiah, you have something, but I'm curious if anybody else saw anything particularly interesting on Twitter, but I think, Isaiah, we can start with you. Yeah, one of the justices of the Texas

Supreme Court, James P. Sullivan, he played football at Rice. I think he was a walk-on. And in high school, according to his website, he had some powerlifting records. Anyway, he appeared at an event for the Denton County Republicans with state rep in

bum garner, who is a large fellow. And I don't know if this is a crowd request or if one of these two guys asked permission to the other, but we've got pictures of Justice Sullivan lifting the representative off the ground. And Vungarner just dwarfs Sullivan. And so this was just a funny, I guess you can call it a campaign trial,

because Sullivan is up for election this year. So this was an interesting campaign trail stunt that took place outside of Denton. Pretty epic. Okay. That's awesome. Okay. I just Google James P. Sullivan. Do you know that that's the name of Sully from Monsters, Inc?

That's like all that comes up. Yes. I didn't know that was the exact name. Interesting. I just hear that evil owner of Monsters Inc. Say, James P. Sullivan. Every time I read his name. That's funny.

Put that thing back where it came from more, so help me. Mine is about working out in a little bit of a different way. There's always videos of Pete Hegseth working out with different military groups and things like that. And there was one where he's running, and regardless of whether you like Higgs out or not, he's running and he's like behind some of the military personnel. And people were like, look at him trailing behind. And so the comments were like, he's 46 years old. I really hope the 20 year olds are like running faster than him. And he's not. And he's like, he's out there trying, you know, because there's a lot of comments about his form and the way he does certain workout things, whatever. But it's just like, it was interesting to see some of the comments like, he's actually just working out. He's, you know, he's doing it. Like, could you do this? Or some people were like, he would never survive in my Pilates class when he was doing certain moves or something. So it's just, it's always funny to see people making fun of. someone that I would never want somebody videoing me when I'm working out, please.

Right. Never. I would be mortified. I don't need to see my running form or my Pilates form. It's all hard. So I would be shaking and stuff. So it's always funny. Keyboard warriors that want to make fun of someone that's doing something. You know, that reminds me a little bit of cross-country. I was kind of thinking about this when I saw him because, you know, at first you kind of see the video and it's a little but funny. He's trailing these guys pretty far behind. But then I was thinking about my cross-country days where, you know, I had some coaches who would just kind of sit on the bench as you did your workout. And that, you know, was a little bit discouraging. You're just kind of running by them and they're enjoying

their granola bar versus some coaches that would run along with you. And maybe they weren't the most in shape where they weren't able to keep up on all of the workouts, et cetera. But it's so like it boosted morale definitely to have them at least trying to join in on these workouts. And so I applaud Higgs-Seth for trying to, trying to keep up with these guys. That's a good point. We would hope that those younger fellows would be a little bit faster than him at 46. There's always a key board warrior to offer criticism no matter what you pose. Oh, yeah.

I don't know. In my experience in public schools, yeah, gym teachers are either the most in-shape people or the most out-of-shape people who work for the school. So, I mean, I'm sure a lot of them do actually, you know, obviously stay in shape and care about fitness. But for the ones who are not quite as in shape, there's always the old adage that those who can't do teach and those who can't teach, teach Jim. So, well, speaking in the school, the tweet I saw that made me laugh is there's a guy posted some kind of fundraising thing from his kids middle school. and, you know, anybody who's been to public school and even some private schools, they have these god-awful fundraising events where you're supposed to spend too much money on whatever

and that kind of thing. But this one, they just sent out a slip that says, you know, here's $10. I don't want to bake, so here's the money I would have spent. And 25, I don't want to hit up my friends, family, and coworkers. So here's the money I would have spent buying wrapping paper and so on. And one of them is $100. It wouldn't have helped anyway. So here's $100 to forget my name forever.

I'm like, I love it. Just recently pertinent to our argument about what chocolate is superior. A cute little girl came to my door the day after that argument selling those overpriced milk chocolate bars. And she was so sweet. I had to buy two and won't eat them. That is hilarious timing. I should give them to Rob. I love milk chocolate.

I'll take them. I'll give them to you then, Meredith. Well, for my tweetery this week, the New England Patriots quarterback Drake May kind of made headlines for saying that he is not 100% sure that the United States landed on the moon in 1969. He said, quote, I don't know about the moon, you know. I think I can see back in the day why we would put the mask,

why we would put on the mask if we went there. but I'm not really sure 200% if we went there or not. I wouldn't say I'm leaning one way or the other. I just know I'm a little bit skeptical, end quote. So that then prompted the administrator of NASA, Jared Isaacman, to respond. I quite literally have the receipts, which I think is pretty great. And then people in the comments were making all the jokes about the moon landing. People were saying like, yeah, one guy says, you know, I think it'd be easier for

government to land on the moon, then cover it up for 57 years. Somebody said, no, it was staged. It was filmed by Stanley Kubrick. But because he was such a perfectionist, they did actually go to the moon in order to have it be accurate on the set. I don't know. I mean, I feel like, as I put on Twitter, one of my favorite jokes is that, you know, the moon landing did not happen because the moon never landed.

It's still up there. You can see it at night. It never landed. It's still up there in the sky. So, yeah, that's, I remember, oh, when all those NBA players went like flat earth a few years back, like Kyrie Irving and everybody, and like, why are we, we don't let them say whatever they want. They're just there to play the game that we like. We didn't hire them for their intellectual abilities or knowledge. No.

I mean, I don't know. It's like, I think that believing that the moon landing is fake is a lot more, it's not good, but it's a lot. better than believing that the earth is flat. Like, that's kind of like straight bottom of the barrel. That's about as, that's about, in my opinion, as bad as you can get,

you know, so, uh, I don't know, all sorts of good stuff. Um, but yeah, highly recommend everybody.

Uh, there's a bunch of stuff we weren't even able to talk about this week, committee hearings on, uh, the new world screw worm and on roofing insurance and fascinating subjects like that. So I highly recommend all the readers go and check out, uh, the text and,

to see what we didn't cover this week. But as always, thank you for spending your Friday morning with us, and we'll catch you all next time. Thank you to everyone for listening. If you enjoy our show, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you want more of our stories, visit us at the texan. Dot news. Follow us on social media for the latest in Texas politics and send any questions for our team to our mailbag. by DMing us on Twitter or shooting us an email to editor at the Texan. News.

Tune in next week for another episode of our weekly roundup. God bless you and God bless Texas.