The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - September 1, 2023

Episode Date: September 1, 2023

Show off your Lone Star spirit with a free Texas flag hat with an annual subscription to The Texan: https://thetexan.news/subscribe/ The Texan’s Weekly Roundup brings you the latest news in Texas politics, breaking down the top stories of the week with our team of reporters who give you the facts so you can form your own opinion. Enjoy what you hear? Be sure to subscribe and leave a review!  This week on The Texan’s Weekly Roundup, the team discusses: Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick appointing a justice to help him preside over Ken Paxton’s impeachment trialA Travis County judge declaring the field preemption bill unconstitutionalThe Office of the Attorney General removing a judge’s block on Texas’ child gender modification banHouse District 29 Rep. Ed Thompson not running for re-election in 2024The steps Texas has taken in its three-year fight against the ESG movement sweeping the investing worldThe Texas State Historical Association striking a balance between members on its boardThe ERCOT power grid’s slew of conservation requests amid the Texas heat spellKaty ISD announcing changes to how it will handle students’ “preferred pronouns” and bathroom useThe 5th Circuit Court of Appeals siding with Texas against the Nuclear Regulatory CommissionA rare earth mineral mining company leasing land from the State of Texas being sued by its investorsSchool districts suing the Texas Education Agency over its plan to “refresh” its district rating systemAnd, we give insight into our new podcast series, Inside the Impeachment: Paxton on Trial

Happy Friday, folks. Senior Editor Mackenzie DeLulo here, and welcome back to the Texans Weekly Roundup podcast. This week, the team discusses Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick appointing a justice to help him preside over Ken Paxton's impeachment trial. A Travis County judge declaring the field preemption bill unconstitutional. The Office of the Attorney General removing a judge's block on Texas' child gender modification ban. House District 29 Representative Ed Thompson not running for re-election in 2024. The steps Texas has taken in its three-year fight against the ESG movement sweeping the investing world. The Texas State Historical Association striking a balance between members on its board. The ERCOT Power Grid's slew of conservation requests amid the Texas heat spell.

KDISD announcing changes to how it will handle students' preferred pronouns and bathroom use. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals siding with Texas against the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. A rare-earth mineral mining company leasing land from the state of Texas being sued by its investors, school districts suing the Texas Education Agency over its plans to refresh its district rating system, and we give insight into our new podcast series, Inside the Impeachment, Paxton on Trial. As always, if you have questions for our team, DM us on Twitter or email us at editor at the texan.news. We'd love to answer your questions on a future podcast. Thanks for listening and enjoy this episode. Howdy folks, Mackenzie here with Brad, Cameron, Hayden, and Matt in the office.

Matt, or excuse me, Hayden. I'm looking at both of you and I just called Hayden, Matt. Hayden, real fast. We just got guidance from the Senate on the press process for the impeachment trial, which is set to begin next week. We'll talk about it plenty on this podcast, but was there anything notable that you saw about how we'll be able to access the Senate chamber once September 5th rolls around? There sure was. Just like the general public, we will need to show up at the crack of dawn and get tickets so that we can have our seat in the Senate gallery. But thankfully, only the people with Senate press passes are allowed to get tickets. So we won't have a bunch of reporters from out of state parachuting on this

trial and trying to get in on the action. I believe the term you used was carpetbaggers. Brad just totally outed you, Hayden. Brad was looking forward to me saying carpetbaggers and I'll let him down. Yes, no carpetbaggers allowed at the impeachment trial. So if anyone can go to the impeachment trial and get a ticket for the Senate gallery, which if you are interested in this, I would encourage you to do that. But only our Texas reporters are going to have press passes to cover the impeachment trial, which I think is the right thing to do by Texans. This is a historically significant event in Texas history. So I was very pleased to see that this will be focused on Texans and that we will be able to cover this for our readers.

Will there be any opportunity, or do we even know this, for out-of-state or national publications to get credentialed by the Senate prior to the trial? It didn't say anything about that in the one sheet, but generally credentialing is a process that happens at the beginning of the legislative session in January. I can't imagine that they would have a bunch of people fast tracking Senate press credentials. I mean, we're only a few days away from the start of trial, five days now, four days once this podcast produces. So I don't see that happening. I suppose it could happen. But it looks like we're looking at mostly Texas reporters covering this. And I think that's, that's a good thing. Yeah, there you go. Well, let's go ahead and jump into

the news and start off with the trial. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick appointed a former appeals court justice to assist him as counsel. It also permits him to appoint someone to serve as the presiding officer in his place. The caveat is that he cannot appoint somebody who is up for re-election in 2024 or who is running in the 2024 election cycle. And the appointment he made was Lana Myers, who is a former appeals court justice, former prosecutor, and she was also a district judge in Dallas County. So she served as a prosecutor for many years and then went on to be a district judge in Dallas County. Patrick indicated that he wanted to see somebody who has experience as a jurist, and he announced Meyer's appointment just a few days out from the impeachment trial. He called her a, quote,

extremely well-qualified candidate with courtroom experience as an attorney and as a judge. And like I mentioned, she was a state district judge for 14 years, and then she was on the Court of Appeals for the 5th District from 2009 to 2022. So again, more than a decade of appeals court experience. It's not the same thing. The two positions that the Senate rules outline, he can appoint somebody to be his counsel during the trial, but he can also appoint someone to be the presiding officer. So I'm not sure if Myers will be tapped during the trial to be the presiding officer. I imagine she will be, but it would be an assumption on my part to say that she's going to be presiding over the trial.

She may just be sitting at his right hand providing counsel as someone with more judicial experience than Patrick. But the rules also allow him to substitute himself as the presiding officer during the trial. So Lana Myers is a name that we'll probably hear a lot throughout these proceedings. And I know a lot of these decisions behind the scenes, like I'm sure the scurry ahead of the trial is quite something in terms of the Senate side and the House side, just in preparation for something that's so unprecedented, at least in modern times. So curious to see how this all breaks down. Is this the first time that Patrick has appointed someone to this position? Last week, Patrick appointed former Justice Mark Brown, who was also an appeals court justice, to this position to be his counsel and serve at his right hand during the trial. But Brown, the next day, remembered that he had a potential conflict of interest.

He and his wife had donated campaign funds to Eva Guzman, who was the former Supreme Court justice who challenged Paxton during the 2022 Republican primary. And we're talking about a $250 contribution, a small amount of money in the grand scheme of things. And Brown said he believed he could act impartially, but in order to preserve the integrity of the proceeding, he chose to withdraw his name from consideration. And I said last week, that's not exactly correct. It was a couple of weeks ago. I believe Patrick announced the appointment on Friday and Brown withdrew his name from consideration the following day on Saturday.

This is the second bite of the apple for Patrick to appoint someone and we don't have much runway left. So hopefully there are no problems with Meyer's appointment because we're running out of time for those appointments to be made. But Brown was the first candidate to be appointed to this position. And now we have Meyer's being appointed instead because Brown withdrew his name. Yeah. And wild to think this is our last weekly roundup before the trial actually starts. This is the last time we'll talk about the trial without having seen how things will be run.

So, Hayden, thanks for your coverage there. Brad, another big story. Just two days before the legislature's very unique preemption bill was set to go into effect, a Travis County judge ruled it unconstitutional. Give us the details. So after a couple hour hearing, Judge Maya Guerrero Gamble in Travis County granted the city's, chiefly city of Houston, motion for summary judgment ruling HB 2127 unconstitutional. That bill is the legislature's field preemption law that sets a regulatory ceiling in nine sections of code. Local regulations may not exceed that which is allowed by state law in those sections of code

under this new law. A coalition of progressive groups celebrated the ruling saying Texas is a home rule state built on the values of local democracy and freedom. The Death Star Law directly contradicted those values, prioritizing corporate interests by using preemption to undermine local democracy and stifle local progress in Texas. The bill's author, Dustin Burroughs, he responded much differently and said, The judgment today by a Democrat Travis County district judge is not worth the paper it's printed on. The Texas Supreme Court will ultimately rule this law to be completely valid. The ruling today has no legal effect or precedent and should deter no Texan from availing themselves of their rights when HB 2127 becomes law on September 1st, 2023. What were some of the arguments made in court? The state argued chiefly that it's the legislature's prerogative to grant or limit local authority as it sees fit, namely that the state legislature created these localities and what it has given it can take away. Also, they contended that the suit itself should be tossed because the state is not tasked with enforcing the law. The enforcement mechanism in this is a private

cause of action, similar to what we saw in the Heartbeat Act from 2021, where specific kinds of parties, not the state, can bring forth lawsuits against or alleging violation, in this case of regulations violation of this new law. And so the cities argued that the law violates home rule authority granted to localities by the legislature and that the law's vagueness violates cities' due process rights in receiving sufficient notice about a regulation's preemption. Note that, and this will probably be a significant theme when we reach higher courts, the law requires localities be given three months notice before suit is brought against them over

particular regulation. The state argues that is sufficient notice. Cities argue it is not. The judge seemed most persuaded by the argument from the city of Houston that the law was so vague that they didn't have, neither had sufficient notice for what would be in violation, but also what it's entering into this, what even is up for debate in violation. And so the judge seemed most persuaded by that. Overall, the judge sided with the cities, and we'll see where it goes from here. We'll kind of know at this point a bit, but if you want to read more about the intricacies of the arguments made, I wrote another piece this week that detailed that. So if that interests you, check that out. Yeah. And real fast before we move to the next question,

remind listeners why it's called a field preemption bill, like why it's referred to as that. So traditionally when the state legislature preempts a regulation, it's called conflict preemption where, you know, think of it like a rifle approach, you know, a single shot at this regulation specifically. This approach is more like a shotgun approach. It's also more proactive. meant to take out multiple regulations at once, but also prevent future instances so that the legislature doesn't have to respond, you know, once every two years to everything that has been passed in the interim. And they've grown, the Republicans in the state have grown tired of doing that. So they're implementing this new strategy. There you go. Where do we go from here? So the state appealed the ruling to the third court of appeals basically immediately. The filing didn't become public until Thursday morning, but the date on it is Wednesday.

So basically right after this ruling was issued, the state appealed it. So we wait for movement on that. There's also a debate about the actual teeth of this ruling was issued, the state appealed it. So we wait for movement on that. There's also debate about the actual teeth of this ruling. The judgment did not come with an injunction against the law. And the cities did not ask for one so that the state could not immediately appeal to the Texas Supreme Court. The Texas Supreme Court is very conservative. And then the Third Court of Appeals is closer ideologically to this trial court. So odds are the cities also get a favorable ruling in this appeals court.

And then what Representative Burroughs said about the Texas Supreme Court eventually ruling this constitutional is almost assured. That's almost definitely going to happen. It's just a matter of time. So without an injunction, it's unclear exactly what authority the ruling has to prevent the law from going into effect on Friday. Boroughs and other proponents of the law argue it will still go into effect, and this ruling is just without any teeth. The cities argue that the ruling itself erases the law as unconstitutional

until a higher court says otherwise. And like I said, it's just a matter of time until the Supreme court sides with the legislature here. It's a legal ping pong. Very much so. Yes. There you go.

Thank you, Bradley Cameron coming to you. We were going to talk about the appeal from the office of the attorney general for SB 14, which we still will, but we have an update on this bill that just happened. So tell us about that. Yeah, that's right. So the Texas Supreme Court just filed an opinion on a separate appeal that was filed on behalf

of Lazaro Lowe and the others involved on the plaintiff's side of the SB14 lawsuit. And the Texas Supreme Court has denied that emergency motion for temporary relief, meaning that SB14 will go into effect on September 1st. And we expected SP-14 to go into effect because of the appeal by the OAG's office. They filed what's called an interlocutor appeal, an accelerated interlocutor appeal. And so it was going to go into effect. The plaintiffs filed a separate emergency motion that was denied by the Texas Supreme Court. So SB 14 will go into effect. And so I'll give an update as well on what that appeal by the OAG's office was. So like we talked about last week, there was a trial on SB 14. SB 14 is the ban on child gender modification procedures and treatments in the state. We covered that trial after the ruling

by the district judge that said, that ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, saying that the state would be restrained from enacting SB 14, the OAG's office filed that appeal to the Texas Supreme Court, which would allow the law to go into effect. So now we wait for the Texas Supreme Court to rule or rather file an opinion on that appeal, but nothing will change. SB 14 will go into effect. Wow. So back in a more legal ping pong is what we're hearing here. So the ban on child gender modification is obviously a national issue. We've seen it all over the country. Is this something that is being challenged elsewhere? Yeah. So this, as what you're, like you're saying, this legal ping pong was going back and forth in Texas. In another state, Missouri was attempting to do the same thing, ban child gender modification. Well, a state judge in Missouri actually denied a request to block the state's ban. So in Missouri, things

are going through as well. They set the precedent. I'm not sure if the Texas Supreme Court is looking elsewhere to see how these legal winds are sort of moving, but that was sort of an indication to where there is legal foundations for allowing this style of legislation to be enacted. And I noticed that in this case, the plaintiffs, Lazaro, Lowe, requested an injunction and got it, and that's what enabled the state to appeal directly to the Supreme Court. And so, as I mentioned in the previous issue on the preemption bill, the cities did not request an injunction because then the state could directly appeal to the Supreme Court. So it seems like maybe these parties who probably are pretty similar ideologically are taking notes from one another on legal strategy. Yeah. So that's why it's important for our readers and listeners to pay attention to what's happening across the country as well, because other states will

give sort of small indications about how things might change within the state of Texas. Yeah. So we make sure to cover here all the little things that go on in other states as well, because it helps us try to understand what's going on here in the state. So for our listeners, we're staying up on everything, too. Absolutely. There you go. Thank you, Cameron. Matt, coming to you, another member of the Texas House announced he would not seek re-election.

You wrote this story, Matt. Tell us a little bit about Representative Ed Thompson's announcement. Pearland area, presently serves as vice chair of the Natural Resources Committee and serves on the Powerful Appropriations and Calendars Committees as well. In his press release that he published on social media this week, Thompson wrote that he was grateful for the time he was allowed to spend representing his community over the years and also expressed gratitude for all the input his constituents gave him while serving, enabling him to do so. His seat is a reliable GOP stronghold. At the Texan News, we have something we call the Texan Partisan Index, which uses past election results to predict how a particular district

in the Texas legislature may fall. It's a great tool that our readers can go check out and see what type of districts fall as along the lines of Democrat strongholds or Republican strongholds or Republican strongholds. And in this case, District 29 is a solidly reliable GOP seat. Now, candidates will start filing officially on the primary ballots for the 2024 election, which his seat will be on this coming November and December, but candidates could announce at any time. Now, we'll keep an eye out to see who files for the seat to see Representative Thompson in the coming days. This is an aside, but I do think being that we have an impeachment coming down the pike here and we'll Bradley. Sorry, that's my fault. But being that we do have an impeachment coming down the pike, we've seen a lot of retirements.

I think the primary season is going to be much more interesting than we previously thought it might. So shaping up to be very interesting. And I will say this for those who are retiring this go around. What a session to be a part of. You have a historic statewide impeachment that they're going to have to participate in. Plus a special session this fall. You have the property tax relief, air quotes, special sessions after the regular sessions. And the regular session itself was quite the session to be a part of. So it's, it's been quite the year for those who served

and to, uh, finalize a career out in, to be honest. Yeah. Well, not to mention the removal of a state representative from office as well. That was quite, um, just a crazy session all around. So many historical things that you, that you saw, uh, happen this go around. The historic property tax standoffs, scandals, and all kinds of interesting moments. So it's definitely going to be a grand finale for some of these lawmakers. Oh my goodness. No kidding. And a lot of those moments feel like they were ages ago. That feels years ago that those things happened. It's hard to believe that that was this year. Yeah. Oh, my gosh.

Matt, thank you for your coverage. Brad, coming back to you. The state is moving into its third year since joining the fight against ESG. Where has the state been and where is it going on the issue? Back in 2021, the legislature passed SB 13, which required divestment of state pension funds from companies deemed to be boycotting oil and gas. The comptroller since identified that list of boycotters, which includes BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager. And it's set to be updated again in September. When I spoke with comptroller Hager, it didn't seem like there were going to be many really big changes, but he said there were going to be changes on that. their capital together and push back against what they see as an improper use of monetary

force in pushing for certain social and environmental causes. The next kind of frontier on this is insurance. The legislature passed a law this year that prohibits insurance companies from using ESG factors to set rates for customers. Overall, this kind of teaming up by these specially red states, using their about $3 trillion in market capital, has notched a few victories. We saw S&P Global announce that they were kind of paring back their ESG policies, but not entirely. So Comptroller Hager tempered that victory with a bit of cynicism. But overall, it seems like some progress is being made for these states. This is something that is

going to continue to be an issue. And for the average person, it affects your pension, where your investments go, how they're invested, and the policies that your investments are used to kind of force into some of these companies. So I'll continue to be following this, but I've just got a piece up this week that's kind of a recap of what's happened and where it's been and potentially where it's going, especially on the insurance side of things. Yeah.

And we'll talk about this at a different time, but there, after the legislative session, I think we expected there to be more bills directly affecting ESG policies to have been passed. I think there was one. There was one. There was one, two by Senator Brian Hughes, who's kind of been the intellectual lodestar in the legislature on this issue. He's been pushing it hard. He had two bills that did not make it across the finish line in the House at a key deadline. Although one of them did. The House, with minutes to spare, pushed through that bill about insurance that I mentioned.

So it'll probably be, those bills will be filed again next time. But it sounds like from the activist perspective, the anti-ESG activist perspective, the SB13 has been a big help. And then also just this extra legal push on messaging has been working. And we've seen Larry Fink, the head of BlackRock, just stop using the word, the term ESG because it's, quote, become so politically charged so that we are seeing some steps being taken backwards by the biggest names and pushing this ESG movement. So which is fascinating in and of itself. Bradley, thank you. Hayden, let's plug ourselves here a little bit.

Let's talk about ourselves and our content for a second here and belabor our points. We launched a special edition podcast this week about the impeachment trial of Ken Paxton. What are some of the things that we covered? Well, I certainly don't want to belabor the point, so I'll keep it short here. If y'all have not listened to our special edition podcast, we would like to invite you to do so. Our first, we have three preview episodes. Our first two covered the whistleblower allegations and some of Paxton's political opponents in 2022 and the events that led up to the impeachment. Our last preview episode is going to be about the impeachment itself. We were in the chamber on the day Paxton was suspended from office, and that will be the subject of our last episode. It provides some of the background

context, and I emphasize some because there is so much to cover in this impeachment and it would be impossible to cover it in just three episodes. We do though hope to give you a little bit of background context so as you follow our coverage at the texan.news of the impeachment it won't all be new information. Head to your where you get podcasts and download our preview episodes because they are packed with information that will elucidate some of what will be presented at trial and some of the tweets that we'll be sending throughout the proceeding. Yeah, absolutely. They've been well received so far. We're grateful for that. Thank you for listening. And so far, just been Hayden and I on the pod,

hamming it up and chatting through all things Paxton. And starting next week, we'll go switch to daily podcasts where all sorts of members of our team will join. But Matt and Brad will be the standing panelists with myself to chat through all the things. And we have some fun guests scheduled to come on too, which I'm excited for. And I won't tease too much who they might be yeah but they're fun suspension build that's right

but it'll be good not many lawmakers folks they're all under gag order but we got some good guests we definitely got some good guests so definitely go check out inside the impeachment paxton on trial we've had fun with it so far brad matt you guys ready to chat all things impeachment every single day boy am i matt you ready oh yeah oh yeah i like it it's gonna be fun okay well hayden thank you for teasing that folks make sure to listen to the pod and thanks for receiving it so well so far we are so grateful cameron coming to you let's talk about the texas state historical association this has been quite the saga that has lasted for months and seems to have come to a conclusion, knock on wood. Catch us up on what has gone on and where we are at now. Yeah. So like you're saying, the Texas State Historical Association has gone through the

ringer really in the past six months. They were facing some financial issues. And so one of their most prominent members, J.P. Bryan, he stepped in to help them out. And because of this, he was given a place on their board as executive director. And in his role as executive director, he noticed that the ideological makeup on the board was not even. By their bylaws, they need to have an even split between non-academic and academic members. Well, he brought this up, attempted to make the changes happen, but there was some on the board that weren't open to that idea. And so what ended up happening, there was a restraining order filed, there was a potential lawsuit. And so as things were unfolding, there seemed to be no resolution to this makeup of the board. They did all agree that to avoid the lawsuit, they would have a mediation session. And so what resulted of this mediation was two academic members would be

stepping down. This would make way for two non-academic members to fill those roles. And there's actually a vacant spot on the board as well. So that will be filled by a non-academic member as well. Wow. So you were able to get Mr. Bryan's thoughts on the resolution, right? What did he have to say? Yeah. So luckily I got a chance to reach out to him and he talked about the tradition of preserving the historical narrative with equal contribution from both academic and non-academic members. And he said that's what is really important to him, and that can now continue with this outcome. There you go. Cameron, thank you for your coverage.

Bradley, it's been a concerning week for the ERCOT grid with multiple conservation requests. How did things turn out? Between Thursday last week and Wednesday this week, ERCOT issued six conservation appeals, and each time the state has avoided emergency conditions. The closest it's come to that this summer was two weeks ago Thursday when reserves came within 600 megawatts of triggering the first level of emergency conditions. During the first part of the recent string, the causes of the tight conditions was high demand, which has been the case basically all summer, and then mainly low wind output as the sun set. But another factor started to play into it at the beginning of this

week. Unplanned thermal outages jumped above 10,000 megawatts. ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas said on Thursday that this occurred because coal and gas plants had been running so much during the last few weeks to make up for the lack of wind generation. Things broke. Maintenance had to be done. Plants went offline. And so, you know, by and large, the biggest reason we're having these tighter conditions is the demand. There's more people in the state than ever. There are more businesses, corporations, which means more suck from the grid. So first and foremost, that's the biggest reason. And until we get more steel in the ground on plants for dispatchable power, it's probably going to continue to happen, especially when you run into these days when wind does not show up. For most of the summer, wind has performed at least above its level in the last week or so um still you know as a percentage of its installed capacity

it's still been pretty low but enough that we haven't had to deal with these you know tighter conditions that cause conservation alerts so um that's been the dynamic for most of the summer but like i said in the last week or two it's been a lot more contentious and so you know still a long way to go during the summer you know probably temperatures are going to continue to be in the triple digits but maybe we have we avoid this still i don't know we each Each time ERCOT has set a conservation alert, demand has, it seems like people have responded and demand has come in lower than projections.

Now that could also just be a factor of ERCOT doing a very conservative estimate of demand. Probably a little bit of both, but so far things have been okay. And despite some absolutely ridiculous statements from some people on twitter but we'll get to that later yeah we'll get to that later so if also is nat gas a thing people say out loud yeah okay that's i just say it because it's shorter i'm just making sure that i know what you're saying yeah natural gas natural gas okay well

thanks for teaching me lingo i don't understand you're saying. Yeah. Natural gas. Natural gas. Okay. Well, thanks for teaching me lingo. I don't understand. You're welcome. Okay. Had emergency conditions been triggered, what is the protocol? So the three emergency levels are EEA 1 when reserves dip below 2,300 megawatts, EEA 2 when reserves dip below 1,750 megawatts. At that point, you will see large industrial users go offline and uh they are allowed to um if they have generators on site they're allowed to sell um electricity back into

the grid and when that happens you see prices at really high levels. Therefore, there's an additional financial incentive for them to pull themselves off the grid, stop taking from it, and then put some back into it. They can also receive credits for just pulling themselves off the grid anyway, relative to the amount of demand they would have taken from the power grid. And then at the third level, it's when reserves drop below a thousand megawatts and that implements rotating outages. That's only happened four times in ERCOT's history, which began in the seventies. Um, the worst of which was 2021. Uh, the state had to drop like 20,000 megawatts because a bunch of power generators went offline for a number of different reasons that we've talked about at length. But most of the time,

it's pretty limited. They sent a directive to all the transmission companies for X amount of megawatts they need to drop. And then those transmission companies are tasked with cutting that certain percentage that they're responsible for of high peak demand in their area in order to get to that level that they need to drop. And I think it's Encore is the largest segment, like 36%. So they'd have to drop 36% of whatever that megawattage is. And so they will rotate the outage. Usually it's 15 minutes off for a certain area, and then that outage is moved elsewhere in their service area. And then it continues until no longer do we need outages.

So people understandably freak out about it relative to what happened in 2021, but it's really not that alarming of a situation. It's not good, don't get me wrong, but 15 minutes out of power, which is what was supposed to happen in 2021 but but didn't. That's not that terrible. At least it's more of an inconvenience. Do other states have issues with, not issues, but do they utilize that rotating power outage? Yeah.

Yeah, they do. California has been doing that for the last few years when they run into especially the summer heat. And they draw power from other states in large part. And so there was a situation a couple of years ago where we saw wind in the surrounding states where they get their wind power from was not generating. And so they had to cut power in the state in order to balance out the supply and the demand. It's been happening, I think, up in the Northeast this year. Largely, it's more of an inconvenience, like I said.

But yeah, it's a tool that all power grids use, not just ERCOT. The problem is that when you say outages, people think these prolonged outages that lasted the entire freaking week. What would be a better term to use than outages? Is there something? I mean, it's rotating outages. The difference is

what Texas... Because that can mean a lot of different things. Yeah. Right. But the emphasis on rotating, right? What happened was prolonged outages. First, it was rotating outages, but they didn't stay rotating. They were prolonged, and it lasted days, not 45 minutes or whatever. So, yeah, regardless, we haven't hit that.

And other than two weeks ago Thursday, we haven't come close. Not really. I mean, things have been tight, but we haven't come close to that. Yeah, there we go. Thank you for your tight, but we haven't come close to that. Yeah. There we go. Thank you for your coverage, Bradley. Cameron, coming back to you. Let's talk about Katie ISD took an action that caught a lot of attention this week. Tell us about this new policy, what it does, and some of the issues that it will be addressing.

Yeah, that's right. This policy change, it was titled Parental Authority and Gender Fluidity Matters. And it was barely passed, four to three. And KDISD will now require sex-specific spaces to be safeguarded according to biological sex, preferred pronoun usage, and reporting by teachers and instruction related to gender fluidity is all addressed in this single policy. And so the majority of the attention, though, was being paid to the preferred pronoun issue. As a lot online were calling this new policy a way for teachers to out their students, let's say. But what it does, because I made sure to listen to the entire board hearing, and the board president explained it this way, is that it allows

campuses to create proper channels for district staff, that's including teachers, to report incidents where students are requesting preferred pronoun usage. And staff will not be required to promote or encourage the use of preferred pronouns. The policy will also require teachers to ask, not require, sorry about that, they will not require teachers to ask students for their preferred pronouns. So this reporting aspect was the contentious portion of the debate the entire night of the vote, as some of the board members asked about how teachers will be able to establish trust with their students if they're going to be reporting these preferred pronouns to their parents. But again, the policy does not say that teachers are going to be telling parents

anything. It's just the teachers are going to be required to report incidents through the proper channels that will eventually get to the parents. This is the transparency aspect, empowering parents to know what is happening in the schools with their kids. And so like the discussion that was happening during the board meeting, the campuses will have the freedom to establish those channels how they see fit. So one campus might do it differently than another. This, again, brings it back to the parent if they want to get involved in understanding how these reporting channels are going to work. They can go to their campus and understand how the reporting channels are going to work.

And in regard to the gender fluidity aspect of this new policy it will it will remove any discussion of gender fluidity in the instruction study materials or any other curriculum that is being used in the classroom so a lot was packed in to this one policy and like i said it was a very contentious debate. A lot of people, a lot of parents showed up to give their opinions on what was going on. There was a lot of discussion going on online, but it did pass. And I go into detail in the piece if people want more information. So if you're interested, go read the piece. Yeah. Breakdown of which members voted which way, what the policy does,

all sorts of good discussion. Thank you, Cameron. Brad, the state of Texas won a case against the Nuclear Regulatory Commission over the storage of spent nuclear fuel. Very important and... Did you understand that? No. Did you follow it? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I'm trying to find a way to say nicely that this is very important and very boring. I mean, that is pretty much all of my beats.

So here's the thing. It's very boring to me. I understand that it is very, very exciting for people that are not me. Do you like Cameron? Do you enjoy your lights coming on? I do. That's why I say it's important yeah yeah the importance is not lost on me okay yeah okay but the um nuclear regulatory commission

is not something that i will be reading about in my free time but oracle whales i will okay yeah i'll try and cover more oracle whale stuff anyway the u.s fifth circuit court of appeals ruled that the nrc does not have carte blanche authority to issue licenses for the interim storage of high level nuclear waste that's spent nuclear fuel back in 2021 the nrc approved that license for an andrews county facility something tech sledge preempted in the second special session that year by passing a statewide ban. It was something that wasn't really on my radar much at all until this odd topic popped up on the special session call by Governor Abbott, and that prompted looking into it more, and this was the issue. So the NRC was planning to approve this license, but Texledge decided to jump ahead of it and ban it outright,

at least where it isn't already stored. It's unclear if the NRC will appeal this ruling, but the owners of that facility have dropped their efforts to build it due to the state ban. And so if the NRC does try and appeal, it will be to reestablish authorities. It believes it has for future instances, whether it's in Texas or elsewhere. So I understand this is important, but tell us why it is important. So if you're excited about nuclear power which is probably at least slightly more sexy of a topic right just only slightly yeah i think it is

okay has a little more pizzazz yeah yeah so governor abbott recently announced the plan to build a first of its kind small modular nuclear reactor on the gulf coast to power dow chemicals operation corpus Christi. This seems to be kind of the direction the industry is moving in, these smaller reactors rather than these big large ones that we have already in Texas, the one at Comanche Peak and the one in South Texas. But if you build more of those, that means more nuclear waste is going to be created. So it's a trade-off that you have to deal with if you're going to have

the power. You know, just like with wind turbines, those have to be the broken ones after they're done working. They have to be, something has to be done with them. We see those piling up in landfills. We see waste from the oil and gas industry as well. This is all something that needs to be done just like taking out the trash from your house every week. That's my pitch for why this is important. And so if those predictions hold, we're going to see a lot more of this. And something has to be done with it.

The state already stores spent nuclear fuel on site at those two existing nuclear plants, along with academic reactors, including in North Austin at the University of Texas. So the stuff is already, if you live up there, you're going to be around this now. Beware. It is safe. Yeah, can you talk a little bit about the safety of nuclear power plants and with the nuclear waste storage? Because there's some misinformation about the safety around it.

So when you talk about nuclear, the one thing most people think of is Chernobyl, which was by and large a bureaucratic failure that caused technical failures. You look at the other two, Three Mile Island and Fukushima were places where nuclear reactors had issues. Those were pretty much successes. Obviously, they weren't operating as they were intended, which is why the tripwire was triggered. But nobody was, as far as I i'm aware nobody died from any complications there everyone got out safely um but it has caused this react public reaction that originally began at least with uh chernobyl um with a lot of concern about having these things. And so that's kind of the movement against increasing our nuclear power footprint.

But storage, it's also incredibly safe. Back when I first started covering this, I looked around and I couldn't find any examples of this stuff. They test these concrete casks for um survivability and they've shot missiles at it and it survives it's fine um and so it's by and large it's a highly radioactive substance but they have gotten really good at storing this stuff. Yes, it's very safe, and the waste is not going to be infectious or radiate onto people because they have these storage methods that have been

tested exhaustively, and it's very safe. And so I think it's just the term nuclear kind of turns people off. Well, the other thing that I... But did y'all see the cat litter instance at the New Mexico high-level nuclear waste site? Did you guys see the cat litter instance of a nuclear waste site?

I think you mentioned that before. Yeah, the high-level nuclear waste site that's near the one in Andrews across the state line in New Mexico, they decided to have a green day for the employees to find different ways that they can do things more green, I suppose. So an employee decided to purchase some organic cat litter to store nuclear waste in instead of the regular clay cat litter. And it caused a multi-billion dollar nuclear spill and wiped out a portion of the storage facility. So there's that too. So still very high stakes here for this kind of storage. Certainly. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. Well, gentlemen, I'm going to interrupt you and make you pause

talking about nuclear waste. Okay. I'm very sorry about it. I know you guys could go on for a long time. But, Matt, we're going to come to you. Investors in a company that holds a substantial interest in a lease with the state of Texas to mine rare earth minerals in Hudspeth County is being sued by investors who say they were shortchanged on shares in the company. Give us those details. That's right, Mackenzie. USA Rare Earths is being sued in the Chancery Court of the State of Delaware by investors who say they were entitled to an equal amount of shares in the company when the owner, Mordecai Gutnick, took assets from another company they'd invested in

called Mordev and transferred them into the new company, USA Rare Earths. They said the shares that they were given were of less value than their Mordev shares and that Guttnick and others conspired to defraud them. Guttnick and the other defendants in the case say that the plaintiffs are trying to rewrite a contract to get a better deal and point to a fundraising effort where USA Rare Earth raised $50 million towards the mining effort. They also say a memo written by Gutnick that plays a key role in the plaintiffs' arguments was poorly written and was ultimately superseded by a more thorough subsequent contract. Now, the Rare Earth Mountain property, owned by the Texas

General Land Office, is said to hold one of the most important deposits of rare earth elements that are critical for electronics manufacturing. China presently holds a near monopoly on rare earth mining, and the Round Top mine has been viewed as important to U.S. national security interests. The General Land Office leased the land to another company, Texas Rare Earth Resources, back in 2011 with the agreement to produce rare earths under a 19-year lease. Fast forward 12 years, nothing has been mined, and Texas Rare Earths has sold a roughly 80% stake in their lease interest to USA Rare Earths. Now, the plaintiffs have not cited a specific monetary number in their suit against USA Rare Earths, but are seeking punitive and

compensatory damages from USA Rare Earths and amount to be determined at trial. USA Rare Earths has filed several motions to dismiss the case, which are presently being reviewed by the judge. Only then will it be determined whether or not the case goes forward. Thank you, Matthew. Cameron, coming to you, a group of school districts has filed a lawsuit accusing the TEA's new accountability rating system of making retroactive changes. Tell us those details. Yes, a growing list of school districts in the state are saying that TEA's new refresh plan will make retroactive changes to standards, which will lower performance ratings This refresh plan, the TEA says, was a response to the lockdowns, which necessitated the change. In addition, the lawsuit, over 200 school districts

have sent a letter to Governor Abbott and to the TEA expressing their concerns over this new rating system. And a bipartisan group of lawmakers have also sent a letter to the TEA Commissioner, Mike Morath, expressing their concern and objection. So a lot of heat coming out against this refresh plan. And I covered the refresh plan when it initially came out. It was a changing in a lot of the what is called cut scores. So what would be passing essentially for different reading and math scores, those were changed. And what this new plan is doing is looking back at the 2022-2023 school year. So that is what they are pushing back against that retroactive nature of this refresh plan in this first year.

There you go, Cameron. Thank you. Gentlemen, let's pivot. We are pivoting to Tweeter-y now. Who should I start with? Who should I call on? Why don't we start with Cameron? This actually would be interesting after all of our previous topics. Okay. So we wrote about this lawsuit by the DOJ against SpaceX. And SpaceX is Elon Musk.

Elon Musk, probably one of the more famous residents here. Who's that? Brad. Just the richest man in the world. Just moving technology forward. Insignificant to some, significant to others. But this lawsuit against SpaceX, they were saying he was being discriminatory in their hiring practices because they weren't hiring asylum seekers or refugees.

And what is interesting is, I wrote about this in a piece when it first came out, and as I've been reading into it more and more, what was going on with SpaceX is because the type of technology that they're working with, you actually have to be a U.S. citizen to work with it because of certain information, let's say, technical aspects that are being used with space travel. Casual. Casual stuff. Yeah. You might want to be a U.S. citizen. Well, so that's what was strange about this lawsuit being levied. There's been a lot of information coming out about the people involved with the DOJ that are filing this

lawsuit. That's for our listeners to figure out on their own. But Elon, as he will, will go on to X, which he owns, also known as Twitter. That's the AP News. That's exactly right. X, formerly known as Twitter. And so he called it ridiculous, another case of weaponization. And so he's taking a hard stance against this and you know it's interesting we'll see what shakes out but it seems like there's been a lot of people going after Elon since he's really taken a charge and being more vocal about different political issues on Twitter.

And so I just thought this was really interesting that he, again, is speaking out, speaking his mind. Doing his Elon thing. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, Brad, let's go to you. So I referred to it earlier, but last Thursday there was a really just ridiculous tweet put out by a certain mainstream media reporter who said that pointing out the projected power deficit on the ERCOT chart and said, you know, this is bad, like February 2021 bad.

Sure enough, we didn't even hit emergency conditions. So there's that. But also, even if we had, even if we had gone to rotating outages, as I said earlier, it would not have been even close to February 21. Because first and foremost, there was not a massive 100-year winter storm

blanketing the entire state. But this person ran with it anyway, and people reacted to it, which was the goal, right? Playing the algorithm. Right, and it was just one of the most irresponsible things I've seen put out there. Are you subtweeting but sub-podcasting right now? I am. Yeah, okay. I already subtweeted, now I've got sub tweeted now i got sub podcast well you didn't even sub podcasting did you just invent that term i did thanks for noticing i i like this new this new term that

you've coined i might steal it we'll take it i like it but you didn't even like sub tweet you like co-tweeted this person oh yeah yeah like it was not a subtweet where you were being super vague like he was his name was in the yes in the mix there anyways i later subtweeted because he further doubled down on his nonsense but regardless i hope he doesn't do that again because it does not do anything to explain to people what's actually happening. There you go. End rant. The best remedy for bad speech is good speech, and you're putting good speech out there.

I guess we'll go with that, yeah. Thanks, Cameron. Even though you're a sassy butt. This is true. Yeah. Okay, great. Matthew, let's go to you. We're going to end on Hayden's because I'm excited about this drama, but I'm also excited about Matt's.

This is a fun one. Oh, well, I was just going to say there was a seven minute segment of a longer interview between the guy who wrote the Richmond North of Richmond song. It's been very, very popular. Oliver Anthony and he was Anthony Oliver I guess and he was interviewed on the Joe Rogan podcast and anyway it was just a seven minute

segment of the interview and I want to go see the full interview but it was very interesting he was just kind of opening up talking about how, um, he, uh, he, uh, gave his life to Christ and, uh, got off drugs and alcohol and all of that sort of stuff. And, um, it was just literally sharing some Bible verses with Joe Rogan. And he read this one verse that literally left Joe Rogan sitting there staring at him like that is really deep. There's really good, really good

stuff in there. And so it was just a good casual conversation. And like I said, I want to go watch the whole podcast, but or listen to it. um uh anywho i just thought i would uh plug that it was it was it was a very good segment so matt was matt in that segment did he reveal his real name uh i don't remember if he did or not i don't think so just wait cameron what's his real name? Tell us. I'm not going to spoil the episode. Come on. You think you know him as Oliver Anthony?

Yeah. Is that not actually his real name? You're going to have to listen. Oh, so you've heard the whole interview. Yeah. No, I heard a clip of it. I saw it on YouTube. Okay. Well, any Joe Rogan podcast, you need to set aside like three hours of your life. Yeah.

So that's one thing. It took me like, I listened to one of Luke Combs. I'm a big Luke Combs fan, country singer. And Zach Bryan, listened to them both on Rogan. And it literally took me like two weeks to get through both of those episodes. Took me a very long time. But we made it through. Good stuff, Matt.

Hayden, we're coming to you. What'd you got? Well, shock of shocks, I have an impeachment-related tweet to talk about. Dan Patrick responded to a tweet by someone who's very active on Twitter, and I will leave it at that, who said that Patrick was back channeling with Paxton and telling him that the trial was going to go poorly for him and that he better resign to save face. And I'm paraphrasing the content of the original tweet. But Patrick responded, this is totally false reporting. I'm quoting from Patrick's tweet. Quote, this is total false reporting. There are no back channel conversations with any party to the proceedings. This is a fabricated story and an outrageous and irresponsible tweet by nothing but a hack writer who often spreads false information

without any facts. Hashtag tech ledge, end quote. And obviously this person is going to be reporting heavily on the trial. And I thought that was an amusing forecast of how media coverage in this trial might go. Patrick obviously is not pleased that this rumor was started and fed into by this, this person who writes a lot on Twitter, but you know, I think during the trial, the reporting is going to be very cut and dry from some, but it's not every day that Patrick responds to something that is put out there on Twitter. But Paxton also responded to this tweet

saying that it was wrong and that he would not back down from this proceeding. So, you know, we'll be in the Senate as much as we possibly can providing updates on this proceeding and reporting it as fairly and as accurately as possible. But some reporters put themselves out there way more and open themselves up to criticism by repeating things that have been told to them, you know, off on background or without attribution. And sometimes that puts elected officials in a difficult spot because then they're in the position of either having to confirm or deny it. So whether or not back channel conversations were happening, you know, obviously Patrick has firmly denied that. So not a timid response from Patrick as far as that rumor goes, but I am fascinated that

as much as Patrick has done to keep the perception of this proceeding as fair and impartial with the gag order and with all of these measures he's taken, that he responded so pointedly to something that was on social media. But it was a big claim. And it really, that tweet, that claim went directly to Patrick's integrity because he's issued this gag order and the tweet more or less accused Patrick of violating it. So he really had no choice but to respond to it in some way. but trial hasn't even started and we've already got a, a pretty huge, uh, clash between, um, uh, a reporter and, uh, the presiding officer of the trial. So, uh, makes you wonder what, what other fireworks are going to happen during the actual trial. Absolutely. Fascinating to see that all go down. Real fast, Matt, is it true that dove season starts the day this podcast comes out?

That is a fact. Wow. As a matter of fact, we're working on a story for the opening day to give our readers all the latest information and statistics on what the dove population estimates are and a little bit of a sneak peek. Texas Parks and Wildlife says they

believe it's going to be a great season. That's awesome. It's going to be fun. My husband is going to Georgia this weekend to dove hunt with his dad. It's going to be fun. I don't know if it's the same time i might drag the old shotgun out of the closet make some hay there you go okay folks well thank you for listening and joining in on our discussion

this week we will catch you next week as the impeachment trial begins don't forget to go and listen to inside the impeachment our new podcast For all the details there, we appreciate you listening, and we will catch you next week. Thank you to everyone for listening. If you enjoy our show, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you want more of our stories, subscribe to The Texan at thetexan.news. Follow us on social media for the latest in Texas politics,

and send any questions for our team to our mailbag by DMing us on Twitter or shooting an email to editor at the texan.news. We are funded entirely by readers and listeners like you. So thank you again for your support. Tune in next week for another episode of our weekly roundup. God bless you and God bless Texas.