The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - September 11, 2026

Episode Date: September 11, 2026

The Texan’s Weekly Roundup brings you the latest news in Texas politics, breaking down the top stories of the week with our team of reporters who give you the facts so you can form your own opinion.Here’s What to Expect From the Dallas GOP Midterm ConventionIn Pictures: Day One of the Republican National Convention in DallasTrump Promises $5,000 ‘Dividend’ for Every American Adult Citizen at Dallas RNCLatino Conservative Group Optimistic About Flipping Rio Grande Congressional Seat‘Detransition Clinic’ at Texas Children’s About One Month Out From Agreed OpeningPaxton, Talarico Attack Ads Home In on Social Issues, Impeachment RecordMcAllen Resident Lands 30 Years in Prison for Alien Smuggling SchemeTexas’ Biggest County Budgets Have Grown by Two Thirds Since 2016Enjoy 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.

What's the percentage number that they grew by? Overall, it's 67%. And that's a calculation based on the sum of the top five counties in Texas. And so that's Bear County. For context, I just did the, I just did the 6-7 meme. That's why Isaiah laughed. I was going to preserve your reputation. And, you know, it's humble of you to admit that.

Howdy, folks, welcome back to another episode of the Texans' Daily Rundown. I'm the Texan senior editor Rob Lausis, and joining me today are reporters Mary Elise Ovar, Meredith Dyer, Isaiah Mitchell, and Steve Kapuska. Now, Meredith and Isaiah, you two are currently in Dallas for the Republican National Convention, this 26 midterm convention that we just found out was happening earlier this year. And it's been pretty interesting. I've been following on social media, but y'all's Twitter 3rd. have been fantastic. It's sort of capturing everything that's been going on. We've had some excellent photos. We had a great photo story go out just earlier today. But Meredith, you know, tell us a little bit about what the energy was like going into the convention. You know, let's get right into it. Well, the energy definitely, um, we were talking about this before on the

podcast. It's not a convention as much as it is like a rally, I get out the vote, trying to get the energy up as I head into the midterms. It's something that I'm kind of jumping ahead to Trump's comments,

but he did talk about that and just discuss how usually the sitting president is their party is not going to do well in the midterms. And he even said at one point to people like pretend like I'm running and get out there and vote for different people.

And he specifically talked about and he had tweeted about this or put it on true social that he wanted people at this rally to speak that were not 30 points ahead or been doing whatever his numbers were really ahead, been doing it for many years. He wanted to kind of focus on people that had tight races that were behind or tight or looking like they needed that support. And so he talked about there were 35 races that he said were like swing races and that he would be visiting all of those states. He, one thing that got tweeted out a lot was him saying that he would come back to Texas twice or even three times if he needed to help get Ken Paxton elected. So he definitely was there to support Paxton. Although in true Trump fashion, one of my favorite tweets was someone who said that he's discovered that it's funny when he makes fun of Paxton's looks. And when he makes fun of his clothes, he kept saying he totally went off the teleprompter and was like, I'm going off the teleprompter. And everyone's going to tell me not to say this. And he really like built up the everyone.

tells me not to do this and not to say this and that it's rude and that I shouldn't and I'm going to do it anyway. And then he just did the whole, you know, my eyes looks or the way he talks or the way, yeah, but he's the best AG. So he ends with like a compliment after. It's not even a compliment sandwich, right? You're supposed to be like hard thing, nice thing, hard. It's like just, do, do, do, oh yeah, he's a good AG. So that's been his prerogative about this. I'm sure we'll hear this comment many more times, but Isaiah, was there anything I missed there about the vibe of why everybody was there? Yeah, as you said, it was primarily a Trump rally, but also a rally for these other candidates. And so we saw some Texas congressional candidates, but also some administrative officials.

So Scott Turner was there, you know, head of the housing department. Scott Besant was there. And so it was in general, setting like a sort of midterm messaging and common sense was really like the one word theme that I would pick out from most of the speeches. You know, they tended to center on that theme like common sense versus the extreme.

And something that sort of subverted my expectations was that looking at the program beforehand, I was expecting a pretty heavy economic focus similar to what the Democrats have been doing. You know, like at Tala Rico's rallies, at Jeanne Heinojosa's rallies, there's been a big emphasis on saving people money, you know, return to the money. Like, that's one of Hinojosa's plans is to, like,

send $1,500 checks to everybody. And Trump presented a similar proposal at the rally. But we also saw a lot of social issues come up. And not only as a critique of the Democrats, but also, you know, as a defense of Republicans on issues like transgenderism, on, you know, especially with it, as it relates to sports, children's sports. And, um, the, um, the, um, the, um, the border came up a lot insofar as that can be called a social issue. And so there was more of a breadth of topics than I expected, you know, looking at the program and just looking at how Democrats have been talking about this election cycle so far. Yeah, girl or guys in women's sports came up like a lot. Like even just thrown out in lists of things. I remember walking around, I was walking around

and it just kept like coming in and out of a lot of speeches and things like that. So, that was kind of interesting. Mary Lease. I think that is interesting because it's, you know, leaning, like you said, instead of the more economic focus, which I think a lot of us are probably expecting. I mean, like for months, that's been kind of the idea surrounding Republicans is that they're going to be focusing more on economics. But this is kind of leaning into what was a very, I think, of a successful strategy as

of the 2024 election, where they kind of leaned into the whole, you know, girls and or boys and girls sports sort of thing and social issues like that. And really just driving home that they were like the common sense party versus, you know, these crazy liberal ideas, social policies of the Democrats. So it's interesting that they've chosen to kind of go that route during convention so far instead of like more of the focus on economics. I wonder why that is. And Gina Hinojosa talked about this in some interview prior to the convention.

Like if they're just going to do culture war issues like and just go honing on that. nobody's interested. So we'll definitely see like is this strategy as effective as it was last time. Are people still interested in these? Or was this something that didn't really, doesn't move the needle with Texans, but it was more a national? Because we also remember it's here. There were a lot of Texas speakers. It's very Texas heavy. But there, I mean, then there were points where obviously there were other senator or candidates for Congress or different people getting up to speak and they were addressing, like, issues that were related to their states or more national issues. So it's here, and the Republicans feel like a home court advantage. You can tell that, but it was not

just for Texas Republicans, just for everybody. Well, and that's a good point because I think when some people hear them discussing these social issues, like, you know, the sports issue and some other ones that have been largely dealt with by the Texas legislature for a couple of years now, it feels a little bit out of place, but that's a good point that this is, it's happening in Texas, but there's a lot of other folks tuning in nationally. And so they're more looking at this. It's like, they're looking at this more of like a broader picture for its eye view. That's just, just Texas, which we might look at from. I think one of my favorite sound bites that's come out of this entire convention rally,

whatever we want to call it, was the language they kept using was the mainstream versus the extreme, right? And you hear this repeated by so many candidates because the Republicans' main sort of theme going into this is we represent, and this is something that we talked about in our preview piece that you wrote up, Meredith, but the Republicans are saying, you know, we represent ordinary Americans, we represent, you know, normal American values, we represent economic opportunity, whereas the Democrats are a bunch of crazy socially liberal extremists and a bunch of crazy communists are going to crash the economy. Something that I think this relates to on a state race in Texas, if you want like a microcosm

of this sort of thing, is Beau French, the former Tarrant County GOP chair, who is very active on social media. And I think, you know, he's willing to say provocative, controversial things. But if you go and look at his ads, you know, he's the guy running as, I'm the common sense candidate, you know, my opponent, the Democrat, he wants to get rid of, he wants to get rid of oil and gas, which is also, of course, a theme that Trump hit on in his speech. Of course, if you're in Texas, you got to talk about Texas oil and gas. And James Tala Rico allegedly wanting to get rid of oil and gas was a theme that he hit. So, yeah, a lot of like, we're the

normal people, you know, they're trying to, because this is going to be a tough election for the Republicans. Now, Trump claimed that, I believe he claimed in his speech that nobody knows why, midterm. Nobody knows why presidents' parties tend to suffer during a midterm. I think we have a couple of reasons possibly why, which is, you know, that people blame the party in power for whatever's going on. That was part of his

his two-hour speech wasn't using a teleprompter, so. Of course, we are. I mean, I was just going to say, it did not feel like two hours because I, you know, Meredith and I were sitting on opposite sides of the arena at that point. And after it ended, we met up. Meredith said, wow, I can't do that lasted two hours. And I thought, neither could I.

I didn't know that it had. But I guess something else I would point out on the economic side is that there was a little, I mean, I couldn't say friction because it was all pretty seamless. But for instance, Jay Feeley, who's running for Congress in Arizona, really during his speech, he said that, you know, he stands for free markets and small government. Right. and pretty traditional Republican talking points. But then during other segments,

there's a long segment that focused on Pennsylvania in particular. Another one in Michigan on the industries of those states. And we saw members of labor unions come out and flank these candidates on stage. There were ads playing on the screens out of the lobby on, for example, like there's a big railroad deal taking place that it said it's going to be good for union labor. and so we do have these fissures that, you know, I've been in a Republican Party for some time now, but so we've got like some candidates coming up saying smaller government,

you know, free trade, capitalism, laissez faire economics, that kind of thing. Then Scott Besson came up and I remember in particular he said the two big things that the administration is taking on are illegal immigration and unfair trade, right? And so if you think of the implications of, what that means, like more government intervention and international trade, less economic deregulation, that sort of thing. And so there's some mixed messaging on the economic front,

but really less so on the social front. Yeah, even you'd mentioned earlier, the Trump had an idea about giving people money. So the thing that's made the rounds on social media, and this is an economic thing, I feel like that the Republicans have mixed views about, is whether it's not a realistic thing that will most likely happen, But Trump was like, if we win the House and the Senate, I will give every American a dividend of $5,000.

And which he pontificated about later that they must spend it in the United States. And I mean, it's just, it's like just a very unrealistic plan that he's hatching and that was getting a lot of cheers, but then also got a lot of the idea of like, what are Republican values and things that they have traditionally stood for and government payouts and things like that are not, haven't been in the past. since I'd say COVID or so, I mean, had started to become something more normalized and got a lot of cheers and everybody was excited and then go on to social media the next day and be like, what's going on? What are we doing? Right. It was interesting that he called it the Trump giveaway. I think that's an interesting. The giveaway? Yeah, he said Trump. I mean, there's a lot of cheers at that moment, so maybe I missed heard it. But yeah, he said, this is going to be the Trump giveaway.

Oh, gosh. And again, all the time, I was thinking of the rally I was at for Jeannie Hinojosa, who's running for government here in Texas when she proposed a similar idea, only for $1,500, though, in Texas. And in her messaging, she kept reiterating, we're not asking for a handout. We're asking for what belongs to us. And as Trump explained his plan, the way he presented it was a dividend based on, you know, from all of the revenue that America has been receiving from tariffs.

So it was parceled in a pro-tariff message. And so he has this justification for it. But I saw it as, it's distinct from saying like, we're not accepting handouts. We're not doling out money. We are, you know, returning to you, what is already yours? Versus with Trump, it's like everybody's going to share in the wealth and the spoils of of these tariffs.

which we found out tariff is his fifth favorite word now he used to say it was his favorite word he wanted everyone to know that after you got crap for it not being god religion family wife he like listed a bunch of like better words and then he was like so i put it at number five now but yeah i think something interesting sorry what was that i'm sorry please continue rob no that's i was just going to say that people have been crunching the numbers and you know if there's if there's if if he said, you know, for every American adult would get $5,000, $250 million adult Americans would be like $1.3 trillion to give everybody a $5,000 check. And the tariff revenue that would be expected for this year would be somewhere around $300 billion, which would still leave about a trillion dollars unaccounted for. Of course, the U.S. national debt did just pass $40 trillion recently. So that's something that's obviously got fiscal conservatives in a tizzy about this kind of thing. As well as, you know, it kind of relates to the Trump accounts that very recently, Steve, actually, you wrote on the Trump accounts when U.S. Senator Ted Cruz was in Austin talking about businesses investing in Trump accounts because this is something that the administration and just the federal government in general wants to tout is, you know, it's seated with $1,000 of. government funds for every American child born between 2025 and 2028, but also they're really trying to encourage businesses, for example, Michael Dell of Dell computers, who Trump,

you know, called out in a speech and said, go buy his computers. So, yeah, Steve, do you think there's anything, uh, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, yeah. And, and, you know, I think something to kind of keep in mind is that the Trump accounts were, um, that was the, the kind of brainchild of Ted Cruz, who seems to be the kind of leader of the, what you might call the more traditional wing of the GOP in that they're much more in favor of a free trade and less government intervention and whatnot. And the way that the Cruz kind of framed the importance of it

was that he said that one of the ways that you could make Americans more invested in capitalism is to actually have them in, invested in capitalism. And so what the idea behind the Trump accounts is, is that, is that like, if, if people are actually, you know, invested in the stock market and they are stakeholders, then they'll be less inclined towards, you know, socialism and that's actually how a cruise was framing the the importance of the account. It's kind of interesting because

odds face one might think that that would not be his kind of thing. Yeah, as you were saying, he was kind of one of the biggest I mean, he was the last Republican, right, to drop out in the 2016 primary race before Trump finally clinched the nomination. And so there was this kind of,

I think it kind of fell to Cruz during that nomination process to represent the sort of traditional wing of the GOP against the kind of change that Trump wanted to bring to the party. But I mean, 10 years down the line, which is also something Trump hit during his speech, you know, he's like, I can't believe I've been doing this for 10 years. And also, I just have to say as an aside, I thought it was kind of funny when he said, you know, look at these guys. They've been here for longer than 10 years. They're not president. So, you know, now Cruz has really gotten behind, I think, the kind of, I don't know if maybe. Maybe they would object to the term an interventionist government, but certainly a much less strictly, a much less strictly laissez-faire, I think idea of economics that had been really popular within the Republican Party for a while, you know, obviously with the Tea Party movement, though a lot of that populist energy of the Tea Party movement has definitely been redirected towards what you might call, you know, the MAGA movement in a.

in a general sense. So it's, you know, John Thunas, Senate Majority Leader, yeah, he's gotten a lot of flack from the more conservative Republican critics who, you know, don't like the fact that the Save America Act hasn't been passed. But I feel like something similar happened a lot with Mike Johnson, you know, back during the, well, was it called in, you know, the year of the four speakers when, uh, after Kevin, McCarthy got the boot and Mike Johnson was put in place. A lot of people were really not happy with Johnson.

They were like, oh, this is just going to be more of the same. But now Johnson's kind of on the, he's definitely on Trump's good side. Trump is always saying, you know, oh, he's great. He's fantastic. And of course, he has to, you know, help his guy Thune as well. Because, of course, Trump needs the support of the Senate leadership if he wants to get his priorities passed. But yeah, I think that was really the worst booing of the entire. of the entire first day, I think, was John Foon, getting mentioned.

And of course, something else about Cornyn that has to be pointed out with the U.S. Senate race is that Trump waited until pretty close to the end of that race to finally go out and endorse somebody. And of course, it ended up being Paxton. But he said, you know, I like both of these guys, you know. And he, of course, eventually said, you know, I think that Paxton has, you know, gone to bat more for me than Corny than Cornyn has, so I'm going to go to bad for Paxton. But Trump is very quick to criticize, but he is also very quick to welcome somebody right back into his circle. You know, he's actually, I think, a surprisingly forgiving figure in terms of if you work with him, he will pretty much bring you right back in.

He might dunk on people. He really likes to dunk on people, but it was interesting to see him give him. give corn and some props. I mean, as you say, like, the Save America Act is Chip Roy's idea, right? That's his legislation. And he and Trump were on the outs for quite a while after the whole, you know, election incident, right? I mean, not incident, like the whole election saga.

And Chip Roy was just not in Trump's good graces. And now his legislation is, like, you know, a top priority for the president. Yeah, well, not to. totally going to shift focus here, but something I wanted to mention before we moved on from convention was some of the speakers that were invited to, some of the candidates that were invited to speak at convention, I thought were notable because there was kind of a South Texas theme. There are a couple candidates who are in some races that are just really important for the Republican Party. There was, on the lineup is Monica Dela Cruz and then her brother, Carlos Dela Cruz,

Tana Tijuana Tira, and then I know for getting somebody else, Eric Flores, I believe, as well. But I thought that was interesting because just because South Texas really is being watched so closely by Republicans, not just in Texas, but it's being watched, you know, at the national level as well. Because Republicans are, you know, there's that Latino vote that they're working to make sure that they can have during the selection because, you know, Trump was able to. when it's so well during the 2024 election. But then now, of course, there's all the concerns with deportation and everything, having to do with immigration enforcement that the Latino vote is going to not be there for Republicans. It's not going to materialize. So I just, I thought that was interesting.

I mentioned it in my newsletter that they were, you know, some of the speakers there because that'll definitely ramp up their name ID for some of those people who might not have quite as big of a name ID. at least at a broader level, you know, they might in their local community, but, but it's also interesting that they're choosing to very closely, and this is consistent with how they've been before, but, you know, closely align themselves with Trump because, like you all we're saying, this is kind of like a Trump rally, but they're choosing to really, like, kind of stand alongside him on stage and align themselves very closely with his administration. That's been carrying out all of the immigration enforcement.

So, yeah, just kind of that South Texas theme. was interesting, I thought. Yeah, and as Trump was saying, right, we don't want people in comfortable districts to come up here and speak. We want people in close districts. And it's going to be a lot of close elections, of course. And as you said, Mary Lees, the Latino vote that swung very hard towards Trump might end up swinging very hard the other direction. Steve, you wrote an interesting piece this week about a Latino conservative group that is supporting Republican candidate Eric Flores, who is running against Democratic Congressman Vicente Gonzalez in Texas Congressional District 34. And so can you tell us a little bit about your conversation with this group and sort of how do they

think that this race is going to pan out? And how does it compare to some of these other South Texas congressional races? Yeah, yeah. So recently there was actually a poll of all three of those races. And so what they found was that Henry Quilar was leading his opponent by quite a lot. They had a Republican representative of Macca Dela Cruz, actually narrowly trailing her opponent of Bobby Alito. The only race that they had within the race that they had within the race. the margin of error was district at 34. And in that race, they had Vincent de Gonzalez, narrowly leading within the margin of error, meaning that's, it's too close to a call. When I spoke with this person from Libre Action, which is a Latino conservative group,

what he told me was that, was that he found one knocking doors, that voters, even though they have reservations about Trump's handling of the economy and such, he found that they still favored Republicans over Democrats on the economy overall, specifically of some of these far-left candidates that are being nominated in many of these races. and in his words, Hispanics know that that socialism doesn't work. And so he thinks that Eric Flores is positioned quite strongly. Interesting.

I think it's, yeah, I think that this is, it's interesting, as you mentioned, Steve, that Flores is really, really close, really close to Gonzalez in this race, which of course, this is a race where Gonzalez had been a congressman in 2020, when because of the 2021 redistricting after the census, that

myra, former congresswoman Myra Flores and he, he ran in her district because of redistricting. He defeated her. And then she came back in 2024 and he defeated her again.

And now there is a different Flores that is running against, running against Gonzalez. Of course, no relation to between Myra Flores and Eric Flores, which I think you might assume that there might be some, given the fact that, of course, Monica De La Cruz and Carlos Dela Cruz are related, being brother and sister. So I thought that that was interesting. Mary Elise, getting into a kind of non-election related news for the week, you wrote a piece about this detransition clinic that is going to be opening or is scheduled to open at Texas Children's Hospital. in about a month. This is a result of a development between the hospital and Attorney General

Ken Paxton. I feel like I mention this every time we have the pod, but, you know, Paxton is still the state attorney general, is not just the U.S. Senate candidate, and he is still making moves in his sort of final months as the state's top cop. Tell us a little bit about this detransition clinic. Yeah, and it is a change in topic, in a sense, but also not at the same time, because, you know, you have to keep in mind, of course, that any candidate who's running for office right now, you know, not that it's necessarily persuading their actions, but the things that they're doing in office are going to be used very heavily for campaigning.

So something like this is something that the Paxson team is going to be using and continue to use to kind of prove his success in office and kind of push forward a certain image. And this is something that was brought up at conventioning. noticed and actually one of the speakers was one of the whistleblowers who kind of brought about this whole, you know, lawsuit and where we stand now at the settlement. But like you said, there's this first of its kind detransition clinic that is, that Texas Children's Hospital has agreed to open by the end of October as a result of this lawsuit between the state and the

hospital after the hospital allegedly legally performed gender modification. procedures on children. And so we just wrote this piece about pointing out that this clinic is, you know, it's about a month, roughly, like a month and a half out from the day that it's supposed to open. And there haven't been many details released yet about, you know, what is this practically going to look like? Because it's something that's been caught up a lot in the headlines about this detransition

clinic. It's supposed to help folks who experience adverse results as a release. of the gender modification procedures. So I haven't been many details about, you know, like the research that's going into kind of the medicine that would respond to this because this is in a lot of ways a new problem or that's going to need kind of an up-and-coming medical response for some of these, the results that happen, the adverse conditions that happen after these gender modification procedures. But some more background on the settlement in May, Paxton entered into a

this settlement agreement with the hospital. And that was because they believed that the staff had been performing medical transition procedures on children and then continuing after your child gender modification was banned in Texas in 2023. And that was a lawyer mentor that's mentioned that spoke at convention as Vanessa Savage. And she was fired from the hospital in the summer of 2024 after she came forward about the hospital, quote, unlawfully billing the state. Medicaid program for those purposes of child gender modification.

And then earlier that year, Ethan Hame, who also spoke at convention, had brought forward information that indicated the hospital was continuing to provide this, what they call, gender affirming care, despite promising to stop. And of course, Texas had banned these medical procedures or interventions for Texans who are under the age of 18 during the 88th legislative session. And then we saw the Texas Supreme Court uphold that in June 2024. You know, it faced some legal challenges there. So this is a topic that, you know, of course, this clinic is supposed to open at the end of October.

So we'll see what the practical details look like there. You know, like where is this going to be located? Who's going to be leading this? We did ask Texas Children's Hospital a bit about this. And the statement that we got was, you know, we asked several questions about where will this be located? What is the practical implementation of this clinic look like? You know, which location is it going to be set up on? And they said that the clinic will, quote, formalize the supportive, multidisciplinary services we deliver to all patients who need our care.

And there's lots of services that outlined in that settlement agreement that include, you know, their chronology, primary care, fertility counseling, and then also like the social work, case management side of things. So navigating insurance, those legal name changes, and then speech pathology as well. Those kind of fall under those services that were in the settlement agreement. And they said that all care will be provided within the hospital's existing licensure and scope. And then they said, given the multidisciplinary approach, care may be delivered in multiple locations depending on patient needs and services required for each individual patient. And then they said that there will also be a medical lead that's appointed to approve,

excuse me, to provide clinical leadership by the end of October. So, medical lead has not been appointed at this point that we are aware of. And we did ask some more questions about that appointment process and what that looks like. We weren't able to get any more details, but we'll keep following this. you know, they're supposed to open at the end of October, so there will be a lot of attention on that. Just kind of seeing what this really pans out to be by the end of October and what it, you know, what it materializes into what it looks like at the end of October with this clinic. If this clinic is going to have its own physical building, et cetera, what sort of staff is going to be appointed, what sort of medical research they're going to be pulling from. So, yeah, this is a big subject in Texas, but also it has attention at the national level, too, as we see at this convention.

I mean, we saw both civage and Hame up there speaking about their experience with Texas Children's. And then also thanking Paxton for his role and bringing this about. So, of course, this is a story that's relevant for the U.S. Senate election, but also, you know, just a part of Paxton, the fact that's. he is still Texas's Attorney General while he's campaigning. No, it's true he is, but of course, he is also the U.S. Senate candidate. And Steve, you also wrote this week on the kind of ads that Paxton and Tala Rico have been recently running against each other with Tala Rico hitting Paxton on his impeachment record and Paxton hitting back against Tala RICO. with an AI-generated ad on some of the more controversial social issues that Tala Rico has talked about. So tell us a little bit about those ads and what you think they say about the state of this race.

Yeah, yeah. So I think as you mentioned at the outset, the main sort of Republican argument going into these midterms is that the Democrats are, you know, extreme and, you know, crazy and believe all these out there. things. And that's been the main playbook that Paxton has been running versus Talleyco. So it's called King James, which actually is very clever, because King James is of course the name of a Bible, but also doubles as you as a King James Tala Rico.

And basically what the ad is, is it's a Taua Rico kind of a coloring in the Bible with all of the, with like sort of his interpretations of Christianity and, you know, him saying, um, some of the more controversial comments that he's been, uh,

criticized for like, you know, saying that a, like, you know, saying that a god is, is non-binary in that there are six, uh,

biological sexes and that kind of thing. Um, and something that was very notable about, the ad is that it's an AI generated. So like, it's like a Taur Rico, um, like it like shows him like,

you know, writing in the Bible, but, but it's not like, um, you know, it's not like, it's not,

it's not like Tau Rico didn't actually say those things, but it's having the AI version of him, uh, say those things. And in my contrast, um, the recent ad that, that a,

that Tau Rico ran versus, um, versus Paxton was very much focused. was very much focused on Paxton's character and ethics. He highlighted an endorsement that he got from one of the people that had accused Paxton of wrongdoing that led to the 2003 impeachment of Paxton in the Texas House of Representatives, the Texas Senate, of course, acquitted him on that. But something that you've actually seen from the Taua RICO campaign is that in the districts of the Republican representatives who had voted to impeach Paxon, you're actually seeing signs from the Tau Rico campaigns saying, like, I know your Republican state representative voted to impeach this guy.

And so that's really where Taur Rico is focused right now. Yeah, because as you're saying, he has to win over the Republican moderates who just might be willing to vote for him instead of Paxton or who of course might just be willing to sit out the vote at all, which if they would have voted for Paxton would kind of be in Talleyico's favor. something that U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, when he's been, he said this on the view earlier and he also said this on social media. But, you know, this is going to be, the test of this election will be can Republicans get the turnout, right? Can they get this turnout without Trump on the ballot, which is why I think it was you, Mary Elise, or I can't remember if it was which of y'all between Mary Elise and Meredith said this, but Trump literally said during his speech, pretend like I'm on the ballot, because he has got to. to get people out to the polls. Because, yeah, Paxton being on the ballot might depress some Republican turnout. And I've been, I've believed for a while that there are a lot of Republicans might say, you know, back in May when Cornyn lost the runoff, you know, oh, I'm never going to vote for Paxton.

But as the months go on and the possibility of a Tala RICO win becomes more and more real, I think a lot of Republicans who, who don't like Paxton are probably going to vote for them. I don't think that it's going to be, you know, I certainly don't think it's going to be a blowout either way. I think it's going to be a very close race. And it's going to be a very late night for all of us. But, yeah, I mean, can he get the turnout? As you said, Steve, it's interesting to see him pointing out, you know,

hey, Republicans, your Republican representatives, you know, impeached him. Yeah, so turning back to some non-election-related stuff, Mary Elise, you wrote a piece this week about a McAllen resident who landed 30 years in prison for an alien smuggling scheme. Give us a little update on what's going on there.

Yeah, it seems to be a lot of the border kind of immigration related cases have to do with human smuggling cases. And a lot of those cases kind of reaching their end point where they're being these individuals are being sentenced, etc.

That's just a lot of what immigration landscape looks like right now as far as like in the legal system. But this is a man from McAllen and he received a 30 year prison sentence and this is for his role. And as we mentioned, leading an alien smuggling ring. And it involved recruiting teenage drivers, which just, you know, added kind of this dimension to the case where he had, you know, encouraged them, allegedly encourage them to, you know, if they're being pursued by law enforcement, to speed away, to flee. And that caused a couple of, you know, dangerous situations, which was argued in court. This is Jose Manuel Silva Lopez. And so he'll be, you know, he's sentenced to 360 months in

federal prison just last week for this. And during his attorney, excuse me, during his hearing, the attorney was arguing that he had placed his drivers in substantial danger because he had, you know, he recruited these teenagers and then he gave them those instructions to flee from the police when they were being pursued. And one incident that was brought up that resulted in three deaths, one of whom was a teenage driver, was after the driver lost control of the vehicle and was trying to avoid a traffic stop being conducted by law enforcement. They also argued in court that Seville Lopez, didn't show any remorse about these deaths. And that crash happened as this underage driver had just picked up the aliens from the Rio Grande River,

which was kind of their, the system in this operation was they would, you know, these drivers would be instructed to go to the pickup these aliens from different points along the river. And then they dropped them off at a number of stash houses that were within the Rio Grande Valley. This particular driver is actually on the phone with Silva Lopez when it happened. That's according to the press release put out by the DOJ. It's something that we mentioned in here is that, you know, this border-related litigation, like I kind of said at the beginning, has taken shape largely around human smuggling conspiracies after the implementation of President Trump's, you know, closed border policies.

There was another recent human smuggling case that, you know, one of the individuals involved in it pled guilty. That was on Friday. So that would be a week prior to when you're listening to this podcast. But this, you know, was an individual where he, you know, had this kind of leadership role in the human smuggling conspiracy that had been enabled by a tunnel that was built between two different locations. And then he was indicted in the spring of 2025. Yeah. So this is, you know, just another example kind of of this border-related litigation that's revolving around these human smuggling cases. So I've been keeping an eye on those. They're interesting, of course. And some of these, you know, we don't see the sentencing happen

for several, several months since this is one case where, you know, his case has been ongoing, but he has now finally been sentenced to prison for 30 years. Thank you for giving us the update on that story, Mary Elise. As you mentioned in the piece, you know, with the changes that the Trump administration is brought to the border. It's not about catching people just, you know, walking across the border anymore. It's about going after these, uh, human smuggling conspiracies, making a very active effort to evade law enforcement. So I appreciate reading that story always from my own edification, you know, learning more about what's going on in Texas. But, um, Isaiah, turning next to you, I, we're going to talk a little bit more, uh, at the end of the pod about,

what we're going to expect from day two of the convention, but you wrote a piece on Texas' biggest county budgets, having grown by a substantial amount since 2016. What's the percentage number that they grew by? Overall, it's 67%. And that's a calculation based on the sum of the top five counties in Texas. And so that's Bear County. For context, I just did the 6-7 meme. That's why Isaiah laughed. I was going to preserve your reputation. And, you know, it's humble of you to admit that. And so I looked at the overall budgets of Travis County, Dallas County, Harris County, Bear County, and Tarrant County.

And the seats of these, which maybe are better known to people outside of Texas are Fort Worth, San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, and Austin. And I looked at the consolidated funds, sometimes called All Funds, budgets for each of these counties. And that's why if you've been paying attention to your own county or one of these in particular, the total might not be familiar to you. And one of the reasons I did that is because there's already a lot of great reporting on the general fund, which is for any city, it's kind of like the discretionary fund. It generates the most debate at city council meetings. It funds the most central services. And it's generally like what you read coverage about.

Holly at the Texan, she's got great coverage of Houston's and Harris County's general fund budgets. But the consolidated funds, the general fund doesn't capture, for instance, it usually doesn't capture debt, capital expenditures, you know, which are expenditures related to the county's buildings. A lot of judicial functions are often left out of the general fund. And so what I looked at was really like the county's entire expenditures and revenue for everything. And what I found is that if you add up the budgets for all five of these counties in 2016 and add them all up for 2026, and they're generally in the draft stage this year. Only Dallas County has adopted a final budget.

Then those sums have increased, it's increased by 67% since 2016. but that masks a bit of a division between counties that have increased their spending a lot and those that haven't. So in the last 10 years, cumulative inflation is about 40%. And Bear County and Tarrant County have increased their budgets by about that much also. So one could say, one could argue that they were pretty much on track with the rate of inflation for the last 10 years. So Bear County's budget in 2016 was 1.8. billion. This year, the draft they're considering is 2.6 billion. So that's a little less than 43% increase. And in Tarrick County, the only county with the budget below a billion, their

drafts this year they're considering it's $8.004 million. And in 2016, it was $58 million. So that's about 42% increase. But Travis, Dallas, and Harris have all had increases in their overall budgets that are pretty significantly over the rate of inflation. And the biggest is, in Travis County. So since 2016, the overall expenditures of Travis County have grown by over 130%, you know, from pretty much a million flat to 2.3 million on the table this year. And in Dallas County, it's grown from 930 million to 1.8 million, a billion. I'm sorry. And that's an increase of about 91%. And in Harris County, the increase is about 61%. So again, this is relevant now because four out of these five counties

are setting these budgets at the moment. And we talked a little bit about this in a previous podcast, and we were looking at city budgets, which work a little bit differently. But what you're hearing a lot this year from local government officials is that it's a difficult budget year.

That's just anecdotally a phrase that I'm hearing frequently as I sit in all these meetings, watch my line. And this just gives us a good context for how much these budgets have grown over the last 10 years. Population growth is

another factor here. It's generally the justification for an increase in the budget, right? You know, Texas is growing. It's been growing for a long time. And a lot of the growth has been concentrated in these counties, which are sort of the vertices of the Texas triangle, except for Austin, which is, you know, on the line. But the sum populations of these counties have grown from 12.3 million in 2016 to 13.5 million in 2025. And that's the last year that we have a U.S. Census Bureau of estimate for the population. And that's an increase of just 9.4%. So again, population plus inflation, it's a debatable metric for, you know, for using as a measuring stick for budget growth. But it's also, it's common. And you could, if you measure that

up against Bear County and Tarrant County, you'll see that it's generally on track with, you know, how much the dollar has lost value over the last 10 years, especially, you know, if you factor in how much the populations of those counties have grown. But that's less so the case with the other three. Well, thank you for giving us the rundown on that, Isaiah. I think it'll be, as you mentioned, I think that the, for a lot of these county governments, their fiscal year starts on October 1st. So we're about a third of the way through the month, and we will be pretty soon, you know, seeing what actually happens and it'll be interesting. Before we get into the tweetery for the podcast, I wanted to ask here, you know, we're recording this on Thursday morning and day two of this convention rally, whatever you want to call it, will be starting soon.

So I wanted to ask, do y'all have any big predictions or things you're expecting to see? Maybe what you might expect Vice President J.D. Vance to say when he gives the keynote address tonight. And then, of course, when the podcast goes out tomorrow, you can compare and see what came true. So do you all have any big predictions or anything you're expecting to see or excited to see? Well, there's definitely going to be a good smattering of Texas politicians throughout the night. We have Lieutenant Governor Tampatrick, the governor, Greg Abbott speaking. I know that Ted Cruz will be speaking. And then it was Eric Flores candidate for U.S. House in Texas 34.

And later in the evening, Mayor Eric Johnson of Dallas is going to be speaking kind of as the night. It starts to wrap up with some of the cabinet members, RFK and J.D. Vance. And then Trump said that he will not speak as long and just do a shorter bit. So we'll see if that I'm curious what a shorter bit looks like to. him, but he is last after JD Vance. So those are the people from Texas who will expect to see. We saw Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick sitting on the, like the dais on the first day next to Ken Paxton, chatting with him, talking with other people. So he's been around the convention so far, but we haven't seen Abbott yet. I'll certainly be curious to see what J.D. Vance says.

I mean, who isn't? But what I mean in particular is I feel like it will signal what kind of feedback he's gotten about the economic issues that we were talking about earlier, from his previous appearance on Joe Rogan and other appearances in the media. And I just know that he's gotten some criticism within the party.

And I feel like how much he leans on those same talking points to deny it will indicate how much feedback he's gotten from his own side. and what that feedback has been like. So if he backs off a little bit from some of his economic ideals that he's talked about in previous appearances recently, I think that'll be interesting to watch. Very cool. Well, it'll be exciting. I'll be following along.

I unfortunately couldn't go to the convention. So I will be following along on the C-SPAN live stream. But as I'm sure is, a lot of our other listeners. But if you are not able to watch the C-SPAN live stream, you should definitely be following Meredith. Isaiah on social media on Twitter, X, whatever you want to call it, because, of course, they will be giving not only live updates on what's happening, but also taking some fantastic photos. You can feel like you're really there. But speaking of social media, I was about to say, meteori for our tweetery for the week. Isaiah, you just wrote here, Alfred E. Newman. What's that about? this is just shameless self-promotion because it's my own tweet

that I quote but James Tala Rico Rico put up this press release ahead of Trump's speech he was like during the convention but Trump hadn't gone up yet

and I kind of read it in his voice or he said you know friend we know we're going to hear from Trump tonight he's going to say this about me he's going to say that

this critique that critique he's going to say that that look like Alfredy Newman for Mad magazine and then Trump did say that during his speech And I just thought that was so funny because I like, I don't know. I don't know.

I can't explain why it was funny. I read the press release and Tala Rico's like earnest voice. And, you know, I had to twitting it out right before Trump went up and just said the exact thing. It kind of reminded me of that scene from 8 Mile, you know, Eminem's last rap against that other guy where he says like, I know what you're going to say is that I live in the trailer. And then it just played out before my eyes. So I just thought that was hilarious. It's also just such a random, like, deep cut. I just think of going to the library as a little kid and seeing Mad Magazine.

Like, is that what it's called? Mad Magazine, is that right? Yeah. Yeah. And just being like, I mean, I had no interest in it. I don't know. It's just, it's so random. And once he thinks something is good, it's going to keep coming up and coming up,

coming up. So my tweetery was from also conference, conference, sorry, convention related. So Jimmy Kimmel, I know Mary Lease was posting this this morning, Jimmy Kimmel, has spoken out about not airing a James Talleyco interview, which is something we saw with Stephen Colbert in the past and alleging that the FCC and Trump were threatening him and different things like that. And one of the speakers at the convention was Adam Carolla, who is very good friends with Jimmy Kimmel. And it's just such an interesting friendship because I was like looking up like how close are they still as friends, just. because they were very close. But sometimes, you know, we don't know these people and people can drift away. But in May, Jimmy Kimmel was Adam.

Adam Kroll's like Walk of Fame as one of his guests there. And those are usually where people invite people they're very close with, you know. So, and they've spoken out about their friendship. So it's just nice to see that they're still friends. They hold very different political views. I mean, they are both openly. He's a ones that the RNC convention totally bashing California taxes and Newsom and, and all of those things.

And then the other one's on TV promoting literally the exact opposite, but they're still friends. So it's just nice to see because we always talk about people being divided, not being able to stay friends, going no contact with people over who they voted for. So just a little moment. I would love to hear their conversations. And if that ever comes up, do they talk about it?

Or do they joke about it or do they avoid it? I'm sure they're both pretty blunt. So I would be surprised if it didn't come up, but I would love to be a fly on the wall. There you go. Steve, were you going to say anything? I was actually just going to observe that Taylor Rico is not the first person that Trump

has used the Alfred E. Newman nickname for. I believe the first person he used that for I was a Pete Buttigieg back in the 2020 cycle. So it's a he is I don't know, he's recycling his old material.

I think it's interesting that once Trump finds a thing that he likes, I mean, he just hits it over and over again. or a thing he doesn't like in the term in the case of, for example, Ken Paxton's fashion sense. But yeah, the fact that he keeps. And of course,

a reference that I think like, I don't know about y'all, I don't think a lot of young people will get the reference to Mad magazine. I don't think it was something that a lot of young people read. I mean, I watched the Mad TV show that they had on like cartoon network as a kid. So, and my dad would make references to Mad magazine stuff.

But it'd be a little bit like, like goofus and gallant from highlights or something, if anybody here ever read that. But I still think that that's a reference that the number of people who get it is only decreasing over time. What was your tweetery, Mary-Loe? Oh, I'm sorry, Meredith, go ahead.

I was going to say, in fairness, people to judge and James Taylor go have some similar vibes. So I guess, like, just the way they talk or the way that their kind of demeanor is. So it makes, if he was going to, like, recycle a joke, they both kind of, like, have a very, what's the word, like, just they're very, like, calm.

You even ask? What? Newmanesque? Sure, exactly. I don't know how he acted. I just know what he looked like. There you go. Mary Elise, what was your

tweeter? Yeah, mine's about Tala Rico, but it's not quite as interesting, I'm saying. But he is coming to Houston this weekend. I'm going to be there for kind of it looks like it's just a town hall that he's holding in Houston.

But I'm curious to see how this one goes down because last time he was in Houston, it was a pretty big deal. the kind of the focus around the whole thing was like the black vote he ended up getting shouted at a decent amount and um and some of the clips of that went um got a lot of attention online and then sparked this whole conversation about you know like jasmine crockett not really supporting talleroico and then kind of can tilerico get the black vote and how important that is for his success anyways we'll see how um he pharison houston this weekend it is um in the heart of the third ward. It's at a, it's actually, it's at a Baptist church that the Democratic Party's held several events at in, in the third ward. There was the one Sylvester Turner was nominated to replace Sheila Jackson Lee. That was, that was where that vote was held. And then Congress from

Jasmine Crockett has also held some of her campaign events there. So just a fun fact for you. So I will report back. We'll see how this week can get. goes for Talarico in Houston. That last time, it was a little bit rough. Absolutely. Well, we all look forward to reading it. And of course, Meredith and Isaiah seeing what you all see at convention. So thank you to everybody for listening. And we will catch you all next time. Thank you to everyone for listening. If you enjoy our show, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you want more of our stories, visit us at the Texan. News. Follow us on social media for the latest in Texas politics and send any questions for

our team to our mailbag by DMing us on Twitter or shooting us an email to editor at the texan. Tune in next week for another episode of our weekly roundup. God bless you and God bless Texas.