The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - September 13, 2024

Episode Date: September 13, 2024

Learn more about today's sponsor by visiting: uslege.aiShow off your Lone Star spirit with a free "Remember the Alamo" hat with an annual subscription to The Texan: https://thetexan.news/subscribe/ The Texan’s Weekly Roundup brings you the latest news in Texas politics, breaking down the top stories of the week with our team of reporters who give you the facts so you can form your own opinion. Enjoy what you hear? Be sure to subscribe and leave a review! Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast.This week on The Texan’s “Weekly Roundup,” the team discusses:State Rep. James Frank Joins Texas House Speaker RaceTrump and Harris Face Off in First Debate, Texas Elected Officials ReactLt. Gov. Patrick Releases New Set of Interim Charges Including Impeachment Reform, Runoff EvaluationGov. Abbott Rejects Biden Administration's Demand to Cede Fronton IslandTexas GOP Names Congresswoman Beth Van Duyne As Its New 2024 Victory ChairFormer Uvalde CISD Police Chief Files Motion to Quash Indictment over Robb Elementary ShootingPublic Comment to Open on New TEA Curriculum in State Board of Education MeetingSmithville City Council Approves Property Tax Increase Amid State Legislator’s OppositionTexas Senator Hits College Station Over 'Sanctuary City Style' Resolution Blocking Individual DisannexationCozen O’Connor Public Strategies - The Beltway BriefingListen for of-the-moment insider insights, framed by the rapidly changing social and...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

and he said it's going to be quote a force multiplier and actually serve as quote an eye in the sky for officers that's kind of ominous and these drones launch out of the nest address the 911 call and can actually return to the nest to recharge the first rollout are these drones in the shape of birds you know i don't think the technology is is there just yet hello everybody senior reporter brad johnson here with reporter cameron abrams uh this is going to be a bit of an interesting weekly roundup podcast first of all it seems like it's a send me some stuff episode because it's just you and me. But it's not send me some stuff. It's not. This is the weekly roundup. You are at

the right place. We are a skeleton crew today because Mary-Lise is sick. So she's out. And then Mackenzie is off the second half this week. She's probably somewhere in Italy, you know, breaking pasta in half or putting

pineapple on pizza. I think that's probably. See Italy, you know, breaking pasta in half or putting pineapple on pizza. I think that's probably. See, I was going to say maybe she's out wine tasting, you know, sampling the local delicacies. That would be the logical thing to do. But no. As we know. Just in the middle of the street with dry spaghetti, just breaking it in front of the Italians, trying to get their reaction. Maybe she'll get sent to federal prison.

That would be interesting. No, we of course do not wish that on our esteemed senior editor, despite her leaving us high and dry this week. Right. Cameron, you are particularly reeling this morning from an Altoid-related announcement. Well, we were having some semi-some-stuff-adjacent conversations before the podcast started. And one of the things I brought up was there's news that Altoid Sours are coming back.

And for people of a certain generation, Altoid Sours were something special at the grocery store. something you get in line to check out and they were always sitting there and you pick it up it's one of those impulse purchases that always pays off but they discontinued them oh and so there's this lingering nostalgia to bring it back well apparently they are coming back but there is a huge caveat here it's not by the altoids brand it's by a separate brand it's an imposter it's an imposter um it's by a brand called iconic candies retro sours and they're actually going to be available at some cracker barrels you know everyone loves the that does seem like a good decision on item placement yes cracker barrel known for their large porsches and low prices there you go go. And they're country store. And now they're off-brand Altoid Sours.

Yeah. And so if anyone listening is having a craving for nostalgia, head over to your local Cracker Barrel. See if they got these Altoid Sours in stock and send us an email. Let us know if they're as good as you remember. Okay. Because I might do that. Throwback Thursday. That's right.

There we go. With that, let's get into the news of the week. And there was quite a bit, as there tends to be. You know, probably the biggest news this week was a fourth challenger getting into the House Speaker's race. And that, of course, was Chairman James Frank, Republican from Wichita Falls. He announced the same way David Cook did a week ago or so, whenever that was, via a letter to members making his initial case as to why he's jumping in the race and things he believes need to be done in the next speakership. He said in the letter, which we have the full thing embedded in our story. You can check it there or you can find it on my Twitter. He said, following the end of last session,

and especially after the primary election results of March, it became clear to me that the House itself and our voters want to move in a different direction. By today's actions, I'm officially asking you to consider whether I represent that direction. Um, you know, Frank was, I've mentioned him on the podcast multiple times as a potential entrant into this race. His name has been floating around for a while. He finished second in the caucus vote in 21 behind Phelan. So he has a history of getting votes for this position. You know, that was before the caucus vote was in 20.

It was in December 20 for the 21 speakership. And, you know, Phelan had come out in November shortly after the election and said, I have the votes, this race is over. But the GOP caucus still had proceedings on it, still had, had, um, considered who, whom to endorse in this race. Phelan, of course, won it. Um, and I think it took a couple rounds if I I remember correctly. But Frank did play second. And he was the last standing opponent in this ballot process.

Well, with Frank entering the race now, how does this affect the speakership race? So he is someone that's been mentioned a lot. He has the persona for the pre-existing relation to the position, I should say, specifically that he's been considered for this before. He has been thinking about jumping in for a while. I heard shortly after the runoff that he was planning on jumping in, along with, I think at the time it was Shelby Slauson. Neither of them jumped in immediately, but now since both of them have jumped in. He is a formidable challenger. He's adding to the numbers of this crowd, though. And, you know, as these

things usually go, you often have members trading in their candidacy for high chairmanship. So, you know, you might find, you might, as this thing progresses, you might have one, two, or three of the challengers to Phelan drop out and endorse the other guy, whoever that is, the last one standing of this group of challengers. With promises of a better chairmanship. Yeah, yeah. That happens all the time. Okay. It's not unusual.

You know, that happened when Phelan became speakership. If you deliver X number of votes, you can have state affairs or another very important chairmanship. James Frank currently chairs Human Services, the Human Services Committee. And he's been in the legislature, I think, around like 12 years or so. So he's been there quite a long time. In his letter, he noted three main things that he wants to see improved. Communication, talking to as many members as possible, as frequently as possible. Member empowerment, which is allowing,

in some, allowing members to represent their districts. And then you have floor management. And a big part of that is going to be the fight over parliamentarians, house rules, things like that. But he's laying those out there as a contrast to Phelan, or at least that's his intent. Yeah. If I could ask you, there's a number of challengers for the speakership it's this is a multi-part question if you could rank these challengers

along the ideological spectrum like most moderate to most conservative could you you do that? And do you think the changing ideological makeup of the House, as we saw in the primary election, we saw a lot of more conservative, let's say, members in the primary went out. Will that affect the eventual vote for the speakership? So in the first part, I'd say they're all kind of in the center, center right of the House GOP caucus. Okay. You know, you have the right-wing faction, which is growing a lot now, especially after the primary. Yeah.

But right now the members that would fit that are Tony Tenderholt, Brian Harrison, Nate Schatzlein, and Steve Toth, that group that's been very anti-feeling for a long time. Then you've got the Freedom Caucus and you know differences between that group and the other group I mentioned is usually on strategy, tact. Then you've got those who are kind of adjacent to the Freedom Caucus but not in it. And then you've got kind of a large group of members, I'd say, that fall somewhere next to that. And I would put most of them there. You know, that's where you start to see a lot of members in or close to leadership, especially where Phelan is. You know, Phelan is,

there's a lot of debate over how conservative a speaker he's been. You know, he'll point to constitutional carry passing at the behest of the Senate, mind you. And then he'll talk, he'll point to the two abortion bills passing, you know, after this session, the gender mod, child gender mod ban. So, but then you have arguments against him for namely things that died specifically take the border protection unit that died by a point of order. Then the appointment of Hugh Brady as parliamentarian. Notably on that, Hugh Brady, he worked for the Obama administration. They also have another parliamentarian that is –

the deal basically was you get one Democrat parliamentarian and one Republican parliamentarian. And that was kind of a way for Phelan to balance things out and appease the Democratic side and also the Republican side. And it's, this whole speakership is a balance, trying to manage and keep 76 votes, right? Right. Especially in a body where everyone wants to be unhappy. Then you have compare Phelan's tenure to like Joe Strauss and it's objectionably,

objectionably, objectively, that's the word, objectively true that Strauss's speakership was not as conservative as Phelan's. Representative Harrison said on a panel the other day that I was moderating at TripFest that this last session was the most liberal session in history. And he pointed to impeachment. That's another big example of those who are unhappy with Phelan and how they view the direction of his speakership Well, so do with what you just laid out in terms of the different factions within the Republican Party in the Texas House and We've seen some more conservative members be elected

and when their primaries is That going to somehow affect the type of speaker that is elected? Or if Phelan wants to be reelected, is he going to have to maybe change some of the previous things that he's done and make promises to maybe take a step to the right on some issues? Well, we saw his office announced that the speaker is committed to school choice as an issue, whereas he was hands off on that last session. So I think that tells you one thing. You know, there's a lot of talk about Rick Perry being brought in and his role.

And I've heard that something he's going to be working on is trying to fashion a rules package that can appease those who are dissatisfied with the current setup. By the way, I blanked on her name, but Sharon Carter is the other parliamentarian, the Republican one. So, I mean, I don't know how this is going to shake out. Nobody knows. There's a long way to go. I know.

I'm asking you to speculate about it a lot. But it's just things people are sort of thinking about. Yeah. And, you know, the fact that most of these challengers are coming from somewhere in the middle of the GOP caucus, I think tells you a lot. And it tells you how formidable just the challenge against Phelan is. You know, it may not take him out. He probably argues that right now on the floor he has the votes, and he probably does at the moment. There's a lot to shake out left.

But, you know, the challenge last time was Tony Tindervold. Right. One of those guys on the right wing of the Republican caucus. And he got three votes. One was himself. The other one, another one was Brian Slayton, who's no longer in the legislature anymore. So the fact that you have these guys who have been chairman, Frank is a chairman under Phelan.

Oliverson is a chairman under Phelan who are willing to take the risk because if Phelan wins, they're not getting a chairmanship after challenging him unless something strange changes, but likely not. You know, they're taking the risk and they feel that there's at least a chance to succeed enough that this is worth going after. I'm not going to rank where I think the challengers stand because there's so much up in the air right now.

For sure. But. Just very interesting now with the number of challengers and a lot yet to be decided, you know, we're still a little ways out. And who knows if another name comes out, you know, there's still a lot to be determined. So, no, I think your insight is really valuable there. Cool. Let's go into the next story, though.

Dan Patrick issued a new set of interim charges this week. What are your big takeaways, Brad? Well, the two that stuck out to me the most, and this, of course, comes after the large batch of interim charges that he released back in April, I think. The two that stuck out to me the most, and there are others in there that are notable. I list them out in the article. But impeachment reform, that was a big commitment by the lieutenant governor after the acquittal of Paxton in the Senate.

He gave this lengthy speech that he had pre-written, prepared. Part of it was reforming the process, specifically ensuring or requiring witness testimony under oath in the House proceeding, not just in the Senate. Because the witnesses, the whole argument back then was, you know, we talked to these witnesses in this general investigating committee, and they have all committed to go under oath during the trial. And they did. The ones that they called all did.

And then also Patrick wants to elongate the time given to members to consider, like two or three weeks rather than a few days. And there's a couple other more minor ones, but they're going to take a look at that. That's going to be something, especially the Senate pushes. It'll be very interesting to see how that is received next session in the Senate or in the House, especially if Phelan retains the gavel. Does Phelan agree to this? You know, the governor might have some weight on this issue. You know, he has, he was quiet during impeachment during

that whole summer, and he's been increasingly critical of it. You know, he's not out there bashing the speaker left and right publicly, but he has hinted at his opposition to how things went, generally, you know, the process. And that's been most of the

criticisms of the impeachment overall was, particularly in the House, how fast it was, at least publicly, because the committee was working on it for months. They started, I think, end of February, early March, they started looking into this. So that is a notable one to me. Another notable part of this interim charge update is the evaluation of the runoff process.

We saw this massively expensive, long runoff. It took two and a half, almost three months between the primary and the runoff election to get to that point. And there's a lot of argument for reducing that, making it a few weeks. I don't know. I guess the arguments can be on one side that, you know, we're just wasting all this time. Let's just get to it, get it over with. The other side is, well, you know, if I'm a second place finisher in my primary, take Dade Phelan, finish second,

I need time to fashion my campaign in a way that I can win the runoff. Because it does take different strategies. It's a different electorate. You know, it's not he didn't Patrick didn't mention this specifically in the charge, but something I think kind of dovetails with this is closed primaries. And there's a lot of discussion about how many Democrats voted in particularly the speaker's race. It's not as the numbers that have been cited are inflated because it they just take anyone that has they have taken anyone that has previously voted, previously voted Democrat, even if they voted

in the last four primaries, voted Republican in three and Democrat in one. Like, how do you count those people? Right. Yeah. But, you know, to take Phelan's race, the number of people who had only voted Democratic in primaries who voted in the speaker's runoff exceeded the margin by which he won. So that's going to be a talking point quite a bit about this.

And, you know, those are the two that stuck out to me there's a bunch of others you can read through them all retail theft school enrollment unmasking protesters that's another big one Patrick has talked about is there what can you tell us about that if off the top of your head? Because we've seen quite a number of protests over the past few months. I'll extend it back to, you know, COVID and the George Floyd stuff. Yeah. And many times there there are genuine protesters and then possibly outside agitators that find themselves in the middle of these protests.

Many of the times we see them masked up. What is Patrick saying about this unmasking interim charge? What's he going to say here? I mean, the argument is that if you're going to protest, you should not hide behind a mask. And I guess the reasoning is that that gives you more license to commit crimes while you're protesting, whether it's property damage or assault, things like that. If your face is going to get caught on TV, you're much less likely to do those things. And I assume that's the argument Patrick will make on this thing. Schweitzer, CEO of Cozen O'Connor Public Strategies. Every week on the Beltway Briefing, our team of former Republican and Democratic presidential appointees, Capitol Hill veterans, and political advocates shares behind-the-scenes perspective that cuts through the noise.

If you want the inside scoop, subscribe now to the Beltway Briefing here or wherever you get your podcasts. It's interesting. Do we know which committees something like this would be given to? This was the State Affairs Committee. State Affairs. Okay. Which is kind of the catch-all for a lot of stuff. I think it brings up a more complicated question about free speech rights, anonymity.

You can apply something similar to anonymous accounts on social media. Yeah, so very complex. It's something that might seem simple on the surface, becomes much more complex once you dive into it. So that's something I wasn't aware of, something I might keep my eye on. Senator Brian Hughes chairs state affairs, and I'm sure they'll discuss that at some point soon. So anything else we want to touch on there? I think I hit all the top ones. Yeah, you hit the top ones. Okay, cool.

Well, moving on to another piece, Cameron, you're going to talk about one of Mary Elise's articles this week. Governor Abbott rejected the Biden administration's request to return Fronten Island to its prior states. Give us the rundown. Yeah, like you mentioned, Mary Elise covered this story for us. Governor Greg Abbott sent a letter to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris condemning their efforts to, quote, undercut Texas historic border security efforts and refusing to restore Fronten Island to pre-construction conditions. Abbott then also responded to the United States section of the International Boundary and Water Commissioner Maria Elena Geiner. Her request that Fronten Island be returned to its pre-construction conditions, saying, quote, you are either unaware of or indifferent to what those pre-construction

conditions were. For those unfamiliar, in 2023, a group of Texas Rangers began an operation to secure Fronten Island from cartel control after Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham gave her approval, citing the General Land Office research, which asserts the land is state-owned. IBCW argued that Mexico had ceded the 170 acres to the U.S. after failing to correct the flow of the Rio Grande to the south of Fronten Island following surveys conducted in the 1970s. So very, what might seem like a recent issue has been happening since the 1970s apparently here. And the letter that was sent out was signed by Abbott, including Geiner, the Texas Military Department's head Major General Thomas Sulazar, Department of Public

Safety Director Steve McCraw, and Land Commissioner Don Buckingham. So just a update there for people who have been following this Fronten Island story, something we've covered on multiple occasions. And if they're interested in getting into more of the nitty gritty detail of what Abbott mentioned in that letter, we have quite a bit of it put up on the texan.news. And if I recall correctly, from reading Mary Lisa's story and reading a bit through the legal docs, the argument the federal government is making is that what changes the state of Texas has made on the island are causing a diversion of water and like the water flow.

I don't know. It seems like a bit of a stretch, but that's part of the argument they're making and why they're wanting the pre-construction conditions to be restored. You know, as with all lawsuits, weaving your way through the legal side of it, sometimes you have to get pretty creative. Right. And we see the state of Texas do that constantly. You know, it's not just as simple as venue shopping. It's fashioning arguments you think those particular judges that you're in front of will be persuaded by.

And so, yeah, a weird set of circumstances there, but obviously part of a much bigger issue with the border response from the states and how it butts up against the federal government. Is the federal government doing enough? You know, Texas obviously contends it's not and has made that contention for a long time. The federal government has had an odd set of conflicting positions at different times. Right. But, you know, we are also seeing the flow of border crossings dip a bit for the moment. And part of that may be that it's recently been summer, numbers tend to go down. When it gets cooler, the border crossings tend to go up just because the weather impacts the ability for these illegal migrants to essentially pass through these barren deserts at some points. And what's just so interesting too, like you were mentioning, the balancing between the state and federal authority on issues like this, especially when dealing with a foreign

nation. We saw, I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago for a issue of my newsletter, Redacted, where the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals allowed Texas to keep its buoy barriers in the Rio Grande. And there was actually an opinion issued in that Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals by Judge James Ho, where he made a really interesting endorsement of Abbott's efforts for protecting the border, really emphasizing the idea of sovereignty against invasion. And so, again, like we were talking about earlier, about how sometimes a surface-level issue might be simple to understand, but once you dig into it, there's a lot more nuance, whether it be on the types of legal challenges where the federal government is emphasizing something with water

rights, whereas you can even drill down to the very basic questions of what is sovereignty when it comes to protection against invasion. So very complex issues that are often addressed at the surface and can become more complex as you dig into them. So very, very fun story. I'm glad we got to talk about that a little bit, but let's roll into the next story here. We have, you wrote about the Texas GOP finally named a new victory chair. What are the details, Brad? So Congresswoman Beth Van Dyne, Republican from the 24th Congressional District that's up in DFW in that area, they've appointed her as the victory committee is kind of a joint partnership between the Senate race on

the ballot and the party itself and a way for crews to raise money into the party for operations usually get out the vote stuff we had we saw Cornyn have Cornyn's team pointed a victory chair back in 2020. I forget who it was. But earlier this year, Alex Mueller was the victory chair, and she stepped down, citing time conflict with her recent appointment to the Metro Board in Harris County. And this position has been open for a long time. They finally got Beth Van Dyne on board and she said in just a few short years, the Biden administration,

along with support from dutiful leftists like Colin Allred has done catastrophic damage to our nation's economy, national security and God given liberties. Obviously right there going right after Colin Allred. Cruz is not at the top of the ticket this time, but he's right up there. The presidential race is, of course, the top of the ticket. But the Trump campaign is not really playing much in Texas because they don't have to. They're going to win the state. It's going to happen. And so it's up to Cruz and the

party to try and ensure that Cruz remains in the seat. Especially as you see national Democrats more and more, although not as much as they are in other places, try and throw some resources into Texas. Colin Mallred's raising a ton of money himself. Yeah, I see all the social media campaigns about turn Texas blue. Yeah. That happens every cycle. But, you know, the role of the victory chair in the fund is to raise money

specifically aimed at, A, helping crews get across the line and be having turnout you know keep up down ballot helping Republicans get elected down ballot but Cruz isn't is the top objective there for this how much how much effect do you think a victory chair has on the on the election not not much not much not much and really what makes this particularly notable on top of the the length of time they've gone without one is the fundraising problems that the party has had. You know, we saw problems bringing in money under the last couple Republican Party of Texas chairs, Allen West and Matt Rinaldi. Abraham George has had some problems with that as well.

Is this, this is, this is something I'm not sure if we've talked about this before i know we've mentioned it in the office but how political parties used to be party driven but now they're individual driven and so do you see this dynamic really going really showing itself in how the differences in All Red and Cruz are raising money or maybe how the Republican Party has had difficulties in raising money over with their past chairmanships. And do you see that sort of playing out in recent years? Well, I think part of it is that, that the party is just, it's not the brand it once was. The brand of the Republican Party is now Donald Trump at the moment. For Democrats, it's Kamala Harris for the moment.

It didn't used to be that way. And that was, of course, a long time ago, that we've been in this world for a while. Yeah. ago that we've been in this world for a while yeah but what i think this says more than anything about is the reason the republican party of texas has been struggling to raise large amounts of money they've raised enough to keep them afloat you know they're not flat broke but they're not raising a huge amount of money to increase staff fivefold at the party like you would normally do in an election, especially a presidential election. The biggest reason is that the party, particularly in Texas, has become more grassroots heavy

and therefore the priorities of it has changed it's also an issue of personalities as well like you know um uh alan west matt rinaldi now abraham george you know the the typical business community is not generally a fan of them you know they want to focus more on social issues whereas the chamber of commerce types they want to focus more on social issues, whereas the Chamber of Commerce types, they want to focus on the economy and job creation and that kind of thing. And it's not to say that neither of them cares about the opposite issue. It's just a question of priorities. Yeah. And the priority for someone who is wanting to send money to endorse certain policies where previously they would send it to the party and the party would distribute the

money to the candidates. Whereas now an individual candidate they can have money accepted directly to them. Yeah and that's something that's a factor that's above all this internal squabbling in the Texas Republican Party. You know, that's a – think about how much money the Trump campaign has raised compared to the Republican National Committee. It's a lot more. Yeah. A lot more. So that's just the way politics has gone.

So is it sort of just like a microcosm here in Texas? Partially. I think it's also just there is another facet of this that is unique to Texas. Maybe not entirely unique, but like there is an internal fight over the direction of the Republican Party of Texas. And there has been for a while, but it's especially large right now because you've had party chairman be openly critical of Republican elected officials. And, you know, they argue they're well within their rights to do that, but it comes at a cost, right? Everything has trade offs. Part of that is, you know, you kind of make yourself less desirable to associate with, particularly if these big money guys don't share all of the same priorities or opinions as the chairman that

is voicing whatever opinion. So there's a lot to it. And, you know, the Republican Party is getting a lot of flack for the way they're fundraising. You know, it's true that it's not as good as it used to be. Like I said, they're also not flat broke. But raising money in this day and age is very difficult, especially when you have Ted Cruz or Greg Abbott raising massive amounts of money themselves. There's just, eventually you reach a point where, why would I give money to

the party when i can just give directly to the cruise campaign yeah so it'll be interesting to see if um someone new being named to this victory chair position if they change their tact in how they are going to try and raise money or reach a new segment of voters to try and get them to turn out. Well, and raising money sucks. I don't know why anyone would want to do this. It's just unpleasant. Now, someone like Greg Abbott is very good at it. He's got it down to a science. Maybe he enjoys it.

I don't know. But I can't for the life of me understand why anybody would want to do this. But it is like a, you know, Van dyne's doing this as a favor okay and it also will come with probably raising her profile among donors as well so like she's someone to watch wanting to run for higher office down the road okay that's interesting. You know, if John Cornyn doesn't run next time, she's a name I would think might consider it at least. So it's not like she's getting nothing out of this. She is.

And if nothing else, there's practice on fundraising because it does take practice. Well, I know I just get bombarded with text messages. Donate to this or donate to that. I had never donated to a campaign ever, even before I was working in politics. So I have no clue how those types of phone calls work and trying to convince people to send you money. It's very hard. It's very awkward.

Yeah. And I've done it before back in my past job, and it's not fun. Yeah. So moving on from that, another one of Mary Elise's articles this week talked about the former Uvalde police chief, Pete Arredondo,

filing a motion to quash the indictments against him. So he, um, he filed this motion basically to just eliminate the indictments as a question of criminal law, uh, take it off the plate, take him out of it.

I doubt it's going to be successful, but it does. He is charged with, I think, 10 counts of child endangerment related to the shooting, particularly that he did not direct officers to go in soon enough to take out the shooter. I think we talked about on send me some stuff one or two episodes ago about the interview he did with cnn and you can see in the video at the same time that he's telling officers to stand down and not go in because i i assume at

the time his his understanding was that no one else no one was alive and there were no students alive in there. But he's getting a radio dispatcher call in saying there is a girl, at least one girl alive in there, who's calling 911 and saying that she's still there. She's still alive. And he's telling officers to turn down the radio so that they can hear him giving orders. Yeah. In that CNN interview, he was sitting there with his lawyer. With his lawyer. And the interviewer asked at one point for him to react to some of the videos and he refused.

Yes. Yes. So, you know, this is his next move in the criminal case. I have a hard time believing it's going to be successful. But he was indicted by a grand jury and now moves to the criminal case, the jury trial. I'm not sure when that's going to happen, but that should be fairly soon, I would think. But, yeah, he got a lot of flack for filing this and you know on the one hand he's trying to defend himself on the other you can understand why totally you got a lot of flack for it so we'll see how that shakes out next one we're're going to go to, Cameron. Finally, one of yours.

Public comment will open this week on a proposed set of instructional materials from the Texas Education Agency. What's the story here? Yeah, so the State Board of Education is holding a meeting from September 10th through the 13th. So as this goes live, it'll be finishing up. And as part of this meeting is they're going to be taking public comment where people are and members and people from the public are going to be able to comment on this newly proposed instructional material by the TEA. And for those who are unfamiliar, the new instructional materials review and approval process was enacted under House Bill 1605, which replaces the State Board

of Education proclamation and the Texas resource review processes, consolidating reviews under a single SBOE governed system. And what the TEA did is they released a new set of state-owned instructional curriculum back in May. And the reason why it's notable, this instructional material being released by the TEA, there's been a lot of conversation surrounding some of the religious themes that were sort of embedded throughout the different lessons and through the different grade levels. I have done a lot of reporting and I linked that in the article on the texan.news. I got a chance to speak with Mike Morath after the release. I got a chance to speak with some of the designers of the curriculum where they went through all the different lessons and

the reason for introducing religious themes in the curriculum. But there has been pushback, like I mentioned. Most notably, Texas Rep James Tallarico, he spoke out quite fervently about the references to religion in the curriculum. He called it reckless, and he was peppering Morat during a House committee meeting. And so there's been lots of pushback, lots of attempts to defend the curriculum and how it's designed and the types of ideas but to get back to the original story over the next few days the public's going to get a chance to voice their opinion and we'll see if that has any effect on the adoption of this curriculum something i'm sure i'll have a follow-up piece on either at the end of this week or at the beginning of next week.

But just the next step in the development, and we'll see what happens with this new instructional material. Cool. Well, the next piece we got is one of mine. It's about the city of Smithville. It's in Bastrop County. There was a fight over the tax rate and the city the city council they proposed this rate it was a pretty stark increase the rate

increase was 10 percent that's different from the property tax increase, the amount of taxes raised. And I think the original one was at the voter approval line, which that's the law that the legislature put into effect in 2019. For municipalities, it's at 3.5% if you exceed that in a property tax increase it has to go before voters now I think with Smithville because it's so small that it the de minimis rate applies to that that was something during this massive tax fight that the they they put in this provision that raised that voter approval rate exponentially higher. And it depended on your population. And the reason was if a small city needs to purchase, say, a new fire truck,

and they need to pass this tax increase to do that, limiting the tax increase to 3.5%, because it's so small, you might not even be able to purchase a fire truck with that. So as for these capital expenditures, now they, of course, could pass a bond, but that's a different story. So the city council proposed this rate and it got a lot of

flack most notably from representative stan girdy's uh republican from smithville he is a freshman representative in the texas house um he and a bunch of other community members attended the meeting this week pushed back and before the meeting started they got the council to agree to a decrease in the rate with some spending cuts and then in the meeting they got apparently an even lower rate. So now the rate adopted in Smithville will amount to, for a median home, about a $210 increase from last year's tax rate. Now that is lower than what it would have been, which I think was like, if I remember the math, like $300 increase. So municipalities account for a smaller section of property tax bills than ISDs,

which account for over half. But it's still, you know, a good chunk of money. And Gertie's was not the only one making this contention that you know we have people are having to tighten their budgets because of the economy so the city should as well they managed to get some money cut from spending in

some grants also cutting the mayor's $6,000 vehicle allowance and blocking a $10,000 performance bonus for the city manager. The original justification from the city for this increase is that they lost $119,000 in tax revenue from the over 65 tax freeze. And what that is, once you hit 65 years old, the amount of money you pay in property taxes cannot increase. It can be lowered, but it can't go above that cap. And so as you have more people hitting 65,

or as you have people who have hit 65 continue, the amount of money they would have brought in from a tax levy decreases interesting so it's property taxes a giant shell game it's moving things around and reforms to it moving things around so that you still meet your budget budgetary needs but lessening the burden on certain demographics, in this case, elderly people. Yeah. We've heard on many occasions how the federal government needs to institute a zero-dollar-based budgeting strategy. Have we seen arguments like that for local municipalities to do that? Because like you mentioned, they are talking about the vehicle allowance, the bonus, but is there... Do you mean by zero budget base, you mean from last year's budget increase? But what I mean is doing a reevaluation of where all the budgetary allocations are going.

Is there a way to say, okay, we have this're budgeting for the fire department and then work our way forward for what is needed within the fire department, instead of rolling over previous contracts. So restarting the budget process every year rather than starting from the blueprint of last year. Right. Okay. Right. I'm wondering if that is a possibility. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what tax law would say about that.

I think it could be just a difference of choice, you know, like how you choose to start the budget process. But, yeah, I haven't heard of that at all happening. So I don't know if there's much. I don't think the state does that oh really either so okay you know it's pressure is not just on localities to go about doing something like this but there was also kind of a personal beef in this oh in this fight between girdies and the city manager um you know girdies called him Robert Taxhike. What's his last name?

Timble. And the city manager responded in a Facebook post and accused him of lying. And it went back and forth. There's a lot to it. I'm not going to get into the, you know, the drama details of that. But I do mention it in the article if you want. But Gertie was a city council member in Smithville before he was elected to the House. So, yeah, it's, you know, these property tax fights are small in scope, particularly in a place like Smithville, but they affect people significantly.

You know, it's the amount of money that's coming out of your pocket. For sure. It further highlights the flawed system of Texas's property tax. The flawed nature of Texas's property tax system, which everything's going to be flawed. Right. You know, if you've heard me talk about property taxes on this, it's that there's no good choice here, especially when it's very difficult to actually cut spending well that's why I brought up the the zero zero base budget strategy instead of rolling over the

blueprint well in Smithville here they want to hire two two new employees a building inspector and something on the management side, because they're growing. And apparently, as they said in the meeting, they've had problems. They've had problems with contracted out inspectors. The work quality has not been good. They've done it by phone. It just doesn't work.

And so that's why they're trying to do this. And they saw a budget with $119,000 less than they took in last year from that segment of property taxpayers. And so they were trying to figure out a way to handle it. And the way they opted for was adopting a higher rate. And it will not be on the ballot because it is below the voter approval line but we're seeing you know this is just a microcosm of what we're seeing in larger cities like Austin for sure or Dallas or Houston this property tax fight happens every year. Yeah. On a much, much larger scale.

Right. But happens in these sleepy little towns too. Yeah. So, yeah, I think we've beaten that one to death. Yeah. We have one more Mary Elise story I think you wanted to touch on. Oh, yeah, that's right. So she wrote a piece on College Station and the ongoing ETJ fight, which is the extraterritorial jurisdictions.

I wrote on this. It was a court case at the Texas Supreme Court about this. Basically, you have landowners that are outside the boundary of the city of College Station, but still are subject to rules and regulations thereof because of these ETJs. And the legislature passed a law last session that allows landowners to petition to get out of these ETJs. And there were some landowners that did that in College Station but they were denied and the city is arguing in court that this law is unconstitutional. So Senator Paul Bettencourt held a committee hearing and they talked about this local government committee hearing and he chastised them for as he worded it basically passing a sanctuary city style resolution

basically saying that they will not enforce this law until the legislature fixes it whatever that entails so check out mary lisa's story on that if it interests you but it's a it's another one of those odd issues that it's not gonna get talked about much yeah it has a lot of effect for just regular people mm-hmm so going on to the next one Cameron you wrote a piece about the city of Bee Cave. I did. And the drone technology that they are deploying as part of their 911 response program. Give us the rundown. Yeah.

As you know, I'm very interested in new technologies, emerging industries. So as I was just looking around the internet, I came across this. As you do. I came across as you do i came across this um where the bk police department is going to be launching this new autonomous drone program to address 9-1-1 calls and during an interview police chief brian jones talked about this AVA autonomous drone system, which was actually developed by an

Austin-based company called EV Vehicles. And he said it's going to be, quote, a force multiplier and actually serve as, quote, an eye in the sky for officers. And what's really interesting about this autonomous drone system is that they are going to be held in what they call nests. And they're going to have... That's kind of ominous. A little bit. But they're going to have these nests at the first rollout. Are these drones in the shape of birds?

You know, I don't think the technology is is there just yet but um at two local school districts that went unnamed and then like a shopping center and these drones launch out of the nest address the 911 call and can actually return to the nest to recharge and be sent out in live video feed can be transmitted to dispatch which is then set to officers and patrol cars so just a really interesting tactic for addressing calls because for for example, wait times are a constant point of contention when people are discussing 911 calls. And I don't know if this is, I'm not sure, I'm just pulling a number off the top of my head. Let's say it takes 30 minutes from the time you call 9-1-1, but to when an officer gets to the location they're needed at. Well, with this drone system, that 9-1-1 call can be placed, a drone can be sent out while the patrol officer is driving out there. And let's

say this nest system is closer to your location, and that live video can be sent to the officer so they're more prepared for when they arrive and can better address the issue at hand. So just a way technology is being used to help aid in the safety and security of individual citizens here. There, you know, as always, there is something I don't mention here but something that is worth conversation is the privacy issue, how these autonomous drones are going to be employed by the police department. They say it's going to be used for 911 responses. Are they going to be used in other contexts? You know, many times when I, you know, going back to an earlier story,

when we were talking about the interim charges and demasking protesters, you know, many times when I was visiting these protests, you'd see police drones hovering above these protests, capturing video, relaying that to officers. Is there going to be other contexts where these drones are going to be employed? So just a little interesting story I thought I'd write about and something that, as of right now, appears like it's going to be helping with the safety and security of individual citizens. Well, last, we're going to talk about the debate. You watched it with great intent. You wrote a piece on reactions.

So if you want to see what Texas officials said, check that out. But I'm more interested in hearing what you thought of it how how'd it come off um you know there's something about i've seen the memes concept of a plan concept and that was when it was about cats and dogs yes uh sounded pretty action-packed well so, so I did write the reaction piece. I'm also going to be writing a newsletter that's going to come out on Monday about the debate. Because there was a lot of interesting things that were talked about. Like you mentioned the eating of the cats and dogs. And that was because...

Springfield, Ohio, which I have been to many times because I played soccer tournaments there growing up. So it was interesting seeing a town so close to home become a national story. Yeah, well, it was a national story, but it was also a very online story in some sense. But it made its way to a debate stage. Well, so that's where we can have a conversation.

We saw how Kamala Harris really took the opportunity in this debate to really try and introduce herself to the country. She's given one public interview since being nominated at the DNC. And in that interview, it was a softball interview. She was with Tim Wallace, her vice presidential nominee. But a lot of people are still sort of wondering, like, who is Kamala Harris? And so there was multiple points during the debate. She was asked a question and she kind of sidestepped it to give herself an opportunity to say who she is, what are her values and things of that nature. Whereas someone like Trump, he was already the president and he was a TV personality for decades. So people know him and they have an opinion. And yeah, if you look at polling and Ted Cruz is the same way, if you see a fave on fave, the amount of people that don't know or unsure is very, very small, like one, two points. Yeah. And what was interesting as well, um,

something I noticed is Trump really was just staring down the camera the entire time, just watching the camera, really didn't look over. Whereas on the split screen, when Trump would be answering a question, you would see Kamala Harris turning her head, stroking her chin, like really paying attention to like kind of giving these reactions to what he was saying. So two very different demeanors and postures during the debate. Immediately after, lots of the reactions were people saying it was Kamala who came out on top because of, like you said,

Trump was really zooming in on online issues like the Springfield, Ohio topic or the concepts of a plan. And they also positioned how they view the country in its current moment very differently. Okay. For Kamala Harris, she talked a lot about her sort of campaign slogan of a new way forward.

We're not going back. Not going back to the administration that she's part of right now? Well, exactly. Or not going back to Trump. But this was sort of how she was positioning herself. Like, oh, I'm fighting for the dreams and aspirations of our people in this country. You know, we're going to have an opportunity economy, provide this and provide that for people. Whereas Trump was really painting a picture of a nation in crisis where saying things are so bad right now, things need to be fixed.

I'm the only person who can fix it. So two different illustrations of how they individually perceive the country. And how is that going to resonate with voters? We talked about this on Send Me Some Stuff. That episode is going to go live on monday is we we were talking about people already have a perception of trump they kind of already know who he is um kamala people don't like the joe biden administration they're probably not going to like kamala harris um but i had mentioned that at least in my mind, the middle is still sort of up for grabs.

And we're seeing alliances be drawn. We talked about, Ann Kamala mentioned her in the debate, the Cheney's endorsing her. She also mentioned a letter that had come out from 200 former Bush aides, Romney aides, people like that who endorsed her as well. But we also see former liberals or ex-Democrats coming out and supporting Donald Trump. So interesting alliances being drawn. And what I mentioned on Send Me Some Stuff is, at least in my mind, it's going to come down to the double haters. And I explain this is there are people that hate Trump and there's going to be people that hate Kamala. But are they going to hate one person more than the other and lean towards a certain direction? So if someone, they hate Trump, but they hate Kamala's policies even more, so they'll go with Trump. Or they hate Kamala, but they hate Trump even more, so they're going to go with Kamala. Because even though there's been lots of reporting on the fact that Kamala Harris was one of the most liberal state senators. Based on her prior voting, she has made attempts

to run to the middle on some issues. So are the more progressive candidates going to be okay with that? Or not candidates, but progressive voters going to be okay with her running to the middle. Or we saw even when Trump was elected in 2016, there was quite a number of former Bernie bro type voters that endorsed someone and voted for someone like Donald Trump. So to just to sort of, I've been rambling for a bit, but just to sort of wrap up, I think the most interesting thing was how each of the individual candidates on that stage painted the picture of how they see the nation. One being Trump showing a nation in crisis and someone like Kama portraying this sort of irrational optimism. Well, you know, it's, I don't think that's new. The party that's in power that holds the White House

is always going to want to paint things as good. The party that's not in power in the White House is going to paint a picture of things being bad. Trump did that in 16 against Hillary Clinton. You know, the nation in crisis, that was the theme, right? But in 2020, it was, look how great we're doing after you elected me and how after Republicans have controlled Congress for, I think it was two years before they lost the Senate. But it just doesn't, it's hard for 2016 talking points to land the same way.

Well, sure. But the theme is the same, right? The theme is always the same. It's the direction you're going is either really good if it benefits me or really bad if it benefits me. So, yeah, I mean, you can change, the issues change, the threads change. Yeah. But the overarching theme is always the same.

Yeah. And I think something worth mentioning as well is there was lots of discussion about the moderators during the debate. I'm sure you saw some of this. It was hosted by, what was it, ABC? And at multiple points during the debate, they quote-unquote fact-checked Trump. Conlon was not fact-checked multiple times, or at all during the debate.

And it was by some people's remarks, they were saying that it was a three-on-one debate where it was the moderators in Kamala versus Trump. And I don't know if you got this perception, but what you saw is how they sort of framed questions at certain moments was it was a series of accusations and then asking Trump, do you still believe this? Or do you, do you, do you, um, would you have done anything differently in, in this, in this situation? And then Trump would have to play defense, um, in response to the question. And then Trump would have to play defense in response to the question. And then they would turn to Kamala and say, how would you respond to what the president, the former president said? So it was an interesting dynamic because what we saw

in the first debate between Biden and Trump is a lot of praise actually for the CNN debate because you know Jake Tapper who is not a Trump fan was relatively neutral during that debate and so people were hoping ABC would do the same thing but from the reactions online other people did not feel that they were as neutral as they could be. So yeah, just an interesting event to take place. There is no scheduled second debate as of yet. After the debate, the Harris-Walls campaign put out a statement saying they'd happy to take another debate now since they think it went so well for them. So any other big takeaways for you from this debate? Well, you know, the fact checking thing is difficult to do well if you should even do it at all as a moderator because it's always going to

this is a debate right everyone is playing fast and loose to one degree or another with the total accuracy of a statement made and when you try and pick and choose because you're going to have to pick and choose time doesn't allow you, as a moderator, to interject on everything. But when you do that, you're forcing yourself to pick and choose, and you're going to miss one. Take it like a referee in a sporting event.

If you enforce a rule here in this instance and another similar instance happens and you don't enforce it there, you're going to get called biased and call your performance flawed. But the other way of looking at this is, as a moderator, it's not your job to fact-check. Right.

There's a whole industry of fact- fact checking that goes on in the national media every time this happens. So, you know, there are – each outlet has their own fact checker, if not more than one. So it's happening. And when you open yourself as a moderator to this, you're naturally going to come up short because it's just impossible time-wise to fact-check everything. Well, yeah. And especially when you make an error, like an actual error.

That's what I was going to say. Some of the fact checks were actually not totally accurate yeah um and then at one point david muir when he was asking trump about the 2020 election he david muir uh brought up that trump had said on a podcast that he lost by a whisker and trump responded saying i was sarcastic and david Muir says, well, I listened to that clip multiple times. It did not seem like you were sarcastic. So in the middle of the debate, the moderator is injecting their personal opinion. Not only just that, but having an argument with the, when these two were supposed to be arguing.

So not a great display of neutrality from the moderators during the debate. You know, you're going to see all sorts of different polling come out, who won, who lost, how voters perceive things. But for you, are debates something that have an effect on a presidential election? Or are they just part of the process that presidents have to go through? They can have an effect, absolutely. Most of them, and we talked about this in sending some stuff, but most of them will not have the effect that the first one did. Right. I mean, the massive effect. But yeah, I mean, look at the candy crowley debate back in 2012 when she interjected to fact check something if i recall correctly she wasn't exactly correct either um in that fact check something about the rose garden and i don't know it was 10 over a decade ago but

um yeah i they can definitely have an effect. And more than anything else, they can hurt you. They can't do so much as help you win as keep you from losing. But I don't think this will do much of anything to move the needle because neither candidate collapsed, which is what both of them are wanting. Right? Neither of them wants to lose it. Yeah.

Because winning it, frankly, is out of their control. Yeah, you can't win a debate, but you can lose one. Yes, exactly. So I'd say that's my takeaway. Yeah. And also, I just don't – I probably ascribe to the point of view of moderators should just ask the questions and not make it about them. Don't become part of the fight it's not your job there are other people outside that

will do the fact checking they'll spend days on it um if you want voters to truly to be able to get as good a picture from these candidates as they can in this debate, then the candidates need to do almost all the time talking. And that doesn't happen when you try and fact check. So others will disagree and think that they're well within their rights to do it. And it's just, it's an impossible task to do it well, I think. So Cameron, anything else you want to add? Otherwise we're going to close this out.

I think that's it. Okay, cool. Well, thank you everyone for joining. We'll talk to you next week. And hopefully we have more than just a skeleton crew. 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

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