The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - September 15, 2023

Episode Date: September 15, 2023

Show off your Lone Star spirit with a free Texas flag hat with an annual subscription to The Texan: https://thetexan.news/subscribe/ The Texan’s Weekly Roundup brings you the latest news in Texas politics, breaking down the top stories of the week with our team of reporters who give you the facts so you can form your own opinion. Enjoy what you hear? Be sure to subscribe and leave a review!  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: A new political poll showing Texas Republicans’ “unwavering” support for Donald TrumpFormer President Donald Trump defending suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton during his impeachment trialAn ERCOT program that pays industrial electricity users to shutter operations during grid stressA Texas senator requesting records from UT Tyler over a transgender tennis player on its women’s teamThe seventh Texas House seat opening after Rep. Carl Sherman announced he would not run for re-electionOdessa passing a ban on private vaccine mandates as well as a tax increaseTesla asking for almost $100 million from the federal government to fund an EV semi-truck charger networkThe Patriot Voice suing a payment processing company for $18 million over a canceled contractTen gang members or affiliates being arrested near Houston for sex trafficking of childrenLubbock City Council and county commissioners court approving a tax increase for Fiscal Year 2023An upcoming “family-friendly” church drag show featuring the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” group<

Happy, happy Friday, folks. Senior Editor Mackenzie DeLulo here, and welcome back to the Texans Weekly Roundup podcast. This week, the team discusses a new political poll showing Texas Republicans unwavering support for Donald Trump. The former president defending suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton during his impeachment trial, an ERCOT program that pays industrial electricity users to shutter operations during grid stress. A Texas senator requesting records from UT Tyler over a transgender tennis player on its women's team. The seventh Texas House seat opening after Representative Carl Sherman announced he would not run for re-election. Odessa passing a ban on private vaccine mandates as well as a tax increase.

Tesla asking for almost $100 million from the federal government. Tesla asking for almost $100 million from the federal government to fund an electric vehicle semi-truck charger network. The Patriot Voice suing a payment processing company for $18 million over a canceled contract. Ten gang members or affiliates being arrested near Houston for sex trafficking of children, the Lubbock City Council and County Commissioner's Court approving a tax increase for fiscal year 2023, and an upcoming family-friendly church drag show featuring the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence group. Thanks for listening and enjoy this episode. Well, howdy folks,

Mackenzie here with Brad, Cameron, and Matt. Hayden is over in the Senate as he has been for the last two weeks. I saw him for about five minutes last night and it was the first time I'd seen him in days. So he does still exist prior to, you know, contrary to what it seems like around the office. Hayden, we miss you. Come back. Come back. But we are, of course, in the middle of all of the impeachment proceedings in the Senate. If you have not checked out our Inside the Impeachment Paxton on Trial podcast that we release daily, recapping the events of each day, certainly do that. We try to make everything, break everything down for you so it's easily digestible and you don't have to watch 12 hours of testimony. That's the goal.

I listen to it all the time. That's where I get my news. Cameron, I'm really glad to hear that. Yeah. Also, you're watching it all day, every day too with the rest of us. Yeah, but you guys really put it together succinctly. What you need to know without opinion, that's where I get my news. No fake news.

No fake news. Fake news stuff's here. That's exactly right. Well, Cameron, let's go ahead and start with you talking about the news of the week. We have a couple of Donald Trump stories to lead off the podcast, and we'll start with yours. A new poll of registered Texas voters gives us some very interesting insight into a variety of issues, even the presidential contest. So tell us about what came up in that poll. Yeah, that's right. The Texas Politics Project, they released a new poll of registered Texas voters, and

they were asked on a variety of issues, the border, education, and like you mentioned, different Republican primary candidates. When it comes to Donald Trump, Republican support is unwavering. That's what the poll said. 79% view the former president as favorable, while 86% of Democrats actually hold unfavorable views. So a stark contrast between Republicans and Democrats and the former president. When it comes to other candidates, like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, he holds a 67% favorable view from Republicans and 51% reported favorable views of the dark horse candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy.

He's kind of come out of nowhere, but holding 51% favorable views. When it comes to other issues that hold a stark contrast between Democrats and Republicans, especially in the state of Texas, is their view on the legitimacy of the 2020 election. I thought this was interesting. Just 21% of Republicans said they disagreed and 11% were unsure. Democrats were overwhelmingly in agreement with the results as 93% of registered voters said they believed the election was legitimate. On some other issues that came up in the poll. The buoy deterrence in the Rio Grande, that's been a big issue as of late. 52% of overall Texas voters supported that action. And with the school choice special session on the horizon, you know, we think it's going to happen. But this was, again, really interesting. When it came to vouchers and educational savings

accounts, only 34% of Republicans see school choice as an extremely important issue. There was a lot of information in this poll, a lot of issues that were covered. I just really hit the top lines on the stuff. If you guys are more interested in seeing some of the other issues, I encourage you to go check out our article. We break down everything for you guys. Yeah, absolutely. And we say this every time we talk about a poll, but of course, it's not totally empirical. It's not something you can just rely on as fact, but it is a very good snapshot and usually very interesting to see where folks are lining up on certain issues. So it's just

interesting. Yeah. And I included in the article some national polling numbers, how they might compare to Texas polling numbers, especially from the polling service, Real Clear Politics. They actually do an aggregate polling of a bunch of different polls, which kind of gives a good, like you said, snapshot. And so I'll just give a quick number for everyone. That aggregate polling in terms of national sentiments on Donald Trump, with the most recent aggregate polling showing 38.4% having a favorable view and 57.1% holding unfavorable views. So sort of mirroring the favorability in Texas, the same as nationally. Yeah. And this was a, I can't remember if you said this already,

Cameron, so excuse me if I'm repeating you, but this is also a poll wherein voters self-identified themselves as registered voters in Texas, which is also important to note. So Cameron, thank you for breaking that down for us. Bradley, coming to you with another Trump story. Former President Donald Trump finally weighed in on the Paxton impeachment trial. He previously talked about the impeachment, but the the trial we've been waiting to see if he'd jump in what did he have to say he uh truth is that the is that the verb um that's like midnight last night on wednesday on truth social yes um he said texas attorney general ken paxton was easily re-elected last november but now establishment rhinos are trying to undo that election with the shameful impeachment of him. Who would replace Paxton, one of the, in all caps, toughest and best attorney generals in the country? Could it be a Democrat or even worse, a rhino? The voters have decided who they want. Democrats are feeling very good right now as they watch, as usual, the Republicans fight and eat

away at each other. It's a sad day in the great state of texas there you have it the former president weighing in on this current trial um he did comment about 30 minutes before the house took up the impeachment articles originally back in may and then he's been fairly quiet ever since on this question, but no longer. It's an interesting dynamic because Lieutenant Governor Patrick is a close friend of the former president's, and he's, of course, overseeing the trial during the 2022 GOP primary for Attorney General. Paxton was endorsed by Trump, but not immediately. And Trump strongly considered endorsing George P. Bush, who is a featured figure in this allegation, this counter-allegation by the Paxton defense of a conspiracy to take out Attorney General Paxton's uh the dividing lines on this are very odd and um though i would say it's not surprising to see the former resident

at this point come in and back the attorney general yeah what do you think of the timing of this that's a good question um because for perspective like last night it was Wednesday recording Thursday we thought the trial could end there there were some motions for a directed verdict that could have expedited some of the process the defense and the um the house board of managers both decided hey we're actually just going to move forward we're withdraw withdrawing our motions. So things move forward. The impeachment trial continues. The defense called their first couple of witnesses. So things are moving forward as if, you know, after the House rested its case. But so that's even fascinating in that this could end any day. We kind of expect for everything to wrap up today or tomorrow and then for the Senate to go into deliberations behind closed doors and come out with a verdict like literally in the next few days, if not over the weekend.

So what do you think of the timing of this from Trump? I mean, it's definitely an effort to sway the jurors at a time when it seems like we're close to that that moment where they have to make a decision. So I think that's probably the simplest answer there yeah and public opinion weighs in on this too senators are you know elected by constituents and this is for all intents and purposes a political trial very much so yep okay well there you go brad we're also going to talk to you about the last week's power grid alarm media reports groaned about a bitcoin miner being paid millions of dollars by ercot what happened there riot platforms a

cryptocurrency miner in rockdale told its shareholders that it made 39 million during july and august for its actions related to the power grid a portion of that total 7.4 million was made in tandem with erCOT's demand response program. Factories and other kinds of large users also partake in the program. With ERCOT, they may enroll in this credit program for their usage to be voluntarily curtailed when grid reserves wane essentially financial incentive to either turn off your power completely or reduce it significantly so that the supply on the grid at that time can be prioritized to residential areas it's a pretty effective method and tool that ERCOT uses a lot, but there has to be some sort of carrot for these large users to get them to do that. And so this was definitely something that prevented, when we had the second emergency alert triggered last week, I think it was, right?

It's all blending together. But triggering that triggered this protocol for these kinds of users to shut off. And there was a lot of uproar about why is this Bitcoin miner making all this money? But when you look at the functionality of it, it makes sense. So there you go. What's the purpose of these two programs? So as I said, it's a financial incentive,

one of many in a system built on them to reduce demand. Without it, businesses would be hard-pressed to take on a deliberate operations loss. These costs incurred by paying users to go offline are considered by grid operators a worthwhile investment to avoid the implementation of blackouts or the prolonged price spike that will cause energy costs to balloon even higher than what what it is they're paying these these users riot itself of the 39 million dollars that made those two months the lion's share of it though was made from uh it's from re from selling back um electricity credits to its utility provider, TXU, so that TXU could then redirect that set amount of electricity

to residential customers. So they made money off of it, so it wasn't like it was just entirely out of the goodness of their own heart, but it served a purpose, and that purpose was well served. There you go. Bradley, thank you. Cameron, coming back to you, some new information surfaced about a male playing on a female tennis team that prompted a tennis or a

tennis lawmaker, oh my gosh, a Texas lawmaker to speak out. Tell us about those details. Yeah, so earlier this week, Senator Mays Middleton posted on Twitter, well, formerly known as Twitter, now known as X, that he was requesting information from UT Tyler about what he said is how UT Tyler allowed a six foot tall man to play on the women's tennis team for over two years. So this was actually something that popped up on my radar a couple weeks ago. This is the first time I've seen a Texas lawmaker point it out. But this transgender athlete was, like Maze Middleton mentioned, playing on the UT Tyler female tennis team. And there was actually some controversy surrounding this individual before when earlier this year, they attempted to play in a women's tennis tournament in Wyoming,

where the state has similar Save Women's Sports Act laws in that state. And it actually caused the local president of the tennis association that this participant was going to play in, they resigned in protest. And so there was already controversy swirling here. And all this to say that in the state of Texas, they recently passed SB 15 called the Save Women's Sports Act. And there has been a continued ripple effect and really exposing what has become a serious issue of men playing in women's sports. And we've seen recent people speak out most prominently. Riley Gaines speaking out about playing against Leah aka Will Thomas and so this is an issue that continues to occur but hopefully now with SB 15 in effect the exposure of the issue will be put into the spotlight so things can continue to resolve themselves.

Yeah, absolutely. And remind our listeners, a lot of these bills that were very hot social issues during the legislative session met some sort of legal obstacle after they were passed and before September 1st when they came into effect. SB 15, is that law currently in effect? Was it met with any legal challenge? What have we seen in that regard? women's sports activists and Texas lawmakers were walking into, I believe it was Texas Women's University, Texas Women's College. I forget the exact name, but there was lots of activists and protesters out there and they ended up spitting on and assaulting these women's sports activists. And a lot of it was caught on videotape and posted online. And we covered it at the time. Yeah, we have a story. Yeah. So no legal challenges, but there's definitely been public pushback. Absolutely. Cameron, thank you as always for

your coverage. Bradley, coming to you, another opening in the Texas House was announced this week. Who is not seeking re-election? Democrat Carl Sherman has decided to run for U.S. Senate against Senator Ted Cruz, foregoing re-election in 2024 to the Texas House. Sherman is a pastor and a former mayor of DeSoto. He said in announcing his run, I intend to win because I believe we've got the work that shows that we're willing to do whatever it takes to defend the rights of every Texan. He joins a field that includes Colin Allred, a congressman from Dallas, who is running away with things in terms of the fundraising side of this. State Senator Roland Gutierrez, who is currently sitting in the Texas Senate, unable to really campaign that much because of this impeachment trial. And then

the former Nueces County DA, he just dropped out and resigned from his position to run in this race. So as far as size of these figures, Sherman is in the lower half, definitely. That doesn't mean he can't make a dent, but we shall see. This does make the seventh, I believe, opening in the Texas House next cycle, or in 2024 2024 next year. Shortly after he announced, State Board of Education member Aisha Davis declared for HD 109, Sherman's District, which is D79 percent, according to our TPI. So it is a very safe Democratic seat. Absolutely.

I will continue to keep an eye on it. And, you know, it's not unlike or unusual for us to see a myriad of candidates enter to run against one of Texas's sitting Republican senators. It's usually a pretty open field in that regard. And so a lot of Democrats tend to jump into the race, just as Republicans do against a Democrat incumbent in other, you know, Democrat heavy areas. So normal for us to see this. It will be interesting to see how things shake out if we have debates or anything along those lines. Do you know, Brad, sorry to put you on the spot, if Gutierrez is able to fundraise right now because they're technically in a session and there are special sessions happening?

I can't remember the rules on this. I don't think there's anything barring them from fundraising which is why we've seen the commitments to not fundraise from various sides of this uh dan patrick said that before right before this trial started the house board of managers said that um so i'm not sure i don't think this counts as a special session in terms of the fundraising moratorium. And even if it did, Gutierrez is running for a federal seat. So I think that is separate entirely as well. When you run for state office, you file with the State Ethics Commission and you have accounts tied to that.

Whereas if you run for a federal seat, it's all federally tied. So it's entirely different entities that you're filing with, that you're fundraising with. So that probably circumvents a little bit of that. Yes. Okay. Bradley, thank you. Matt, we're coming to you. The Odessa City Council worked with an unusual ally in crafting a first in the state resolution banning all emergency mandates relating to COVID-19, particularly notable in that we've seen, you know, a lot of different officials throughout the country respond to this second wave of COVID in very different ways, and Odessa took its own approach. Give us a rundown of what happened. You're right, Mackenzie. There's a lot of concern that there's another wave of COVID

shutdowns and mandates, etc., on the way. And for the benefit of our listeners before i review the story we literally have some breaking news right now the texas attorney general's office just issued an opinion ruling that emergency executive orders issued by the governor have the full force and effect of law just like any law passed by the legislature. So that's something I'm going to look at and probably do another story on. But it segues into that issue there. So the story at hand, though, is a story of the city of Odessa, which is in West Texas, or what we call the Permian Basin, worked with an unlikely ally, a state representative from another side of Texas, State Representative Brian Harrison, whose district is in the sort of south-central Dallas-Fort Worth area. Specifically,

his main city is Midlothian. Anyway, they worked with him to craft the resolution based on his legislation, the Texas COVID Medical Freedom Act, which passed the Texas Senate this past session, and the Public Health Committee in the Texas House with overwhelming bipartisan support, but it did not survive the House Calendars Committee. For those who are not familiar with calendars, every bill passes its preliminary committee, has to go to calendars, and calendars essentially assigns a date and time that it's eligible to be brought up in the floor for full consideration. If you don't get that, your bill does not pass go and does not collect $200. Anyway, Harrison, who was the chief of staff for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

under former President Donald Trump, then later became state representative, sought to ban all mandates, including by private employers or by the governor, which kind of segues into this attorney general's opinion that just came out. It bolsters that executive power that the governor's office has to essentially mandate masks or mandate vaccines or ban under the full force and effect of law. Legislation prohibiting local governments from imposing mandates was the only item that actually passed, and out of the sessions that have occurred since the COVID lockdowns, that's really been the only thing, despite all the public outcry over it in Texas, that's substantially pushed back on emergency powers is that local prohibition. So Harrison, since his bill did not pass, is working with cities like Odessa to fill the void

using local government. The resolution passed Tuesday with only one abstention, and Harrison was present for the vote there in Odessa. Yeah, a very interesting take on, you know, watching somebody address an issue that was not passed via legislation they sponsored during the legislative session. What has been some of the reaction from other lawmakers regarding the resolution? Two lawmakers, both of whom serve on the House Calendars Committee, which we talked about, reacted where Patterson called the resolution a quote dog and pony show done to cover up a possibly illegal tax increase. Patterson was referring to a typo in the public notice showing that a number that estimated the average homestead values as a negative number whereas the the number homestead values as a negative number, whereas the number

was actually supposed to be a positive number. Whenever you added up all the columns, it was essentially the total column, and they put a negative sign there on the percentage instead of it being a positive. That was the typo. Now, apparently, Senator Paul Betancourt had reached out to the Odessa City Manager, John Beckmeyer, who's the former executive director of the RPT. And apparently they discussed that error and they're going to get that taken care of, fixed and all that good stuff. who responded to the criticism from the other two lawmakers by pointing out that his city, despite the energy boom, was able to keep property taxes from increasing beyond 1% of their budget, while also acting to broadly protect the medical freedoms of their taxpayers. He used this to contrast the Texas legislature, which passed a record budget, which he said grew nearly 25%.

Now we did a little bit of looking and I think the number was between 22 and 23%. So not entirely inaccurate, but that's a little bit more precise number. It was something in the $70 billion higher than the previous budget. And he said, despite all of the tax revenue that the Texas legislature had, they failed once again to fully protect the medical freedoms of taxpayers. So the city was stepping up essentially in this context to do their job. Now our listeners will want to check out our full coverage of this story where we have a reaction from Odessa's own lawmaker, Brooks Landgraf, who did not participate in crafting the resolution, but did provide a comment

regarding his position as well as other details surrounding this very interesting story. Great rundown, Matt. Definitely a spicy story as we watch these comments being traded back and forth on social media. Thanks for putting it all in one place for our readers cameron we're coming to you elon musk i think you should officially be dubbed our elon musk reporter i didn't put put this in my twitter but did you see uh some news outlet is doing going to have a taylor swift yes reporter matt put it in slack that there is going to be a taylor swift reporter and i said i quit and connie goes what connie was not pleased with matthew for bringing that to my attention and then connie did agree that we should have an entertainment

section of the website which then i would quit my role as editor and i would go and just like run that section of the texan yes i can't help and now would we cover primarily taylor swift yes it'd be like 75 taylor swift look at this look at this way instead of having to take out a second mortgage on your house to go to an eros concert again you can now apply for dr evil air quotes press credentials. That's right. You owe me a pork chop. I do owe you a pork chop.

We have a lot of bets around the office about the results of the impeachment trial. We won't talk about where our bets lie, but there are a lot of pork chops on the line for certain gentlemen in this office. For those that don't know, in our office, the universal medium of exchange is a perry's pork chop yes on fridays they're much cheaper than they are on the on the menu regularly and so friday pork chops are the the bartering it's like currency here or the perry's friday pork chops okay well cameron you uh you are the elon musk reporter and matt takes the beat i feel like when you do not cover it you've you've written a couple elon stories haven't you yeah i i try to every now and then but uh cameron literally catches them before i can get to them whenever they pop out he's speedy he's just an interesting guy and he's in texas now so he does yield some news so let's talk about this he continues to

keep his name in the news as you've said tell us about this recent very big ask he's making of the federal government. Yeah, so I came across this story in Bloomberg, and they found that Tesla, which is Elon's electric vehicle company, is asking for nearly $100 million in government funding to construct this new electric charging station network for this fleet of electric semi-trucks that he is producing. And he plans to run this network from Texas all the way to California. And the route is planned to begin in Laredo and will attempt for Elon to create this network of a charging station for these semi-trucks because he recently sold a fleet to PepsiCo, who actually has a production factory in California. And I didn't include this in the story. This was something I came across afterwards, that there's been a lot

of manufacturing in terms of vehicles, whether it's Ford or even Tesla is moving a lot of their manufacturing to Mexico. And so that Mexico-Texas connection sort of lends itself to why he might want to start building this chartering station in that region. I didn't include that in the story. I came across it later, but just continue on here. Because what I also found interesting is we see there's this big environmental push from the federal government, especially when they signed in 2021, the bipartisan infrastructure deal, by the way, which I dug into a little, is very heavily debt finance in terms of reusing COVID funds, unused COVID funds, to finance these packages. But the big push for green energy is not without its pitfalls, especially when it comes to EVs, electric

vehicles. A big reason is the batteries. We can look to countries like China, where they produce more than half of the world's electric vehicles. They've had lots of issues with the disposal of these EV batteries because of the toxic material and the heavy metals that are actually present in these EV batteries. There's things like nickel, cobalt. We could go into a whole thing about cobalt, but I don't want to bore the listeners. That is literally the most nerdy thing you've said today. I could go into a whole thing about cobalt. Well, I'll leave that for after the pod discussion. There you go. You know, because there's not an efficient way for disposing of these batteries.

And so the heavy metals and toxic materials leak out and can cause pollutants to enter into the soil and eventually into the atmosphere. So the green energy push with the vehicles might look good on its face, but it's the after effects or the unseen effects that happen along with it that people should understand, at least have some information about. So I go into a little bit in the piece if people want to read a bit more, I include a lot of links. So go check it out. Absolutely. Cameron, thank you. Brett, and also I could go into a whole thing about Cobalt should go into our office quote book. We need to add that to our list of funny quotes. Thank you, Cameron. Bradley, coming to you. A Southlake organization is suing a company for $18 million over viewpoint discrimination.

What are the details? Right-wing events organization, the Patriot Voice, sued a payment processing company for $18 million after it allegedly canceled services for a 2023 Dallas event that then eventually folded. With the event scheduled for January 23, Total System Services, the vendor, began servicing the event's transactions. It actually started that a few months earlier after a previous service contract was canceled in similar fashion from a different company. The following month, TPV says in their filing, transactions began being rejected, and upon a contact with a TSYS employee

who stated that the transaction was either too large for the company to process, or it was, quote, outside our risk parameters, which is a pretty generic statement. After further inquiry, the employee later said that the company's risk department had placed a hold on the transactions because the organization qualified as a, quote, exclusionary business. The filing further readsS, uh, never disclosed and concealed from the Patriot Voice the fact that there were risk parameters associated with the account. This was a critical time for ticket sales because as total system services knew the Dallas event was scheduled to take place and

the Patriot Voice had already incurred substantial operating expenses including advanced deposits for the hotel performances and to book keynote speakers so they are suing suing total system services for the money they actually lost and potential money they believe they would have earned had this event taken place and future events that would have taken place without this, quote, reputational damage. So interesting debate over freedom of association or from association and freedom of speech. What's going to win out on this? I don't really know, but it's it'll be a pretty interesting court case. Yeah, interesting implications.

Bradley, thank you. Matt, coming back to you. Federal and state law enforcement arrested 10 gang members involved in human trafficking near Houston. Give us the details. So a 10-day operation led agents with the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Marshals, Houston Police, Harris County Sheriff, and more to arrest 10 people, all of whom were related to some extent, either known gang members or known affiliations with a gang, and arrested them on felony charges relating to human trafficking, specifically for sex crimes. The charges applied included sex trafficking of minors,

sex trafficking of minors by force, and conspiracy to sex traffic minors. The FBI Special Agent in Charge of the Houston Division, David Martinez, issued a statement on the arrest saying, numerous young girls will no longer be raped, sexually exploited, and beaten by the individuals arrested during this operation thanks to the effort made by our partners at the Houston PD, U.S. Marshals, DHS, and all the agents who make up the Human Trafficking Rescue Alliance. Unfortunately, human trafficking incidents like this are something we report on very frequently at the Texan, and according to a special agent with the DHS,

the sex trafficking of children and human trafficking is one of the fastest-growing criminal enterprises in the United States, which explains the volume of stories that we see. Numerous Texas officials have blamed the increase on the ongoing crisis at the southern border, the status of which, such as the question of whether it is secured and to what extent the state may be involved in border security, is an ongoing political and legal battle between the state and the federal government. Absolutely. Matt, thank you as always for bringing attention to stories like these. Very important folks are just aware of what's going on.

We appreciate your coverage. Bradley, we're coming to you. This time of year, localities adopt their tax rates and two local governments in Lubbock have elected to raise their taxes. Real fast, I did want to say I just refrained from making a pumpkin spice joke because it's September and that came out. And I know how much you abhor pumpkin and pumpkin spice lattes but I stopped myself so we can instead talk about localities adopting their tax rates at this time of year yes let's talk about the much more exciting aspect that is uh adopting a tax rate I just wanted you to know that I exercised an obscene amount of self-control in asking that question first time for everything

talk to us about what they passed. At its Tuesday meeting, the Lubbock City Council adopted a 3.17% increase in the city's tax rate for 2023. That's below 3.5% voter approval limit, so they do not need to get approval from voters to adopt that. Lubbock County also passed an increase. They didn't provide a percentage jump, but both of them to put together will amount to roughly a $115 increase in the average homeowner's property tax relief plan that includes an increase to the homestead exemption and it includes compression, but both of those deal specifically with school district taxes, which is half or more than half of the what you see on your tax bill and so um you know we're seeing a lot of

places raise taxes um especially these we're seeing it with school districts um because they feel like they have more wiggle room since there is a substantial now it will last for two for two years but there's a substantial decrease coming with this buy down by these by the state legislature um and so that's happening other localities like lubbock uh the city and the county are approving these tax increases matt mentioned odessa adopted a a slight tax increase. It's fairly usual. Most of these are within the voter approval limit, so they're not going to have to go to voters.

But it still does work against the total return you're going to see on your bill from the property tax relief plan. And also note that these savings that are estimated, it's estimated to come from these, this, uh, Texas legislature relief plan. It's, it's a comparison to what bills would be without it. It's not necessarily a reduction from the previous year, although it could be, uh, just depends on the situation and the specific property that you're paying taxes on. So, you know, if the most effect, if you want to reduce or keep flat property taxes, the most effective thing to do is not to protest your appraisal, which is already it's already done in past. You can't do that anymore. But it's to oppose these property tax increases, these tax rate adoptions, because that sets the rate for everybody. It's not just your home. So, yeah, something to keep an eye on. And if that's something you want to do, I recommend you go to these meetings, and they're happening now until the end of September generally.

Cameron and Matt, did you guys think that was more or less exciting than pumpkin spice lattes i don't even know how to approach that question cameron any thoughts um you know i feel much more, but pumpkin spice lattes, I haven't had one in years. I would have loved to hear about it. If there's any new drinks associated with it. I don't think I've ever had one. New products? You've never had one, Matt?

No. Have you had one, Brad, even though you hate pumpkin? Have you tried it? Yes. And you still didn't like it? I didn't like it. But I do get a kick out of all the memes this season that start popping through social media about uh the girls and their pumpkin

spice yeah i realize i'm fitting into the mold like with complete accuracy right now we talked about taylor's webbed and pumpkin spice lattes it's not good yes yeah i saw a video on twitter yesterday where this guy counted how many scoops of sugar was in one of these kinds of drinks. And it was abhorrent. Yeah. I usually ask for like half sweet. It was like 17 scoops. Okay, well that was a Dunkin' one, I think.

Yes. That was like a milkshake. But it's the same kind of thing. It's one of these sugar-loaded drinks these coffee chains they lie about what these drinks are they call them like lattes or frappuccinos whatever whatever it is it's a milkshake yeah with a little bit of coffee in it it's true yeah well macchiatos aren't macchiatos like real macchiatos are literally a shot of coffee and like a tiny bit of milk and foam and here it's like the caramel macchiato at starbucks is just

literal caramel syrup drizzled on top of a latte it tastes good though it does it certainly does um yeah they have a new iced pumpkin cream chai tea latte, apple crisp oat milk shake and espresso, pumpkin cream cold brew, and of course, the pumpkin spice latte. Very good, delightful things. What's your favorite pumpkin spice product? I really do like pumpkin spice lattes. I think they're delicious. And I do like the pumpkin cream cold brew that does sound good it's very very good it's just like cold brew coffee with some

nice little foam on top that tastes a little fall like little cinnamon pumpkin yeah action going on we got we got into the pumpkin spice season a little early when we accidentally purchased some pumpkin spice creamer that's true the office that's right yeah i think maslin and i are the only ones to use that i think there needs to be a law that says the average temperature has to drop below a certain amount before all of the pumpkin spice is allowed to be go on sale yeah just wait for christmas to come around we're gonna the all i want for christmas mariah carey oh my gosh how early can you start playing that yeah um well that's a whole other discussion we still have an entirely other news story to

talk about and i completely derailed us yeah don't ruin my day bringing up christmas okay you grinch we're moving on okay another church is holding a drag show in the state of texas tell us about the situation and why it's happening now yeah that's right uh this seems to be a continuing occurrence in the state and there was a law that was set to go into effect, SB 12, that would have blocked these types of performances in front of children. But like I said, it was blocked by a judge in Houston. And this family-friendly drag show also announced that the Sisters for Perpetual Indulgence would be in attendance. And this group has continued to find themselves in the middle of controversy. Previously, they were performing outside of the Dodger Stadium, which caused an uproar.

Not just outside of the stadium where there was counter- from Catholic affiliated groups that were condemning the drag show performers. And then more recently, this was after we published our story. It was actually on the same day. The Daily Wire published a story about a associated member in California that was arrested for masturbating in public. So this group, they can't keep themselves out of the news for a lot of reasons. Yeah. As I mentioned. There's a lot going on here.

And like I said, there was a law that was passed in an attempt to stop these types of performances in front of children, but it was blocked. There hasn't been any movement yet on attempting to challenge the blocking of that law just because it would take action from the OAG's office and they're tied up in an impeachment trial yeah so a lot of their staff temporarily stepped down to um be on the attorney general's legal team so i'm sure they're hemorrhaging employees uh cameron thank you for that okay gentlemen let's move on to the tweeter section we're going to focus a little bit here on paxton um talking about what's going on this week but matt i know you're at the supreme court today why don't you give us a little bit here on Paxton talking about what's going on this week. But Matt, I know you're at the Supreme Court today. Why don't you give us a little bit of a preview of your story on that? For sure. So it was kind of an interesting morning. I got to walk over to the Texas Supreme

Court and sit in oral arguments for a little bit and then walked over to the Texas Capitol, to the Senate chamber and sat in the impeachment trial arguments. It's been an interesting morning, but the case that I was watching at the Texas Supreme Court comes out of Polk County and it kind of has a little bit to do with laws pertaining to our profession in media, specifically rules surrounding defamation and that sort of thing. And the particulars in this case is really quick. The local newspaper up there wrote a story about an assistant district attorney, or specifically a controversial trial in which they mentioned this assistant district attorney had participated in the prosecution of it. And I guess the details are that this trial became rather controversial in nature,

and you don't really want your name associated with having been part of the prosecution. And he maintained that he wasn't part of the prosecution and he sent a letter to the newspaper saying, hey, this was wrong. I demand a retraction. A week later, they retracted it and said, in essence, you know, that we were correcting a mischaracterization, that he was part of the prosecution. We found out he actually had some roles in later parts of, I guess, the appellate court process, etc. But that wasn't good enough, according to his attorney. And so they sued the newspaper for defamation and saw victory at the trial court level and the appellate court level. And now it's before the state's highest court on a couple of different questions. One, whether or not he constitutes a limited public figure. And two, whether or not all of the elements in the case genuinely added up to actionable defamation, etc., etc.

And you saw some pretty interesting questionings from the justices. And just one stuck in my mind, Justice Jeff Boyd just very pointedly asked the plaintiff's attorney. It sounds, not so much if it was a question, so much it was him making a statement. But he says, it sounds to me like he's seeking vengeance and not relief, so to speak, or retribution and not relief, so to speak, or retribution and not relief. It didn't sound like he was accepting the case from his perspective. And some other questions from the other justices very much felt like they were pretty—you typically don't, sitting in oral arguments, uh, get a very good grasp on where the justices stand.

They usually ask questions that keep their cards close to their chest and that sort of stuff. And in this case, it, it, it, it seemed like they were, if I had to guess, that they, they weren't accepting the, um, the plaintiff's argument very well. Then again, we'll wait and see whenever the opinion comes out, but it's a case I'm going to try and digest the details a little bit more on and have a story out soon. There you go.

Thank you for that little teaser there, Matthew. Okay, let's move on to Paxton here. Brad, why don't we start with your Paxton tidbit from the week i might have mentioned it on yesterday's episode daily episode i think you did but we didn't really like hammer home on it yeah it's a wild turn of events yeah so the midi foundation which is probably the onus for all of this um all this impeachment, at least. It's the start, its conflict with Nate Paul is allegedly the start of Paxton's involvement in all these allegations. But the Mitty Foundation is, I believe it operates in South Texas. I might be confusing that, but the head of the Middy Foundation is a guy named R.J. Middy, who's an actor. You might recognize him as Walt Jr. in Breaking Bad.

It's a very strange moment of coincidence there example of coincidence but another odd thing that happened earlier in the trial that may or may not have been said on purpose as kind of an easter egg but ryan banger the second witness called during this whole ordeal said um when he was talking about the midnight opinion and why he signed it as opposed to Ryan Vassar, another whistleblower who normally did that kind of thing. He said, my sense was

if something broke bad I did not want to tarnish his Vassar's career. So I don't know if that was Banger making a would that be a pun? I don't know if that was Banger making a, would that be a pun? I don't know.

A reference. A reference. Yeah. It's very clever if he did it intentionally. Yes, yes. Yeah, especially with that far removed from that portion of the testimony where that came out. That was way in advance of us publicly

or finding out that he right that um he was the head of the midi foundation at this point yeah it wasn't that fact wasn't raised until the attorney for the midi foundation was on the stand what was that this tuesday yeah a couple days ago yeah so yeah very odd it was but interesting quite something well that's a fun one. Have you guys seen Breaking Bad? Of course. There you go. The trial. Always making an appearance.

Do you have too, Bradley? You've seen it? I've seen the first few seasons. Okay. I've only seen the first few episodes. Really? Yeah. I watched it with my family and they were super into it.

They showed it to me and then i like they showed it to me when i was not married and i only really watched tv at night and it just was not nice to go to bed dreaming of drug deals and decomposing people in bathtubs you know see see i what i did not like it i watched it and then i re-watched it in anticipation of better call saul oh my family loves better call saul yes yeah better call saul was a great show they really love it i could just never get into it it's a lot and i really liked the show i just it was not good you know right before bed watching for me yeah but i really liked it it's a really good really good show okay um cameron what did you see on twitter this week um keeping with the paxton theme that's right uh i saw a tweet he said he's heading to maine next

week he's gonna be sitting down with tucker carlson uh and he's gonna to Maine next week. He's going to be sitting down with Tucker Carlson. And he's going to be talking about the impeachment. And like you said, it's going to be interesting because he announced this before the end of the trial. So we don't know what he's going to be talking about in terms of the outcome so i'll be watching it everyone else in texas will be watching it tucker has really uh gravitated and over to x and it's been a great platform for him gets a lot of views tons of views but the thing about the views on x have you seen the breakdown you only have to uh be on the video for like two seconds or something. For it to register?

For it to register as a view. Oh, wow. That's why there's so many views. Yeah. That's interesting. I always wonder about that. Yeah. Fascinating.

How much is that? Do we know what YouTube's algorithm is? I remember seeing like a screenshot of it somewhere but um i don't know about youtube but it's longer than two seconds though probably yeah so like for example if you're just scrolling on your feed and you come across a video and you linger on it for a couple seconds it'll count as you even if you don't have the volume on yeah even if you don't remember it at all yeah it was just there fascinating Fascinating. Yeah, but it has been a good platform for him.

And, I mean, the numbers are crazy. They speak for themselves. You can't really get those kinds of views just by people scrolling by. Yeah, and he's been doing a lot of interviews with some interesting people around the world. Yeah. Really. Paxton will be interesting. Is he a Vladimir Putin booked? or he was trying to set up some interview with

putin but i i don't remember if he's doing something more recently now i'm sure i'm sure he will why not i saw the um this is such a such an aside he had an interview with dave portnoy of barstool sports and portnoy like uh debuted a pizza review where this guy got so angry. Did you guys see that? The video? Yeah, the guy who was like, you don't know what you do to small businesses. Yeah. Based on one bite of our pizza. Yeah, exactly.

I mean, I can totally sympathize with that. That would be. If I worked my butt off for decades to build a pizza place and Dave Portnoy wanted over, took one bite and gave a terrible review. I would be very upset. But the joke is also that he takes a lot more bites and he's basically a whole slice of pizza the entire time. That's the whole joke.

And he also raised like $50 million for small businesses during COVID. Yes, I'm not saying he hasn't done good things. I think Dave Portnoy is funny. He's interesting. Can you judge a pizza on one bite? I don't think so. How many bites does

it take to judge a pizza? Do you think? I guess if you're going to just do one bite, you have to include the crust because that's an important part. But most people start at the end of the pizza, they're not, you know, serial killers.

So. See, I would do the double bite, one bite, where you take a bite of the point, as you're saying the end, where everyone else goes. Right. But before you swallow,

turn the pizza sideways, bite at the crust. Counts as one bite, it's one mouthful. Why not just judge the pizza after you eat one slice? That seems reasonable. Well, you gotta keep your shape. And say that it's one slice instead of just one bite.

Well, sometimes he issues his score literally after one bite. Oh, really? Yeah. Pizza judging is as advanced science as wine tasting. I think that's, well, we'll anchor a lot of people if we say that's fair, but I think there is some truth to that, Matthew.

Okay. Well, I'm sorry if we're going off the rails here. I did it to us. There are some really great documentaries about wine tasting where they, because there's this whole world of wine where the sommeliers are judge and rank these wines blind. And so they don't know where these wines come from. And I saw this recent documentary where they brought in these sommeliers for a blind taste testing and they could not tell the most expensive wines you know hundreds and hundreds of dollars versus

you know a few like 100 or 80 bottles of wine yeah oh um that just reminded me of something uh and this kind of ties back to your California stuff. There's this movie that's based on a true story about how like Napa Valley became, got its spot on the globe for being, you know, great wine and all this sort of stuff. And it was where this little winery took, from Napa Valley Valley took some bottles over to this competition over in France. And time and time again, the wine tasters, judges or whatnot, you know, tested their bottles of wine. And it was from Napa Valley. And I was like, where's Napa Valley? I guess it was back before Napa Valley was a thing or whatnot.

But there's a bottle from this test tasting thing that's actually in the smithsonian institute uh but they made a movie on it and it was very good wow i don't remember the name of it was it i because i think the one i'm thinking of is called sour grapes it was either that or something else oh well maybe we should all go on a wine tasting after this guys now i want pizza and wine bringing bringing it back to texas wine there's all kinds of wineries and stuff throughout the texas hill country there's even a few wineries out where i'm from in southwest texas now yeah yeah there are yeah absolutely there are a ton we might be the next napa there you go

okay i'm gonna real fast highlight a little piece of news here from Holly, as well as a tweet from Matt. Donald Trump himself, former president, has come out in defense of Ken Paxton, as well as Donald Trump Jr., which Matt quote tweeted earlier today. And basically, Trump Jr. quote tweeted Ken Paxton's announcement that he's going on Tucker Carlson and said, Rhino hunting season is coming with a bunch of exclamation points so the Trump team is very much uh mobilized for Ken Paxton right now sabers rattling yeah absolutely and then Holly as is typical for Holly broke some news today following calls for Harris County Judge Lena Hidalgo to return or resign word is that she will be discharged from a mental health facility soon and return to work on October 2nd.

So lots of news, as always, coming out of Harris County and wanted to give Holly a shout out there. Okay, gentlemen. Well, I'm getting word from Daniel that the people need in this room to change filters for our AC. So I should kick us out of here.

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