The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - September 17, 2021

Episode Date: September 17, 2021

This week on The Texan’s “Weekly Roundup,” the team discusses the latest candidate to jump in the race for Texas attorney general, a quorum-breaking lawmaker donating her per diem to Planned Parenthood, how the third special session could affect the governor’s reelection campaign, the latest on the Texas border wall, an update from the Austin police chief as homicide numbers spike in the city, the scheduling of a Texas House runoff election, conflict between gubernatorial candidates over the storage of nuclear waste, controversy over mask mandates at a Central Texas school district, and a lawsuit that highlights the growing problem of foster children without placement.

Happy Friday, folks. Mackenzie Taylor here on this week's edition of the Texans Weekly Roundup Podcast. Today, our team debriefs another candidate jumping in the race for Texas Attorney General, a quorum-breaking lawmaker donating her per diem to Planned Parenthood, how the third special session could affect the governor's re-election campaign, the latest on the Texas border wall, an update from the Austin police chief as homicide numbers spike in the city, the scheduling of a Texas House runoff election, conflict between gubernatorial candidates over the storage of nuclear waste, controversy over mask mandates at a central Texas school district, the latest border numbers,

and a lawsuit that highlights the growing problem of foster children without placement. Thanks for joining us and have a fantastic weekend. Howdy folks, Mackenzie Taylor here with Hayden Sparks, Isaiah Mitchell, and Brad Johnson. Daniel Friend is not with us today. He is off to see his family. So it's just the three amigos plus this amiga today. Wow, look at that guys. Hey, every time I say something along those lines that I think is funny, just myself, all of you look at me with such like. I'm just trying to think about when we became the three amigos.

Well, here's the thing. I would say any people who have any sort of friendly disposition toward each other in three in pairs of not pairs of three. That's not even a thing in a trio would be the three amigos well today i learned that brad hates me it is true it is true i have to stare at you every day across the desk that's a good point when your glass water receptacle that is actually a bottle of scotch well not if it's got water in it that is a true story folks for those listening at home um what about those listening in the car do they count as well they they don't on this one oh okay yeah i think we should include our car listeners our car

listeners our commuters yeah i wonder how many people listen to us just sitting around and how many listen to us while they're doing something i wonder if people are yeah i wonder how many people listen to us just sitting around and how many listen to us while they're doing something i wonder if people are yeah i wonder if people are doing things like cleaning the house or if they're outside doing yard work with us in the um so basically how many people just treat us as uh white noise yeah exactly exactly how i would do it maybe there are people who use our podcast to fall asleep at night. That could be a demographic. Do you ever do that where you listen to something to get yourself to fall asleep and it's like a podcast or a movie or something? I do that with audio books at times. Oh, yeah.

That makes sense. I find it with audio books, though, hard to go back and find your spot. Oh, that is true because you fall asleep in the middle. Yeah. A podcast, you only got like, you know, an hour or two that you got to parse through with an audio book. It's like, dang, where did I even leave off leave off anyway this was a riveting conversation are you ready to talk about the news i'm always ready you're also i get paid to do that so well good i have to i'm glad that there's a

contractual obligation there you go well let's start with this um daniel wrote a piece about a recent addition to the field for texas attorney general talk us through this the primary is becoming very heated it already was and you know now we even have more contention walk us through it yeah i think this is going to be the the most watched primary race in the state this year just because of how many big names are in it and today being thursday representative matt kraus republican of fort worth entered the field, the field already included incumbent in the House, a conservative caucus of members, he said that he wants Texas to have a faithful conservative fighter in that position who will look out and fight for the interests and liberties of Texans all over the state.

A late entry, Krause delayed the decision, saying that he wanted to first assess whether there was a need or an interest for another entrant to get into the field. And should he win, some issues he pointed to that would be top of mind for him are redistricting the election reform bill, the Heartbeat Act, and the energy sector, which all will be featured choke points for the Texas Attorney General to have to defend in court, whether now or in the future. And he concluded his statement to Daniel.

Daniel got an interview with him. He said that about those things, those are going to be the job of the Attorney General for the next four years. And I think you have to have that faithful conservative fighter who does that. And I think that as we get our message out to the people of texas it will resonate the faithful conservative fighter uh point i think might be a campaign slogan we're going to see a lot of yeah yeah i think you definitely will um in terms of you know his specific qualms with the incumbent he pointed to in a radio spot with Mark Davis this morning, he pointed to

the investigations that have gone on and he said, you know, whether or not these things turn out to be true and let's say charges are filed or not, it still has impacted the respectability of the office and the importance of the office, the business the office must do. That kind of echoes George P. Bush's language about it. You know, when he jumped in, he said that Ken Paxton and I are largely similar on the issues. But this thing, the way the office is run is going to be of big importance in the race. And to be fair, that's the argument we've heard from multiple candidates who jumped

in the race, right? I mean, George P. Bush has said time and time again, this is more of an administrative problem or an ethics problem as opposed to a policy problem. You know, can Paxton has waged big wars against different administrations in his time that have, you know, kind of gone against the will of the state of Texas in terms of, you know, the red leaning of the state. So, interesting to see that, you know, kind of be the crux of this argument and that that crux would be enough fodder for multiple prominent GOP candidates to jump in. People clearly see a window of opportunity here. And it's, you know, it's interesting that one of the state's top political positions is largely focused on not really politics, at least in terms of policy type stuff. And I'm sure it'll get into that as we go on, right?

It will, yeah, certainly. But the big focus, like you said, is these allegations surrounding the incumbents and how true they are. Yeah, which are, I mean, they're big not to belittle these allegations and the legal battles going on around the attorney general's office right now they're very uh prominent and um problematic so it'll be interesting to see how that all shakes out but you know the policy i think will be figured out down the line and i think will largely center around um the attorney general's defense of the president in the election i think that will kind of be a lot of the, you know, political difference between some of these candidates. And of note, too, I believe Paxton got the endorsement of President Trump, right? So this Krause jumping in is coming after that.

So even despite that, Krause believes there's an opportunity here for, you know, a lane for him to run in. Now, talk to us about Krause's background in the Texas House. Well, he was first elected in 2012. He had challenged Representative Charlie Guerin, longtime member in his district, the election prior in 2010, but lost in the primary. Since Krause won, he's won every time since, but since then his margin of victory has shrunken a little bit. I think in 2020, he won 56% of the vote, down a few percentage points from how much he won the first time around. So, he has been in, like I said, he's been in since 2012.

In 2019, he was the House bill author and Senate bill sponsor of the Save Chick-fil-A bill, that issue about San Antonio banning Chick-fil-A from its airport. He was the person on the front mic defending that bill when it came down to the wire both times because the first bill died at a deadline and then they managed to get the next one through the Senate bill. So there was that. This year, he was the author of HP 1399, which is the gender modification bill prohibition of sex change surgeries and using puberty blockers on minors. That got the farthest of any of the proposals, but it's still stalled at the deadline in the House it hasn't gained really much momentum since. But he was the one pushing that particular bill. And then in terms of ratings, this year, Mark P. Jones of Rice University

rated him the 16th most conservative member in the House, and that is just three spots down from where he was in the 2019 session so roughly top 15 conservative member of the house yeah and like i said he's in the the freedom caucus all of those members are um you know in in the top quarter of the the gop um caucus in terms of conservative ratings and matt krause is among them as well and i'd say social conservative policy is kind of his bread and butter is where I'd put him is he's he's willing to go to bat for those, you know, the pro-life causes. As you said, the gender modification bill for minors willing to sponsor that. Those are things that he cares very deeply about. Very strong Christian faith.

So it'll be interesting to see how that plays into this as well. And that's where the strong or the faithful conservative fighter thing, I think, will come into play time and time again. And also, dovetailing into the run for AG, the other point of interest for him is constitutional law. I think he does that for a job. And he works for the nonprofit. He's an attorney, but he specifically practices constitutional law. And so, at least to some regard, and that is exactly what he would be doing as attorney general. Well, and I know to kind of dovetail into redistricting here, because that's certainly going to be a big focal point in the next month. But, you know, we know that there were many Tarrant County state reps who met this last week in Tarrant County to discuss how these districts would be redrawn. Now, how could this affect redistricting going into this next special

session? So Krause's district was the fastest growing in the house in population, according to the 2020 census. So, you know, a lot of change. And I think you can kind of see some of that in the kind of shrinking of the margin, even if it was just kind of minor. But Fort Worth obviously is a fast growing town and town and um the dfw area itself is is growing quite substantially but um his departure gives republicans the opportunity to carve up a district without risking the sacrifice of an incumbent um you know people in office they like to protect those at least if not friends those aligned with them yeah and so um they now they have this the chance to kind of push different sections of krause's district other ways um and that uh that just

makes it easier on the republicans in the redistricting process yeah absolutely and tarrant county is a lot of folks call it the largest red urban county in the country, but it has certainly been purple as of late. So, we'll see how this goes. And there are only so many districts that can be drawn within those lines and so many precincts that can be split up between different districts. Yep. And that means Krause's run for AG means that there's another open seat now. I think redistricting will dictate who runs for this HD93 seat. It will still, HD93 will still be a thing.

It's just where is it drawn? That's the question. So I think we'll see the field kind of come together once we have a better idea of where redistricting is. Sure thing. Well, thank you, Bradley. We're going to stick with another Daniel story in his absence. Isaiah, let's talk to you about this texas state representative michelle beckley donated a pretty large sum of money to planned parenthood talk to us about why she made this donation

where she got the money and what the controversy might be so everybody on earth knows by now about the texas heartbeat act everybody on earth everyone by now about the Texas Heartbeat Act. Everybody on earth. Everyone. Everyone. In the deepest reaches of the Amazon, they're talking about the Texas Heartbeat Act. It took effect 16 days ago and practically stopped abortions in the state for the first time in decades. And obviously abortions make up a substantial portion of Planned Parenthood's revenue. Beckley is not a fan of the Heartbeat Act. She is a fan of Planned Parenthood, hence the donation. What made her donation especially controversial is that the pay she donated was her per diem payment that she collected over the course of the special sessions,

for which she was not mostly present. So for the first two, she wasn't there. And in total, about $750,000 of taxpayer funds went to Democrats who participated in these quorum breaks. And Beckley's sum out of that is that she's donated to Planned Parenthood is a little over $10,000. Yeah. Now talk to us. There were many Republicans, particularly who were disappointed in Democrats, one, keeping the per diems and two, not being, you know, dished out consequences for their quorum breaking. Walk us through some of the proposals to one, recapture that per diem or just impose fines or restrictions on representatives who break quorum. I'll let Brad take the actual legislative bills that dealt with that kind of, you know, punitive measure. Outside of the Capitol and actual bills,

there were just a number of politicians calling for the corn breakers to return their per diems, and some of them did so. The Speaker of the House even requested it, right? Right, yeah. The head of the chamber. Who's kind of, as Brad has pointed out a number of times before, straddling the parties right now. So it's rare for him to go out on a limb

to one side or the other and this kind of thing right um in terms of the the resolutions that were passed it's something that has to be done through the house rules or at least that's the route that has been identified thus far um nothing has has been passed nothing was passed during the the short like basically one week session that we had at the end of the second one but there were a couple proposals and the one that got the most traction it had a hearing in house administration it didn't deal with any retroactive punishment for what had already been done it would have if i correctly, set like a two times or fine two times the amount of the per diems made during whatever string of unexcused absences that members had. But it would not have required the corn breakers from July to repay their per diems. Additionally, the per diems are in the Constitution, so they have to be paid, which is why the Speaker had to request them to repay it back. It can't be withheld initially,

so the Speaker couldn't just see members on a quorum break and then tell the administration office to withhold those per diems. They have to be clawed back through repayment. So that's the reason that it unfolded that way. I believe Representative Cody Vesute had a resolution that did have a retroactive aspect. I believe the main part of the retroactive aspect was revoking committee chairmanships and that didn't go anywhere either um well you know the window of opportunity for setting these kinds of punishments is closing just because the um the proximity to the incident is drifting further and further away and so as that happens there's just going to be less and less appetite for

members to set a policy on this. Political attention spans are very short. Right. Despite the efforts of someone like Representative Tony Tenderholt or Vasut, who have tried a lot to get this, something like this passed. And I think Representative Tenderholt has tried the past few sessions to get something in the rules on this. But we'll see what they do, if they do anything during this coming special session, which starts next week. Got it. Well, thank you both for chatting about that. Brad, we're going to stick with you here. Speaking of the third special session, it's slotted for next week. It starts next week. We have had a summer of special sessions and we're going now into the

fall. Now, Governor Abbott, this might be his last chance to shore up some legislative victories, which, you know, largely he'll be able to take responsibility for in terms of political or campaign messaging. Walk us through what his agenda says about what he's prioritizing prior to being, you know, and he has also, you know, notable primary challengers as well. So, walk us through that. Yeah. So, I think it's worth noting at the outset that the governor controls what the legislature does, or at least what issues they consider during the special session. He has the constitutional authority to set the agenda, and he did. He set five items.

They were redistricting, which has to be done. Then the disbursement of federal coronavirus dollars. There's $16 billion the state must deal with. Yeah, a lot of money um the transgender sports bill that prohibits biological males from competing with biological females in youth sports um then we've got the restriction on vaccine mandates by political subdivisions it specifically is related to governments and mandates therein. And then we've got kind of an odd duck here, a dog tethering penalty. That bill died in the, I think it was the House, in the first go-around during the regular session.

We'll see. I believe that was vetoed. It was vetoed by the governor. And he expressed the sentiment that he supported the reasoning behind the legislation, but he felt like the way the law was written would lend itself to micromanagement. He didn't believe in that level of restriction on an individual's ability to restrain their dog, even if it was for a good reason. So I don't think he was against the purpose of the bill, but was against some of the mechanics so we're revising it in special yeah so we'll see what what shape that takes you know um but those are the the agenda items um i would say of the as it relates to governor abbott and his last chance to you know shore up his

governing record for the coming elections. All these items, only one, maybe two are really that hot button. Uh, obviously the big one is the transgender sports bill. And, um,

that has failed in each, the, the regular session and the, uh, second special session, um, through various manners, but,

um, it still hasn't been passed. And it is on Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick's priority list. So I think now that it is only one of five, it has a better shot of getting passed, but you know, who knows what's going to happen there. I would say the other one, the vaccine mandate prohibition specifically on government and governmental entities. I see Abbott kind of towing the line. His critics to the right want an across the board prohibition, even for private businesses. His critics to the left want the ability to issue vaccine mandates across the board.

So with this item, he's kind of skirting the middle, trying to find trying to satisfy his center right base without jumping all the way one way or the other. I think that's pretty clear, but we don't even know. That is, I think, reading through the items, that is the most vague of the items. So we'll see what form that takes in the House and Senate. I would say that the first two items are general housekeeping measures you know drawing districts has to be done uh constitutionally and this is the last unless this fails this will be the last chance to you know do that well and there's even a dispute about whether they are even allowed to do this during the special session and if daniel was here he could expand on that but it may be that a court decides that

they're not supposed to be drawing them in the in the last or during a special session but otherwise um you know this is the the first year um or the first session since they've had the census data available so if they don't then i guess we'll have to continue to um we'll have to wait till the next regular session in 2023 if a court decides that they have to wait until a regular session to do it. And we knew all along that this redistricting was going to be in a September-October special session. Yeah, the fall. Just because of when. Census data.

Census data, yeah. The other general housekeeping measure is the $16 billion in federal coronavirus aid. As detailed as I've been explained, the only thing that is really kind of a set deal with that is replenishing the unemployment insurance fund. There was $2.2 billion before the pandemic, and that all got used. And then the state had to take on, I think it was just under $7 billion in loans to help finance that. And so other than that, we don't really know what they're going to spend this money on. One bill Senator Paul Bettencourt has introduced would provide property tax compression, similar to what happened in 2019, continued. That would fall under this category. They would be using this money because

it's not property tax reform or relief is not a separate item on the agenda. So they would, it would have to fall under this coronavirus aid. But there's a prohibition from Congress for using this ARPA money to cut taxes. That's being debated, argued in court. We don't know where that's going to end up. And then, as I said, with the dog tethering bill, the last one's kind of a mystery. I don't, it sounds good on a mailer to say Governor Abbott, you know, signed legislation to protect man's best friend. But other than that, you know, he's setting a criminal offense and that's, or would be setting a criminal offense. And I think that's the main reason that he vetoed it

in the first place, at least the oversight of that and how, you main reason that he vetoed it in the first place at least the oversight of that and how right how curtailed it would be so um you know we'll see what what form that takes during the session i feel like we should call on winston to have his perspective he is here after all you're totally right let's get winston on the mic that would be uh i go over well now talk to us about how you, all of this fares in terms of reelection for the governor. What does this look like politically? Yeah. So in the primary, obviously, the governor has been criticized a lot by his primary opponents, especially the Don Huffines, Allen West and Chad Prather group.

You know, there's other primary candidates, but those are the serious ones. And he's been criticized for not going with the gender modification bill. He's kind of spurned that. But I think the transgender sports bill and the vaccine mandate prohibition were influenced by the rhetoric to his right. And he's trying to head that off at the pass. As for the general, Abbott did not include the gender modification ban. And he has snubbed that legislation throughout the process, despite the loud criticism from within his party.

While Abbott won re-election in 2018 by a wide margin, he's likely to face more formidable Democratic opponents, especially if Beto jumps in. Like, we're hearing a lot more rumblings right now. It's kind of, it's been expected for a while, but, you know, hearing it drum up a lot more recently. Abbott seems to want to avoid supplying Democrats with potential ammo beyond what has already been done with the election reform bill and the heartbeat act and constitutional carry so i think both the primary and the general have influenced this final special session agenda but like any other special abbott can add agenda items at any point he chooses so that development is something to watch absolutely well thank you bradley for covering

that for us hayden let's talk about the border. How did the Texas Border Wall Project come into being? Well, I think it's interesting how in politics some things never change. And one of those things so far has been the position of the border wall as a feature in Texas politics and conservative politics more broadly. But I recommend heading to the texan.news because I did an in-depth piece on some of the mechanics of the border wall funding. And the history of this goes all the way back to 2014 when President Trump gave a speech at a conservative event in New Hampshire. It was one of the first times that he stated publicly that he intended to build a border that, in his words, build a border like you've never seen before. And, of course, he made that a fixture of both his campaign and his presidency.

But here we are years later. And if President Biden intended to shut down the border wall as a discussion and as an issue, he certainly failed on that front because Governor Abbott in June announced a border wall project after facing strong criticism from one of his primary opponents, Don Huffines.

I sense a theme. Yes, yes. And based on the fundraising numbers, Abbott's definitely doing okay in this primary race. But he announced in June, as this primary got started to get heated, and only 450 miles of the federal government's border wall was constructed before Trump left office. The US Department of Homeland Security issued a long statement discussing some of the from their perspective and the Trump administration, their belief in the benefits of the border wall. And I know that some of the criticism of it has been centered on President

Trump. Well, a lot of hay has been made of President Trump building barrier where barrier already existed. But, you know, Daniel and I went down there, we've seen this border wall, it's not a rinky dink little fence. And even National Geographic when they were discussing or in their reporting of some of the environmental issues that could be associated with this wall. They even reported that it makes no sense to downplay the construction of a new barrier, even though there may have been a barrier there before. This is a much different barrier. It's much involved. It was a lot more intricate than the barrier that already existed. So that's some of the overview of the border wall promise. And Governor Abbott has set high expectations for this wall, or he's created high expectations as well. Colonel Steve McCraw,

who's the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, told the Texas Senate Finance Committee that the state of Texas intends to build more than 730 miles worth of barriers and other fencing along the southern border in Texas, which vast stretches of which remain without a barrier, according to the overview of border wall construction that was in place when President Trump left. You know, you have all these border projects that were under contract in Texas, but there was really only one 52 mile stretch that was in pre construction, according to the archived content, DHS content when Trump left office. So Texas, large portions of the Texas border remain without a barrier. Much of the wall that President Trump completed was in Arizona and New Mexico. And that is the backdrop for some additional funding that we'll talk about in a second. Yeah. So let's get into that. Where are we and we being Texas in terms of the border wall

building process, particularly after this legislative session? Well, and just to add one more note to what we were just talking about, you know, we have the New York Post reported recently that we have border guards filling gaps in this wall with random construction supplies that they're able to find. And so there are certainly tactical benefits to many border guards. I know there's controversy over that, but for some, the tactical benefits are clear, some in Border Patrol, in fact. But as far as where we are in the process in Texas, thanks to a little number called House Bill 9, 87th Legislature,

second called session, there will be $1.02 billion in funding dispersed directly to what are known as trustee programs in the office of the governor. Abbott has not signed this bill yet. I can't think of a reason why he wouldn't sign this bill, so I fully expect him to sign it, and he likely will in the coming days or weeks. But this will be for border security infrastructure. The bill provides that he is not allowed to use eminent domain to build the wall. But the Texas Senate has said in a press release that $750 million of this funding will be used for a border wall. And of course, Governor Abbott placed $250 million is what he called a down payment on the wall over the summer. And this funding bill, HB 9, received support from Democrats and Republicans along the southern border, bipartisan support. It was also a bipartisan vote. You had lawmakers from both parties support House Bill 9. And so not only does it include the funding for the governor's office, it includes hundreds of millions of more dollars for other agencies of government for border

security. And the Texas Facilities Commission told us the other day that they are, in fact, expected today, Thursday, to present their final recommendation for a program manager for the southern border and we include the flow chart um on our website for the border wall project we love a good flow chart we love this church in general i think mckenzie is especially fond of charts that's fair yes me and zay i think are the we fly the flag i i feel like i need to tap Zay to create a border wall chart for us because he created some pretty cool charts on his education funding piece. But there's a joint venture between two engineering firms, Hewitt Zollers and Michael Baker International, one of which I believe is based in Pennsylvania, which is interesting for the Texas border wall project. But we'll have to see how that plays out. They've been a joint venture between those two companies has been selected as the top respondent. And again, that recommendation is to be made today, Thursday.

But in the meantime, there is a lawsuit pending, initiated by, you know, we talked about the Attorney General's race earlier. This lawsuit was initiated by Land Commissioner George P. Bush, accusing the federal government of illegally stopping the border wall project under the Administrative Procedures Act. And Attorney General Paxton was successful in the Romania-Mexico lawsuit. So Land Commissioner Bush could be successful in this lawsuit. We'll have to see how that plays out. But that, as Texas prepares to build its border wall, that lawsuit is in the pretrial phrase. And if it's successful, it could force the federal government to restart its project as well. We'll have to see. Well, thank you for that, Hayden.

As always, phenomenal border reporting. Bradley, let's go local. So the city of Austin set a new record for homicides in a year, 60 total. No, I think we're dealing with over 60 now, but around 60. This is the highest since the 80s this past weekend. And the interim police chief discussed its causes. Talk to us about what he said. Yeah, so he gave three main factors. The first of which that he identified was the frequency of illegally owned gun use

in crimes uh across the board not just illegally owned uh across the board um not just in homicides he said that over the last couple of years we have seen a market increase on the number of gun crime that is occurring in the city um i think based on just national trends that's that is occurring in the city. Um, I think based on just national trends, that's, that's occurring across the country as well. Um, especially in larger cities, but Austin, you know, its homicide rate is expanding well beyond basically every other city in the country. Um, and so certainly every other city in Texas and at one point last year, um, every other city in the country as well and well beyond it. But, um, Austin is historically a low crime city.

And so when you have, you know, in terms of raw numbers, um, uh, run, run number increases can be, uh, substantially higher in terms of the rate increase, but you know, it's still an increase and it's still happening. Um, and at an alarming rate the second issue that he mentioned was offenders out on pr bond committing other crimes um as larger cities have implemented laxer bail policies more and more violent offenders have been released on no cash bill at all and then have some of them many of them have committed another offense something that holly has covered extensively in houston i'm not sure the exact number but as of earlier this summer it was like 160 people um i think it was this year that had been killed

by an offender out on pr bond and so that's just an outrageous number. Austin having fewer people does not have that many, but it still has a substantial amount. The city of Austin implemented such a bail policy, specifically prioritizing PR bonds for those deemed indigent and the class of indigent is broadly defined. But there was a specifically one high profile case that, uh, that I wrote about wrote adjacently about, um, in January of 2020, Dylan Woodburn entered a homeless man, entered a, uh, a restaurant in downtown or South Austin, I think right across the river on SoCo. And, uh, he stabbed three and killed one. He was out on a PR bond from a month earlier on a burglary offense. And he was a repeat offender on multiple things.

So that's just one example. There have been many. The third factor that Chacon pointed to is the low staffing level of APD. Currently, the department is operating at about 1.2 officers per 1,000 residents. That is below what is considered the base level metric of serviceable metric of two officers per 1,000. There's about 390 officers short of their staffing level two years ago and um currently based on the budget cuts from last year there are like 140 to 160 vacancies on of patrol officers so uh during since the budget cuts last year response times have jumped one minute and 30 seconds which is a

long a lot it's a lot of time and uh the department is shedding around 15 to 20 officers per month so um this issue although he didn't say it because he is not going to jump into a political fight it dovetails into the actual political fights over the budget cut from last year and the resulting police ballot proposition that would set a minimum, among other things, set a minimum staffing level of two officers per thousand. So that's something voters in Austin are going to be casting ballots on this November. Overall, Chacon concluded, unfortunately, I think this trend might continue, probably will continue, and we need to do everything we can as a community to stop that number from growing.

Now, two points of context. Immediately after this, the city of the Austin Police Department announced the 61st homicide of the year. And then earlier this month, Mayor Steve Adler gave his state of the city address. And in it, he pointed the blame at a lot of this at, quote, right-wing misinformation. And so you can clearly see, and the mayor himself is vociferously opposing the ballot prop that's coming. And he is very much of the opinion that the reforms that were made last year are worthwhile, important, and necessary. It's part of this broader effort to kind of reimagine the role of a police department in a large city. So, the mayor is not, this issue, the Chaconne statements, the homicide rate rate and the mayor's statements are not lining up

and we'll see where things go well thank you for that brad hayden we're going to come to you um another house district special election this time a runoff um this was scheduled talk to us about houses are 10 and where this race stands well this one's right around the corner. It's going to be on September 28th. The election day for this race was on August 31st. So in very recent memory, early voting for this race will be September 20th that week. Maybe now I should tell you what the race actually is. Mention it's House District 10 between Brian Harrison and John Ray, who incidentally was the incumbent for that seat as recently as January. This district has not had a state representative since the end of part of this, the second to call the first called session. And for the entirety of the second called session, D10 did not have a state representative. Now, talk to us about how the tones and rhetoric of these two candidates and campaigns have shook out since all this began. Oftentimes, I think those in Austin are a little isolated or insulated rather from a lot of this rhetoric being thrown around the attacks being made by campaigns but these are so blatant they've made their way you know they've made their way to

austin people know what's going on so talk us through that well i think it's a lot of people um when two can't when two or more candidates are running, ideally you have the candidates talking about their resume and their stances on the issues and then people decide based on that. But unfortunately, this race has gone to personalities a little bit. And Brian Harrison was the chief of staff to the Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar under President Trump. And former State Representative Wray has said publicly that he believes Harrison is exaggerating about his record. And he's accusing him of making it sound like he was Trump's chief of staff is more or less the criticism that he has put out there this week. The day that Abbott announced this runoff date, in fact. But Brian Harrison has had his own accusations against Ray, who produced a video of an answer that Harrison gave about public education that was heavily edited and included the tail end.

Well, I won't say the tail end, but it was the latter portions of an answer he gave in which Harrison had criticized critical race theory. And he had said that he didn't want liberal teachers unions pushing an agenda on the students and Midlothians and the surrounding area's school districts. But Harrison also said he supported public school teachers, and he supported giving them the tools to teach core curriculum instead of ideological. That's kind of a useless phrase, ideological ideas. In other words, instead of pushing politics, pushing the necessities. That was what his answer was. But this video whittled it down to only what he said about the liberal teachers unions and not what he had said before about his kids being in Midlothian schools and his family supporting public education.

So that boiled over onto social media on the day that this runoff date was set so the unfortunately the tone in this race has been uh pretty hostile and negative but the race will be wrapped up really soon here at the end of this month it'll be interesting to see how it all shakes out thank you hayden brad we're coming back to you now this is uh really the nexus of two of your beats which i think is so interesting we have we have energy policy and we have the governor's race kind of coming together. And it's an obscure fight over nuclear waste, the storage of nuclear waste here in Texas. Give us a brief explanation of the issue. So let me first say, if this interests you, go read the articles because those go into far more depth than I can here. But the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved a license for a West Texas facility. read the articles because those go into far more depth than i can here um but the nuclear

regulatory commission approved a license for a west texas facility to store high level radioactive waste on an interim basis that's up to 40 years next to an already existing low level radio waste radioactive waste storage facility um in andrews county that spurred legislation or the coming of that license spurred legislation aimed at proactively stopping the facility's approval governor abbott signed the law after the second special session about a week before the license was approved high level radioactive waste is uh spent nuclear fuel um the stuff that they use to actually conduct the process of nuclear fission. And it's used to, among other things,

generate electricity at nuclear power plants. Several locations, namely the state's two nuclear plants themselves, one in DFW, one in Houston, already stored spent fuel on their premises in the exact same manner that this facility, this interim facility, would store their stuff.

Important to note that there have been no incidents so far of nuclear waste storage or transportation causing disasters. But obviously, you know, this is the highest degree of radioactive waste. And so it comes with a lot of hesitation and concern about. And it certainly has occurred out in West Texas in the Midland Odessa area. The third aspect of this that I think is incredibly important is for decades, the federal government has failed to complete a Nevada facility at Yucca Mountain designed to store the spent fuel permanently for you know thousands

of years and they were supposed to have completed it by 98 still hasn't happened it's just you know bungling decade after decade so that has kind of led to this issue of we need a stopgap measure yeah a place to store this in the meantime up until ideally you know this yucca mountain facility is built so that's the as brief as i can make it um you did very well i'm very proud of you bradley uh i know this can really go into the weeds so thanks for giving us a 30 000 foot view on that so talk to us about what the governor said about this issue that kind of sparked this whole con or not even controversy it was already controversial sparked this whole debate right yeah so it was on he he signed the law shortly after the special session ended and then was really nothing about

it yeah um the frankly the only attention it got was you know the article that i wrote or that a couple other media outlets wrote on the bill itself but then governor abbott weighed in on twitter and he said the b Biden administration is trying to dump highly radioactive nuclear waste in West Texas oil fields. I just signed a law to stop it. Texas will not become America's nuclear waste dumping ground. Obviously Biden is making this a federal government versus state of Texas issue. Um, that is not entirely out of bounds because, uh, the nuclear regulatory commission is the one that regulates this. And that is an arm of the federal government. But, you know, this license process began in 2016

and has spanned three presidencies, including Republican Donald Trump. So, you know, I don't even know if Biden knows about this. I think he's got more pressing issues on his plate. But this is not as simple as, you know, a Biden versus Texas thing, even if that may contribute to it. Now, Abbott is staunchly opposed to this. He's supportive of the bill, and that's where it started this week. Now, what have his opponents said about the issue yeah so that it kind of as you said uh crosshairs of two of my beats the governor's race it became a focus of the governor's race after abbott tweeted that uh we saw a couple of his opponents weigh in uh chad prather the blaze

tv host um basically echoed all of abbott's points uh in his position said tech in some he said texans come first texas texans come first in texas not nuclear garbage we aren't washington's dumpster now where it became really interesting was which is really good campaign messaging right if that's the case yeah yeah and oh yeah that's you know what i mean it mean? There's a reason that this bill was passed and that the PR seems to be on one side. Right. It is a very easy issue to market. Now, like I said, where it became really interesting was Alan West weighed in, and he took a bit of a contrary position to Abbott. Not that this should be allowed, not that this facility should be allowed to go into development,

but that the bill didn't go far enough. He said that of particular concerns, the allowance of nuclear waste to be stored in shallow facilities, and the Andrews case on a cement slab on the surface, with the collapse of Afghanistan and fundamentalist Islam on the rise again, thanks to the failures of the Biden administration. And we see invoking of the Biden administration. The state of Texas should not be building a bullseye for bad actors.

You know, that's actually a point that I hadn't heard made yet, at least by a prominent figure, the potential terrorism implications here. But this has clearly caught the eye of the gubernatorial candidates at least most of them despite it being an incredibly obscure topic and uh incredibly in the weeds and an issue that not many people understand um myself included before i started looking into this i didn't know anything why would you yeah so um again i would encourage you to go read the a couple of articles that i have on this issue uh it goes into a lot more detail um and gives more context and more understanding than what these statements have absolutely well thank

you for you know really making that digestible for me for our listeners and our readers it's very difficult. Count that as a win. Yeah, absolutely. Isaiah, let's talk about mask mandates in school districts. Certainly something that's not new, but Round Rock ISD found itself at the center of some more unique challenges and arguments. Talk to us about the story. So the proposed plan on the table earlier this week has been a mask matrix, and that would adjust mask requirements based on recommendations from Austin Public Health.

So Round Rock is in Williamson County. A piece of Austin is in Williamson. They're right next to each other. And that alone is kind of interesting. I'm sure they're not completely the very first ones to do this, but that's not a tactic I've seen widely elsewhere. You know, we, the most recent innovation I think that we saw as a statewide pattern was the opt-out mandates where parents, that's like, you know, my little brother, the high school he goes to, that's what they're doing. Anyway, so for the matrix that they're proposing at Round Rock, Austin public health recommends COVID stages that come in five colors from

green to red. And so for example, under the matrix that, that round of ISD is proposing, if you're in stage four or five, the master required, if you're in stage three, then they're just strongly recommended.

And I think one to two is just, you know, totally optional. There was also a ruckus at their meeting. Again, not new. But there were a bunch of attendees that were wanting to get in. That was the name of our student section in college. The ruckus. Oh, not ruckus at the meeting?

No. That's a good band name. Ruckus at the meeting. With an exclamation point at the end. Totally. That sounds a little familiar. A bit. You panic at the school board?

Yeah. Exactly. Well, there were a bunch of attendees that wanted to get into the meeting room with the trustees instead of sitting in the overflow room and watching the live stream down the hall. One of them is this local Republican gadfly named Jeremy Story who got blocked and kind of, I don't want to say apprehended. That makes it sound like they're holding him somewhere. But he was just physically held back by the cops when he tried to get to the door. And he and a bunch of other of the citizens who were there claimed that the district violated the Open Meetings Act by limiting entrance. The district says that it's not a violation of the act to have seating arrangements and

stream it and record the meeting. There's also some drama going on with Jeremy. Yeah, so talk to us about that. So first, we have to talk about the board. A lot of votes, especially with regards to masks that we've covered before, actually, because it's just a unique situation. Two of the trustees on the board, Daniel Weston and Mary Bone, are usually outliers. They're just frequently at odds with the rest of the board. They sent out a press release a little while ago to publicize a meeting they had with a woman who claimed to be the superintendent's girlfriend and said he had assaulted her.

Jeremy Story says the board has thrown him out of school board meetings before for trying to bring these accusations to light at public meetings. His suspicion of the superintendent began when the superintendent was hired pretty recently in a process that was mostly behind closed doors. We linked to the statesman reporting on that. And just two days ago, Story said that he took the assault allegations to Round Rock police after the Round Rock ISD police declined to take up the case. So he's claiming that they're using our ISD police to target him when he's at this meeting anyway. So meanwhile meanwhile weston and bone who previously alleged or brought to light whichever phrasing you want that the district was enforcing

a mask mandate that did not exist if y'all remember that from a few months ago were the only two trustees at the meeting that voted to allow the attendees to get inside now i mean all that is there's just so much going on with this whole district. But give us some context about its overall performance. I feel like maybe too much ink has been spilled nationwide on what a lot of people are just calling the mask wars. You know, people get mad about mask mandates at school board meetings, and it's typically not very substantial. So I don't like to draw attention to a particular district unless those little mask wars somehow tie to greater issues in the district as an RISD. So here they tie into these accusations of malfeasance.

And meanwhile, RISD also earned its first F in at least recent years on the state's financial responsibility metric for the most recent rating. I checked the last three or four. I didn't delve into their entire history, but it's just a sharp turnaround to get an F after three or four years of A's. And with regards to students, because that's what all this is really about, the recent F ratings have actually looked all right. Students have scored above average on the star historically, according to the ADF database. And if we look at the most recent spring 2021 scores, those still reflect that average. Even after the whole statewide drop, Round Rock ISD students scored above the state average on all subjects of the star in high school.

So it's looking good for them overall, like the way the ship is sailing at Round Rock ISD. Well, thank you for covering that. Definitely complex. So we appreciate your context. Hayden, back to the border. Has the Border Patrol released its report for this year in August? Well, yes, they did, but not before someone else let the cat out of the bag. Fox News reported Wednesday that a DHS source had told them that there were, again, in August, more than 200,000 enforcement encounters with illegal aliens in that month, many of whom are or were deported under Title 42, the coronavirus immigration rules. And about half of that total number was single adults.

And almost 19,000 were unaccompanied children, which that's lower than we've seen in prior months, but still a lot of unaccompanied kids who are coming to the U.S. And then 86,000 plus family unit apprehensions. But yesterday evening, CBP did release their operational update after this report and some commentary on that. But the Biden administration is continuing to emphasize the number of unique encounters, which in August were about 157,000. 156,641 is the specific number. But unique encounters meaning with different individuals. The enforcement encounters, you have people attempting multiple times to cross the border illegally. So while these may be, in other words, if you have somebody break into your house and then they're arrested, they get out of jail, they break into your house again. That's two burglary incidents, but it's only one unique encounter with the same person.

And I only make that analogy to say that that's why they're emphasizing the difference between these two figures. But while this month we're still seeing extraordinarily high levels of illegal immigration, 20 plus year records being broken. We haven't seen numbers like this since the Clinton years. And with that in mind, this is the first month in Biden's presidency that the number of enforcement encounters has gone down from the previous month. But it's still it's a 2 percent drop from July to August in the number of enforcement encounters. And CBP said that we have officially hit the one million mark. So a total of one million two thousand seven hundred twenty two unique individuals have been encountered. And again, that's unique encounters year to date for fiscal year 2021. So and this is, of course, with the backdrop of what I discussed earlier with Texas putting

in place its own border security infrastructure and funding. So we'll have to continue to see how that impacts the number of people who are attempting to cross the border. And in the meantime, the Biden administration is requesting additional funding for investment in Central America or spending in Central America, because they're they're focusing more on the big what they view to be the big picture items, what is incentivizing people to come here in the first place. Many people would say that the Biden administration is incentivizing people to come here, but they would respond to that by saying it's deteriorating conditions abroad,

and they believe that we need to be the ones stepping up to address some of those things so that people don't have to leave their homes. Well, thank you, Hayden, for covering that for us. Isaiah, we're going to come to you. There has been a lawsuit going on against the state since 2011 regarding the foster care system here in Texas. And the court and DFPS have both released new documents in the last week that explain a growing problem of children without placement. This is complex. There are a lot of sides to this story. But let's start by talking about the kids involved. Yeah, so for their element in the story, I started this article with a little snippet of a story included in the court records of

one girl only nicknamed AO, an acronym. And she has been through 10 caseworkers, 11 psychiatric wards, two stints and juvenile detention, and several suicide attempts, including swigging nail polish remover. And naturally, foster care centers have been reluctant to take her. And so she spent her fifth spell at a caseworker's office earlier this year. And at that same stay, her last spell in Children Without Placement, or QOP, which is where, you know, the problem is that a lot of these kids have to spend time in caseworker offices. Law enforcement found her with a bag of rat poison in her pocket. She was hospitalized again. And she's 16 years old. So they interviewed like 50 kids and put six of these stories in the documents. Anyway, so that's the situation with the kids typically involved in QAP,

is that they're spending more and more time in QAP, in caseworkers' offices, in hotels, because the DFPS is having a hard time placing them. And in addition to having more kids in QAP, they're spending more time in QAP, like more days, longer periods. And a great share of the kids that are in co-op could be defined, I think, as risky because, you know, suicide attempts and aggression towards workers and things like that. Now, what did the court monitors find and argue? So this is a lawsuit that's been going on since 2011 against the state regarding the foster care system.

And the court monitors, so in 2020, like a little over a year ago, the court appointed the system of heightened monitoring at foster care centers that had a record of high rates of abuse and neglect. And court monitors that are separate from the height monitors in that system just submitted this report finding that um a lot one finding a lot of unsafe conditions in co-op you know when they're spending nights in caseworkers offices and things like that but finding that children feel safer in co-op that are participating in that than they do in the residential treatment centers where they would be placed which is interesting interesting. But it's the opposite for the DFPS workers themselves, who feel less safe when they're watching over children in their offices than in the regular course of their jobs. Yeah.

So tell us a little bit more about the state side of the story. So I've seen a lot of reporting that's just kind of dunking on the DFPS. The system's broken. It's DFPS's fault. And if you dig into it, you've got this problem where since the heightened monitoring was put into place, there have been foster care centers, like I mentioned earlier on the children's part, that are reluctant to take the riskier use. And there were a number of centers and operations that just decided to quit the foster care system entirely rather than accept heightened monitoring yeah and so there's this tension between availability of centers and capacity and quality and high standards and the multifaceted part of it is is that workers themselves individually or facilities can get these reason to believe

findings you get disciplinary actions if say they restrain a kid physically. And before the heightened monitoring system, the data leads us to believe that a lot of that went on but went under the rug. And so, on the one hand, you've got to balance having youths that will attempt suicide or be aggressive towards staff, and that might require methods that are, strictly speaking, prohibited under, that would be seen under heightened monitoring oversight. And now that these centers can't do that, they're ducking out. But on the other hand, you also have to wonder, a lot of these centers that quit rather than accept oversight, what was going on there? Yeah. You know?

So, again, there's this tension between trying to expand capacity. Since the state doesn't do that on its own. It contracts with private groups to do that. You've got that on the one hand, and on the other hand, you've got trying to hold them to a higher standard, which is arguably shrinking the capacity and ending up with more of these kids spending the night in caseworkers' offices, especially if they're more difficult, to put it unsympathetically. Wow. Well, very complex, difficult,

and this is the kind of policy that affects the everyday lives of Texans in very direct ways. So, thank you for covering that for us. We'll continue to monitor that. Okay, boys, let's head on to some fun topics here, some popular culture here. Now, this week we saw that a comedy legend, Norm MacDonald, passed away, and we wanted to kind of take some time and commemorate a lot of his work. I know Isaiah and Brad, you two are particularly big fans of just his comedy and ability to make people laugh. So walk us through a little bit of your favorite Norm MacDonald moments. Well, Norm MacDonald was interesting because he relied almost solely on the setup

and punchline joke which is uh just classic version of comedy um but he was such a dry and he would have he would his best one the moth joke or one of his best ones, The Moth Joke, had such a long, drawn-out delivery. And then you realize at the end, you know, the punchline. And it's just funny, even though it's PG, too. So, like, a lot of comics these days have to, you know, cuss and talk about disgusting things in order to be funny. And he did not, even though he did dabble in that on occasion but um i cannot say my favorite one of his uh but it is very funny uh it's called the uh uncle i think uncle jack bit okay um but it just has a a twist i did not see coming at the end, but, um, yeah,

Norm Macdonald was hilarious and he should be remembered for that. Isaiah. Um, I hate to be a copycat, but I've also just got to go with the long jokes and they're so long that I can't tell one of them on the podcast cause we're at the end here, but that's kind of what makes him funny is that he'll just, he'll go on,

uh, talk shows like with conan or whatnot and tell these jokes that last seriously like six minutes long yeah and um just end with a very fizzling disappointing almost punch line and the groaning isn't part of the just the funniness of it but um i gotta go with the long joke i know i've seen him in movies he's popped up in some that i've seen but i frankly can't remember remember. Not many. He did have a couple. I think Dirty Work or something like that was one of the main ones. His generation of SNL comedian, many of them, like Adam Sandler and David Spade and others, went on to do movies.

And he really didn't. It's odd. That does remind me. All his OJ bits are pretty hilarious. He would just sneak OJ jokes into unrelated segments when he was running the whole daily news thing yeah on snl he actually weekend update he got fired for that because oj was a golfing buddy of one of the executives at nbc and they eventually said don't uh norm you have to stop this and he's like heck no continue doing it and they fired him man well i think that's after he

passed away it was very special watching the kind of people that came out to you know commemorate his life i think comedy in its best form unites people of all political stripes and that's something that as long as you can laugh about pretty much everybody as long as you can make jokes about everybody there's something very uniting and special about that. Absolutely. Absolutely. And he, something in this age of comedy where everyone is carefully tailoring it, making it woke and all this just unfunny nonsense.

You know, like Michelle, whatever her name is doing a parade, celebrating abortion. Like that's just not funny at all. Anyway, look at it. Yeah.

He just didn't give a rip. Yeah. You know, the whole OJ thing is a perfect example he talked about how oj killed people all the time made jokes about it yeah and despite his superiors telling him that you know they would fire him and eventually fired him he didn't stop and that's how comedy started yeah you know it's it was done largely in these basement settings where they talked about things that they would get arrested for. Profanity at one point was illegal in a public forum. He was definitely a throwback and just an all-time great.

Yeah, absolutely. Gone too soon for sure. Do you all have like a favorite SNL or favorite comedian? Like an SNL skit performer or just favorite comedian? I got to go with Gaffigan again. I respect. I'm going to sound 60 years old. I respect being able to you know

somebody can make me laugh a lot without cussing so and Gaffigan does that really well he'll just joke about a whale for 10 minutes or something

it's funny I wouldn't do it with a gun to my head yeah well and he too you listen to him and it's like every sentence is drawn out

so much his hot pockets bit and you just hang on every word he says it's like every sentence is drawn out yeah so much pockets bit and you just hang on every word he says it's so funny and i think he lives a very unique life to all his kids in new york city it's just interesting he's got like nine doesn't he he's got a lot of kids i don't know how many it's a lot of kids bradley uh despite my appreciation for gaffigan and mcdonald being able to make you laugh for not cussing my favorite is uh someone who does that a lot um uh dave chappelle the king of comedy would you call him that i think right now he is i think right now he's absolutely the king of comedy his skit show on comedy central is just one of the greatest things yeah and i went back and they put

it on netflix recently and his three of his most iconic uh skits are all on the first episode of his show including the uh the black white supremacist clayton rigsby it's one of his best of all time um but yeah dave chapelle i'd say yeah that makes sense he i really do think he right now at least is the reigning king of comedy i think a lot of comics even regard him in that way right now there's another one that doesn't care oh he does not say what he's gonna make the jokes that he wants to which is why his special was as controversial and as popular as it was right and it was amazing yeah um hey well hayden and i first of all i just want to make a note are cracking up because my mic just fell from its stand and i'm of all i just want to make a note are cracking up because

my mic just fell from its stand and i'm holding it in my hand right now it's quite funny so hayden and i were yeah she's holding it like it's a water bottle she's about to drink out of well and it's funny because brad was able just to continue talking while you and i are busting and kind of threw me off a little bit but i feel like that happens often me stifling laughter on this podcast while mckenzie telling everyone i'm stifling laughter that's true um well brad now you and i have talked about john mulaney a good bit and um i don't think you know exactly what's going on with him lately maybe you do but we mentioned it briefly i love his netflix specials i think he's so good at telling this story oh my gosh incredible there's a whole story he tells about going to meet bill clinton as a kid that's hilarious um yeah he has

a lot of great bits oh and the street smarts one street smarts bit i don't know if i know that one oh my gosh you have to see that yeah i'm sure but i also could totally know it and just not be remembering yeah just typically how my brain works um but he's got a lot going on in his personal life not to get into celebrity gossip but he went to rehab get into yes i'm going to recount this for you i'm going to educate you here but he went into rehab um for drug and alcohol addiction came out of rehab at some point began uh he separated from his wife began divorce proceedings went back to rehab again. I think this is, and then he, I think he went twice, came back out. There was an intervention.

He started working for Seth Meyers' show just to kind of hold a job. And basically Seth Meyers and some other comedians, I think it was Fred Armisen and some other guys had an intervention for him because he was still using cocaine. And he went to rehab and during this portion he started dating olivia munn uh famous actress and just last week announced after coming out of this stint of rehab that he and olivia munn are expecting a baby wow yes that was quite a there. And it's quite sad because I think a lot of his comedy had to do with his wife, right? I mean, he told stories about his whole line, that's my wife, right? That whole thing was so good. And he talked a lot about just their marriage.

And a lot of folks were really invested in those two. And he talked very fondly of his wife. And so, it's just sad to see that happen. But a lot is going on in his personal life he's hilarious however um olivian munn geez yeah she has a string of horrible decisions on including i was gonna mention aaron rogers yeah who is now the worst statistically the worst quarterback in football this year which is very sad which is amazing it's not gonna last the whole season i know but it's hilarious yeah it's something hayden do you have anything to to

contribute anything to add this whole conversation makes me feel like i need to get myself up to speed but uh i'm not a big nsl no oh my gosh definitely not i'm not a big um snl watcher but i have enjoyed some of their greatest hits like um alec baldwin and kate mckinnon did a pretty good job making fun of the presidential debates oh yeah those are so fun yeah um the 2016 ones and i know uh i'm not sure if y'all may remember this when melissa mccarthy uh did a bit on Sean Spicer, woman of Trump's first. That was hilarious.

Of course, you know, they make fun of one side more than another, definitely. But when they're at their best, they do both so well, right? When they're at their best, they make fun of both sides very well. But I agree. Yeah, it's definitely a little one-sided. There is one, I think I've shown all y'all this bit but there's this one skit where jimmy fallon and oh is the first name sean i don't know why i can't remember his last name are these uh workers in a like retail workers in a high-end men's

fashion store and at the end of the skit will ferrell comes in on like an electric scooter it's so funny he had a tiny cell phone i believe it's what sparked or inspired zoolander is what i've heard which is so but that one every time and jimmy fallon is notorious for breaking um breaking just in skits and laughing hysterically and he did in this one and they could barely get their lines out and it was so amazing funny and you barely ever see will ferrell break and he breaks a tiny bit in the skit which just makes you howl it's so funny he would be my second favorite comedian will ferrell oh classic well gentlemen we have uh talked a lot about our favorites um anyway thank you for contributing such uh intellectual conversation about comedy. I appreciate all of you.

It was deep. It was very deep. Wonderful. Well, folks, thanks for sticking with us and we will catch you next week. Thank you all so much for listening. If you've been enjoying our podcast, it would be awesome if you would review us on iTunes. And if there's a guest you'd love to hear on our show, give us a shout on Twitter. Tweet at The Texan News.

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