The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - September 18, 2026

Episode Date: September 18, 2026

The Texan’s Weekly Roundup brings you the latest news in Texas politics, breaking down the top stories of the week with our team of reporters who give you the facts so you can form your own opinion.Republican Officials Respond to Bo French's Comment on UT Austin StudentsTexas Republican Candidates Embrace AI-Generated Campaign Ads Ahead of NovemberOne Month From Early Voting, Here’s What the Polls are Saying in Major Texas RacesTalarico Community Event in Houston’s Third Ward Features Letitia Plummer, Emphasizes Black VoteLand Commissioner Buckingham Announces Push for New Energy Production on State LandsRoblox Absent at Texas House Committee Hearing on Children's Online Safety'It Is Gambling': Texas Senators Skeptical of Prediction Markets' Legality in TexasTexas House Committee Weighs Tradeoffs of Property Tax Relief ProposalsEnjoy what you hear? Be sure to check out our articles at The Texan and leave us a review!Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast.

Anybody else have any NFL teams that they're rooting for? I mean, I follow college football a lot more than the NFL. But I am prepared to get my heartbroken by the Cowboys again before the season's done. We need to bring Kim back for football stuff. She's our go-to sports reporter. Did y'all know that the Super Bowl is on Valentine's Day this year? Romantic. That's fantastic timing.

Howdy, folks. Welcome back to another episode of the Texans' Weekly Roundup podcast. I got it right this time because I said Daily Rundown last time. Joining, I'm the Texans senior editor, Rob Lauchess, and joining me today are reporters Mary Elise O'Barr, Meredith Dyer, Isaiah Mitchell, and Steve Kapuska. How about them Texas Longhorns? I'm just going to jump right in. I'm going to jump right in. I've been riding this high all week.

Based off your outfit. Prepare to see a longhorns. lot of this color during football season on the on the weekly roundup i am of no help in the football department sorry did anybody else have a team that won big this week this past weekend university of houston was extremely successful against southern university which i had not heard of before they played them um but i think the score was it was almost it was like 70 to 6 or maybe it was 60 to 7 um they won quite andly so that was that was entertaining.

Very nice. Anybody else have any NFL teams that they're rooting for? I mean, I follow college football a lot more than the NFL, but... I am prepared to get my heartbroken by the Cowboys again before the season's done. We need to bring Kim back for football stuff. She's our go-to sports reporter. Did you all know that the Super Bowl is on Valentine's Day this year? Romantic.

That's fantastic. timing. Yeah, two things I love. I'm surprised the NFL script writers didn't stage that for the Super Bowl with Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey doing their thing. That would have been perfect. Oh, right.

Did you guys see that Travis Kelsey apparently got taken in some massive fraud scheme? I saw this that like he might have lost like I think they said the scheme was worth. I think it was somewhere in the realm of like $30 million. This guy was frauding people. I think he was, I think he wasn't a legal immigrant, but yeah, he might have

lost like millions of dollars in some fraud scheme. People were posting like his old tweets, uh, talking about stuff saying like, yeah, it's not surprising that this guy got taken in a fraud scheme because he wrote something. I think it was like 10 years ago. He wrote that he saw like a squirrel eat a piece of bread and he was like, he totally smashed that piece of bread. I didn't know they ate bread like that. People are like, yeah, I mean, is this, is this a shock that this guy got taken in a million dollar fraud scheme? Apparently, the fraudster was living in Austin. I believe he was illegal alien and living in Austin, apparently very successful in his whole business plan he has going on. There you go. Man, see, we're all in the wrong line of work. We should all be, should all just be doing for. I mean, clearly you can make a little bit of money for a while, right? if you're willing to live frugally afterwards and you don't get caught,

then it would work. But I will have to contend myself instead with enjoying the win. I was at a sports bar on Saturday night. The guy next to me was like, at the end of the third quarter, the guy next to me was like, I think this is the worst game of football I've ever watched my entire life. And by the end of the fourth quarter, he was like, I think this is the best game of football I've ever seen.

It was a miraculous comeback. People were cheering. Strangers were hugging each other. There was one Ohio State fan at the end of the bar who just got increasingly depressed over the course of the, over the course of the fourth quarter. But then, of course, on Sunday, we all woke up to a tweet that kind of set the Texas GOP world on fire. Isaiah, what did Railroad Commissioner Bo French say about the University of Texas at Austin student section? Yeah, Bo French, who is running as the Republican nominee for Railroad Commissioner, he posted a picture of the student section during the game where most of the students in the foreground looked Indian, like from India. And he said, I heard UT graduation this year looked like this.

I didn't believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined. And he elaborated in other posts that his remark referred to foreigners and the way they look. And so that caused a bit of a ruckus. And I'll say that the Texan normally doesn't run social media-based stories. There's a lot of outlets that do that. And we recognize that social media is not real life. So the interesting angle on this is not only that, you know,

the French said this as a big statewide nominee, but also that this year the Texas GOP really wants to project unity. And every party always wants to project unity. but to give you a sense of, you know, why this year's a little bit different, there was a picture that made the rounds a little while ago of every Texas Republican statewide candidate posing with Governor Abbott in, I believe it was the governor's mansion. And when Abbott posted this picture online, he said that this was the first time ever that all statewide Republican candidates, not judicial candidates at least, had joined to set a group campaign strategy. And so, and, you know, Long-time listeners are familiar with the contact for this by now, right? I mean, Paxton in particular is not polling well, and he's running for U.S. Senate against James Tolariko. And in 2018, their, you know, Betterer-Rourke had a race against Ted Cruz

where he also lost in the end, but he mobilized a lot of Democrats for down-ballot races. And so that seems to be hanging over Republicans' heads this year. So something else to point out is that Beau French was not, Greg Abbott's first pick for Railroad Commissioner. And French won the nomination after a very, very thin primary election that went to a runoff between him and the incumbent commissioner, Jim Wright. And Wright was Abbott's pick. He was also Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick's pick.

And he also had the endorsement of Texas Land Commissioner Don Buckingham. And so that's a lot of his statewide top Republican power. behind this incumbent Jim Wright, and he lost to French, who, like, his most recent political involvement was with the Territ County GOP where he was chairman. And French, you know, was not a total party outsider. He had endorsements of several elected officials,

a few state house members, at least one congressman, as I recall, and also turning point action. But Abbott preferred the incumbent Jim Wright. But after French won the nomination, and, you know, after all the primary just was settled, Abbott gathered French and all the other Texas Republican statewide candidates to say, hey, we're all on the same side.

The primaries are over. Now, with the general election on the horizon, all that matters is GOP unity against Democrats. And so then once French posted this, as is to be expected, there was a lot of pushback from political officials. And so Abbott responded with criticism that, you know, could be interpreted as being a little bit oblique. but he said a selective picture of Longhorn fans celebrating our biggest home victory ever actually shows the way that Texans unite. We unite under the brand of Texas. So again, Abbott is pressing this unity message in his response to French.

Dustin Burroughs, who's not a statewide, he's not going to be on the statewide ballot, but he has statewide power as Speaker of the Texas House. He was a little bit more direct, and he called on French to delete the post. Santhedat is demeaning to people because of their race and ethnicity. Ken Paxton responded to a challenge. by Tala Rico to respond by saying that he condemns racism in all its forms. But he also kind of redirected his critique and said that it includes James Tala Rico saying white men or America's top terror threat and that he prays to overcome his own whiteness,

whatever that means. And that's a quote from Paxton. So the interesting thing about this is that French, by this one post, really put a lot of stress on what was already a strained effort to maintain unity among the estate. statewide Republicans. Again, and when I say already strained, I just mean that the head of the party in Texas, Greg Abbott, did not really get everything he wanted out of the primary elections, you know. And despite that, all of our Republican statewide candidates are making an effort to project friendship, Amity, and all that. And French has made that a little bit difficult with his post. Yeah, it was interesting also. I'm sorry, Meredith, go ahead. Oh, no, it's okay. Do you want to, you go first? Sure. Well, first I was just going to say, Steve, let me know that I said railroad commissioner

Beau French. I meant railroad commission candidate Beau French. So I apologize for that earlier. But, yeah, I was just going to say that, you know, Burroughs said in his response to French that he said, we can have, you know, conversations about immigration, but this post is demeaning. And some people were, you know, coming out and saying, hey, you know, Bo French, can't make a comment about immigration policy. And there were several people who were saying, you know,

we can't have a comment about immigration policy, but they were criticizing what they viewed to be, you know, the racially charged aspect of the post, but also how a lot of Texas House members who are more aligned with the House leadership, like Charlie Garen was retweeting people who were criticizing French's comment. Jared Patterson talked about it.

There were a couple of other, Republican. Jeff Leach commented on. Jeff Leach. That's the other way. I was like right on the tip of my, yeah, could not think of the name. But yeah, Jeff Leach. So yeah, it's interesting, as you said, Isaiah to see like the unity, the unity campaign

where then the Republican figures are, I imagine that behind closed doors, there's probably a lot of phone calls. Like, why did you say that? Why did you say that? And of course, a lot of Democrats have been kind of energized by this because they're thinking, you know, wow, this is this is an opportunity to. you know, win a statewide race because this is so controversial that surely this is going to, you know, help John Rosenthal, who's the Democrat running, I would be more skeptical of that.

This is still a down-ballot race. I still don't think most Texans know what the railroad commissioner is, but I think people who are more politically plugged in are very excited about it. So with all that, Meredith, what were you going to say? Just that we will, it will be interesting to see how far the reach goes. And because it's been seen by, I think, 52 million views, they had John Rosenthal on CNN, I believe, a couple nights ago. And somebody was commenting on social media that when was last time that a railroad commissioner candidate in a state was on CNN? You know, that's not normal. I know that a lot of national pundits have talked about it as well. So we'll see if it, like, how much it does affect and if it sticks in people's mind as like,

maybe they would never even think about that down ballot candidate, but they're just like, oh, that was the one with the tweet. That was a situation. So I have seen a lot of. I think national attention more than you would ever get normally to this race. Yeah, and I think Bo French pretty much got what he wanted out of this post. He's up to 100,000 followers on Twitter now. I mean, he was, he was posted. Some people were saying, wow, Beau French gained something like, I don't know, like 10,000 new followers. And he was responding saying, you know, 30,000.

People from all over the country were talking about it. I just think it's great. The Railroad Commission race will always find a way to have some crazy controversy in it, like with Sarah Stogner a few years ago, with her, the video of her writing an oil pump jack nude. Now you have Beau French making these kinds of comments. Yeah. So it's maybe because it's a relatively, I don't want to say boring, but maybe very technical

kind of office that it attracts such interesting campaigning. It's kind of like maybe how, you know, car insurance or lawyers or whatever, they're kind of interchangeable, which is why the advertising is so crazy for it. it, you know, because they really have to make themselves stand out. But speaking of advertising, Mary Elise, you wrote a piece this week talking about AI-generated campaign ads being used in this midterm cycle and a lot of it by Republicans. So tell us what you found about that story. Yeah, this piece was almost a roundup of some of the AI-generated ads that have been put out there during this election kind of campaigning season in Texas. Like you said, Republicans.

Republicans are the ones that are in particular kind of cozying up to this new technology. We've seen a lot less of it from the Democratic candidates. In particular, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick has been using AI in different forms, but recently, particularly in his campaigning, again, state representative, Vicki Goodwin, who's a Democratic nominee for Lieutenant Governor. there was I mean this wasn't against Goodwin for say but he was more just targeting the Democratic Party overall and he had this series that he's been putting out the most recent one was where he's depicted walking through historical scenes this particular one was Paul Revere's midnight ride and then it looks like it integrates this real video of Patrick where he's walking and speaking and he's warning folks about the Democratic Party and the threats that they pose to Texas. And then that was kind of molded into this otherwise clearly AI generated content.

Then he's put out recently two kind of similar ads where he hit several Democratic candidates, but specifically Goodwin, his opponent. There was one where it did have a disclaimer on there that it was digitally generated imagery. And so that was something that I was kind of looking at, and I included in this piece, is that some of these videos don't say that they were generated with AI. And depending on how well-versed with AI you might be, it might be more obvious to one person than the other, particularly like there's that generational gap too of being able to look at something

and recognize this was generated by AI. I would say I've noticed that a lot. I think that the younger folks are probably a little bit more quick to be able to recognize that's AI. And it's just advancing so much. So there's more confusion there. But, so there was this one eye that Patrick put out about Goodwin specifically. It showed her, talking about her support for different forms of taxes while she was on the football field at University of Texas. And she was listing, this AI version of Goodwin was listing different forms of legislation that she's voted for. And as she would say like this different,

text that she supported this AI generated version. And then you'd see a ref yell flag on the play, throw flag on the field. And she kind of, you know, she hit back at Patrick and she said every time he drops one of these deep fakes, we get a big spike in fundraising, support my campaign and let's regulate data centers in January. So kind of pointing out the data center usage here. And then there was another ad that Patrick put out that was also hitting good one, but also a couple other Democratic candidates.

state rep Gina Nihosa. She's that gubernatorial candidate against Abbott. And then, of course, Representative James Tolariko, who's running against Texas Attorney General Kna Hxton. It featured those kind of big names in this election cycle for Texas. And it showed them the AI versions of these different candidates who were at these different college football events. And they were displayed complaining about the,

or more so talking about, about that they want more taxes. Complaining about the lack of firearm permits was one section. And then there was a scene focused on pronouns where Tala Rico is depicted sitting in the stands. He's surrounded by everyone, of course, is standing at this football game. He's wearing a shirt. The reads don't mess with trans kids. And he's focused on if the 12th man has been asked about its pronouns.

12th man, of course, he was out of Texas A and a football game. So this is, you know, this came in, I think these came within just a couple of days of another ad that was put out that got a lot of traction by Paxton about Tala Rico. Personally, I thought that this one, the AI and this one seemed a little bit more advanced. I mean, in general, AI is just, it's advancing every week, obviously. But this one seemed like maybe it'd be a little bit more convincing, especially to older generations. But this is a King James ad, and it was hitting Tala Rico on several comments on these kind of social wedge issues that Tala Rico has been hit over by Republicans. And he has described as, you know, and he's been asked about these on different TV hits, et cetera. He said that they missed the mark.

He even called them cringy, his different comments about, you know, that there's more than two genders and using Christian scripture to justify abortion. So it shows Tala RICO in this one writing. in a Bible with a crayon and saying, and I know lots of people have different opinions about how to pronounce crayon or crayon, but I say crane. Anyways, in the beginning, he's saying, he says at the start of the video, in the beginning, God was non-binary,

and he wasn't a Christian, and God said, let there be six genders and there were. And so in the press release that Paxton's team put out alongside this video, they linked to the different statements that he's made, where they kind of drew inspiration from for the for the script that he this AI generated Talarico had in this video. So just these very kind of wild videos being put out that it's just this really unique angle of campaigning that the Republicans in particular are really focusing on

and seem to enjoy using refined effective. And Talarico was asked about this particular King James ad and he said that he's not going to be using AI to advertise. and he told CBS News that they're using AI to mislead the people of the state, and then he hit Paxton and said that's completely consistent with a liar like in Paxton. And then, yeah, I reiterated, we're not going to use AI in political advertising. One other thing I'll mention that we included in here of an example of Republicans using AI in this way was Abbott's team. They kind of caught a bit of flack for this. They posted a photo of Hina Hosa speaking to a student at a table.

And this was, appeared to be like a screenshot from an original video that Hina Hosa had posted or she was speaking with students whose schools had closed. And there's a little flag on the table. And originally it was an American flag, but Abbott's team posted it as it looks like it was a transgender pride flag. And it was pretty believable. You know, it's just that small box that's been changed.

but some people pointed that out and that that was kind of a clever way to switch the flags there or just misleading. So they did catch a bit of flack over that, but that was just an example of how AI's kind of playing into this election season.

So we'll keep watching this, especially with, to see what sort of legislation takes form during this next session about this issue, because I would find it hard to believe that this isn't going to be addressed during next session.

think that this issue is going to see some daylight. Last session, we saw a bill introduced by former Speaker Dade Phelan to kind of address this issue of political advertising using AI. So we'll see if legislation like that gets brought forward. And then just if it's successful and kind of what arguments are around it. Yeah, you're making me think there's no Democratic AI commercials that I can think. Has anyone seen one? I don't think there's any. I don't think there's Any, is that what you found, Mary Lease? No, none come to mind immediately. I know during the primary season,

I saw some more low-level AI usage, but it was almost like videos that people were producing. There were lower-level candidates going against each other, and I think there were some Democrats just producing, but they weren't as high-quality and just wasn't on this scale. But as of now, during this, going up to the, leading up to the general, I haven't seen anything from Democrats on this. So obviously there's all these ads coming out. Then we have polls also coming out regularly as well that are being used in the ads.

So there was a new poll that came out this morning. So that would be you're watching this on Friday the day before. Recon MR. Texas poll is what it's titled. And it's the same tracking survey that was called the Texas Pulse poll before. but they don't have that wording on it, but they do reference the same data. And it doesn't have the Texas A&M Bush School logo that it had before. But they do follow the same. They're using the same data there.

It was from September 8th to 11th, they talked to 614 likely Texas voters and found that these leads, they were finding Democratic leads. So for U.S. Senate, Tala Rica was 49% to Paxton's 43, which was up from 47 to 43 in July. And then for governor, they found Hina Hosa was at 49% to Abbott 45%, which had also widened a little bit from 4645 in July. And then Middleton and Middleton was ahead of Johnson. That was one of the races here where the Republican remained in the lead with the vote, was the poll. 45 to 44, which was a little bit smaller than the 46, 44 that it was in July. And then Goodwin, 47 to Patrick 46, which was almost exactly 1% of job from what it was in July as well.

So there was a lot of interesting information in this poll. It was interesting, like majority voters viewed Hinojosa. like, for example, she was, like, viewed more authentic or she got more for being, like, in touch with Texas values, like she scored higher than Abbott. But when it came to qualified to be governor of Texas, he was 56%. People said they would describe him that way, well, only 53% would describe Pinojosa that way. And so RECONMR, senior research analyst Lindsay Pendron, who Isaiah has interviewed, and that's on our site. She was talking about the governor's race

and just talking about how like the momentum is, she said that the momentum over the last few months goes back to independent voters who now favor Hina Hosea by 38 points up from 13 points, she said in July. And so a quote from her was, she said, quote, interestingly, while voters narrowly favor Hina Hosea for election,

they don't think she'll win the election. And then she went on to say nearly a third of voters who say that they'll vote for her, think Abbott will ultimately win the election, which these are the discussions that everyone's having who's in politics is like the perception versus the actual reality when people go to vote and what they think versus what they actually think will happen is, it's going to be interesting. They had a little, some little, I think they called them, I don't know if they call them odds and ends, but that's what I felt like. They had a list of some other things that they had asked people about, like, flat cameras, finding that 55% of voters oppose them.

They had some different things like THC. They said that six in one, six in ten voters opposed the recent enforcement of this THC ban, 75% of Democrats, 72% of independence, and then half of Republicans supported the ban. And then obviously they had to ask about data centers because we can't go, can't go without data center information. So they, the memorandum that on the large data centers, 53% of Democrats think that that is the right decision, 45% of independence and 38% of Republicans. One thing that also stood out to me was some comments that Hendren made about

Paxton's Senate bid, and she just made the point that almost all, like, 90% of Democrats are backing Talarico when they're asked, like, okay, if it were today, like, who are you know about for? We're just 87% of Republicans were backing Paxton. And so she called this, quote, defections from within his own party. and said that it highlighted his, what, weaknesses amongst his own party. So those are, once again, discussions that are happening, things that people are noticing and try to figure out how much of effect this will have when people go to the polls.

So that was that was the recon poll. Actually, on that point, Emerson College actually came out with a poll of the race as well this morning. The results that they found were a bit more in keeping with the opponent. averages there. What they found was at Taral Rico by one point, they found him leading Paxton at 47 to 46. In the previous poll of the race, they had Paxton leading

47-46. So not a very large change within the margin of error, obviously, but you would still rather be the person out in front. And in the government partner's race, if they found Abbott's leading Inahosa 49 to a 46, which as compared in their previous poll, they had him leading 49 to a 45. So once again, not a lot of a change there. The interesting thing that this poll found was that is that when Emerson asked voters, not who they were voting for,

but if they had a favorable or unfavorable view of the candidates, what they found was that more voters had favorable than unfavorable views of the Democrats, Tala Rico and Inajosa, whereas voters had more unfavorable than favorable views of Paxton and Abbott. And it will be interesting to see if the kind of onslaught of a Republican ad, that have been queued up. I will be changing that in the days to weeks until the election. Very nice. It seems we've had quite a slew of polls recently that have given the Democrats a lot of reasons for confidence.

I know that there's been, you know, debates over the sample size of these kind of polls. And, of course, you know, the fact, I feel like I mention this on every podcast, but the polls have tended to undercount conservative Republicans. And especially for like more controversial Republican candidates. For example, Donald Trump is the guy who destroyed a lot of people's confidence in polls, not only in 2016, but again in 2024. So, you know, polling is obviously important to follow. And it's interesting, of course, the way that candidates sort of use polling. But, yeah, we'll have to see how it actually bears out on the ground. But speaking of being on the ground, Mary Elise, you were at a Tala Rico event in Houston.

over the weekend. Tell us about how that was at the third ward. What is what is the on the ground democratic energy for Tala Rico look like? Yeah, I would say it was generally positive for James Talarico. This is his return back to Houston. Last time we covered an event for him in Houston, you know, a campaign event. He faced a bit of backlash. I mean, he was also welcomed pretty warmly by a fair amount of the crowd at that time. But that was kind of the infamous town hall. where some people stood up and shouted at him and demanded that he stay for more questions and suggested, and several of the speakers that went before him had suggested that maybe he wasn't doing enough to earn the black vote. And that kind of sparked a lot of discussion around.

Is Jasmine Crockett going to support him? Is he going to be able to get the black vote? And just how in general that group of individuals were upset about the way that the Democratic primary went. I mean, Jasmine Crockett called it at one point a racist race. But this was an event in Houston's third ward, and this was held at Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church. This is a historical location for a number of reasons, but I've been there before for after Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee passed away, former Houston Mayor, Sylvester Turner, and then congressman was elected to replace her by the Harris County Democratic Party that happened in the same room where he had this rally. also was there during the primary season where Jasmine Crockett was campaigning essentially against Talleyco, although that one was held in their sanctuary. This was in their, there's an official name for it, but in their event hall. Yeah, I would say it was generally a positive welcome for Tala Rico at this event. Like he said, it was in the Third War. There were several Democratic midterm candidates over there that spoke. So there was a couple of

running for different House districts, Democratic candidates. So there's Tyler Smith. He's challenging State Representative Lacey Hole. That's an HD 138. And then former State Board of Education member Stacey Childs. She's running for outgoing State Representative Alma Allen's seat. And then also Letitia Plummer, who is a Democratic nominee for Harris County Judge, an extremely important position considering how large Harris County is. and this would be replacing outgoing county judge Lena Hidalgo and plumbers running against Orlando Sanchez, the Republican candidate.

At the very start of the event, one of the individuals who leads at Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church introduced herself as Reverend Angela Raven Anderson. She kicked off by condemning the concept of Christian nationalism and kind of brought that up as a theme for the event. She said she appreciated how Tali Rico stood again, against its, quote, negative influence on our current political process. And then she led the group in prayer.

And during her prayer, talked about kind of the application of some different Christian doctrinal ideas, loving your neighbor. And then she described how she believes loving your neighbor. She would look like these certain immigration and Medicaid policies during her prayer. She also, or sorry, I meant to say Stacey Childs then spoke. When Charles spoke, she did kind of reference these concerns about the, quote, racist primary, where you know, Crockett lost to Tel Rico. And she said, we want our issues taken seriously. We want our communities invested in.

And we want our voices heard before our decisions are made. And again, this is child speaking. She said, and I'm here to finally tell you that James is listening to us. And then she also thanked him for, quote, reworking his campaign to make sure that black Texans were heard and taken seriously. She was likely referencing Tala Rico's recent initiative where he expanded his team's kind of outreach, targeting black voters. They called it faith outreach, youth engagement, and then just general organizing efforts to reach black voters. He hired three, quote, veteran black political operatives to lead the effort.

So that's something he did recently to kind of address this issue. And then Plummer, who like we said, is running for his county judge. She said during her speech that Talarica is a good man who's going to make sure he carries his faith in the right way. So I think kind of referencing that Christian nationalism that was brought up at the very beginning. She's saying, you know, we know that he's going to carry his faith in the right way is how she put it. She said that he's her friend and they've been on the front lines and making sure Texas is flipable. She said also indicated that he understands how important Harris County is because he's been, you know, supporting her off the bat. And she mentioned something that she said recently.

I was at another Leticia Plummer town hall a couple of days ago, and this is something she had said. But, you know, where Harris County goes, Texas goes to considering the size of it. But Talley Rico in general stuck to a lot of the message. He's pretty disciplined, staying on message with a lot of the same things he's discussed at these different campaign stops. You know, targeting billionaires through unity, increased funding for public schools, removing certain barriers to achieving the American dream, and then increasing access to horrible health care. This kind of like pillars of his campaign. But he also addressed what we were just talking about, the AI usage by the reform. Republicans in particular.

And like we said, he had confirmed, I'm not going to be using this in campaigning, but he also went out and said they don't have any real attacks, so they're firing up their data centers and making up fake ones. And then he hit Paxton, said even the most advanced AI couldn't come up with Ken Paxton's actual scandals. So AI is continuing to play a role in this election, very interesting. something else worth mentioning is he made this appeal, which he's made before and seems to be a big focus of his campaign,

but to Democratic of voters, that you might think would be considered less likely to support him come November. He said, so we're all getting screwed, whether you're a little more conservative or a little more progressive, whether you're black, white, brown, we're all getting screwed. So he was trying to appeal to several different voter. demographics there, of course. A little more conservative, progressive, black, white, brown, as are his words. Well, thank you very much, Mary Elise, for coverage on that. But we've talked

a lot about election-related stuff. And sometimes you have to get more into the, you know, there's the other side of politics, of course, the boring side, the regulatory side, also has a lot of interesting stuff going on. Not to imply that all the regulatory stuff is boring. Of course, we're going to be talking a little bit here about some of these legislative hearings. that happened this week, and there's a lot of interesting little nuggets of golden there. But Steve, you had an interview with Land Commissioner Don Buckingham about her push for new energy production on state lands. Tell us about this initiative and how your interview with Buckingham went. Yeah. So basically, Buckingham is looking to open up Texas state lands.

the general land office or GLO has under its purview about 13 million acres of public lands so it's quite a lot to geothermal energy

natural gas and what's called a small of modular nuclear reactors. And so the GLO is opening up a request for information process or basically they're

they're looking for interest of companies who would be interested in building these forms of energy on public lands to get more information on them for what projects

might be possible. Very nice. And did anything in specific, I think, stand out to you about the interview? Were you all able to talk anything about the Permian Basin Reliability Plan? Because that's been a huge source of controversy, right? This whole proposal to add a bunch of transmission into, like to carry power from East

Texas into West Texas. Did Buckingham have anything to say about the proposal from some people to instead build out like energy production out in West Texas where it's being consumed? Yeah, yeah. I mean, of course, Buckingham noted that there is a lot of a, of a stranded gas out in the Permian Basin. But what she told me was that she felt that there's a way to do energy production. And I can quote her, quote, almost at the wellhead or a very short distance from there, unquote.

Very nice. Yeah, power generation, the energy grid, I think, is one of these issues that will just never go away in Texas politics. you know, it was, it's always been a big deal, became an even huger deal with the 2021, the blackouts and such. And it's going to stay a big deal as long as Texas continues to grow. And it looks like that growth is not going anywhere. So with that,

let's get back to our regularly scheduled programming on legislative affairs. Let's see here. I think Mary Elise was Roblox. Was the Roblox Corporation at the Texas House? earlier this week. I heard that they weren't. What's going on? Yeah, they were not your correct.

And that caused quite a dust up at this particular Texas House Committee hearing. There were a lot of different interesting things that happened at this hearing, which you can get all the details on or on the Texan dot news. But this particular one with dealing with children's safety online got a lot of attention. because this particular platform gaming platform, Roblox, was not present at this hearing. And the reason for the interim charge that they were discussing in the first place was because of content that had been produced on Robblocks's website. This was content which was found to be simulating the Robb elementary school shooting in Evalde. And that sparked this new interim charge that the house was discussing.

And so this was kind of the focus of that particular discussion on children's safety online. A quick, just like recap of our brief on what Roblox is. It's kind of this venue where users can create and play their own games so they can create their own content on there. About 40% of the players are estimated to be under the age of 13. So that's why this is very relevant for the topic of children, safety online. Yeah, so the Roblox Corporation was repeatedly criticized by lawmakers for not showing up to this hearing. They had put a white piece of paper saying, you know, reserved for Roblox in this particular seat, and Chairman Ken King made a point to repeatedly mention Roblox saying Roblox if you're listening, and he kept telling witnesses to make sure they're not sit there. He said, we want to reserve this spot for them so that they feel welcome.

but this interim charge had been issued in the first place after state representative Don McLaughlin had found this content on Roblox's platform that simulated that shooting that took the lives of 21 people, 19 children. So the hearing on Tuesday had designated this charge as one of their two main focuses. And they had invited Roblox, among some others, to attend the testimony and questioning, Roblox to not attend. although we were able to get a statement from Roblox that we have within this piece, but they just noted that they did submit a detailed written testimony,

which we also were able to obtain. That's included in the article that they submitted to the committee, you know, explaining the different initiatives they've taken, and they said that they will continue to engage constructively with policymakers on the issue. But the kind of their explanation for not being there, was within this written testimony that they submitted. It was about 10 days before this hearing took place that they submitted this written testimony. They said, well, we're happy to cooperate further on this matters.

We hope you can appreciate pending litigation limits are availability for live testimony at this time. So that was our explanation for not being there at the hearing. Chairman King referenced that during the hearing and he essentially scoffed at it, said, you know, it does limit the things you can say if you're involved. involved in litigation, you're involved in these lawsuits, but it doesn't mean you can't come at all and speak at this hearing. So, yeah, they repeatedly just noted that Roblox was not present, and so Roblox got a lot of hits from a lot of people because they weren't present there. They weren't there to defend themselves or to speak with the lawmakers. But you can check out the article for

their full written testimony. It's about five pages. And then there's 15 pages or 15 documents. where they describe the different measures that they've made, like safety measures, kind of as a supplement to the testimony to say, hey, these are the things that we've been working on to address this issue. But roadblocks definitely caught a lot of heat, a lot of heat on Tuesday. Well, and they're not even the only ones who got a lot of heat for not showing up to a committee hearing. The Railroad Commission is, again, an issue that just keeps popping up over and over again

this week. railroad commissioner Wayne Christian was, and, you know, invited to come speak as a witness in front of the House Energy Resources Committee. You know, this was an oversight hearing on the Railroad Commission, and he did not show up. And Chair Drew Darby was not very happy about that. He said, quote, it is beyond clear that Commissioner Christian has willfully chosen to defy this committee. Then he continued, a sitting commissioner absconding from his agency's oversight hearing, is nothing more than a mockery of the Texas legislature and the legislative process. So he was a bit miffed about Christian not showing up.

But Steve, you covered the Texas Senate State Affairs Committee hearing about prediction markets. And somebody did show up somebody from the Kalshi prediction market platform. Tell us about that hearing and what he had to say and what some of the senators had to say. Yeah, so the person from Calci that showed up was Robert Adenalt. He's the head of enforcement there. And I think he had a very tough job because I think all of the setters were basically of the opinion that Calci and prediction markets like it were violating at. at least the spirit of the states a ban on gambling, if not the,

the letter of the law itself. And, um, an alt, um, you know, he tried to sort of, um,

explain how, uh, what, uh, what Calshe does is how it doesn't fall under the kind of statutory definition of gambling. Um, But for example, a state senator, Bob Hall, who's been very emphatic on being anti-gambling.

He criticized, and I quote, experts that thrive on getting around the law. And of course, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick has been very anti-prudgeon market as well. I would certainly expect that this is something that the state legislature will take up once they come back into session. Very nice. And I also wanted to say, Steve, about this article that I really appreciated the lead. I thought it was very well written. So I would highly recommend everybody go read the article to see what I'm talking about because I bet that you will enjoy it. Meredith, you this week were at the, actually, if I recall correctly, is this right, the first hearing of the new maternal health subcommittee that was created in the Texas House?

Yes, this is the first inaugural hearing that they had. And it has a very long name. It is actually the maternal health and menopause and access evidence-based medicine subcommittee. So it's a really, it's a tongue twister. It is a smaller committee with only three members. And a lot of the hearing was just hearing some like overviews and some reporting from different health agencies and different health providers and companies, doctors, different people. So one of the main takeaways was because like I said, they talked to people from health and human services. They talked to different doctors.

They were hearing from people from different universities. But the back half of the meeting was more talking about iron and iron availability. And there was a couple of panels that focused either on nutrition and iron or the idea of how to distribute iron to pregnant women in the most effective, efficient way to get it to them. So that was interesting. I've never heard so much discussion or topic on iron in relation to. ship to pregnancy. Obviously, women are more prone to anemia and things like that in general. And so they were just highlighting the need for, you know, why have women have to go get a prescription or go buy it themselves, not a prescription, but go buy it themselves or something. Why? These are something

that's pretty cheap and easy to, it's an over-the-counter drug like or supplement. Can we just give it to directly? They had some ideas about distribution. It was very interesting. They also asked to include anemia and iron status in data collection, just noting that in Texas we don't have the best data collection for that. And so they were using other data from different studies. And the idea of, yeah, just at the end of the day, it was like direct to patient dispensing model for iron was the best. So yeah, you learn something new every day. So as you all learned in the 40 this week, Mary Elise is expecting. So I felt like this. would have been a great, would have been a very informational, informational and interesting,

maybe more for you, but I was glad to learn as well. Yeah, particularly relevant topic. Yeah, go check out the 40 for some details on who's going to be taking that over. I'm really excited for Steve to take that over because he's definitely tuned in to the Washington, D.C. world. So I'll be MIA for a little bit in a couple of weeks for a very good reason. The important question, Mary Elise, is, are you getting? enough iron. That is a good question. You know, I'll report back. Perfect. All righty. And then

Isaiah, you also were at a committee hearing this week. Everybody was at a committee hearing this week. It was like the Oprah of committee hearings. Everyone had something going on. Isaiah, you were at the Ways and Means Committee. Tell us what's going on there. Did they mention anything interesting? Speaking of forever issues, did property taxes come up? they did and more speaking about interesting things mary lees you know my wife always tells everybody that our daughter is basically made of bagels and cream cheese and she got those prenatal vitamins in the iron and everything and frequently forgot to take them and you know our babies cute as a button regardless so so don't worry about it um but yes it weighs and means uh it was primarily about

local government property taxes, spending, and, you know, potential avenues for property tax relief. Residents know homeowners know that there is no state property tax in Texas. It is a local government issue, but it's one that spans the state generally. And something interesting that we learned at the meeting, James Quintero from TPPF told us that Texas actually ranked second nationally for number of local governments. and I think Illinois is first, you know, Home of Chicago. And so we actually just have quite a bit of cities, counties, and school districts across the state. You know, thousands of municipalities, 254 counties, and I don't know how many school districts.

And that doesn't count special purpose districts, smuds, and things like that. And, well, you know, I'll just point out a few interesting statistics that came out of the meeting because we already heard a big, comprehensive presentation at a previous meeting in the Senate about ISD property taxes in particular. And the reason why those are important is because those tend to be the biggest component of the average homeowners property tax bill in Texas. So Mike Marath, who's the head of the Texas Education Agency, gave a presentation on property values, ISD property taxes, all that stuff.

And we learned from his presentation that since 2013, property values, at least as they're appraised for school finance have risen by an average 120%, right? That's since 2013. But if the state had not expanded the homestead exemption since that time, property value growth would have been 163%. And he has a little chart that, you know, is a bar graph stacking the value without the exemption above the value that we have to date with our property tax assumptions. And that top share just grows like from slim to really, really fat starting in 2022 when, you know, which followed this huge housing boom that we had during COVID, cheap mortgages, lots of people moving to Texas, all that stuff, still an issue we're

grappling with. So that was a noteworthy statistic. And we heard testimony also from the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association, Jennifer Rabb speaking on their behalf. And Rabb actually presented some more concrete ideas for property tax relief. But something she pointed out was that a lot of this legislation is just shifting the tax burden, you know, from one taxpayer to another, and then, you know, in terms of spending from one form of local government to another. So we learned from the Senate meeting that I talked about a little while ago that local government or local school district tax lilies have actually decreased a little bit due to some state property tax reform that's been passed in the past few years. But for a lot of,

all other forms of local government levies have actually increased during the same time. So we're seeing a marginal decrease in one form of tax, but an increase in other forms, to put it another way. And another interesting point that Rab made was that by these methods compression and homestead exemption, you know, these are kind of complicated terms, but they amount basically to the state using its own money, which it collects through, you know, sales taxes, for example, rather than property taxes, to supplement the budgets of these local governments. governments so that ideally they can rely less on property taxes for their own revenue.

And Rob's point was that that method shifts the tax burden from homeowners to other parties that can include, for example, people that rent and businesses that are based outside of the state. But a sales tax, you know, a consumption tax collects money based on transactions that take place. And so people that are renting a home still contribute sales tax whenever they buy something. you know, that's subject to the sales tax. And same thing for businesses that are transacting, you know, with people who live in Texas. So it's just another way of looking at our tax system, right?

We've got local governments that rely on property taxes, the state which collects it through, you know, generally consumption taxes and taxes on oil and gas. You know, it's another big component of our budget. But through the sales tax at least, that actually is collecting money from people who are not homeowners, even from people who are renting, living in apartments, what have you. and Rab's point was that that takes away from the tax burden on people who do on their homes who would be paying property taxes. Well, thank you very much for breaking that down, Isaiah. Property taxes, always a perennial issue in Texas politics.

So thank you. As for tweetery this week, we had a lot of tweetery, I think, at the beginning of the podcast already talking about Beau French and all the craziness in there. And I will say that, you know, as somebody who really enjoyed the game, you know, going on Twitter, later in the week looking up anything about the Longhorns about the game and it just being about the political controversy was, you know, it's good sometimes to keep politics and non-political things separate in my mind. But, you know, nevertheless, it was, it's a lot going on. It's going to continue being a big issue. So make sure that you catch the next episode of the weekly roundup every Friday morning. And we will talk with you all later. Thank you to everyone for listening.

If you enjoy our show, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you want more of our stories, visit us at the texan.com. Follow us on social media for the latest in Texas politics and send any questions for our team to our mailbag by DMing us on Twitter or shooting us an email to editor at the texan. Tewan. Tune in next week for another episode of our weekly roundup. God bless you and God bless Texas.