The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - September 20, 2024

Episode Date: September 20, 2024

Learn more about today's sponsor by visiting: uslege.aiShow off your Lone Star spirit with a free "Remember the Alamo" hat with an annual subscription to The Texan: https://thetexan.news/subscribe/ The Texan’s Weekly Roundup brings you the latest news in Texas politics, breaking down the top stories of the week with our team of reporters who give you the facts so you can form your own opinion. Enjoy what you hear? Be sure to subscribe and leave a review! Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast.This week on The Texan’s “Weekly Roundup,” the team discusses:Parliamentarians, Chamber Rules, and the Race for Texas House SpeakerAna-Maria Ramos Becomes First Democrat to Join Texas House Speaker RaceFBI, State of Florida Investigating Second Assassination Attempt on Donald TrumpOAG Lawsuit Against Bexar County Voter Registration Mail Plan Dismissed by Judge, Paxton AppealsTexas Attorney General Calls for State to Obtain Federal Citizenship Data to Cleanse Voter RollsGov. Abbott Declares Venezuelan Gang 'Tren de Aragua' Foreign Terrorist OrganizationCruz Launches $6.7 Million Ad Buy Hitting Allred Over Voting Record on Biological Men in Women's SportsCBP August Report Says Encounters Between Ports Of Entry at 'Lowest Level in Years' New HHSC Data Indicates No Elective Abortions Performed in Texas in Last Two YearsCozen O’Connor Public Strategies - The Beltway BriefingListen for of-the-moment insider insights, framed by the rapidly changing social and...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

As Adam Schefter said, he's ready to not have to take his phone into his shower with him. You know, like, I'm kind of in this fear, too. Yes, you are. Like breaking news, at least like trying to get out there quickly. But I don't take my phone into the shower with me. What the heck is he doing? You just take it on your vacations. And even when you say, oh, I'm'm gonna be off for a week you're still

tweeting out breaking news it is an addiction i cannot stop it so i can sympathize with woj even though he is in a stratosphere way above me in terms of breaking news good morning everybody and welcome to this week's episode of the Weekly Roundup Podcast. I am Senior Reporter Brad Johnson. I'm here with Reporter Cameron Abrams and Reporter Mary Elise Cosgrave. Welcome, guys. Thanks for having me, Brad. You are contractually obligated, especially because our esteemed editor is having Wi-Fi problems,

and I cannot do this podcast myself, unfortunately. As much as I would love to do. No, I'm just kidding. I would hate to do that. But Cameron, we have got ourselves a house speakers race. Yeah, we do. There's been tons of updates, lots of people jumping in recently. Why don't you run us through what's been going on so by far the biggest development is actually happening today this is friday as we publish

tomorrow as we're recording at 10 a.m in austin a group of upwards of 50 republicans are going to be meeting uh all the reform-minded members, basically the ones opposing Dade Phelan as Speaker. And they're going to try and coalesce behind a challenger. And you've got five Republican challengers. Tom Oliverston was the first to jump in.

Shelby Slauson was second. David Cook was third. James Frank fourth. And John Smithy, who we'll talk about in a second. So it's a crowded race So it's a crowded race. It's a crowded race, and they need to basically pick someone as their candidate. And so they're going to hold a vote on Friday.

It's probably going to go multiple rounds. I don't anticipate them having just one ballot. It's going to be a secret ballot. Wherever they're having this, I don't know. They're not going to release the location until an hour beforehand no long john silvers no i don't think long john silvers i don't think uh lg ljs can uh you know accommodate okay okay it's gonna be over 50 members oh wow they're hoping close to 60 i think it'll probably fall in the middle there around 55 we shall see, though. And

there's, from what I've heard, some surprising names that are going to show up. Interesting. So that is going to happen. And the way they're going to do this is following the Texas GOP caucus rules, which entails the first two rounds, you has to hit two-thirds of the vote in order to secure the endorsement. And then once they hit that, if nobody gets two-thirds, it will go to another round, and they'll start eliminating members until they get down to two. Okay. And then after that point, if they get down to 2 members, there's a lot to this,

up to 8 ballots in one cycle. Once they get down to 2 members, then after, if they don't hit 2 thirds, after 2 more ballots, they will reduce it down to three fifths. Then they'll go for another two ballots. And then if nobody gets it after all that, they will restart the process over and either it'll be the same candidates and maybe they run through the same exact string of votes or they will try and find someone like mike johnson who has not been in the race because clearly they can't call us behind anybody else i think that's pretty unlikely they will probably

select someone in those eight ballots and i of the names that are already yeah and usually this goes you don't get a selected candidate until um you get down to two two members because it's just really hard to get two-thirds support behind some someone when there's you know three or more candidates right okay and so in the it's the same way that the caucus chooses their endorsed speaker candidate. And when that occurred in, I think, 2020, when Dave Phelan first won the speakership, it went down to him and James Frank after two ballots, down to two candidates. So they did that whittling system down. I expect it to go pretty similar. I have no idea who's

going to win this you know Oliver since been in the race the longest the thing you hear from everyone when they talk about this is the first one in is never speaker that doesn't mean he won't he won't be the caucus nominee you know you've got geographical elements to this. Oliverston's from Houston. It would be interesting to know if he's backed more by Houston members, especially given the fact that spending next session for Houston for flood mitigation and other infrastructure needs is going to be a massive issue. Oh, interesting. Okay.

So that's something to watch. Will the Dan Patrick neighbor factor play into that at all? Oh, it absolutely has. And that's one reason that some members have opposed him, especially outwardly. Okay. And his neighbors, or at least used to be neighbors with Dan Patrick, he also shares a consultant. Even members that I've talked to that are against Dave Phelan have indicated hesitation about someone that close to Dan Patrick running the house. Ollerson has said, you know, I am my own man.

It doesn't matter. Dan Patrick doesn't tell me what to do. So regardless, though, that's a talking point. And it's going to affect votes. Then you have David Cook and DFW. James Frank is Wichita Falls, and his district is way up north, kind of closer to DFW than anywhere else, but I think it's still, I don't know if you count it as DFW.

Slauson is kind of, if I remember correctly, between Dallas, Fort Worth, and Austin on the west side of 35 out there a little bit. And Smithy, of course, is Panhandle, Amarillo. I think I hit everybody there. And so it's just a mess. It's a morass. I don't know how this is going to take out. But that does bring us to some other discussions.

First, I'll just talk about the two new speaker entrants. Okay. I mentioned John Smithy. Right. He's someone who has flirted with running for speaker a lot before. He's been in the house for 40 years probably. I think he's like fourth or fifth on the seniority chart. Mm-hmm. So he's been there a long, long time. Well, and he had a bit of a moment, wasn't it?

Tell us a little bit about this moment that he had last year. Well, he during the impeachment, he stood up and gave a speech and criticizing the the process of impeachment that got a lot of acclaim especially from Dan Patrick who cited it frequently in radio spots yeah and social media posts all this stuff in my estimation Smithy is kind of the favorite for at least a large chunk of the contract with Texas people. Okay. Interesting side note there is, you know, Smithy's voting record is not a rock-ribbed conservative voting record. You know, he's a kind of a typical rural Republican. And we saw that being a feature in the race in the primary this year. More rural Republicans were against, say, school vouchers, ESAs, school choice, whatever you want to call it.

Also, he voted against banning taxpayer-funded lobbying, which is, for the right wing of the caucus, a huge issue. Right. So I don't know if that's going to play at all maybe it doesn't matter because it might be that the biggest issue here issue in this whole thing is just the commitment to reforming the house in whatever way they see necessary but smithy is definitely an interesting one to watch he also joined late he joined on friday night a week ago. A week ago Friday today, basically, when we were recording.

So he did that kind of quietly, submitted it after hours. He is an interesting person to watch in this, no doubt. But yeah, I don't know how that's going to shake out.

And then we've got Ana Maria Ramos, the first Democrat to join the race. So I'll just quote her statement. She said, I've decided to enter the race for Speaker of the Texas House to champion the rights and freedoms of all Texans. This race is about we, not me. When it comes to elect a speaker, we will need a candidate

who will fight to protect our public schools, restore protections of Roe v. Wade, and pass common-sense gun safety reforms. I'm stepping in this race today because we deserve a Democrat in every single race, and that includes the race for the most powerful role in the Texas House of Representatives. Well, tell us a little bit about

what a Democrat entering this race means. Because you laid out the infighting, the voting that's going to be occurring within the Republicans. What does it mean what the Democrat entering this? So it could go one of a few ways. If she has a block of, let's say, 10, 15 members that are with her and only with her, where she is in the caucus probably on the more progressive wing of things and there is a real contingent especially on the progressive

wing of members who have been kind of locked out of leadership in their own caucus and they're upset with their own caucus um you know they're not getting chair vice chairmans. They're not getting chair or vice chairmanships. They're not getting prominent roles on committees. Ramos, I think, is on two committees. I can't remember off the top of my head, but neither of which is particularly notable. So she's jumping in. She wants to fight.

And it's kind of like a reverse of the right wing of the GOP caucus you know they want to fight more and so if she has a group of 10 she can pick and choose because of how tight things are and how fractured the Republican caucus is that could decide a lot. So she's using this tell me if I have this correct is With her entering the race and she has 10 Democratic members that are locked in to voting for her, she can use her candidacy as a bargaining chip. Absolutely. And that's what a lot of these members do, either to trade in for a good committee chairmanship. If you're looking for a political podcast that goes beyond the headlines, check out the Beltway Briefing. I'm Howard Schweitzer, CEO of Cozen O'Connor Public Strategies. Every week on the Beltway Briefing, our team of former Republican and Democratic presidential appointees, Capitol Hill veterans and political advocates shares behind the scenes perspective that cuts through

the noise. If you want the inside scoop, subscribe now to the Beltway Briefing here or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, isn't that a that's a big point of discussion with how the house is being run in assigning chairmanships to these committees right isn't there a portion of the republicans who don't want any democratic chairs for these committees and so yeah how using um uh ramos her candidacy as a bargaining chip, she's not going to be able to, for those Republicans that are against Democratic chairs, how do you see her sort of throwing that support behind a certain candidate? Would the Republican candidate have to commit to that contingency of Democrats to assign Democrats to chairmanships of committees. And how do you think it would be used?

Well, I don't see that happening. I think unless Dade Fielding is Speaker, again, I don't see Democratic committee chairmanships. But you have vice chairmanships. That's there, too. You have certain spots on, let's say, calendars or, let's say, state affairs, two of the more important committees. One role Ramos can play, and this is, of course, if she has a block of votes behind her, is spoiler for Phelan. Because as it's looking right now, if the GOP caucus is, or this reform caucus is able to unite behind one candidate, and they can then peel off enough Republicans from Phelan's current support base that,

with, you know, either a threat of primary or the idea that you have to follow the caucus endorsement, because that would ensure Phelan cannot get the caucus endorsement, then you'd be able to play spoiler for Phelan, because if he needs all of the Democratic caucus to vote for him, plus 15 Republicans, or whatever the number shakes out to be after the generals, that could be a very important block that the speaker needs to retain the gavel. You know, the other thing is, and this is something I've heard suggested quite a bit recently, that the game plan is not to elect Phelan for these kinds of members anyway

because they want to just blow stuff up. So they're sick and tired of the leaders in the Democratic caucus playing ball with the Republicans and they just want they want Democrats to start just killing everything if they need you know just causing a ruckus in the house interesting and you know that was kind of the original intention of the founding of the Freedom Caucus on the right. So it's kind of a mirror image there. Democrats think that in 8 to 10 years,

they'll have the state because of demographic movements. I don't know if that's going to happen. It's probably going to get a little bit closer. Will it flip? I don't know there's a lot up in the air on that but um that's kind of the dynamic she's playing in this and you know once she came out and declared that's when you saw a lot of people saying all right it's over for feeling i don't think that's true but it is it is a wild card that could be a pretty big hit to his chances, but it also might not be.

I don't know. So there's that. There's those updates. I won't go into it too much because it is a lengthy and weedy piece, but I put up a piece on Thursday about one of the bigger issues in the Speaker's race, which is the parliamentarians specifically and rules reform specifically on points of order and points of order are the method by which members can kill legislation on the floor in the house we saw it used quite strategically oh yeah last session and

i spell it out in great detail in in the article um Then you add the fact that the parliamentarians, who were, one's a Republican, one's a Democrat, were appointed to kind of be impartial, or at least appease both sides of the House membership. And for a number of reasons, one of which is, you know, Hugh Brady has a pretty partisan past he brady is one of the parliamentarians for the left like he worked in the obama administration that is a a criticism levied quite a bit now i think the more impactful criticism is you know how he's ruled on things he and sharon carter have ruled on things in the house. You mentioned the points of order. That was a big problem in the House last year. A lot of members, including Phelan allies, were quite upset about how things went.

So if that interests you, check out that piece. It's kind of lengthy, and I'm not going to go into all the weedy details, but it is a massive issue that is affecting this race significantly, and every reformed caucus member has committed to, or the candidate for speaker, has committed to changing things up, and most notably getting rid of the parliamentarians, replacing them. So if I can, we can just linger on this just for one more second. I have a question about the parliamentarians. Is there a possibility that the two existing parliamentarians, they're relieved of their duties and two new parliamentarians are brought in, but it's two Republicans?

Instead of appeasing both sides of the House, Democrats and Republicans, appointing a parliamentarian from each side of the aisle. Is it possible they could appoint two staunch conservative Republican parliamentarians? I think that, especially if you see a reform caucus member win the speakership, I think you'll probably see that. Okay. You know, I think you'll also, you could also see as a SOP to skeptical members feeling commit to relieving, especially Brady of his duties,

there's no guarantee that's going to happen. Take the issue on Democratic chairmanships, Phelan's not back down from that. So if he's committed to having these two parliamentarians, then he may stick to that as well. I don't know. This whole, a lot of this, it's not just sour grapes, and I wouldn't even put it primarily on that. But there is an element of, well, of course I'm going to be miffed if my

legislation dies in the House, especially on a point of order like we saw with SB 14 last year, where quite literally the reason it was overruled, or the reason it was sustained was because the citation group that was put in the bill summary was American College of Pediatrics and not American College of Pediatricians. Right. A lot of members just said, that's trite. What are we doing here? Yeah.

Why is a massive bill like this going down on something like that? Now, there's a more substantive point of order was the one against the Border Protection Unit Bill, HB20. And that was an entirely different animal, full of different arguments. But, you know, this issue has ruffled a lot of feathers, and it's not just those who want to see Dade feeling out of power. No, I think that's a great breakdown.

And I think we can get really wrapped up in a lot of the bigger picture issues when it comes to issues, when bills are proposed and when things pass or don't pass. But when you dig down into it, things like how a parliamentarian rules on a point of order can drastically change how policy is either passed or fails on the floor. It's very important. Absolutely. And I would argue, I'm sure some would disagree, but I would argue it's more important than the Democratic chair issue because over the last few sessions, not much has really been killed by Democratic chairs, at least in terms of these really large priority bills.

It has happened. I think school choice did in 2021. I think that's the last big one. Also, the amount of Democratic chairmanships has shrunk quite a bit. I think there's the last big one. Also, the amount of Democratic chairmanships has shrunk quite a bit. I think there were eight last session. Odds are it's probably, even if Phelan does win, it's probably one or two less than that. So the issue, in my view, of points of order in the parliamentarians and the way the House is run is a more substantial factor in this race than just the thing that sells and that has

sold in the public sphere, which is no Democrat chairs. That's my two cents, but by the time this goes out and the day this goes out, it's going to be a very fascinating day, an important day in this race and how it shakes out.

Yeah. So, okay, Cameron, we'll get off that. I don't know if we'll have any discussion about Texas-led politics after this, but let's move on to a story about, well, the biggest news that happened over the weekend, which was the second attempted assassination of Donald Trump. Yeah. He survived another assassination attempt while golfing in Florida on Sunday. That's right. Tell us the details. Yeah. So he was at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida on Sunday. And a U.S. Secret Service agent spotted a man, now identified as Ryan Routh,

crouched in the bushes near the golf course and armed with a long gun. And it turned out the gun was an AK-47 style rifle with a scope. Routh also had two backpacks with a camera with ceramic tiles and he was just about 300 to 500 yards away. And Secret Service agents opened fire on the suspect before Routh attempted to flee. He was eventually found, taken into custody, and the FBI now has assumed the investigation into the incident. You know, just interesting, this is the, like you mentioned, second attempted assassination. You know, this time around we have a lot more details about the perpetrator in the attempted assassination. There is lots of reporting about this. NBC News detailed how Raul had more than 100 criminal counts that had been filed against him.

And Raul was quite a polarizing figure in the online discussions surrounding ukraine and russia and actually spoke with a number of different news outlets including semaphore and newsweek romania about the russia ukraine war he had traveled to ukraine made many social media posts about it. So lots more information that has been revealed about this individual. And he is alive. He is in custody right now. And what's interesting is after the first failed assassination attempt, there's lots of discussion surrounding Secret Service, FBI oversight investigation. And we were probably going to expect similar disagreements with how the investigation was going to be carried out the second time. But Governor Ron DeSantis actually posted on social media that

florida would be conducting its own investigation regarding the attempted assassination so um looks like we're going to get a dual investigation one by the federal government one by the state of florida hopefully um we can start to get some answers to these individuals and their motivations behind why they're attempting to take Trump out. Did he actually get a shot off? Or do we know that yet? From what I understand, the only shots that were fired were from Secret Service agents. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Cameron. Yeah.

Moving on, Marylise, over to you. Attorney General Ken Paxton appealed the district judge's dismissal of his lawsuit about Bexar County. Give us the update. Yes. Yeah. More news from the Office of the Attorney General. So the Texas Attorney General, Kim Paxton, this is something we had discussed,

I think, two weeks ago in an episode of the Weekly Roundup, but he has appealed District Judge Antonia Artiga's dismissal of a lawsuit, and we discussed the lawsuit in the other episode, that he had filed against Bexar County, and it was against their mail-out voter registration plan.

And the process of this whole situation really began when Paxton issued a written warning to Bexar County on September 2nd, and he threatened to use all available legal means if Bexar County were to proceed with their plan to hire this third-party company to mail out unsolicited voter registration forms. And this was a contract that would cost the county about $392,000. So Bexar County Commissioner's Court the next day voted to continue with their proposed plan to fine Paxton's orders and then Paxton the following day sued Bexar County after they agreed to hear, oh excuse me sorry, after they determined that they would move forward in using the taxpayer funds to pay the third party company which is Civic Government Solutions to print and distribute thousands of voter registration forms, essentially defying

Paxton's orders. And so Paxton sued Bexar County and Bexar County agreed to a hearing on the motion for a temporary restraining order against the county's voter registration plan, but this wasn't going to take place until September 16th. However, three days before the hearing, Bexar County then filed to dismiss Paxton's lawsuit, which was granted by the judge, Antonio Ortega. Paxton then found that Bexar County had already allegedly expedited the distribution of the voter registration forms before the hearing even happened. And he called this, in his words, engaging in dirty tricks to avoid appropriate judicial review of a clearly unlawful program that invites voter fraud. Judge Ortega determined that the case was moot. And this was a motion that Paxson decided to appeal on Monday to the 15th Court of Appeals,

and he said he will continue seeking appropriate remedies. And so we'll keep you all updated with the developments. That should be an interesting situation to watch. Do we know how many of these forms were sent out or mailed out? We don't know exactly, but Paxton said they expedited mass mail outs. Okay. We don't know the exact number. Okay. If I could just mention one thing. What's interesting in Barrett County,

how they are working with this civic government solutions. Is that correct, Mary Elise? Yes. We saw something similar happening with Travis County working with this same organization, Civic Government Solutions, this voter outreach company. I just think it's interesting to bring up the point that there are these organizations that exclusively focus on voter outreach and aligning with city governments municipalities to aid in their efforts for getting people out to vote but there's a lot of controversy surrounding them especially with how Paxson is framing it with Bexar County and also

with Travis County because Paxson sued Travis County in the same way, is that Paxson is framing this civic government solutions agency as being partisan actors in the cause with the types of voters they're targeting to get out to vote. And so there's just this, I bring this up to point out, there's an entire ecosystem of organizations, nonprofits, activist groups, big money donors, local governments that are all tangentially related to each other, working together. You know, you don't want to get too many red strings out to connect dots, but it is just something that you notice every once in a while and your eyebrow starts to raise sometimes. So just thought I'd bring that up.

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I guess I will set myself up on the next one. Sorry. No, it's all right. So Texas made a move to access a federal government database this week it relates to elections and curating the um the voter rolls so attorney general ken paxton penned a letter to secretary of state jane nelson requesting that she obtain access to a federal citizenship database to cross cross-reference with the state's voter role he said in the letter as you know the federal government continues to be the most significant challenge we face in securing Texas elections. Texas has acutely felt the plane in nearly four years of the Biden-Harris administration's

disastrous open border policies, which led to a flood of illegal immigration, both in Texas and statewide, nationwide. This letter, along with an accompanying transmittal of registered voter information, is already public information. This letter would trigger the federal government's statutory duty to help your office. Basically, he's saying, here's a draft letter to the Secretary of State. Send it over to the federal government. That way we can access this and match up.

We have all these registered voters that we don't know their citizenship status. And that way we can match up with the federal database to see who's a citizen, who's not, who can be registered to vote, who can't. So that's the whole purpose. The Secretary of State, shortly after this letter came out, did send the letter, although it was interesting, they put a – it wasn't the same letter. Now, I haven't found exactly what was different.

It was shorter. It was a lot shorter than the proposed letter from the Office of the Attorney General. I don't know if that means anything significant, but it was – it did catch my eye, I thought. But the overall – I mean, this this is probably gonna happen pretty quickly and then I'm sure we'll find out how many of these registered voters are eligible and those who are not I'm sure there will be some amount of them that that were not eligible because they're not citizens. But is it a massive amount? I don't know.

Well, we've been seeing lots of conversations surrounding citizens, non-citizens voting in federal elections. We saw Chip Roy over the past few months attempting to pass the SAVE Act in Congress. He's had some difficulty doing this. Mary Elise has covered this as well. They've been trying to attach it to the continuing resolution, lots of pushback on that, failed votes. So efforts in Congress at the federal level, efforts here at the state level, trying to sort out the citizens versus non-citizens on the voting rolls. Yeah, Mayor Lease, your newsletter, The 40, went out this morning, and it included a section on that CR and SAVE Act. Can you give us a rundown of what happened or what happened last night how that shook out yes so yesterday actually the house voted on Johnson's continuing resolution

which is attached to the save Act which has received a lot of mixed reactions but yesterday they voted against it so his speaker Mike Johnson's continuing resolution did not pass yesterday and So I kind of wrote about that in the newsletter. Okay. And, of course, the strategy by linking them together was it would be very difficult to pass the SAVE Act. It has been impossible so far to pass it on its own. Yeah. Right?

And it's been months since it's been introduced. Like, when we were at the Texas GOP convention, and I interviewed Chip Roy, how long ago was that? Oh, yeah, that was May. May. I asked him about the SAVE Act then. Yeah. You know, so it's been a topic of conversation, and they just continue to push. Well, and another thing you put in there, Mary-Lise,

which was a notable dynamic to this. So the purpose was to try and get the Republicans, the conservatives on board with the CR by attaching the SAVE Act and get Democrats on board with, or at least permissible with, the SAVE Act by attaching it to the CR to fund the government. And it didn't work. But a fascinating bellwether for this was Tony Gonzalez. Yes. And what did he say about this? I can't remember exactly what he said, but he distinguished between that he is for the SAVE Act,

but he is not for a CR. So he was pointing out that you can be for a CR but or be for excuse me he pointed out you can be for the SAVE Act but not be a for a CR so he was saying he doesn't like how they're put together he was just agreeing with that. And of course Gonzales was one of the main reasons that Jim Jordan could not win the speakership. And that whole process resulted in Johnson eventually, when everyone just threw up their hands and said, all right, let's go with someone who's not been involved in this. He eventually won, and Gonzalez played a big role in that. Gonzalez also received the endorsement and fundraising help from Johnson.

So this was an interesting dynamic and kind of a break between the two, right? Yeah. Well, and we just see at the federal level, at the state level, how important and how difficult it is to be the House Speaker. You know, like incredibly important pieces of legislation at the federal level, a continuing resolution to fund the government, and then the SAVE Act. Mike Johnson is not able to get this done very easily. Lots of negotiations happening behind the scenes. And as we talked about at the top of the pod, lots of conversations and difficulties being just the Texas House Speaker. or U.S. senators are, it is very difficult to maintain control for any lengthy period of time.

You're going to piss people off all the time, one way or the other, whenever you make a decision. And that itself is going to chip away at your majority. And so almost every decision a speaker makes, whether it's in the Texas House or the U.S. Congress, is done in mind to preserving the majority. Because you can be ousted at any time. So I think we've beaten that horse to death. So we'll move on from there. Mary Lee, this is coming back to you.

Governor Greg Abbott declared a Venezuelan gang a foreign terrorist organization this week. What happened? Yes, so on Monday during a press conference in Houston, Governor Greg Abbott signed a proclamation that declared a Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, known as, or goes by TDA, he declared them a foreign terrorist organization. He described TDA as, and I quote, notorious for the brutal violence and murder, for kidnapping, extortions, bribery, and trafficking of drugs, and even humans.

He also linked the TDA to the death of Laken Riley, who some of y'all are probably familiar with her name, who's the 22-year-old Augusta University student who was murdered in February by an allegedly Venezuelan national who was in the country illegally. He explained his declaration, Abbott explained his declaration, by saying that we will bring the full weight of the government against TDA by declaring TDA a foreign terrorist organization. Texas will use force to halt their operations, use civil asset forfeiture to take their property,

use enhanced criminal penalties to keep them in jail behind bars for longer periods of time. And this is interesting because a similar order was signed by Governor Abbott in 2022, September 2022, after he wrote a letter to the Biden administration declaring that any criminal cartels that were trafficking fentanyl into Texas, he declared them as terrorist organizations. He also signed numerous bills and security measures in 2023 that specifically targeted illegal immigration and called for the increase in funding for federal border patrol agents. He shared with the press at the conference that there's currently no database to track these gang members and their activity across the state of Texas, but the Texas Department of Public Safety will now begin collaborating

with other federal and local law enforcement to establish a database. Do we know if there are any other either cartels or gangs that have been declared a terrorist organization under this? That's an excellent question. I'm not sure. Okay. Well, I'm glad Mary Elise mentioned the case of Lake and Riley. And then also people might be familiar with this Venezuelan gang because they have been in the news recently as well in regards to the Aurora, Colorado takeover. And so this isn't just an isolated incident, whether it be in Texas or in Georgia with

Lake and Riley, it's also in Colorado. And who knows if this gang is in other parts of the country as well. So just very interesting Abbott's taking this next step, trying to, you know, foist some criminal penalties on them. Yeah. So I looked up the 2021 version that the comptroller has

of these foreign terrorist organizations. And most of them are like, you know, ISIS, other various Islamic groups, the Communist Party of the Philippines, slash the New People's Army. The IRA. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. I'm not seeing any. And of course, this is three years old. MS-13 or anything on there?

I don't see any other gangs on it. So that might be a relatively new thing. Hamas is on there. Yeah, so I don't know. Maybe we'll get back to that on the next podcast. But nothing's coming up immediately. So if we want to jump to the next story, Brad, Senator Ted Cruz made a notable campaign expenditure this week.

Tell us what happened. So the Cruz campaign launched two new ads that they're airing in metro areas across the state, especially all the big ones. And it's a $6.7 million ad buy in conjunction with the Republican Party of Texas. And it's focused on the issue of biological males in female sports, whether that's secondary level or collegiate level. And so two ads, one titled Agony of Defeat, and the other, Boys and Girls, began airing this week with a substantial buy behind them.

And that part is notable because Cruz has been lagging way behind in TV spending already been up since April or May and he has spent a ton of money on that but they have since then they've kind of flipped the script I saw ad impact had Cruz had Republican ad space booked through the election at like 23 million and Democratic at like 1 million. So that indicates to me that All Red is going to come in with a really big buy here soon for the homestretch. So that's something to watch. But these two ads, this is coming when it is because polling has shown it's a huge advantage for republicans okay tell us about it so um the texas politics projects april 2023 poll showed 68 support for quote requiring athletic participation to be based on biological sex in k-12 and higher education institutions in Texas.

Among independents, 54% supported that idea. And then, here's the kicker, 45% of Democrats. Wow. So this issue has a lot of cross-appeal. Yeah. And from what I've heard, anecdotally from people that are pulling this on the inside, it is the single biggest mover of undecided voters towards the Republican side, which is why they're going with this messaging. And so one of the ads reads or says, The thrill of victory in women's sports, the agony of defeat to biological men.

Now our girls are being left in the dust, robbed of their right to compete fairly. And Colin Allred voted in Congress to oppose Texas state law that protects women's sports. I go through some of the citations in the article, so check that out for all of those details. But they include Allred's vote against the 2023 Protection of Women and Girls Sports Act. That's exactly what it sounds like. Basically a federal version of what Texas passed. And then he also opposed the March 2023 Parental Bill of Rights,

part of which would have required parental consent to change a child's sex-based accommodations at school. That's not just sports. That's also bathroom use, things like that, locker rooms. And it also mentioned his support for multiple versions of the Equality Act that would have expanded the Civil Rights Act's protections to include sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Allred was asked about this at one point, and his response was, these protections just need to be extended to make everyone more equal and prevent discrimination.

That was his take there. It had nothing to do with boys and girls sports. But this issue is a huge advantage for Republicans, much like the abortion issue is an advantage for Democrats right now. And so I think, you know, immigration is like this, immigration and border security is this all-encompassing, overarching issue in this race. And we've seen especially all red distance himself from the bite administration on it but this is something that they're just taking on the chin kind of like cruz is taking the abortion issue on the chin right now there's really no way to get around that and all red's

been hitting cruz over and over and over again on abortion. Now Cruz has his own wedge issue. And a wedge issue is something that divides supporters for usually an opponent. And what this divides is the undecideds, especially the independent ones. So that's Cruz's game plan here. And we'll see how effective it is, but it probably will be quite effective. Yeah, it would be interesting to see if All Red has any internal polling where it's telling them to continue on this path of supporting the gender identity portion of this issue,

where he sees that as something he needs to maintain a position on, or if he could possibly come out in a week's time or two weeks' time and say, I've had a change of heart. Well, that won't happen, no. What they've decided to do is just ignore it, and that's what Cruz has done on abortion. Like I said, they're taking it on the chin, and they're just moving past it and going,

fighting the battles that they feel like they have the advantage on. And so this race is just increasingly fascinating. Polling has shown it anywhere between two point margin lead for Cruz and a 10.1. I think it's like smack dab in the middle, four or five points.

That's my guess. But it's still a close race. It's not – Cruz isn't blowing them out of the water. This is probably not going to be an Abbott over Beto O'Rourke margin, and it'll be a lot closer to the Cruz over Beto O'Rourke margin we saw in 2018. But, yeah, I'm excited to see this lately. Yeah. And it's just interesting, too, because Ted Cruz, he is such an established political figure.

I'm sure he has really high name ID, whereas Allred, not so much. He's been much more quiet. His name's not out there as much so just two different personas in the public media space political media space I mean this whole Cruz's name ID is Matt is as high almost as high as you can get nobody doesn't know who Ted Cruz is right and they're decided one way they love him or they hate him. Allred's much different. So the race here is for Allred to define himself before Cruz,

define himself positively before Cruz can define him negatively and vice versa for Cruz with Allred. That's what you're seeing here. And, yeah, I mean, Allred's put a ton of money in. Cruz is putting a lot more now. And this is, there's going to be a lot more to come in this race. Yeah. Okay, Cameron. Okay.

Coming over to you. All right. A new report on the southwest border details how encounters between ports of entry remain at their lowest level in years. Tell us about it. Yeah, U.S. Customs and Border Protection released its August update on immigration and border security. Like you mentioned, low levels with encounters between ports of entry along the southwest border being 68 percent lower than the same month a year prior, and Border Patrol recorded about 58,000 encounters in August 2024. They attribute this drop because of President Joe

Biden's executive order in June, which aimed at deterring illegal immigration. And CBP notes encounters between ports of entry have decreased by more than 50 percent. When it comes to regions within Texas, because southwest border encompasses other states as well, but when looking at El Paso, Del Rio, Laredo, Big Bend, and the Rio Grande Valley, have all seen declining numbers over the past year. Some other interesting numbers I think are worth noting is the CBP One app, which was introduced in January 2023. This one app allows for scheduling appointments at points of entry.

813,000 individuals have used the app to schedule appointments for entry into the U.S. One of the more controversial programs the federal government has introduced is the Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, also known as the CHNV Parole Program. By the end of August 2024, nearly 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, quote, arrived lawfully on commercial flights and were granted parole through this process. And hundreds of thousands of these Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans were, quote, vetted and authorized for travel. The reason why I bring this up is Fox News reporter Bill Meloguin.

Is that how you pronounce it? I think it's Melosian. Melosian. Okay. He's a border reporter for Fox News. He made some comments about some of these policies where he stated, quote, these numbers do not count in border patrol data as they are not illegal crossings. He explained that his sources within ICE are being overwhelmed with the numbers

of people being brought into the country and that, quote, they do not have the manpower or resources to find and deport such large population of people if they overstay these two-year grants. And what's important, I think, to mention because if there are hundreds of thousands of individuals being flown into the interior of the United States on a parole program where they have a specific amount of time they are meant to stay on this parole program. If there is not the manpower and the oversight to check in and vet these people as their parole time period is expiring, what is being done to oversee these individuals.

According to the Office of Inspector General, there's some issues there. So, even though, again, numbers may be down, it's because of this parole program being introduced is allowing for a, quote, vetted and authorized process to allow more people to come into the country in this sort of gray zone of legality. So as numbers might be down, there are still more foreign nationals coming into the country. Okay. Thank you, Cameron. Mayor Elise, over to you. No elective abortions were performed in Texas within the last two years, according to recently released data. Give us the full rundown. Yes. So recent data released from the Texas Health and Human Services Commission indicates that shortly after Ruby Wade was overturned in June 2022,

there were no elective abortions performed in Texas. The report also found that in the 22 months following the United States Supreme Court's decision that no constitutional right to abortion exists, 113 under the category of medical necessity life slash health exception abortions were performed in Texas. That's 113 that were performed in Texas in the past 22 months. There were three of those life health exception abortions performed each month, September 2022, October 2022, and November 2023. Higher number, six of those medically necessary labeled abortions were administered in January 2023, December 2023, and then February 2024 each.

And then there were seven of those abortions that were performed in both November 2022 and May 2023. So there's a lot of numbers there, a lot of data that you can read all of the data on the article up on our website. But there was something worth noting. There's a pro-life organization, Texas Alliance for Life, and they responded to these numbers that the data refutes. The Harris-Waltz campaign's claims that doctors cannot or will not perform medically necessary abortions out of fear for potential legal consequences. And so they were saying that, you know, this data potentially indicates these claims are incorrect and that doctors are willing to perform abortions when necessary. So yeah, you can check out the ARC website for all the data. Okay. Thank you, Mary Elise. Cameron, let's close on your piece about scheduled execution and a letter coming out from legislators opposing that. What's happening yeah so just for some background for people this

letter is in regard to a scheduled execution of robert robertson uh in 2002 how everything sort of happened is robertson rushed his unresponsive daughter to the hospital, claiming she had fallen out of bed. But doctors suspected child abuse, leading to subsequent charges for her murder after she died. And he was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in 2003, with the prosecution relying heavily on what was known at the time as the shaken baby syndrome hypothesis. They were arguing that Nikki's injuries were consistent with violent shaking. Robertson's attorney explained the circumstances surrounding the death of his daughter to the criminal justice reform group Innocence Project, including Robertson's history of cognitive issues. The attorney that was giving the information to Innocence Project, I detail all that in the piece,

but the daughter had a long, complex medical history, previous conditions, and Robertson also had undiagnosed autism at the time. So there was some issues surrounding how he was communicating at the time of the incident. And again, this is a very detailed piece. I won't get into all of it right now, but I explain the shaken baby syndrome hypothesis. I explain some of the information that was presented in the autopsy that was used during the prosecution. But what is happening now is Roberson is scheduled for execution on October 17th. This coming after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied his appeal to stay the execution without reviewing the merits of his claims,

and his attorneys are seeking clemency from the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Governor Greg Abbott, as this case now has drawn increased attention due to the concerns about the use of outdated and, quote, debunked scientific theories. this regarding the chicken baby hypothesis what we saw recently is a letter that was published with a number of different signers by texas house members across the political aisle upwards of 80 names where people from the right like lazy hole people from the left someone like joe moody who were arguing that clemency should be granted in this instance because of the debunked scientific theories that were used in the conviction and both were arguing that the state should not be executing a innocent man and so I

detail all the history of the case some of the competing theories that were used in the conviction the comments from the lawmakers. So if people are interested, they can check that out at the texan.news. Thank you, Cameron. All right, now moving on to Tweeter-y. Marilise, what you got? Yes, well, I thought that this was, this is something that Cameron has covered previously. I believe it was Cameron um but you know I actually just saw that

this is a different account than I thought because it's not Elon Musk that's really funny oh it says they're shutting down the X headquarters in San Francisco today, but that is probably not correct. Well, I like the big neon sign that they have put up on the San Francisco building, GFY. If people remember Elon Musk, I forget what, some media press conference. I think it was at some, was either new york times or something they they held some media forum and they had elon musk there he made a gfy comment that caught a lot of headlines and went pretty viral so i see

but yeah yeah he's moving a lot of his companies everything everything is coming to texas x tesla everything well you know he cites often the friendly tax and regulatory environment yeah that's quite opposite to california and that's he's not the only one doing it yeah texas is booming population-wise and economically so um it's it's a tidal wave alright Cameron go ahead Marylise I was just going to ask isn't Texas ranked number 8 economy wise now in terms of what metric do you mean

global GDP I'm pretty sure that's what it was yeah it's around there, yeah. Texas has tended to jump a slot each of the last few years, maybe the pandemic year notwithstanding. But, yeah, it's on the rise quite a bit.

All right, Cameron, over to you. So I think it was probably a month ago now, there was reports of a cyber attack, confidential information from the Trump campaign that was leaked to the Biden 2024 campaign. And there was lots of speculation about, like, how does this happen? Like, cybersecurity breach and information being stolen. Well, on September 18th, I saw this come across my timeline, that the FBI actually had conducted a malicious cyber attack

where they sent unsolicited emails to individuals then associated with President Biden's campaign that contained an excerpt taken from stolen non-public material from former President Trump's campaign as text in the emails. So we're seeing foreign governments act as malicious actors, trying to influence American elections. Things are going to continue heating up. I'm sure we're going to see more and more stories like this

over the next few weeks, whether it be Iran in assistance or Russia or whatever hostile foreign nation. You know, other countries, they're interested in American elections just as much as an American citizen is. And they want to exert some sort of covert control over them. And so just something I thought I'd bring to people's attention just to keep their eye on. Okay. Thank you, Cameron.

We'll conclude on mine, which is sports-related. Shock. There will be no more Woj bombs. No! Woj bombs are now a thing of the past. I am, of course, talking about Adrian Wojnarowski. He is, or was, until recently, an ESPN reporter. In fact, for NBA things, I'm not an NBA fan, but I know who he is,

and he's quite prolific in his scoop breaking. Yeah. He decided to hang up his, I don't know, pager that didn't blow up, his cell phone he is hanging it up and taking a far less stressful job as the uh the general manager of st bonaventure's men's basketball team and uh you know he has he's become the go-to source for breaking news on NBA things, and there's actually a fascinating grapple for power in that realm. I was going to ask you.

What's the other guy's name? What's the athletic? Oh. It's. Dang, I can't. The athletic? Because the only guy I know, I'm remembering his name, Shams. Shams, yeah.

Sharania, that's it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So those two were like, Shams was his protege, and then went to the athletic and started competing with him and they just were going tit for tat on breaking news breaking nba news and now the uh the old sensei has retired he's he's hung it up he's ready as uh adam schefter said he's ready, as Adam Schefter said, he's ready to not have to take his phone and do a shower with him. You know, like, I'm kind of in this fear, too. Yes, you are. Like, breaking news, at least, like, trying to get out there quickly.

But I don't take my phone in the shower with me. What the heck's he doing? You just take it on your vacations. And even when you say, oh, I'm going to be off for a week, you're still tweeting out breaking news. It is an addiction. I cannot stop it. So I can sympathize with Woj,

even though he is in a stratosphere way above me in terms of breaking news. But hats off to him. Hope he enjoys the new challenge. And now it's going gonna be interesting to see who fills the void anything bad cameron no uh no i i did just the entire industry of breaking sports news like um i used to be very into it watching it all the time i was a big Cowherd fan watching him. He's more of a pundit. He's more of a pundit, yeah,

but the most sports I catch now is when it's playing on the gym TV. Wow. You dropped the addiction that is sports and picked up the addiction that is politics. I think I chose the worst option. Yeah, definitely. At least you don't have to worry about your

fantasy team every week then. Right. All right. That'll do it for today's show. Follow us for updates on the House Speaker Race that I mentioned at the top.

That'll happen at some point on Friday and we'll see where it goes from there. We'll catch you next week. Thank you to everyone for listening.

If you enjoy our show, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you want more of our stories, subscribe to The Texan at thetexan.news. Follow us on social media for the latest in Texas politics and send any questions for our team to our mailbag by DMing us on Twitter or shooting an email to editor at thetexan.news. We are funded entirely by readers and listeners like you. So thank you again for your support. Tune in next week for another episode of our weekly roundup. God bless you and God bless Texas.

All right. Bye. I hope you include that. Bye. I hope you include that. Bye. you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you Thank you. Stay tuned for more news updates after this short message.