The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - September 25, 2026

Episode Date: September 25, 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.TSU Poll: Talarico Keeps Narrow Lead Over Paxton, French Loses Ground After ControversyCruz and Paxton Join Forces, Attack Talarico in Houston-Area EventICE Shooting in Austin Sparks Protests, Calls for InvestigationTexas GOP's Lawsuit to Close Primaries Put on Hold Ahead of Potential Legislative ResponseU.S. 5th Circuit Court Decision Pares Back Interstate Restrictions On Gun SalesIslam in Texas: Lawmakers on Both Sides Speak OutVIDEO: Texas Lieutenant Governor Candidate Vikki Goodwin on Healthcare, Education, House vs. SenateVIDEO: Railroad Commission Candidate Jon Rosenthal on Texas Energy, Oil and GasEnjoy 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.

President Trump is going to be attending the Tennessee versus Texas game on Saturday in person. So between the University of Texas, the University of Tennessee, and President Donald Trump, there will be, as the joke goes, three shades of orange at the game. Well, howdy folks? Welcome back to another episode of the Texans' Weekly Roundup podcast. I'm the Texans senior editor, and joining me today are the Texans' reporters, Mary Elise O'Barre, Holly Hanson, Meredith Dyer, Isaiah Mitchell, and Steve Kapuska. How is everybody doing this morning starting with Mary Elise? Because if we all answer it once, then it'll be chaos.

Good call. I'm doing great. Personally thrilled that it's finally fall, even though it doesn't quite feel like it here. But I'm holding out hope. Very nice. We do love fall here. As we are recording this today on Wednesday, it is the first. full day of fall. Yesterday they say it was the first day of fall, but the autumnal equinox was actually

near the end of the day. So Wednesday the 23rd is the first full day of fall, and I started the day with a slice of pumpkin bread. So I'm off to the races. I did have a pumpkin drink the other day, but I am a little bit of a fall grinch if it is almost a hundred degrees outside. And I love falls. So I'm holding out for when it gets to like 80 maybe and then I'll put a sweater on or something. Yeah. I'm with you, Meredith. I'm also looking forward to Christmas. So. I'm with you, Meredith. It's too hot for pumpkin drinks and pumpkin things at this point. It's supposed to be 100 degrees in Austin today. I'm not happy about that. It's crazy. It pretty much if you, you know, if you go outside between noon and. sunset, you know, you're kind of

risking illness or injury at that point. So I'll do what I always do and I like to stay inside. There are leaves everywhere. The leaves have fallen. So. Yeah, but you still see like flowers

flowering in this heat. I mean, I've seen like bushes around my neighborhood where flowers are still growing. I haven't seen the leaves yet. I'll have to, maybe this is a your area, Isaiah. You're missing out on the foliage? I'm going to start looking, yeah.

The pecan trees where I live have all shed their leaves for the most part. Now, they're not like totally bare, but the ground is covered in pecan leaves. Well, Isaiah's in the far north land still at this point. So here in Austin, we're still sweating it out. If you want to get outside and do anything, you've pretty much got to do it, you know, between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. because it's just too stinking hot. Yeah. Although you mentioning pecans, Isaiah now makes me want a slice of pecan pie,

albeit with a big scoop of ice cream on top in order to cool it down. So that's what I'm going to be thinking about for the rest of this podcast. We had to get our food today. It wouldn't be a Texan podcast without food being at the forefront. This is something people have noted on Twitter. I thought we were going to reignite the whole thing. whole chocolate debate that went on in Slack this week.

Oh, I don't even think we have. That would take a whole other hour to get into the debates over. It would take a whole podcast to discuss the merits of the various kinds of chocolate that are available to us. Well, I think that Rob

doesn't want to get dog piled here because I think that there seem to be some more strong opinions in a specific direction that Rob doesn't agree with. That's true. He doesn't want to get a tax. for his wrong opinions about chocolate.

There's nothing wrong with white chocolate. I think you're right. I think we should probably move on to our content because otherwise I'm just going to have to sit here defending the truth to a bunch of people who are too blind to see it. Instead, let's talk about something much less controversial and much less ambiguous polling

in Texas U.S. Senate race. Holly, there was a poll this week that was released by Texas Southern University and it is one of the best polls for Attorney General Ken Paxton that we've seen in a long time. Tell us about this poll. What does it say? Well, that's right, Rob. You know, this one is very interesting in comparison with some of the other polling outlets that we've seen,

because this is conducted by Mark Jones. He is a professor at Rice University. He also works with the University of Houston's Public Policy Center and with the Public Policy Center at Texas Southern University. and it's a larger sample size than we've seen in some of these other polls. So it's got 1,800 voters, and there's been a lot of discussion about whether or not, you know, these polls are getting a good sample size. We've seen some as small as 400 registered voters, but Dr. Jones likes to use likely voters

and get a really good sample size so that he can look at not just voter intention, but some of these currents that are happening in these races as well. This one is a little better for Ken Paxton, although he's still lagging by about one point, but that's within the margin of error. So what we saw is that Tala Rico led with 47%. Paxton had 46%. The libertarian, Ted Brown, is pulling in about 3%.

And there's still 4% of these likely voters who were undecided in this race. This poll is interesting, too, because we've seen a lot of numbers, including one that came out after this poll from Dr. Jones that suggested that Abbott is way behind Gina Hinojosa, the Democrat challenging him this year on that gubernatorial ticket. But in this particular poll, which a lot of people would say is a little more accurate, we do see Governor Abbott leading.

He had 49% to Gina Hosephi. Hinojosa is 45%. There are a few, just 2% planning to support the libertarian candidate in that race. So this one is very interesting. There are also some really interesting trends here when it comes to that race for the Texas Railroad Commissioner that I know Isaiah has written quite a bit about, but of course that race erupted in controversy, went from being a down-ballot race that nobody was really thinking too much about to being one of the top headlines over the past week or so, just because of the comments that Beau French, the Republican, made about the UT football fans rejoicing over their win a couple of weekends ago and using it to make a point about

whether or not these universities are allowing in too many international students. We did see in this poll some effect of that. Although Bo French is leading his Democrat opponent state representative John Rosenthal by just two points, we did see him lose ground in the favorability ratings. So Mark Jones polled back in July and he found that 67% of the respondents didn't know enough about Bo French to have an opinion of him. And he had about a 19% favorable opinion and 14% unfavorable. But in the meantime, the proportion who didn't know enough about French dropped by 21 points. 22% now have a favorable opinion and 32% have an unfavorable opinion giving him a net unfavorable of 10%, negative 10%. So, you know, he certainly got some

publicity out of that comment. But, it may not have gone in his favor. Yeah, something I'd add to that is that it's a perennial question when we were discussing polls and this whole Texas political sphere in general, how much does this online stuff actually matter? You know, like, is the average Texas voter, is the average Texas voter care what goes on on Twitter? Do they hear about it? And in this case, it got so much media coverage and I think more importantly, attention

from other big, important Republicans that, you know, It's more than just the average inflammatory tweet. But yeah, it'll be interesting to see. It's funny the way Jones phrases this because it's so, I don't know, antiseptic. But he says, like, the most likely scenario is that the principal driver of dramatically greater voter awareness of both French was that tweet. And Jones said of the Texas voter, what they learned they didn't like. But we still have this vast share, as you pointed out, Holly, of people who don't know about French. So I'm certainly going to be watching to see what his favorite.

ability looks like and really, you know, I don't know how many polling outfits are actually tracking this race down to the level of favorability, like polling people's opinions of Frozen's in French. But yeah, I'll be interested to see how much this suffuses public opinion to French in the weeks to come, whether it fizzles out, how many people learn about it in the first place and whether that will affect their vote. Yeah, and another interesting thing about this poll that it showed that Dr. Jones pointed out to me when I interviewed him about it is that probably the most popular statewide candidate on the ballot is Don Huffines, who is running for comptroller, another race that's not as high profile as the governor's race or certainly the Senate race. But

people really seem to like Don Huffines. He has a pretty high favorability rating. And that was kind of an interesting surprise in there. Yeah, I mean, Huffines did so well in his primary that and obviously being in the position leading up to the election is going to be helping him. And people seem to be liking what he's doing. I know that he's already, there's been reporting on him already making different cuts and things that he's talked about and people have been discussing that. And so obviously, if people are giving him favorable opinions, whatever he's doing right now is, seems to be working in his favor. Well, to be fair, his advertising focuses on, you know, auditing government and money.

He's not talking about some of the more controversial issues. I mean, there tends to be a lot of bipartisan agreement that these governments should be audited, whether it's state or local governments. So, you know, that's a message that's easy to reach out to a wide array of voters. So talking about the job is actually helped him with his job, focusing on what, which is a big thing with both French as people are like, This doesn't have anything to do with the job that you're trying to get right now. It's like interviewing for a job and talking about something completely different.

So it did make, I think we talked a little bit about the national reach last time, but I don't know if we mentioned like the comedy seller in New York with an Indian American comic Aziz Ansari talking about him. Ben Shapiro was talking about him. I mean, just a lot of people were, it was on YouTube, different influencers and things. So it did make its way to different parts of the country that you would. not expected to. Totally. It was, I heard it talked about on all kinds of different podcasts. So it, you know, catapulted that race into the national spotlight, but probably not in the

most positive way for that race. And in certain respects, Huffines and French are similar candidates, right, in their situation, because both have run campaigns that were very much attuned to cultural concerns and Huffines didn't really make his campaign and he didn't infuse it with a racial sense, sensitivity, but all of his billboards were very you know, hurt to the point

Trump-Maga Republican, right? That was a really popular Huffins billboard, doge, the Texas government, stuff like that. And so red meaty kind of stuff that is attuned to you know, sort of the volume of Twitter, for example, and stuff that the general Texas voter is concerned about, especially the general Republican voter, but that might not seem obvious as obviously germane to the job of like, in his case, the comptroller, or in French's case, the railroad commission. The advantage for how finds is that because the comptroller's office is over finance, that affects

a lot more than just oil and gas. And so the whole Doge topic, it is hot and fuzzy and everything. but that's one that actually is particularly relevant to the Comptroller's office because it would be the one tasked with determining how efficient all these agencies are in spending their money and stuff like that. And Hoffines in French were both, I mean, I don't want to characterize it as outsider candidates because there's a lot that goes into that and they both got a lot of big endorsements, but Texas Republican leadership preferred the other guy in both of their primaries, right?

but each of them won their primaries upsetting the favorite pick of Governor Abbott, among other big statewide Republicans. And now, you know, the whole GOP in Texas is trying to rally around these candidates, including these two who weren't Abbott's favorites to begin with. Yeah, I think that's a great point. They both were kind of, you know, coming from the outside of what a lot of people would consider the establishment and not favored by party leadership necessarily. and so they do have those similarities.

But Huffines seems to have navigated that a lot more efficiently going into the general election than Beau French has. You know, another thing about this poll that is interesting, and as Mark Jones said, you know, by having such a large sample size and asking more, I don't know, pertinent questions and collecting more information, he also had some information about whether or not Republicans are going. going to be supporting Ken Paxton in this general election. So of the voters who said they plan to vote for Abbott, I think it was 93 percent, said they'd vote for Paxton. And two percent of those said they'd vote for Tala Rico and a couple for Ted Brown. And there's a couple undecided. So, you know, when we dig down into those numbers, we do see, you know, a little bit of a breakdown in the Republican vote, much less so that then on the Democrat side of the aisle, even though we've heard a lot of, you know,

chatter about whether or not Jasmine Crockett supporters are going to support Tala Rico. It does seem to be consolidating, or the Democrats seem to be consolidating their support for Tala Rico, whereas Republicans are not quite in the same boat, according to this poll. I was actually about to bring this up, Holly, because that's one of the really interesting numbers

from this poll being that 99% of Democrats said they planned to vote for Tala Rico, well, just 84% of Republicans said that they would vote for Paxton, which mirrors something that was found in another poll, the R-R poll that came out earlier in the month. Dr. Lindsay Hendren, who works for R-Kon-M-R, said that they found 97% of Democrats said that they were going to support Tala RICO, and 87% of Republicans said they were going to support Paxton. So there have been, you know, criticisms that have been made recently about this polling, you know, the ReconMR polling, the Mason-Dixon poll, suggesting that their sample sizes are too small to capture like an accurate swath of the population. But I thought it was really

interesting that it's almost the same numbers. You know, it's this kind of high 90s versus sort of the mid-80s in terms of support respectively for Tala RICO and Paxton. And something else that I wanted to bring up really quick about this poll is, I think it's interesting how, you know, Tala RICO maintains this very small lead, and there's a very small amount of undecided, but it is possible.

It's probably not likely, but it's possible that Ted Brown could serve as a spoiler candidate in this election if a number of people who might have voted for Cornyn decide to vote for the libertarian candidate instead. I just think it would be fascinating to watch the political fallout of the libertarian candidate, you know, potentially spoiling the election and having Tala Rika win. I think that that would give us at least something to write about. And I don't think it's impossible. Absolutely.

I mean, typically we've seen libertarians serve as a spoiler, you know, on, we're down-ballot races. I don't think we've ever seen one serves as a spoiler on a statewide ballot in a very, very long time. But I've seen my share in some of these local races for state reps and things like that, where the libertarian got more votes than the margin between the Democrat and Republican. So that's a distinct possibility, although it would be really interesting to think that people who supported Cornyn would vote for a libertarian like Ted Brown. It just seems a little bit inconsistent, but you never know. Well, and a piece that I wrote this week that kind of ties into this whole conversation had to do with an event that happened in Houston that was a rally between Ken Paxton

and Senator Ted Cruz. But something that Cruz acknowledged during his speech, he gave a lengthy speech, talking about Paxton and then just talking about the party as a whole. He mentioned this polling, you know, and he acknowledged that this polling and the race hasn't been necessarily favorable for Paxton. You know, these numbers we've been talking about, but he was attributing at Tala Rico's lead, apparent lead, if you're just looking at these polls, to the amount of money, he said in attack ads that the Democratic Party has been running against Paxton. And he mentioned some of his own previous races, and he said,

You know, you have, when you have this much money just coming in after you, he said this would explain, you know, the polling differences here. He said, the polling in this race has it in a dead heat. So he called it a dead heat. And he said, the reason for that is that Pexton has had 200 million of attack ads against him. And he said, turns out when you face 200 million of attack ads, it's going to leave a mark. So that was kind of an interesting take from Cruz there when he spoke. but this was an event in Houston. And it was notable because Tala Rico had just been in Houston.

I think it was exactly a week prior. He was in Third Ward, which we covered last week. He was rallying with some folks in the local community. But this go around for Paxton, it was with Senator Ted Cruz. Those were kind of the two headlining the rally, but they were speaking alongside several different Republican candidates. And they were calling it the Texas on the first. frontline rally. It was also hosted at a church, a glorious way church in Cyprus. And, you know,

there were several Republican candidates who spoke. And a lot of the focus of this whole event, as would be expected, was leaning heavily on criticism of Representative James Talleyco. And not so much on boosting Paxton as an individual candidate, but a lot more of just hitting Tala Rico over specifically as more socially liberal record, different statements that he said that Republicans have really latched on to him, been blasting out during his campaign season to market him as too radical for Texas, is kind of the tagline. Before Cruz went on stage and spoke, he spoke for quite a while ahead of Pakistan, a congressional candidate, John Bonk, spoke.

he's running of course his Republican nominee for Congressman Wesley Hunt's seat so that's District 38 and he had kind of two specific hits against Talleyico he said you focused on the the transgender issue and saying that Tala Rico is a big supporter of that community and gender ideology and then also hit him over his masculinity and said that he was you know wanting to trans Texas and described him as a soft and weak man and Those were themes that were repeated several times throughout the event. As far as turnout, this church was decently full. A lot of the seats were full.

I will note, though, it was a mostly elderly crowd, but that also you could chalk that up to being, it was a Monday afternoon. As compared to Tellerica's event, though, was the other week. It was pretty late in the evening. So that just, of course, is going to affect. He was able to come out to an event. but mostly elderly crowd. And then chairwoman of the Republican Party, Dorenda Randall, spoke.

And it was interesting that her speech kind of focused on amping up crews and talking about what an incredible politician he has been, the different roles that he's held and the things that he's done for Texas. But it almost sounded like an intro for somebody who's running for office. and it was just really the crowd was just really getting into it and cheering for him and excited for him to take the stage. And then Cruz did take the stage. He talked about a lot of different things, but he, for the first bit of a speech, he's really focused on sharing his Christian faith and talking about how his father came to the faith. And then he shifted to targeting the Democratic Party.

And he also mentioned several different races that are happening throughout the country. Of course, considering he has more of a federal outlook. look than just, you know, what's going on statewide. He talked about the Democratic Party. He said that it's kind of joined together the communists and the Islamists. He said that they hate the same people. He said they hate Christians, they hate Jews, capitalism, the Constitution in America. And then he kind of shifted to this attack, which has been consistent, consistently made by Republicans about Tali Rico's comments on God being non-binary and his conversations or his comments about trans kids and abortion. Cruz mentioned that one, you know, one statement that he's particularly appalled by that

Taurica had made in the past was that he, what weighs on his heart when he's asked on a podcast is providing abortions to people who are transgender. So you can see here, the transgender theme is really something that the Republicans are focusing on as a hit against a Democratic Party. I mean, I think Meredith and Isaiah mentioned this specifically a lot at the convention that happened recently, the midterm convention, that the whole concept of biological girls playing biological boys' boys, excuse me, the other way around the boys and girls' sports issue, which was a huge conversation during the last election, that that was really taking center state. age in the Republicans campaign against Democrats at this convention. So yeah, that was an issue

that just was repeated throughout this event. And so it was kind of like this, they're kind of signaling, you know, we're going to keep focusing on this transgender issue as well as some mentions of affordability. So Paxton ran through his affordability plan, which he's laid out before at different events. But a lot of the conversation is more around this social issue. which I found to be very interesting. And obviously we'll see how that pans out for Republicans in the end, you know, whether it's if this issue is still really concerning for voters and if this is really hit home with the voters.

But yeah, it was just another political rally in Houston, which is, of course, a major spot for candidates to come and rally at because just considering where it's located, I mean, Harris County is very significant. Also, the Republican candidate for Harris County judge, Orlando Sanchez. He also spoke for a couple of minutes, and he mentioned what I heard Leticia Plummer say recently, who's his Democratic opponent, she was saying, you know, if you can take Harris County, you can take Texas. And I think that's definitely being signaled here with these rallies happening in Houston.

It sounds like a lot of the discussion there is kind of set by the setting, if you will. I think I read in your report that this was at the Glorious Way Church in the Houston area, which is a very politically active Christian church. They hold a lot of political rallies there. but it sounds like maybe somewhat some of the message was tailored towards that audience with a lot of emphasis on those cultural issues. Did you feel like there was even attention given to both the cultural issues and those affordability issues? I know a lot of Republicans have shifted to talking about. Yeah, I mean, affordability definitely was a part of the conversation.

It just wasn't central to the conversation. but you could tell for sure when you came into the church that this is a very politically active church. I wasn't as familiar with it before as you are Holly, but they were playing different slideshows and having different flyers for different political events about how they're involved in the Capitol and just the legislative process and encouraging people to integrate their faith and kind of put it into action in the political activism world. It was really interesting the themes that you were talking about that keep coming up that we're at convention. They're here.

They're in a lot of the different ads that are on certain of Talarico's comments, the God being non-binary, the different things about boys and girls sports. And it just reminded me that this week there was a tweet by Representative Jeff Leach where he laid out like a prior bill that he had put out about abortion and then put like the actual votes of different state white candidates. like just bringing kind of the receipts to specific legislation and voting. And that is something that I'm wondering, um, like how effective continuing to use the same like repeated lines over and over without showing people what like things that the votes they've actually done, things they've actually supported or not supported, um, the effectiveness of that. And a lot, you know, there have been people that are saying on the other side that people are tired of, these issues, they're not going to be effective. So, well, I mean, we'll obviously see. This is what we say

all the time. See when we get to the, when we get to the election. But it has been quite repetitive. And they haven't broken away and offered like a lot of new information at some of these events. And so like I said, when Jeff Leach laid out something about, it was about aborting receiving care. Sorry, I'm going to get it wrong. It was about the child receiving care after abortion had failed, I believe, life saving care. And he had put Rosenthal and He no, Hosa. and Goodwin and all these different statewide and like how they voted. So, yeah, Rob, did you have something to comment about that? Yeah, I was just going to say that you're right that this social messaging,

I think Isaiah you also wrote about this, but it's almost a little surprising that the Republicans are pushing the social messaging as much as they are, given that affordability and economic issues have become so central. and obviously we saw a lot of affordability related messaging, I think, even as early, you know, as recently as a couple of months ago, but it definitely feels like the social issue messaging has really ramped up. And of course, we've seen kind of similar related controversy in this recent shooting in Austin by an ice agent of an illegal alien that has obviously fired up a lot of, Democratic officials and progressive activists, something that they obviously like to stress as something with which to attack Republicans and the Trump administration. So Holly, you wrote about this shooting that happened over last weekend. Tell us what's going on.

Sure. So, you know, there's been a lot of developments since we first wrote about this, the shooting incident that happened on Sunday afternoon in Austin, Texas. And initially, we did know the identity for sure of the driver who was shot. But slowly through the past couple of days, these details have been coming out. What's been interesting is that on the day of the shooting, you almost immediately had a press conference with Austin Mayor Kirk Watson, along with Congressman Greg Casar. I always want to say Caesar, but it's Casar. And they were, you know, obviously kind of, you know, seizing on this opportunity to talk about, They don't really like ICE in the community.

Kassar actually called for ICE to get out of Austin and stop their immigration enforcement efforts. There was also an immigration attorney who came forward and said she represented the family. And she identified the driver of the car, his last name is Perez. But some of the details that they revealed at that press conference and that the attorney revealed have now been contradicted not only by some videos. evidence, but also by DHS and the secretary Mark Wayne Mullen. So initially they said that, you know, he's a DoorDash driver. He was pursued by these vehicles that were unmarked, and he didn't know that they were law enforcement.

Since then, we've seen one surveillance video that appears to show Perraza's vehicle driving very, very fast, and being pursued by two black SUVs with sirens and lights flashing. So that's a bit of contradictory evidence. We also saw some video that was released by the city of Austin, to their credit, that shows a very calm scene of this man being removed from his vehicle and being given medical attention there at the scene. There's been conflicting information about whether or not he's received adequate care. We did see in one of those videos, you can actually see a bullet entry wound on his back,

Since then, some reports have said that the hospital has not sought to remove that bullet because it's very close to his spine. But he's obviously able to move around as he was in this video, but it's been back and forth in the ICE detention facility and some of the hospitals, one in Austin and one in San Antonio. With all the political fallout and some of these comments coming from Mayor Watson and Congressman Kazar, We did see a response from DHS. They posted a very lengthy thread on X, dispelling some of what they called the myths and misreporting about the incident. They said he has been receiving medical care and that he did not have a valid work permit. One of the points of contention is whether or not he entered the country legally or illegally. it appears that, according to the attorney, he entered the country using something called the CBP1 app. And that was an app that the federal government developed initially for other purposes.

But under the Biden administration, they transformed it a bit and allowed immigrants to use it to schedule a hearing to come into the country and seek asylum. It was not any kind of official lawful entry, necessarily. but that's what the attorney is saying, created a lawful entry for Mr. Perez. They've also said that, you know, he was here legally, he doesn't have a criminal history, he was a driver for DoorDash. It was conducting a DoorDash delivery at that time. That information has been confirmed by DoorDash. But the federal agencies are defending their actions here. And this is this is going to continue to be a back and forth. Every time I turn on the news or check on this story, there's been a new development. So it's been a little difficult to keep up with.

My guess is that it's going to be much like the case in Houston where we actually saw an illegal immigrant killed by an ICE agent when he was shot. But we really don't have much more information than what we had in the first couple of weeks after that shooting, because the federal agencies say that they are conducting the investigation primarily. And purportedly, they are including the Texas Rangers in investigating these shootings. But they're keeping a lot of that information very close. And, you know, it'll be some time before I think we get any answers about what actually happened, And despite whether or not Mr. Perez entered the country illegally before he was shot in Austin,

a lot of people are asking, well, why did he need to be shot? And as for the exact circumstances of the shooting, we just don't know at this point. But I think, you know, at this point, we're going to continue to see a lot of these politicians, especially as we're getting closer to an election, trying to talk about this in a way that supports their candidates and their side of the argument. So it's going to continue to be pretty contentious. Another aspect of this is that we did see a lot of protests in the city of Austin. In fact, some of those protests turned somewhat violent. There were incidents of rock throwing and APD did send out riot control and use pepper spray and tear gas on some of those protesters. We've also seen a little bit of

push back from the local officials here in Austin about the way those demonstrations were handled. At the same time, we saw Democrats condemning the shooting and asking a lot of questions and demanding an independent investigation. We also did see them asking protesters to remain peaceful, not engage in rock throwing or anything violent that would detract from the argument they're trying to make about the way immigration is being enforced in the community. Well, thank you very much, Holly, for that detailed breakdown of the story. Certainly interesting to see, of course, as more information comes out, because as we know from these kind of things, the information you get within the first 24 hours is often quickly contradicted by the information that we get in the next 72 hours or in the next week or such. So true. It's almost like you shouldn't rush out with a hot take until you've gotten more information. crazy. Well, I don't know how I'm supposed to get my Twitter likes if I don't rush out with a hot take. But speaking of hot takes that happened this week that got a lot of people talking on social media, Mary Elise, the Texas GOP filed a lawsuit a bit ago to try to close their primary elections and a federal judge just addressed that lawsuit. What did he have to say?

Well, he essentially put this lawsuit on hold, temporarily paused it. So this is that lawsuit between Republican Party of Texas, as you said, and then Texas Secretary of State over our state's open primaries. He suggested within his decision to issue this day that the upcoming legislative session may have the answer, may resolve this issue come January in the following months. So Judge Matthew Kexmerich, he issued this stay on a Friday. So when you're listening to this, it was just one week prior. So he provided that temporary pause in this case that, you know, divided former Secretary of State Jane Nelson and then, you know, Republican Party of Texas.

Office of Attorney General is also involved. And then our newly appointed Secretary of State, Robert Howden. So a little bit of background on this lawsuit. R. VT filed it against Nelson. That was in the fall of 2025, and they were essentially arguing that Texas's open primary election system, which they said allows independence and Democrats to vote in Republican primaries, violates First Amendment rights of the party. And so Texas law, the way it currently is, says that the only restriction on this crossover voting is a prohibition on one's, one party's primary voters jumping to another party's runoff election in the same cycle.

So that does allow voters to cast ballots and say Democrat primary one year and then Republican primary the next or vice versa, so which you're at. So the judge had requested, and we covered this recently, he had requested clarifying information from our new secretary of state about how he was going to approach this lawsuit considering the role of the the Secretary of State in this lawsuit, he asked him to kind of clarify what's going to be your approach to this. You'd be represented by the same legal counsel and, you know, are you going to be, are you going to be differing from Nelson in this approach? Howden responded with an approach where he said, and I'm not quoting him directly, but he said that essentially the name, the only thing that's changed in this lawsuit is the name and that he would be having pretty much an identical approach to this is Nelson. which is that the Texas legislature must be the first act on closing party primaries, that it's not the role of the Secretary of State. So this order on Friday, which paused the lawsuit,

it does require that there needs to be an update filed promptly if the legislature passes. So this is after the session kicks off. And Governor Greg Abbott signs into law any legislation that would affect open primary system. So if they do resolve it that way, or if no action is taken on the topic, but he said, in any event, a report, a status report has to be filed by the first week of June, 27. And so this stay, this pause on this lawsuit will end at the conclusion of the 90th legislative session. So regular session, as you can imagine there will probably be special sessions. So this stay does end at the conclusion of a regular session.

and he says that that should give the parties involved in this lawsuit enough time to make any appropriate necessary adjustments before the next primary election. So that shouldn't be a problem as they're heading into the next primary. But he did kind of essentially leave the door open here for parties that are involved to continue pursuing the case after the stay expired. So after the 90th legislative session. and he said that this his ruling, the stay here is not a ruling on the merits of any of these motions. So because of that, the parties that are involved in this lawsuit could go ahead and he said re-earge such motions if they find it to be necessary. After session concludes, and depending on, you know, what happens at session regarding these open primaries. This is a big deal in this, in a Texas political world.

Of course, a lot of people online are talking about it. And an interesting kind of reaction from the former chairman of the Republican Party, Texas, Abraham George. He said that this stay is a win, quoting that we're moving the needle in the right direction. And he said that because this puts the burden on the 90th legislature, and he said that he knows from last session, the 89, that there are conservative legislators who are all in for closed primaries. And he said, he would have preferred a ruling that said, um, that addressed the first amendment issue and said that the party has a first amendment right to associate. But he said, we just have to wait until the 90th. So, um, that is what we will do. We will wait until the 90th and see what happens on

this issue. Um, and where open primaries go moving forward. Well, thank you very much for your coverage on that story, Mary Elise. Steve, turning next to you for another interesting judicial decision piece on something of, I think, great import to conservative Republicans. Tell us what the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals just had to say about interstate gun sales. Yeah, yeah. So in a recent two-to-one decision, the Fifth Circuit found that A series of provisions in the Gun Control Act of 1968 were unconstitutional for violating the Second Amendment. These portions of the Act effectively made it illegal to sell handguns across state lines. The thing is, though, how it works right now, if you buy a handgun from out-of-state,

is that the place that you buy it from, they will ship it to a gun store or FFL holder in the state, will then transfer you the gun for a transfer fee, which is usually somewhere between $30 and $50. So how it effectively is right now is that you can buy handguns across state lines because of that legal workaround. What the Fifth Circuit basically said was

that the portions of the gun control acts that necessitated that workaround are not constitutional. And the government in their defense of the law, how they cited many gun regulations that were in place at or before the founding. And what the court found was that these were not at all like interstate handgun ban. So the court sought to apply the two-step tests from the Supreme Court's decision in a Bruin, which was a landmark case that made a two-step legal test for determining if a law violates the Second Amendment. The first step is a plain reading of the text of the law, whether or not it violates the right to keep and bear arms on its face. And the second step is if there was any sort of comparable laws or regulations that have a history or a tradition in the United States actually dates back to have a founding.

And what the court found is that the portions of the Gun Control Act, failed both these steps. What they found was that the ban on interstate stales did violate the plain reading of the Second Amendment. Even though there was a workaround, a plain reading is still a plain reading. And the court was not persuaded by the government's citations of several old laws and said that they were not at all incomparable. And what makes this case interesting is that it sets up a, what's called a circuit split with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers among other areas of New York City. And circuit splits are one of the largest factors, and whether or not the Supreme Court takes up a specific legal issue.

Essentially what it means is that a circuit split means that federal law is being applied in different ways, in different parts of the country, and the Supreme Court, I really doesn't like that. So the fact that the Fifth Circuit came down this way makes it much more likely that the Supreme Court will take up. I have this case or a case touching the same issues in the near future. Well, very nice.

Thank you for the rundown on that story, Steve. We always love a good Second Amendment piece at the Texan and this one was quite interesting especially when it's dealing with sales and interstate sales and all that. I remember Isaiah you had it. I think it was Isaiah. Somebody had an interesting piece about silencers. It was getting rid of that $200 tax on the silencers. My favorite bit about that still was that that $200 tax when it was first implemented in the 30s would have been like $5,000 today. And the tax became progressively. less and less burdensome due to inflation. But thank you very much for the rundown on that story, Steve.

Meredith, turning next to you for our last big story of the pod. You wrote a gargantuan piece this week on Islam in Texas. Tell us what lawmakers are saying. Tell us about some of these issues that's going on and sort of what we're maybe can expect going into the 90th legislative session. Yes, definitely gargantuan. That's the technical word for it. It just kept going and going because it is an issue that is just keeps going and going. It doesn't really have, that's one of the takeaways from it is that it's continuing to build and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, especially in the Texas State House, which I was able to talk to some of them. They are expecting things. I know State Rep Salman Bojani was like, I'm expecting this to escalate. This is, I'm hearing chat. of bills, like their things are going to be happening. So there's a lot of, you know, kind of running through some of the things that have happened that have been made the headlines, whether it's statewide officials, including Governor Abbott, getting involved with local issues that are related to Islam, you know, the examples of the Muslim-only water park event, the Islamic Games, these ritual foot washing stations, like those pop up in our stories. And then

also Epic City has been an ongoing hot topic and some of it, it's legal issues surrounding it. So there's the Sharia Free Texas caucus that was started by Brent Money, which has around 50 members. And then from there, there were a couple of other caucuses started by Muslim state reps, Salman Bojani and Sula Mandalay. One is Bojani started the Religious Freedom Caucus, and then Lalani started the Interfaith Caucus. I know that the religious freedom one has 44 members, and the interfaith one has not announced members yet. They said they're kind of gathering together, getting, you know, brainstorming, starting to work on things, and they haven't really set information yet. So I was able to, I talked to Bojani.

He did a great interview with us and really laid out how he's feeling about it, how what, obviously it's very personal to him as a Muslim and how he wants to, you know, he's, he has met with. rent money, which was interesting behind closed doors. And he said he did appreciate him being willing to meet with him and to hear him out. He wants to kind of dispel, he, in his words, dispel some things that he believes money misunderstands about Sharia. And then I know Lelani was talking about just he thinks that in November some of the, like the elections will end up deciding, like, how many of these bills will go forward, obviously. So yeah, there's just some really good information And also, I know that convention Mary Elise had interviewed money and we included some of that on here where he's talking about Sharia. And he actually describes it as a kitchen table issue, which is interesting because that has not often been described as a kitchen table issue.

And so that was kind of interesting to hear that as well. So there's these three different caucuses, which will play out in the house. And then they are the Texas Sharia. I'm sorry, there's so many. These caucuses have all these names. The Sharia Free Texas Caucus was inspired by the Sharia Free America Caucus, which is in Congress and was started by Republican Congressman Keith South and Chip Roy. And so they've also been very vocal about that. And it also has bled into the local level as well.

I know that I included in there's some previous reporting that we had done on Chip Roy writing an article about some development with an Islamic group near a military base in San Antonio area. and then also Keith Self has been involved in like the McKinney speaking out against a mosque in the McKinney area that he represents as well. So it's it's going local, state, federal and kind of flowing back and forth a little bit. And so, yeah, definitely worth it for those interviews to kind of get some insight into, especially the house next year. Or next year, well, next year, yeah, next session. Yeah, I mean, sessions coming up in just a few months. That's the thing is we've got. the election in November, which, as of the time we're recording this, is now I think, what, less than, I think it's less than 50 days away, right? I mean, we're getting pretty close here. But then two months after the election is when session starts. So that's going to be a very exciting and busy time, but I think we're all looking forward to it, especially if the election changes the, uh, changes the makeup of the, uh, Texas House or Senate.

you know, if that number of Republicans to Democrats shift, that could definitely change what makes it through, what makes it past the finish line this session. So thank you very much for breaking that story down, Meredith. I also wanted to say before we get into our tweetery for the week, I wanted to plug a couple of interviews that you and Isaiah did recently. Meredith, you interviewed state representative Vicki Goodwin, who is running for lieutenant. governor and Isaiah you interviewed state representative john rosenthal who is running for uh railroad commissioner as we talked about relating to what holly was saying earlier about the railroad commissioner race um would you all like to mention any specific favorite bits from the interviews that you all did uh something interesting i mean obviously everybody watching this is going to go and watch the full interviews afterward but was there anything from each of y'all's interviews really that stood out or you found particularly interesting? Mine was more of just a fun fact that I learned in researching.

So Vicki Goodwin is in the house. She's a state rep and she is running to be the lieutenant governor and just learning that the last time that that happened where someone made that jump politically was in 1969 with Ben Barnes, I believe. And so I always just love a fun fact that you learn about. That's not a common thing that happens. And so it is an interesting, it's, you know, attempting something that's not common. Well, our interview was primarily about the Permian Basin Reliability Plan.

And so if you've got questions about that and what the Railroad Commission has to do with it and have that intersects of some of the other state agencies, definitely go give it a listen because that was mainly what we talked about, that we touched on other issues as well. Did you, real quick, did you touch, you touched on the 765 KV. Did you talk about that in relationship to the Permian Basin Reliability Plan? Yeah, really centrally, centrally that part of it. Another fun topic that everybody who like gets very excited about. Absolutely.

Yeah. And I think you guys even also touched a bit on the story that Steve wrote recently about the general land office opening up state-owned lands to new forms of power generation. So I recommend everybody go and watch those interviews because they are fantastic. So we've talked a lot about politics. Does anybody have any interesting tweeterie this week? I see Mary Elise Elizabeth Holmes documentary. I don't want to play favorites here, but everybody knows I love movies.

So Mary Elise, do you want to tell us a little bit about that? Well, this is going to be a groundbreaking documentary, I think going to be very wild. So Nathan Fielder, if you're not familiar with him, maybe I'll let you do your own research there. But he did this documentary of Elizabeth Holmes. And it looks like it's going to be very interesting, very riveting. She was the businesswoman who was convicted of fraud in connection with her tech company, Aronos. And you can look more into her background.

but honestly the cinematography and both his teaser and in the trailer just alone are very impressive from my perspective as well as just the storyline he appears that he lived in her home for a while and got some to really document her life for a bit before she went to uh before she went to prison so very interesting um i think it comes out October 16th so might go have to go check that out in theaters Well, my favorite tweet that I saw today deals with Texas history and also references, well, says that there should be a movie about this, and apparently there is. But apparently today, the day we're recording this podcast, is the 126th anniversary of the murder of William Marsh Rice, who was the founder of the Institute that eventually became Rice University.

But apparently his valet and an attorney that represented his second wife wrote up a forged will, and they had this plot to kill him. And first they tried to poison him with mercury pills, and then he just wouldn't die. And so the valet apparently smothered him with core form, as one did in the year 1900 when you were trying to kill someone. So it was a pretty interesting tweet there, given the whole history. on that Traces of Texas account, which is a great account for sharing old photos and old stories. He did say it seemed like a great movie fodder since you're a movie buff rob. But somebody pointed out there was a movie made about this in 1993, and it's called The Trust.

I've never seen it, but after reading this, I think I'm going to have to go watch it. It does look like it'll be, let me see here. Did it star anybody well known? Because I have to say that I've never heard of this movie before. I've never heard of it. I don't know if maybe it was a lower budget. Yeah, probably. It's his starring.

I just looked it up really quickly, Sam Bottoms and Karen Black, and I'm not a movie buff. And so just because I don't know who an actor is, it doesn't mean very much, but I've never heard of either of those people, but it seems like it might be fun to watch. Yeah.

Definitely looks interesting. Meredith, what was your tweetery for the week? Mine was, a lot of us have followed Ben Sass online with his whole journey of of cancer and faith and all of that and he's been very outspoken. But somebody had commented a couple of days ago. And it was someone with just like very few followers. It's just like a normal person, not someone famous. And they said, you've been quiet as a late senator,

just wanted to say that I'm praying for you and your family. And then he was like, hey, thanks for the prayers. And then he just gave a huge update to this person kind of in a quote tweet. But it was really good news. Like there was good news that he was sharing about how he had like a big surgery that got rid of a lot of cancer. And he's obviously lived significantly longer than his initial diagnosis and had got to spend time with his family and just like talks about what he's grateful for. Like I think one of them is a specific drug and the different doctors he has and his kids and stuff. So, you know, just see something nice on Twitter.

And I feel like I'm all stirring up right now. just really beautiful to see how people have invested in it and just like actual kindness of like, I'm praying for you. I care about you. And he's like, hey, thanks for doing that. Like, this is actually what's going on in my life. So he's, I, he's really navigated this beautifully. And it's, uh, just, it's, it's, it's been such a gift.

He's been such a gift. Very nice. My tweetery is slightly less serious than that. Um, but I thought I would round off the end of the podcast with some. something related, of course, to my burnt orange shirt, which is the announcement that is, I think, actually just broke as we were in the middle of recording, that President Trump is going to be attending the Tennessee versus Texas game on Saturday in person. So between the University of Texas, the University of Tennessee and President Donald Trump, there will be, as the joke goes, three shades of orange at the game. Is that a home game for UT or is it in Tennessee? Which UT? Oh, well, good point.

Is it Texas home game or Tennessee's home game? It'll be Tennessee. It'll be Tennessee. It'll also be smack dab in the middle of Trib Fest. So it's a very convenient timing for that to happen. So I believe that that's an 11 a.m. game. But I did want to also say right here at the end that Meredith, and Steve, both of our reporters will be at Trib Fest.

We'll be following along with all the big panels from lawmakers and people from various industries. So make sure that you are following them on social media if you can't be there in person because this is going to be an interesting one. I think the headliner right now is they're going to have James Talarico there, which makes sense as an Austin Democrat guy. And I'm sure he's done it before. But it'll be a big one.

So make sure that you're following. Stephen Meredith so you don't miss out on anything and make sure that you check back with us every Friday morning for the next episode of the weekly roundup. So thank you to everyone and we'll catch you all 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, visit us at the texan. 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 us an email to editor at the Texan. News. Tune in next week for another episode of our weekly roundup. God bless you

and God bless Texas.