The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - September 29, 2023

Episode Date: September 29, 2023

Show off your Lone Star spirit with a free Texas flag hat with an annual subscription to The Texan: https://thetexan.news/subscribe/ The Texan’s Weekly Roundup brings you the latest news in Texas politics, breaking down the top stories of the week with our team of reporters who give you the facts so you can form your own opinion. Enjoy what you hear? Be sure to subscribe and leave a review!  Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast.  This week on The Texan’s Weekly Roundup, the team discusses: Comptroller Glenn Hegar telling Attorney General Ken Paxton to petition the Texas Supreme Court for his back payThe “whistleblowers” who accused Paxton of corruption doubling down following his acquittalA federal judge ruling that drag shows do not necessarily fall under First Amendment-protected “expressive conduct”A federal judge ruling that Texas’ ban on drag shows with minors in attendance is unconstitutionalAbbott saying the special session agenda could include cracking down on illegal immigrant “colonies”Two elected local officials in Texas with felony convictions fighting to keep their officesDueling lawsuits over a Houston high school student disciplined for violating the school district’s hair length policyGeneral Electric suing a Texas recycling company over its dumping wind turbine blades in SweetwaterLaura Maczka Jordan and Mark Jordan’s bribery and fraud convictions upheld in appeals courtSturm, Ruger and Co. writing a letter to Texas lawmakers over alleged discrimination from Wells FargoAnd more.

Happy Friday, folks. Senior Editor Mackenzie DeLulo here, and welcome back to the Texans Weekly Roundup podcast. This week, the team discusses Comptroller Glenn Hager telling Attorney General Ken Paxton to petition the Texas Supreme Court for his back pay. The whistleblowers who accused Paxton of corruption doubling down following his acquittal. A federal judge ruling that drag shows do not necessarily fall under First Amendment-protected expressive conduct. Abbott saying the special session agenda could include cracking down on illegal immigrant colonies. A federal judge ruling that Texas's ban on drag shows with minors in attendance is unconstitutional. Two elected local officials in Texas with felony convictions fighting to keep their offices.

Dueling lawsuits over a Houston high school student disciplined for violating the school district's hair length policy. General Electric suing a Texas recycling company over its dumping wind turbine blades in Sweetwater. Laura Maska Jordan and Mark Jordan's bribery and fraud convictions upheld in appeals court. Sturm Ruger and Company writing a letter to Texas lawmakers over alleged discrimination from Wells Fargo, Texas A&M's new diversity, equity, and inclusion guidelines, and the last time Texas House members tried to oust a speaker on the floor. Thanks for listening and enjoy this episode. Howdy folks, Mackenzie here with Brad, Matt, Cameron, and Hayden on another episode of the Weekly Roundup. We've already been talking about hot peppers, casual work days, Brad's new

shirt. It's not new. So we're off to a really good start. Okay. It's really not new. No, it's not new. I don't believe you, but I will your i will i will accept your word um cameron you are also hot ones aficionado and we'll we'll talk about it later but we've been talking about hot sauces yes before we started i've never tried those crazy hot sauces we'll get back to your experiences with da bomb da bomb later in this da bomb insanity that's right we'll have the teaser for our fun topic folks let's go ahead and jump into the news brad ken paxton and his first assistant are demanding back pay for the 112 day period in which he was suspended from office

pending the impeachment trial in the senate what did they have to say paxton first took aim at comptroller glenn hager during his interview with Tucker Carlson. He was one of the many Texas officials named, well, maybe not many, but at least a handful of Texas officials named during that interview. And he specifically said that the Comptroller took away his ability to pay for legal counsel. And this affected him and made him have to you know raise more money for that paxton was suspended immediately after the house impeached him back in may and based on that period he would be out about 47 000 from the first day of suspension until he was acquitted and reinstated just a couple weeks ago.

And First Assistant Attorney General Brent Webster wrote to Hager saying, quote, the Constitution could have but does not provide that a public official is denied a salary during the pendency of impeachment proceedings. It opens the door for this debate on whether the Constitution and law requires the comptroller to withhold pay of an official who is suspended, in this case through impeachment, or if the Constitution is silent on that. And that's one of the arguments that Webster and Paxton make, is that the Constitution is silent on the issue of suspension with pay pertaining to impeachment. It does address suspension with pay pertaining to suspensions for employees, for state employees for investigations, which this wasn't kind of investigation, but it's also kind of its own thing. So it's just a massive legal gray area but Webster in his letter pointed to the shall clause of the constitution that says

the legislature shall pay an annual salary to the attorney general and this was the first swing in what apparently was a a week full of um back and forth over this suspension, this $47,000, which, you know, that's not a drop in, that's not nothing, but it is, you know, compared to the amount of money that's being spent both sides on legal fees is almost nothing. Right. So in this back and forth, what did the comptroller have to say? So a day or two later, Hager's office responded with its own letter saying, essentially, sue me and let the Texas Supreme Court resolve this issue. Which, according to them, is something they asked the or they assumed the attorney general would do from the beginning right after they the news came out that they would not be paying him. The letter from an employee, a general counsel at the comptroller's office wrote or said that if the Texas Supreme Court answers this unprecedented legal question by ruling that our Constitution does not prohibit the payment of the Attorney General's compensation during his temporary suspension. We will process your office's payroll vouchers for the Attorney General.

Now they went through a couple legal provisions that they cited to make their case that the Attorney General is not allowed to be suspended with pay. There is statute that allows for employees to be suspended with pay. That was added by the legislature, I assume, after some example occurred where there was an investigation that turned out to be nothing. And the employee that was suspended pending this outcome of the investigation was exonerated and then without a lot of money. But the legislature fixed that whole however when they wrote this statute the provision specifically exempts state officers which are defined in code as in part elected officials so additionally the comptroller contends that the constitution only allows one attorney general to be paid at once, and since provisional AGs were serving during the Paxton's suspension, they were paid for performing the office's duties. As the letter notes, though, this is unprecedented. It's a legal gray area. This is something that likely, if Paxton chooses to continue asking for this, the Supreme Court

will have to weigh in on. What should we expect then going forward? Well, if he does choose to initiate legal action, he would have to sue the comptroller's office, interestingly enough, a wing of the state that is normally the attorney general's responsibility to defend in court, he'd have to sue. That might be, I'm not sure exactly, but it might be in his own personal capacity, but we'll see how that shakes out. But he would have to sue in an Austin court, which is not necessarily friendly to the attorney general,

which is something he noted in Tucker Carlson's. But once a ruling comes in on that, he could then appeal directly to the Supreme general, which is something he noted in Tucker Carlson's. But once a ruling comes in on that, he could then appeal directly to the Supreme Court, which is all Republican. And so ultimately, that's where this is going to be decided. It's just a question of how long. Yeah, we're talking all Republicans here too. Statewide elected officials in Paxton and Hager and the Supreme Court. Yes. All Republicans. Yep. So really just comes down to some constitutionality questions. Bradley, thank you. Hayden, we are coming to you on our last Paxton story for the week.

Attorney General Paxton's accusers held a news conference at the Capitol earlier this week to repeat many of the claims they made at the trial. What was the purpose of their event? This news conference did not really involve any breaking news. The accusers filed a supplemental motion supporting a motion they made in March to lift the abatement on their lawsuit against the Office of the Attorney General Ken Paxton was recently acquitted on 16 articles of impeachment, and four articles of impeachment against him were dismissed. But four of the attorneys who were fired by the OAG amid their suspicions that he was violating the law sued him, seeking back pay and damages for emotional distress and other harms they say they suffered after their termination. In February, the Supreme Court of Texas granted a motion to abate the suit after the parties appeared to reach a mediated settlement agreement contingent on funding of a $3.3 million settlement by the

Texas legislature. That settlement was not funded and the party, the accusers made a motion in March to lift the abatement on the lawsuit so proceedings could continue and they want a trial in Travis County. At the news conference, they repeated many of the allegations that were stated in the trial and said that they are going to continue to fight Paxton and seek these damages that they believe that they suffered at the hands of the OAG. The standard of proof in civil cases is typically lower than in criminal cases. How could that affect their efforts? The standard of proof at the impeachment trial was beyond a reasonable doubt. Clearly, it wasn't necessarily a criminal proceeding. It was only to decide if

Ken Paxton would remain attorney general. But the lawsuit they filed under the Texas Whistleblower Act is a civil suit, and as I understand it, civil cases usually have burdens of proof that are different, such as clear and convincing evidence or preponderance of the evidence. It's not quite as high a bar as beyond a reasonable doubt because in a civil case, no one can go to prison or be sentenced to a criminal penalty. I asked Mr. James Brickman, who is one of Paxton's accusers, what he would say to senators who decided that the evidence at the impeachment trial was not beyond a reasonable doubt. He said he strongly disagreed with that decision, and he believes the senators who voted to acquit Paxton were condoning corruption. And as you've said so many times

before, just because the impeachment trial in the Texas Senate is over and the attorney general has been acquitted on all 16 charges that are levied against him by the Texas House does not mean that this is it. We still have whistleblower settlements and lawsuits. We still have securities fraud charges. We'll see where all of that ends up. I think a lot of the discussion surrounding this press conference was about Grant Dorfman's testimony and whether or not, you know, who, you know, who initiated the whistleblower settlements and whether it was the OAG or whether it was the whistleblowers. And so. Which the testimony at trial was that it was Paxton's accusers. Yes. Initiated. From Dorfman, that was the testimony. Yeah. Right.

And the managers did not challenge that on cross-examination. Yeah. So when Lieutenant Governor Patrick and the media has been saying that the accusers of Paxton were the ones who initialed the settlement talks, that was based on testimony that was stated at trial. There you go and this um before this press conference in addition to the motion that the supplemental brief they filed they sent provided a letter that their counsel sent to all the senators trying to dispute that saying that actually it was in hindsight it was the um the office of attorney general that saw it. Which, um, I did. They, I don't think they introduced that exhibit at trial though.

It's a new letter. It was, yeah. I think it was written after the acquittal. Yeah. Which is, yeah. Very interesting. Thank you, Hayden. Cameron coming to you following the initial issuance of a temporary restraining order. A federal judge has ruled that Texas's

ban on drag performances with children under 18 years old in attendance is unconstitutional. Give us those details. Yeah, that's exactly right. This was following a ruling of a, oh, actually, this is a permanent injunction based upon a previous temporary restraining order that banned the implementation of SB 12, like you just explained, was going to ban drag performances with minors in attendance. The judge said SB 12 creates viewpoint discrimination, is substantially overbroad, and unconstitutionally vague. The ruling from this judge also argued that SB 12 would have a chilling effect on speech. What was interesting is that this ruling mentioned another court's ruling about drag shows we'll talk about in just a bit, which came to a very

different conclusion. What has been some of the responses to the ruling? Yeah, the ACLU filed this lawsuit. And of course, they took to social media to celebrate the ruling. Interestingly, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick was one of the first people I saw on social media to put something out. And he said, this story is not over, kind of giving indication that there will be responses to this ruling. So I'm sure we can expect more to come. There you go. Well, Cameron, let's stick with you. Another story, this is a ruling we touched on earlier where a judge issued a ruling that would actually ban drag shows, this time on a college campus. Tell us what happened here. Yeah, exactly. A federal judge in the northern district of Texas

has ruled that drag performances are not a category of free expression protected by the First Amendment, which will allow a ban on these types of performances to remain in effect at a Texas public university. This is West Texas A&M, while a lawsuit challenging the ban on the performances on this campus continues. The U.S. District Judge Matthew Kazmarek, he's been involved in a few different cases we've talked about. He ruled against a preliminary injunction saying that drag performances do not obviously convey or communicate a discernible, protectable message. And like we talked about, or what I mentioned earlier, this was interesting because the ruling about the First Amendment justifications from the SB 12 lawsuit that were made in this case are different than the ones

in the previous case we just talked about. The determination that there is a, they determined there is a difference between these cases, but what Kazmarek said is there are reasonable limits that are protected under the First Amendment. He argued is the movement from freedom of thought to speech to conduct. So with two seemingly related lawsuits with different opinions being ruled by these judges, it will set up a very interesting debate going forward. There you go, Cameron. Thank you so much. Hayden, coming back to you, Governor Greg Abbott made a comment on Dana Loesch's show about a reported colony of illegal immigrants near Houston. We've seen it in the news a lot. What were the governor's comments? He addressed the reported housing development in the Houston area known as Colony Ridge that is said to be a place where illegal immigrants go to find easy housing.

There have been some allegations against the developer that I'm not going to repeat because they're strongly disputed by his attorney. But the developer, excuse me, the housing development is in the Houston area and is a cause of concern for those who believe it could be a hotbed for cartel activity because of the number of people that are there and the lack of oversight and infrastructure that is there. Governor Abbott said that it is under investigation by the Texas Environmental Quality Agency, and he has directed the state police to monitor it closely for any criminal activity. He also, though, said that he could add this issue to a special session agenda for next month after all the baseline information is collected so that the governor's office knows what can be done legally

and what needs to be changed in law so that these types of housing developments can be prevented yeah and we're nearing another special special. I mean, I cannot say my words this today. I'm just keep like mumbling. Anyway, but we're nearing another special session. And I think there are increased calls for the governor to add some sort of border security related call to the special session agenda. We'll see if that happens. But this would kind of go in tandem with that. Hayden, thank you so much. Matt, coming to you, two local elected officials in Texas were discovered to have a felony criminal backgrounds. Officials in those two very separate jurisdictions have reacted differently. You've written a story on why one official is

going to trial to be removed from office while the other has stayed in office for a year with no enforcement actions taken. Give us a rundown. That's right, Mackenzie. This has been a very interesting story to cover. In Texas, the law prohibits convicted felons from holding or entering public office. Around this time last year, officials with the Ictor County Utility District, which is a water district outside Odessa that provides water to some 5,500 customers, discovered the longtime board president, who was an elected official, Tommy Irvin, was convicted of four felony counts of dealing meth and cocaine from the mid-1970s, a long time before he was ever elected to office. Irvin claimed that he had a pardon from the governor

and pointed to language in a DPS crime record that said he had clemency. However, a thorough search of all pardon records shows he never received a pardon, never requested one, and instead, sources indicated that the term clemency was a reference to his receiving parole after serving a multi-year prison sentence. A complaint was filed with Hector County District Attorney Dusty Gallivan, and he in turn requested the Texas Rangers investigate Irvin. After four months of silence, they denied the request, simply saying that it didn't merit their involvement, and stayed short of elaborating any further as to why. Irvin offered an explanation that a box of pardons had been found in a state storage building, and that his attorney was working with the Board of Pardons and Parole to go through them, speculating that his would be found.

But that story didn't appear to hold water either. After a record request for all communications with the Board of Pardons and Paroles revealed, they hadn't been in contact regarding his records. Fast forward another six months, and Irvin remains in office, and Gallivan has not sought to enforce the law or conduct further investigation that we know of, and Irvin has still not produced a pardon. How does that case differ from the other that you found? In Kerrville, it was discovered that Kerr County Commissioner Harley David Ballew had a felony burglary conviction from around the mid-1970s. After it was discovered, the district attorney there, Stephen Harpold, requested the Texas Rangers investigate the record and investigate they did, finding that he was a convicted felon.

Harpold immediately sent a letter to Ballou demanding he resign immediately. Five days later after he didn't, Harpold made good on his threat and filed a removal lawsuit. That case will actually see a hearing this Friday, where Ballou is arguing that he received a form of deferred adjudication before that actual process was enacted in state law. He's claiming that the Tarrant County District Attorney's Office at the time had a predecessor to that called deferred sentencing, I believe, where essentially after the completion of a sentence of probation, the judge refrains from entering the final conviction, instead

dismisses the charges. Harpold contends that from their research that that isn't the case and is asking the judge to enter a order removing Ballou without having to take it to trial. What is the latest controversy in Irvin's case? ECUD buys nearly all of its water from the city of Odessa. The problem is the contracts between the city and ECUD were signed by Irvin, and the city says that under contract law, since he's a convicted felon, he doesn't have the legal capacity to enter into a contract, and therefore they are void. ECUD has pushed back on this, claiming that Irvin has been vindicated but still have not produced a pardon. Now, we reached out to the Texas Department of Public Safety multiple times to ask why the Rangers felt that it did not merit their time

when the legal status of Irvin is putting an important water contract now at risk, and they also reacted differently in the Kerrville situation, but they have not responded to our requests. There you go, Matt. Great reporting. Thank you so much. Cameron, coming back to you, a student was given an in-school suspension that has resulted in a pair of dueling lawsuits all over the hair length policy at a Houston area school. Give us the details. Yeah, a student at Barbers Hill High School was given an in-school suspension over the grooming policy where male students must have hair that will not extend below the eyebrows, below the earlobes, or below the top of a t-shirt collar. The boy's mother filed

a lawsuit claiming that the suspension is in violation of the Crown Act. And before I go into the Crown Act, some of the details in the lawsuit about the suspension, the details of it are kind of interesting. They're alleging that the student had to sit on a small stool for eight hours with the intent to cause pain to the buttocks of the child and feeding the child sandwiches like a prisoner, they said, with the intent to deny him hot food. So some interesting details in the lawsuit, but the main crux of the claims are the violation of the Crown Act. And the Crown Act is a new law that was passed this latest legislation where it is meant to create protections for people with, quote, textured hair from race-based discrimination. And interestingly, the school is arguing that the grooming policy is not in violation of the Crown Act because the new law

is specific to hairstyles and does not address specifically hair length. And so the school filed this separate lawsuit seeking guidance on this policy and its legality under this new Crown Act. And we are just waiting. These are very new lawsuits. This is a brand new story. So we haven't had any developments yet. But if new things come out, we will make sure to report on it. Absolutely.

Cameron, thank you. Bradley, long time no talk. Yes, I am returning to the podcast. That's great. A wind turbine blade dump in West Texas is the subject of new litigation. What are the details? General Electric sued Global Fiberglass Solutions in New York State, alleging fraud and deceptive practices.

GE paid GFS roughly $17 million to recycle its blades. The method that they discussed doing it in was pelletizing, which I'm not sure if it's an actual word, but basically turning the fiberglass blades into pellets. How they do that, i have no clue but um instead of doing that gfs has piled up all of the blades it is responsible for at two sites across the country including one in sweetwater texas we've seen that there are some reports about um about that dump site in the media recently. And we have in our article a satellite image of the dump site. You can see all the blades there.

Interestingly enough, the Google Maps, when Daniel and I were pulling these images, the Google Maps satellite pic does not show any blades, but the Apple Maps one does. Interesting. I don't know why that is, but yeah, that was weird. So the suit that GE filed reads, GE paid a premium to GFS because GE believed it was hiring a premier environmentally conscious corporate citizen that ultimately would recycle the blades. It continued. GE learned that GFS merely stockpiled the blades it continued ge learned that gfs merely

stockpiled the blades it obtained from ge's customer sites at various locations where they simply sat for years without gfs taking any steps to recycle them this was like i said filed in new york state and the gfs has said in other reports that they intend on recycling these blades and especially doing so by mid-2024. If that happens, I don't know. We haven't seen any progress so far, but they have said that they're working on it basically. Basically, they have not had the capability to recycle all these blades yet,

even though they said they did to GE when they first contracted with them. So we'll see where that goes. But the people out in Sweetwater are growing very irritated with this eyesore. There you go. Well, thank you, Bradley. Hayden, you've been writing about a crazy story in North Texas for several years now about bribes, housing developments, and an extramarital affair. What is the latest in the downfall of Mayor Laura Maska? The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an appeal by Laura and Mark Jordan after they were convicted in 2021 of bribery and tax fraud, in addition to

conspiracy charges related to Laura Jordan's time as mayor. When Laura Jordan was elected mayor, she was Laura Mazka, and she won on a platform of avoiding zoning regulations that would provide for the construction of apartment complexes near residential areas. This is a quality of life issue that I think comes up a lot in suburban areas. People want to keep residential areas and high traffic areas partitioned, and she ran on a platform of supporting that. Mark Jordan was a real estate developer and to my knowledge he still is. He wanted to create a project near highway 75 to construct apartment complexes near a residential area called the Prairie Creek neighborhood and the Prairie Creek residents did not want this to happen. They lobbied against Mayor Mazka doing this, but Mark Jordan, according to prosecutors, offered Laura Mazka all kinds of

lavish trips and cash payments in the amount of tens of thousands of dollars. Ultimately, Laura Mazka became Laura Jordan after she married Mark Jordan in 2017 at the advice of their attorneys and after they had carried on an extramarital affair and the two were convicted in a second trial in 2021 of fraud counts. And despite the fact that she appealed and he appealed as well and said that the federal government did not prove a quid pro quo, the Fifth Circuit in late August rejected their appeal and they are now still facing prison sentences of six years each, which were handed down in August of last year. So does this mean that the Jordans are finally going to prison? Well, they could go to prison. They had a report date after they were originally sentenced,

and that report date was rescinded after they posted the appeal. but I checked the Bureau of Prisons website, and it appears that they are not in custody. They could seek a rehearing, and the federal court records indicate that they could be doing that. So it's possible that if they're granted a rehearing that they will not proceed to go to prison at this time. But if that is denied, eventually, they will be given a report date and they will have to serve their prison sentences. There you go. Hayden, thank you so much for your coverage. Matt, coming to you, a new Texas law prohibits those seeking to contract with the state, including banks, from discriminating against the firearms industry. Now, one gunmaker says they were

discriminated against by a bank. Give us those details. The gun manufacturer Ruger wrote a letter to Texas lawmakers this past week alleging that they were discriminated against by Wells Fargo. In the letter, they say Wells Fargo refused to extend them credit nor give them a new credit line, which they say is a part of an increasing effort to prevent the firearms industry from accessing basic financial services. The law, which was authored by Senator Charles Shortner, requires banks to submit a disclosure statement verifying that they are in compliance with the discrimination law before they can enter into a contract with the state or an entity of the state. When Ruger asked the Texas Attorney General's Office to investigate their disclosure and their claim that they were in compliance, sharing their own account of how they say they were discriminated against, the Attorney General claimed that, or the Attorney General's Office,

I should say, claimed they found no indication of discrimination in their investigation. Now, the purpose of the letter from Ruger this past week was to ask lawmakers to investigate why the Attorney General's office found no discrimination in their investigation of Wells Fargo. Now, we'll watch to see if there are any reactions from this request by either Wells Fargo, the Texas Attorney General's office, or lawmakers, but it's worth mentioning that the legislature is presently out of session, and at least for the next week or two before Governor Greg Abbott is expected to call the special session in October. There you go, Matt. Thank you so much. Cameron, coming to you, Texas A&M has released new guidelines for how they will handle the issue of DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion on their

campuses. Tell us some of the details of those policies. That's right. Yes, Texas A&M continues to find itself in the news because these guidelines have not received a favorable response. I detail in the piece some of the controversies that Texas A&M has found itself in. Matt did some reporting on their journalism program and that botched hire they had. I did a follow-up on some released emails. We detail all that in this piece as well. But, for example, these guidelines say A&M staff can send recruitment staff to events geared towards recruiting underserved racial or ethnic groups and also

train recruitment staff on, quote, cultural competence. Also, A&M will allow professors to include DEI statements on syllabus, but only if it does not indicate an intention to treat students differently or in a preferential manner. And so some of the backlash to these guidelines came specifically from the Texas Public Policy Foundation and one of their senior fellows, Sherry Sylvester. She released a video saying the new guidelines fly in the face of what the law prohibits and segregated graduations will still be allowed to continue at A&M under this new guidance. So despite Texas A&M trying to do something in terms of providing information, it still, to some, does not hold up to the muster of what the law is going to demand with the new DEI ban. So what we're seeing, we'll see what Texas

A&M does, but a lot of different universities have attempted to make some changes on their campuses. A&M, just the latest. There you go, Cameron. thank you so much. Bradley, I want to end with a piece that you published Thursday morning detailing the last time that there was a parliamentary challenge and Texas House members tried to oust their speaker on the floor of the House. We are talking about this just because we've seen since the impeachment trial, you know, calls for Representative John Smithy to run for speaker from some more conservative House members, Freedom Caucus or Freedom Caucus adjacent folks kind of making those calls. So walk us through your piece and give us some background. called for Phelan to be replaced were Reps Tony Tenderholtz, who of course ran against Phelan last time at the beginning of this session, this previous session, Steve Toth, who just left the Freedom Caucus over the impeachment issue, and then Brian Harrison,

who's still in the Freedom Caucus, all have asked Phelan to be replaced in some form or fashion. Also, the Texas GOP State Republican Executive Committee passed a resolution over the weekend calling for Phelan to resign or for members to vacate the chair. Motion to vacate the chair is a privilege motion, meaning it must be recognized and it doesn't need nine additional members to sign on like a motion to challenge the ruling of a chair all very in the weeds parliamentary um rules but it brought up the the last time this was tried on the house floor it was when tom craddock was speaker back in 2007 um there was a lot of a lot of frustration with a portion of the House chamber during his last term as Speaker. There was an attempt on one of the last few days of, and I spell all this out in the article,

but there's an attempt to raise a motion to vacate the chair, and Craddock just refused to recognize it and basically said you are not recognized for that motion therefore you cannot make it and that was his way of preventing that from happening would he have actually been ousted if a vote happened not sure but they don't want to even get to that point yeah because then it's just all up in the air who knows what happened especially in the house yeah it's like herding cats out there um but this confrontation laid the groundwork for speaker joe strauss along with about a dozen other republicans and if i recall correctly almost the entirety of the democratic caucus to make strauss the speaker who would then be speaker for the next almost decade, not quite. And so I go into more detail on things that were said

on the floor at the time. State Rep Jim Dunham was one of the more vocal members trying to raise this motion. But it is interesting context for something that could potentially happen when the body reconvenes in a couple weeks for this education special session. Do one of these three members go up and make a motion to vacate the chair? And then will we have a vote? Does the speaker find a way to avoid having that like craddock did the rules after craddock did this were changed to prevent that from happening though also the motion to overturn the speaker's decision to challenge the ruling of the speaker now requires 75 seconds,

which is itself a majority. So that itself, if that were to happen, would be the referendum on the speakership. So regardless, who knows what's going to happen, but it is interesting to see history not repeating itself, but rhyming, as it were were as it were as it were lord in heaven okay tweetery section let's move on to this portion brad thanks for your background

of that story um matt why don't we go ahead and start with you what did you find notable this week well i saw a tweet from the texas association ofies that I thought was just a good little civic reminder. And that is that the deadline to register to vote in the November 7th election, yes, we have an election this year. I think it's easy to forget. In addition to the big ones next year, but this one kind of gets overshadowed by all the big stuff next year. But it's still very important. There's 14 proposed amendments to the Texas Constitution that we Texans are going to be voting on. So if you want to have a say and a part in crafting an actual constitution, you have to be registered to vote by October 10th.

So you still have some days left. Quick, easy, painless, all that good stuff. But yeah, it'll be coming up pretty quick. October 10th is the deadline and November 7th is the election. Wow. There you go. Really is coming up. And soon enough we'll be in primary season,

which seems to already be starting in a lot of ways. Pretty much, yeah. Yeah, it already is. Well, thank you, Matthew. Let's see here. Let's go to Cameron. Cameron, where do we go next? Okay.

Well, the Jetsons promised us flying cars in the future. Did they? Yeah, of course. Did they look at the camera and say, we promise you flying cars? Well, when you're a young kid watching that, you think the future is going to be this tech utopia and what we get instead are self-driving cars

causing traffic jams in Houston. That's what I came across this week. Apparently there is a bunch of self-driving cars and they just blocked an intersection in Houston. And so there is a huge line of cars lined up behind these self-driving cars that were just stopped in the middle of this intersection. Police are walking up to the car, these self-driving cars. There's no one sitting in the front seat. The pictures are in this article. There's no one in the front seat.

So the police are tapping on the glass on the window saying, you have to move. You have to move. And the people in the back are just putting their hands up like, I can't do anything. I'm not driving. That's crazy. Oh, my gosh. And I guess this was like some beta tests before they do a full rollout. But, you know, I think it's interesting self-driving cars. We know Elon's trying to do that with his Tesla. And a lot of the Teslas, they have the self-driving technology, but you have to

have the driver sitting in the front seat with their hand on the wheel. But, yeah, I just thought this was funny because, you know, as much dystopia people talk about with technology, where we're at right now, like all the bad things, we are years away from things being fully implemented because still we can't have self-driving cars operate normally in an intersection they just stop so um so we're not close to blade runner we're not as many sci-fi novels and tv shows they put out we it seems like we're very far away well and we're seeing more and more self-driving cars in Austin, too. And I feel like I've seen tweets this week about self-driving cars in Austin having similar problems.

Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. I think the technology is really, really cool. Because I've ridden in a Tesla and it shows like when you're driving and it shows like the cars driving by and the stoplights changing. And it's actually really cool when you're riding in a Tesla and it's on the self-driving mode and you can see the cameras and stuff. But to have it fully autonomous where you don't have to worry about it, we're very far away. Yeah. And there is, even with Teslaslas even if it is self-driving there

is some solace i feel with somebody sitting in the front seat so something goes wrong i love the pictures though that you come across on twitter and someone will snap a photo where it looks like the person's sleeping behind the tesla they're just like on their phone with their knees up to their chest reading a book totally to be fair i've seen people driving exactly like that but in a normal car yeah yeah i've seen somebody with their like leg out the window like up on the on the rear view or the side mirrors yeah pretty wild well cameron thank you yeah um we have two gun tweets that we're going to address here so hay, why don't we go ahead and start with your tweetery from this week? of a gun dealer here in Austin who is suing the ATF over its alleged overzealous interpretation of the 1968 Gun Control Act. I don't know a lot about this lawsuit, but evidently a federal judge

recently dismissed or denied a motion to dismiss and TPPF was excited about that. And they put out a news release about that this morning. Wow. Well, there you go. So you're saying the DOJ sought to dismiss the case and the judge— okay, so that's a victory for them then. Oh, there you go. Brad, what about you? Well, I wasn't paying attention at the moment when Matt was talking about the Ruger thing, so I wanted to add some extra context. The law that is discussed in this is an esg focused law um it was one of

two esg laws in 2021 past the other one was sp-13 that i've talked about a lot with the fossil fuel boycotters this was the other one um and uh it's you know something that it was that along with the with sp-13 were some of the first laws in the nation to attack this issue. So I also believe, if I understand correctly, the investigation of the complaint against Wells Fargo predated this letter, but it hasn't gone swimmingly for Ruger. And so now they're appealing to the legislature to look into it more. Use their investigatory power, I guess, through committees, so to speak. That's what I'm guessing is what they're asking.

You know, haul people in for questioning. The exact bill that they're citing, that they're saying that Wells Fargo violated was SB 19 passed in 2021 in the 87th legislature, which the caption was relating to prohibited contracts with companies that discriminate against the firearm or ammunition industries. Yeah. That would fall under the S in ESG, social.

Oh. Guns are social? It's considered a social S in ESG, social. Oh. Guns are social? It's considered a social issue under ESG. I do like going shooting with friends, so it is social. It's a social activity. And my friends love to come to my place to go deer hunting, so I guess that is social. You've never invited us. Oh, you never asked?

Come on. Well, you said you invite them so mckenzie get your gun okay well i just might have to it was actually kind of the first front that we saw on the esg stuff of this moving cap trying to move capital away from gun manufacturers and that's what ruger's alleging here and then it kind of transitioned into these environmental policies so got it do you have another tweet bradley i see i can if you want me to talk about i would like you to briefly talk about it so the austin american statesman ran an article today or recently the last couple days

that um and i'll credit cameron he actually found it i think uh the social media online the social media text is huddle mayor faces calls to resign after accepting gifts that critics say represents racism well this gift is a banana holder you know like you put a bunch of bananas on a hook. Like your counter? Yeah. And the banana holder has a monkey on it. Like the cutest little cartoon monkey. Yeah, it looks like Curious George. Yeah. And this, someone felt the need to write this article.

I will say, though, I had a realization after seeing the picture that Brad tweeted out of the banana monkey holder. Yes. And that is that our office snacks are very unhealthy options. Yeah, it's true. We could probably go with some fruit. Some fruit. More healthy options. It's true.

It's true. Yeah. So I just couldn't believe that. First of all, that this is a controversy. Second of all, that a news outlet would choose to cover this. I just thought the, you know, I was thinking it was going to be bad. Like something that actually might have had some racial overtones or something. But please, listeners, go to Brad's Twitter and look at the tweet with the picture. It's a little curious George monkey.

And it's like a banana hook. There's nothing nefarious about it. It was hilarious. Gosh, if that Hutto mayor resigns over this yeah they're calling for him to resign and i think you said the the person who gave it to him just thought it was yeah she was cute and well she the person who gave it to it was at some city council meeting and they were saying that the banana i feel like i'm the monkey climbing the ladder trying to get to the bananas which represent everything i care about you know and i'm like okay sure you're gonna get some funny stuff at city council meetings and

yeah local politics local politics it is like local politics in a nutshell yes my gosh well i'm going to do this i think it's the first time i've ever. My gosh. Well, I'm going to do this. I think it's the first time I've ever done this for my Twitter. I'm going to cite myself. I very rarely tweet, too. I'm not a big tweeter. I retweet y'all a lot, but I very rarely tweet. My tweet is this giant piece of hail that fell from the sky.

That's like the size of a tennis ball. This happened in Austin this week. It was wild. Was it your house or someone else? No, it's my house. Oh my gosh. It's my hand. I'm holding it.

We got it from our yard. And hail was still coming down when we got this. My husband ran out there with an umbrella so he wouldn't get pounded across the head with something. But it was wild. We had I mean, there was definitely a hailstorm in Austin, but it only hit parts of the city. And at our house, we had like tennis ball sized hail that came down. It was like every 20th piece of hail that came down was that sized. And it was crazy. It sounded like we were under attack, like having that sized and it was crazy it sounded like we were under attack like having that sized solid object hit your roof over and over and over again yeah but i the day after i was driving in i saw a ton of windshields just broken yeah on the freeway i saw some pictures of the softball sized

hail but they had like spikes on them or something oh my gosh yeah it was crazy like i don't know how that formed in the sky looked like some medieval weapon or well a friend of mine in the texas world is big into weather and he was saying which i don't understand this and this might be an elementary uh weather understanding that I just do not have. But it was 100 degrees and sunny that day, which he said can contribute to incredibly large hail, which I don't really know how or why, but it was wild. Did y'all have any damage? My car already has hail damage. So but the other car was in the garage. We have a one car garage, so we only have so much space to stick a car in. So the other car, the new car, was safe.

I have an incredible hailstorm story. Oh, gosh. It's when I lived in Odessa. Okay. I'm driving from Midland to Odessa, and there's this massive just thunderstorm front, and there's just this perfectly line of clouds and it's coming my way and I can see this huge hailstorm coming down and it's incredible and I could see this overpass down the road just a little ways and so I floored it and got underneath the overpass just

the moment this massive most incredible hailstorm I've ever seen goes goes by and i come out fine but as i'm driving along all the cars it looked like a war zone like there were holes cleaned through some of these cars and i mean just wreckage and disaster everywhere i mean whole parking lots full of cars just absolutely trash well you think you think about dealerships, like these car, like these lots with literal just full of brand new cars. Yeah. That's just crazy. There was a movie theater on the left as you come into town, you know, just parking lot

full of cars. And I mean, it literally like looked like somebody took a machine gun and shot up all those cars. I mean, it was incredible. Like if you'd have been inside it and one of those come through, like, I don't know how people didn't die. I don't remember hearing of anybody dying, but I got really lucky. And I mean, I beat it. It was like an Indiana Jones moment. Oh my gosh. That's so scary. Yeah. It comes fast. You can get caught on the road and it's scary, but I think, thankfully we were safe. I don't know if everyone in Austin was safe,

but it was a wild, you didn't have any at your place, right, Brad? It is weird. Every time, almost every time it rains in Austin, where I live in Del Valle, absolutely nothing. We get nothing. Weird. Rain, hail, anything. We get nothing. Well, everything does tend to come from the hill country and go a little bit northwest. I don't really know why, but it seems to do that.

You must just be right out of the trajectory well gentlemen thank you folks thank you so much for listening to us blather especially on today's episode and we will 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 the texan.s. 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.