The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - September 3, 2021

Episode Date: September 3, 2021

This week on The Texan’s “Weekly Roundup,” the team talks through new bills that went into effect in Texas this week, election reform finally making its way to the governor’s desk, what to expect during the final days of the second special session, the U.S. Supreme Court allowing implementation of the Heartbeat bill, efforts to strip Democrats of their leadership positions after they fled the state, a new Democrat-led redistricting lawsuit, school districts taking new approaches to mask mandates, TxDOT parting ways with a vendor after millions of dollars of overcharges were billed to customers, and Bexar County’s ongoing battle with the state over mask requirements.

Happy Friday, folks. Mackenzie Taylor here on the Texans Weekly Roundup podcast. Today, our team talks through new bills that became effective in Texas this week. Election reform finally making its way to the governor's desk. What to expect during the final days of the second special session. The U.S. Supreme Court allowing implementation of the heartbeat bill. Efforts to strip Democrats of their leadership positions after they fled the state, a new Democrat-led redistricting lawsuit, the results of the latest special session, school districts taking new approaches to mask mandates, TxDOT parting ways with a vendor after millions of dollars of overcharges were billed to customers, and Bexar County's ongoing battle with the state over mask requirements. Thanks for listening and have a wonderful Labor Day weekend. Howdy folks, Mackenzie Taylor here with Brad Johnson,

Daniel Friend, Hayden Sparks, and Isaiah Mitchell. We have all sorts of topics to get into this week. A lot is happening in Texas and we're going to go ahead and start right off the bat with Hayden and Isaiah to chat with them about 10 bills that became law this week. Boys, y'all wrote a piece together, taking a look at the September 1 effective date for a lot of these bills that were passed by Texas legislators during the regular session. So walk us through some of these proposals and what they do and why they're important. Well, just for some background, the Texas Constitution requires that bills take effect 90 days after the legislative session,

or at least 90 days after. So September 1 usually falls 90 days and some change after the regular legislative session and the years that lawmakers meet. So that's why September 1 is a significant date. Other laws take effect immediately after they are signed by the governor because they receive a two-thirds majority vote in each house. But most of these laws did not, so they take effect on Wednesday of this week. And there are lots of hot-button issues, one of which is constitutional carry. Our very own Daniel Friend has covered that extensively. But now in the state of Texas, you do not have to have a permit to carry a handgun on your person. And of course,

there are still some exceptions to that. Like you can't carry it in some gun-free zones like courthouses and school zones as well. You also can't carry when you're intoxicated off of your own property. So there are still some exceptions, but that was a bipartisan law that was passed and that took effect on Wednesday. Texas becomes the 20th state to legalize permitless carrying firearms. Then you also have resigned to run legislation. It's more of a political landscape bill that requires that political parties, that if someone wants to run for a statewide office and they are an office holder in a state political party, they have to resign

that position before they run. And the background of that is that legislation was enacted by the legislature just a few days before Allen West, who was the Republican Party of Texas chairman at the time, announced his resignation, and then a month later announced his campaign for governor. So that's the resign to run bill. And then Brad has reported on this extensively, the police defunding restrictions. The legislature put some policies in place that apply to larger cities and is meant to deter them from what has become known as defunding police departments or redirecting funds from public safety to other projects within the city. So cities that substantially remove funds from their budgets could face a

property tax freeze in the following fiscal year, and they could also face, I believe it's a 10-year ban on annexation. So those deterrents will be in place for cities who defund their police. And then the Star-Spangled Banner Act, which came into being after it was rumored and then later confirmed that the Dallas Mavericks have stopped playing the national anthem before their games. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick made it a priority to advance a bill that prohibited state contracts or any other taxpayer funding for sports teams in the state of Texas unless they provide written verification that they are going to play the national anthem for people to sing prior to games. And he touted that as a bill that was meant to advance patriotism

and to preserve the time-honored tradition of singing the national anthem before sports. And so those are just a few things that I covered in this piece. And then Isaiah, if you want to go over some of those others. Yeah, sure. So con carry is a big deal, obviously in Texas. I feel like if that's the boys are back in town, then the suppressor bill is like vagabonds of the Western world. The Thin Lizzy joke. Forget about it.

Anyway, so the legislature passed a bill that could lead to a pretty, probably the first major legal challenge to the NFA out of Texas, maybe since it was passed in 34. I don't know. That's a long legal claim, but basically the NFA, the National Firearms Act, has a lot of regulations for dealing and buying suppressors or silencers for firearms. And those include a $200 tax stamp and a registration process that, if you're not registering with a trust, can take your fingerprints and some other data. And the legislature passed a bill that exempts suppressors that are made in Texas from these requirements. And so it'll be cheaper and a less burdensome process to buy a suppressor if it's made in Texas. Daniel actually, again, I guess our gun guru, turned me on to some interesting legal history from Kansas, which apparently passed a similar law.

And after it was passed, the news was out in Kansas and everything. And there were just a couple of regular citizens that tried to buy a suppressor. And now they've got felony charges because the government or the federal government said that they wouldn't acknowledge the law. The ATF has done the same thing in Texas and warned Texas dealers that federal law still applies. But the first step in the Texas bill is for dealers to approach the attorney general and ask him to get a declaratory judgment that the law is constitutional. And so as of yesterday, that can start happening, which would be an interesting legal challenge. The Heartbeat

Act to bury the lead also took effect yesterday. Legally, that's another big deal constitutionally. We'll talk in a little bit how it reached the Supreme Court, and that made it the first abortion-related challenge to Roe v. Wade since Justice Ginsburg died. So there's just a lot of history being made there, and we'll describe it in more detail in a little bit. The Critical Race Theory Bill and its original passage, HB 3979, took effect today. That's one that Republicans in the legislature have been trying to clean up by their standards in the two special sessions that have followed. But HB 3979 is state law and it took effect today. And we've described that one ad nauseum, so I won't go into detail about it. Another interesting bill, if you'll recall during the Trump administration, he issued a regulatory rule regarding price transparency for hospitals. And the legislature passed a Senate bill that codifies that in statute.

So under the law, hospitals must maintain a list of all standard charges and make them easily accessible to the public and free of charge to access. So that's a new law that also took effect yesterday. Well, thank you both so much for that. And we'll continue to monitor any other bills that become law. The enacting dates, the effective dates are just like Hayden mentioned, an interesting constitutional just tenet. So thank you boys for that. Daniel, we're going to come to you now. The major election reform bill that Democrats had, you know, incredible objection to throughout this whole process was the, you know, the crux of why they left the state and broke quorum, saw its final votes in the legislature this week. So tell

us a little bit about what that was like. Yes. So Senate Bill 1 passed both the House and Senate this week. It was surprisingly anticlimactic. There were no additional walkouts from Democrats in the House. Well, there were a bunch of members who did not show up, but there was enough for a quorum. And there was also no filibuster in the Senate. In fact, they didn't even talk nearly as long as they did in the regular session when it was at a similar stage. So Senate Bill 1, the election bill has gone through. It passed both chambers. There was a conference committee report, which is what happens when the two chambers don't agree on the bill that they passed. And so they work out the differences.

The difference between the version that came out of the House and the conference committee report that was approved by both chambers was not terribly big. There was one amendment that was added by the House that was supposed to help, that the House intended to help people who accidentally don't realize that they're not legally allowed to vote and they go and vote, not be penalized for that accident.

But the Senate and some people were concerned that that would allow illegal immigrants to vote or non-American citizens to vote. And so that's why they decided to go ahead and cut that amendment out of process through the conference committee report. After that happened, then both chambers voted on the conference committee report and passed that out. Tell us when the law will go into effect and what some of the provisions are so after governor abbott signs it which he has indicated that he will it will go into effect about three months after the last day of the special legislative session um so since the last day of this special session is just around the corner on i believe sunday september 5th uh then

that puts the enactment date of the date that it'll go into effect in kind of early December. Now, of course, that's not right around the corner, not like immediately, but it is long before any big elections are happening. So that will give some time for that to go into effect. Some of the provisions included in the legislation is it's pretty big bill, about 75 pages. And some of it increases legal protections for poll watchers, which also adds a new training requirements for them to be certified by the Secretary of State and also requires them to take an oath saying that they won't disrupt the process. It also adds voter ID for mail ballot applications. Voter ID is already required. Now, when you go to vote at the polls, this just adds that if you're voting by mail as well.

There are some provisions in here to clamp down on vote harvesting. And there's also some new regulations for voting assistance. Now, talk to us a little bit about the partisan political fights we've seen throughout this entire process. This has been very much a team red and team blue issue. What's next in that regard? Are Democrats going to give up now that it's made its way to the governor's desk?

So I expect it will still be a partisan fight. We've already seen some threats from lawmakers. I believe Trey Martinez Fisher, a Democrat representative in the House, has essentially said, you know, this is going to be going to the courts next. There are going to, there are sure to be legal challenges. I'm sure there were actually even some legal challenges that we saw be brought against some other election bills that were actually passed during the regular session earlier this year, which I think are still lingering in the courts. And so I'm sure this will be the same boat where Democrats who are upset with this legislation will try and push back against it. But at the same time, I think it's also fair to say that a lot of the partisan fighting that we saw surrounding this whole

debacle, this whole bill, with Democrats walking out of the the house and you have all these lawsuits going back and forth. And with all that, I think you'll see a lot of shift away from the election bill and more as we turn toward redistricting, which is another big partisan fight. And so, you know, there's already been a lawsuit filed that we'll talk about a little bit later here, but I'm sure, you know, the election bill, that fight is still going to be there, probably in the courts. But we're going to see a little bit more fighting shift towards other topics like redistricting. Well, thank you for that, Daniel. Brad, let's continue on this topic of special session, but let's zoom out a little bit. Now, this special session is 30 days long, just like every other. And the legislature must finish up its business by this Sunday night before that clock expires. Talk to us about which of the priorities of the agenda items on the governor's proclamation for this second special session.

And of them, you know, obviously, number one is election reform that Daniel just talked about. Probably Governor Abbott's second highest priority bill is bail reform. And that has passed and likely Abbott will sign that. I don't see why he wouldn't. But then there's various other ones that are headed to his desk. They are a slate of property tax bills. They give a couple minor property tax reforms. For example, one is a homestead exemption that can now be used in the first year that a homeowner purchases their property.

Then we've got the $1.8 billion in border security funding, restrictions on the ability to mail abortion-related drugs, a 13th check for retired teachers, new 22 primary election dates, education, virtual learning. And those are just the main ones that have already passed Muster and are headed to his desk. I assume there's various other smaller level bills that apply or pertain to these larger topics that we'll see pass as well, but those are the main ones. Now, we only have a few days left, like we already talked about. Well, what other items are left on the table? Yeah, so a few big ones. The biggest, I would say,

is that's not really a policy-related bill. It's the legislative funding. That must pass the Senate. They've kind of been holding that up as like something over the head of the House to get them to pass the various bills that, you know, the Senate and Governor Abbott would like them to. One other one that's more obscure, but was specifically on the governor's call, disposal of radioactive waste. I have a piece in the works on that. We'll see when it goes up, but it it goes into detail about what this issue is. And it's actually, you know,

for those interested in that kind of thing, it's pretty fascinating, but it is a more obscure item for those that have to pass the house. We've got the critical race theory bill, which I believe is on the House floor today being Thursday. And I think that'll be the second reading, the first official vote in the House on it. That definitely will have to make its way through. Then we have the transgender sports bill that would require athletes to compete in the gender of their biological sex. And that actually probably died earlier this week in the House Committee on Public Education when Chairman

Harold Dutton, a Democrat, did not advance it along with the critical race theory bill. So that will not be on the floor right now, and it will likely have to wait until a third special session. I should have included that in the likely dead category. But then we've got, along with likely dead, we've got vaccine mandate prohibition. I have not seen any movement on either of these proposals. It's possible that they're just going to wait until the next session. But the governor added that late onto this session's call. Then we have the restriction on local government employment regulations. And that was kind of a high profile dust up on the House floor on Wednesday. I've got a piece on that in the works. And

I talked about it on Twitter a lot. So if you're interested in seeing what went down with that, it again failed on the House floor and this time from a point of order by Representative Joe Moody. And that will likely have to be brought back up in the third special session. Which is just around the corner. And we'll be waiting for that as well. Thank you, Brad, for detailing that for us. Isaiah, we're going to come back to a very important Supreme Court movement this week that has a lot of people talking. And you mentioned it earlier, but let's get back to the heartbeat bill.

Remind us first how the heartbeat bill works. So we've described it a lot. But again, the general idea is that it bans abortions once cardiac activity can be detected, which usually develops around six weeks into a typical pregnancy. And the main structure of the law's enforcement means that the government or officials of the government or any branch of the government at all, those are all prohibited entirely from enforcing it. So the government cannot enforce the law. And violations include not only performing or inducing an abortion, but also aiding or abetting an abortion that takes place after cardiac activity can be detected. So that's the general skeleton of the law. And in these claims, plaintiffs that are suing violators of the law, if they prevail, can be awarded damages not less than $10,000. So it's intentionally expensive because this is how the law is enforced.

Yeah, it's a very unique enforcement. Now, the Supreme Court decision is responding to a lawsuit on the part of several abortion facilities and counselors. But talk to us about how the lawsuit led to this point. So Whole Woman's Health and Planned Parenthood are probably going to be the most recognizable names among the many plaintiffs that joined in this putative class action lawsuit. And because of the way that the law is built, the chassis of the law, they couldn't just sue the state of Texas or a state agency as they've done in, say, Holman's Health versus Hellerstedt. So in this case, they attempted to certify a class, a defendant class of every state judge in Texas, every state clerk in Texas, in addition to suing all the state agencies that regulate employees of these abortion facilities. And they also sued one lone citizen defendant,

Markley Dixon, who is most prominently known for pioneering the sanctuary cities for the unborn ordinances in Lubbock and elsewhere. But in this case, was tagged as a defendant because they believed he could credibly sue them for performing abortions, post-heartbeat abortions under the law. So it's a weird lawsuit. And it was filed in federal court. And initially, that was aimed at a hearing for preliminary injunction that was going to happen on August 30th. And after the judge denied motions to dismiss by the defendants, then the defendants appealed to the Fifth Circuit, and the hearing of the preliminary injunction was canceled. So between the 30th and two days after that, the first of this month of the law took effect, plaintiffs were in kind of a mad scramble to find some way to get an injunction to stop this law. And so with that, they made an emergency petition to the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Supreme Court just denied it in a 5-4 decision.

Tell us a little bit more about the reasoning for the Supreme Court's decision. Well, again, it all goes back to the way the law works and the way that it prohibits the government from enforcing it. Under Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which is obviously in the jurisprudence after Roe v. Wade, governments cannot constitutionally, under constitutional precedent from the Supreme Court, create an undue burden where the government is not enforcing it. And also the same reason why the mother herself who seeks an abortion cannot be sued under the private enforcement suits. So because of that, because of that structure of the law, now I'll just read you a little sentence from the Supreme Court's collected opinion. Federal courts enjoy the power to enjoin individuals tasked with enforcing laws, not the laws themselves. The state has represented that neither it nor its executive employees possess the authority to enforce the Texas law, either directly or indirectly. So whatever injuries the plaintiffs in this case, the abortion providers, are claiming that they will suffer or

have suffered, they strictly speaking are not coming from the state. And so, in that case, there's not really a controversy between the plaintiffs and the defendant state agencies that the Supreme Court can intervene in. Well, Isaiah, thank you for covering that for us. We'll certainly be, you know, I think it's been arguably one of the biggest stories this week is this Supreme Court decision. And folks on the left have a lot to say and are very, very opposed to this. And yeah, the vitriol and the anger from a lot of those on the left is very apparent. And those on the right are celebrating it and very excited. So very interesting to see those kind of partisan lines drawn so blatantly, even in just the public eye.

But thank you for covering that for us and breaking that down. Very unique all around circumstances. Hayden, we're going to come to you now. Let's talk about social media censorship. That bill has made its way through the legislature in one way or another. Now talk to us about whether this was a party line vote, if there was bipartisan support or opposition. How did this break down? Well, out of the House, the bill passed 77 with 77 ayes, which is, of course, there were only about, I think it was 49 nays. So that's a slimmer than usual margin, but it's primarily because a lot of

Democrats aren't there because they're protesting the election bill that Daniel was discussing. So the vote was narrower than usual also because there were Republicans who were in opposition to this legislation. And in the Senate, the vote was 17 to 14, which is also a narrower than usual margin for a GOP priority item. So the Senate added one amendment that I am receiving word that was just approved by the House as well, that significantly whittled down the definition of censorship. Sorry, let me back up just a little bit. The bill would prohibit social media companies from censoring the content of its users based off of their viewpoints. And it would prevent social media companies from essentially canceling people for having views that don't align with the company.

But the arguments for and against came down to whether or not this is a line that social media companies should not be allowed to cross. If social media companies are going to put themselves out there as a forum for a debate, as a place to share content, then they cannot then editorialize on the content that is shared. And the First Amendment rights of their users should be prioritized as the arguments in favor. The arguments opposed from Democrats primarily concerned what they call misinformation. In other words, material that they would consider to be insignificant or, excuse me, inconsistent with current science should be allowed to conduct their business as they choose, and it would be improper for the government to interfere with that. In the end, though, the supporters of the bill within the Republican Party were able to get the votes necessary to push it through, but the opposition was led primarily on the Republican side by Representative Giovanni

Capriglione, who spoke against the bill on the House floor. And then I believe Senator Kel Seliger was the only no vote on the Republican side in the Senate. Now, just to refresh our memories, talk to us about basically what the bill would do. Well, it applies to social media companies with more than 50 million users. It requires a biannual transparency report on the part of social media companies of that size. It also requires that there be a structured appeal system when content is removed. So the definition of censorship in the bill as of now is to block, ban, remove, de-platform, de-monetize, de-boost, restrict, deny equal access or visibility to,

or otherwise discriminate against expression. So social media companies would still be allowed to remove things that run afoul of violent content rules or threatening violence, things like that, pornographic content, anything that would otherwise be prohibited. But they cannot restrict the content of their users based on their viewpoints per that definition. And it uses existing legal infrastructure to enforce it. There was a similar law in Florida that was ruled unconstitutional, but that law had a lot of bells and whistles that this social media censorship bill does not have. I think Representative Kaine, who introduced the bill, says it exempted Disney, and our bill in Texas has no such exemption.

It also does not include some of the exorbitant fines that the Florida law that was signed by Governor Ron DeSantis included. So ours is considerably different. The author, Chairman Kaine, said that it was written specifically with the Florida case in mind to reduce the chances of it being stricken by a federal court. It's always interesting to see how different states approach the same issue, particularly in Texas, as a lot of what happens here in the legislature bleeds into other states. So, Hayden, thank you for covering that for us. Bradley, we're going to talk about quorum breaker chairmanships now. So now that the special session is winding down, the window during which members can be stripped of committee chairmanship positions, any sort of leadership positions in the House after fleeing to D.C. is closing, right? That window's closing.

Talk to us about the latest development in this debate. Yeah, it's certainly closing from a real politic perspective. Like, you know, the amount of time that they have to levy these punishments is rapidly waning just because eventually they're going to move on to other things. And so this week we saw quite a bit of of fervor dusted up over this. Specifically, there are two resolutions on the table for some set of punishments that would punish quorum breaking. The first one filed was H.R. 72 by Representative Cody Vassut. That has both proactive as in preventative measures for down the road aspects as well as retro Darby that is limited only to future quorum breaks. It's meant to prevent the same thing happening down the road. Both of them deal with, in some way, with stripping committee chairmanships, and we've seen

a lot of discussion on this. Like I said, Vesuvius hasn't really moved. Darby's, however, did have a hearing in House administration. I don't think it's moved beyond that, at least last I checked. But that has moved further than Vassoult's version. of two strategies here. And we'll see, clearly there's one that is more preferred by House leadership, at least at the moment. In these last few days, we'll see if any movement happens with one or the other. But right now, the political power behind that is shrinking. Now, talk to us about the pressure and the conversation that has surrounded this issue. Where has that stemmed from? How much conversation has there been? How public has the debate been for those who have not been following? It's become very public recently, especially recently. Now, back when I, during the quorum break, I did a story. I spoke to a couple of members and they told me that most members of the House GOP caucus are in favor of punishing the committee chairs, the Democratic committee chairs in the House that broke quorum now. And so that was only a few weeks ago.

I would find it hard to believe that that needle has moved much. But right now, I think there are 13 roughly committee chairs that are Democrats in the House, and 10 of those were part of the original quorum break. And so those would be the ones that are up for punishment on this in this respect. And so we also saw the Texas GOP and its new chair, Matt Rinaldi, become very outspoken about this. He has harped on this multiple times, and he joined a press conference this week with Representative Vesute alongside much of the rest of the House Freedom Caucus and other conservative members and a few other just more general Republicans joined as well. And so he joined them and tried to rally the troops behind this. It doesn't seem that much has been done or much has come of that, you know, a few days later. But, you know, there's a few days left in session, so it's possible. One other thing of

real note is that it's not just the conservatives that are behind this. Of course, the conservatives have generally been behind not appointing Democrats to committee chairmanships in the first place, let alone revoking them after this quorum break. But we saw a couple more just straight down the center Republican organizations, the Texas Young Republicans and the Texas College Republicans come broke quorum, just revoking chairmanships from Democrats in general. But they especially echoed the call to revoke the ones that broke quorum. And so there's a lot more push behind this proposal now, but it doesn't appear that it's going to do much, at least during this session. And like I said earlier, once we get into the next special session, the opportunity will still, of course, be there to do this, but the political capital or the political will to do it will just be that much smaller. And the further away you get from the end of the quorum break, the harder it is to implement retroactive penalties.

Let's talk about that real fast, because as we've talked about before, the clock is running very low for this special session. But this is bigger than that. This is political, right? This is dealing with the memories of both lawmakers, voters. Eventually, this topic just won't be of issue anymore. and we've talked on the podcast a lot about okay well this quorum break happened will voters hold democrats accountable for those who don't approve will it inspire you know hardcore democrats to come out to the polls to vote for them like what what kind of electoral consequence does this have and in the same vein how long does this discussion continue to be had in the House? What's the clock on this? Will this be brought up in the next special session, do you think? The momentary sting of them tends to leave the minds of the legislators. And there will be those, of course, that continue to beat this drum and honestly have beaten this drum on quorum breaking before.

Representative Tenderholt has proposed legislation to tamp down on quorum breaks every session since 2017. And so I assume that will continue. But the reason that this became such a possibility was the timeliness of this quorum break and the effect it had on the legislature. There was a poll done today that I just see a result come out on, and it's Texas voters oppose the quorum break 47 to 36 percentages. And so that shows that that's a pretty widespread for how many are opposed to what the Democrats did. Obviously, Texas is a Republican-leaning state, and a solidly Republican state. And so naturally, they're going to, you know, tend to side with their party or the ones on their side of things. But still, you know, I think this could play a role in the midterm elections. Now, just like the legislators, voters' memories only last so long,

and the sting of this will eventually fade away. We'll start talking about this quorum break like we have talked about the, what was it, 2003 quorum break. And so, it's eventually just going to fade away, but I'm sure this will continue to be a topic in the legislature to one degree or another. Well, especially as the next legislature convenes in 2023, I guarantee you at the beginning of the rules fight, which has happened at the beginning of every legislative session, this will come up. And it is worth noting, we talked about this before, the speaker is in a precarious position in terms of being reelected. There was a contingency of Republicans who were not on board with his speakership and backed another candidate. And so those who elected him were those on the more conservative wing of his party and Democrats, right? So there is certainly something to be said for him wanting to make sure that those Democrats, those influential Democrats in leadership are pleased with him and want to reelect him.

So that's also part of the part of the deal here and what's at stake for Speaker Phelan. Thank you, Bradley, for covering that for us, Daniel. Let's talk about redistricting. There is a new lawsuit that's been filed by some Democrats. Talk to us about it. So two Democratic senators, Senator Roland Gutierrez from San Antonio and Sarah Eckhart from Austin, have filed a lawsuit in a federal district court in Austin to block the legislature from adopting new maps this fall and essentially make the lawmakers wait until 2023 to draw new maps. And in the meantime, they're asking the court to issue new temporary maps for the election

that obviously comes before the next regular session in 2023. So that is what the lawsuit is that they have filed. We will see what comes of it, though. Absolutely. So then what is the legal argument that they're dealing with here? So for anybody who's been paying attention to redistricting this year, and we've even written on it earlier, it really doesn't come as a surprise, the legal argument that they're making that redistricting shall be completed during its first regular session after the publication of each U.S. decennial census. So the first regular session after the census is published usually comes in the middle of a regular session, and that's when lawmakers deal with redistricting. But because of the delays this year, that hasn't actually been the case. The first regular session after the publication of the census this time is actually going to be not until 2023, because the numbers weren't

released until a couple weeks ago. So because of the delays with the release of that data, the two Democratic senators are arguing that essentially the legislature doesn't have the constitutional authority to make new maps until the next regular session. Now we'll see how this actually plays out in the courts. One of the things that might go against the lawsuit is precedent because the legislature has done redistricting, you know, different aspects of it in either, you know, a middle of a regular session in the middle of a decade or during a special legislative session immediately after a regular session, which is what we saw in 2011. So all that to say, you know, redistricting is going to continue being a legal fight. That's the argument that Gutierrez and Eckhart have put out, that it goes against the Constitution. There's some precedent that would suggest otherwise, but it hasn't actually been tested in court because we haven't really been in a situation quite like what we're seeing this

year. So we'll see how that plays out. And I'm sure it'll be interesting to see what it is. Thank you, Daniel, so much. Hayden, let's talk about a special election that happened this week for a house district that we've been watching pretty darn closely. But talk to us about House District 10, the background of the race, and why the heck there was an election in the middle of August. Well, this is the off-season for elections, if you will. I'm trying to honor Brad and use a sports analogy, but the reason there is an election in the middle of 2021 here in August and then a runoff, which will be coming up soon, is former state representative, now congressman, Jake Elsey, ran for Congress just a few months after he took office in House

District 10, which includes Ellis County and a small part of Henderson County. So when he vacated the office, having been elected to Congress, he left the seat empty, which spurred a special election by Governor Abbott. And it was a very short campaign period, only three or four weeks that they had to run for the seat. And that is what led up to the August 31st special election. Talk to us about the election results and what this means going forward. Well, the results were that it was inconclusive. They were, well, it wasn't inconclusive.

It just went to a runoff. So they will continue to run until the day of the runoff, which will be set by Governor Abbott. The final election results were that Brian Harrison came in first. He ended up with 41% of the vote, about 4,600 votes. And then John Ray, who is the former incumbent of the seat, received 36% of the vote, about 4,000 ballots. He was in the office as recently as January because he was the immediate predecessor of Elzey. That gives you a timeframe of just how brief Elzey was in the office. And then the other candidates came far behind. There was one Democrat in the race, Pirina Otiano, and she finished third with 11% of the ballots. She received only about 1,300 votes.

And then there were a few other candidates in the race. They made Kevin Griffin, a Republican, got 8%. Midlothian City Councilman Clark Wyiffe, got 3% of the vote. And then there were some other candidates that received less than 1%, and another one who had endorsed, had dropped, her name was on the ballot, but she endorsed Brian Harrison, who was the chief of staff to Secretary of Health and Human Services, Alex Azar, during the Trump administration. And he also has the endorsement of Ted Cruz. And then Ray was in the seat for six years and is now running for his former seat. And he has the endorsement of various political action committees and interest groups in Austin.

So those are the dynamics of the race. And it's just a two man race now. And they will continue to campaign probably for the next few weeks school districts issue blanket mask mandates for students, you know, in opposition and defiance of Governor Abbott's executive order. But we're seeing some new approaches from different school districts and they've been experimenting with rules that let parents opt their children out. Tell us about where some of these districts are and how their mandates work. Right. So, like you mentioned, Dallas ISD, I think, was the first one that got a lot of press shortly after GA38 was issued, which prohibits mask mandates, consolidating previous orders. Dallas ISD decided we're going to mandate them anyway for just about everybody on campus. And now, I don't even know the total number of school districts that are

doing that in Texas now. It's quite a few. But there are some districts that have implemented conditional mandates, you know, if they meet some certain threshold of case numbers or whatnot. And among those and among some others, there are also districts that are sending parents an opt-out form where if they fill out, you know, in some cases, a reason why they don't want their child to wear a mask or anyway, they can turn to this form to the district or the school and just opt their kids out. So Plano ISD is one school board that's done this. Corpus Christi implemented a similar rule that took effect just a couple days ago. Round Rock ISD had this rule for a little while and then they recently narrowed it to only allow exemptions for health reasons asthma I expect things like that Corsicana ISD is another example that's near where I grew up so in their example we included quotes from their form and it just says

I understand that as a result of this decision my student will not be required to wear a mask while at school and or during school activities when such requirement is in place. And that's the form that parents sign. Talk to us about whether these are technically legal under the governor's latest executive order. Strictly explicitly, no governmental entity, including a county, city, school district, and public health authority, and no governmental official may require any person to wear a face covering or to mandate that another person wear a face covering. So even though these mandates are softer than requirements that everybody wear a mask on campus, which is the more typical response, they're still not quite legal under GA-38. However, TEA guidance recently released says that the mask provisions of GA-38 aren't being enforced right now, at least by the agency, until litigation is complete because there are a lot of school districts and localities that are embroiled in lawsuits with Abbott and the

state right now over the authority to issue mask mandates. The Supreme Court of Texas got one step closer to completing that litigation recently in San Antonio, and we'll talk about that soon. But what's interesting about this compromise is that it appeared to anticipate a legislative compromise, because right now the state is wrestling with ideas on how to deal with mask mandates, whether or not they should be legal or not. So a Republican, Jeff Leach, filed a bill in the Texas House that originally would have prohibited mask mandates as state law. And one of his Democratic colleagues, Harold Dutton, filed a bill that would essentially codify and statute what's happening right now.

It would let school districts adopt mask policies. And the two of these guys expressed willingness to reach a compromise where districts could adopt mask mandates with a chance for parents to opt their children out. So this system potentially could be what happens statewide. Wonderful, Isaiah. Thanks for covering that. Certainly interesting to see the different legal approaches taken by many school districts across the state. Brad, we're going to come to you. This has been a story that got a lot of traction. A lot of readers cared about this story, but TxDOT, the Department of Transportation, announced this week that it parted ways with their vendor in charge of billing for the TxTAG toll road service. What are the details of this? So the main reason for the termination was millions of dollars in overcharges to Texas drivers that use the

tech tag service. It allows you to basically prepay and then get a lower rate when you use the tolls. And so multiple instances, there have been many overcharges and eventually push came to shove and tech stock parted ways with IBM. In the short term, they entered an emergency contract with SAP Software Solutions and the Department of Information Resources Managed Security Services to kind of stopgap measure to fill the void before they find a new vendor to handle billing. But, um, yeah, it's pretty big news. And, uh, obviously many people across Texas use the tollways. Uh, sometimes you don't even realize you're on a tollway before, before you get the bill. Um, and so, you know, you can definitely, uh, it can come as a shock to get a bill that is either higher than what you should be charged or a bill that is sent to you that you weren't even in the area when it happened.

I've heard stories about that as well. So, all in all, it's a big step in a different direction. And clearly, the Texas Department of Transportation has kind of fed up with the vendor. Well, and it seems that IBM had a lot of words to say itself, this vendor. Talk to us about their reaction. They basically pointed the finger back at TxDOT. They said that, I quote, the success of any information technology project depends on each of the participants

filling its obligations. IBM's performance on this project has been hampered by the inability of TxDOT to do so. Now, they went into zero detail about what those obligations that were failed included, neither did TxDOT really provide much detail into much of what the errors were other than these overcharges happened. I think the total was about $11.7 million in reimbursements that had to be made earlier this year.

And so just a classic example of two entities pointing the fingers at one another. And, you know, it's, it's going to end and the eventually we'll have a new vendor. And I'm sure that will not be all that big of news by the time that occurs. But yeah, yeah, there's there's seems to be not really any resolution between the two parties on this. Well, and if there's one thing Texans can agree on, it's that people don't like toll roads, right? That's just kind of the nature of it. And the Department of Transportation has not been historically forthright with a lot of these different kinds of toll road issues and billing problems. So, interesting to see what will happen next, especially as a new vendor comes in. Right. And just a personal anecdote for toll roads. It's interesting when I first moved here, because I'd never seen a toll road that kind of just picked up where regular road left off. You had to actually merge onto the toll road. There was a checking station that you had to

pass through. So you can very easily here in Texas just happen upon a toll road and not even realize it. So, I can see why Texans would be irritated by that, and especially if they're getting overcharged. Talk about the opt-in, opt-out situation. That's an example right there. Exactly. Thank you, Bradley. Isaiah, we're going to come back to you. You already foreshadowed this topic. Let's get into it. But Bayer County has been in the news a lot, particularly in dealing with these mask mandates. You mentioned earlier that the Supreme Court of Texas got one step closer to making a definitive ruling on the governor's order prohibiting mask mandates.

What did they decide and what led up to it? Yeah, I know y'all have all just been on the edge of your seats about this one for the past eight minutes or so. So the Supreme Court of Texas has not made a definitive ruling on this. I want to get that out of the way because these can be confusing and they take multiple steps that seem to be identical and they aren't. But in an order that they issued last Thursday, the court sided with Governor Abbott for the moment in his fight against mask mandates in Bexar County by staying mask mandates in the locality. City and county officials have been suing the state for the authority to require masks, namely in schools. And so they sued the state. of Appeals. And Abbott claimed, interestingly enough, in his writ request to the Supreme Court,

that the Fourth Court of Appeals denied his motion a mere 11 minutes after he filed it. And so these cases have been moving rather quickly. It's dizzying. It's hard to get a hold of. That's what I'm trying to do is straighten it out. So anyway, the Supreme Court stayed the order. The case is still pending. But for the moment, the court has denied Bexar County the authority to require masks. Got it. Now talk to us about the Texas Disaster Act specifically. This is all kind of wrapped up in that. What have been the arguments surrounding the act in this case? Well, it's like kind of like what Brad mentioned earlier, people have got short memories. And I don't think this has completely gone away. But there seemed to be

a pretty big swell of bipartisan support for reform to the Texas Disaster Act during the first regular session. And now maybe not so much, I don't know. But it was interesting. There are a lot of Democrats and Republicans, I'm thinking of politicians as ideologically disparate as Nathan Johnson and Matt Schaefer, who are both, a declaration that the Texas Disaster Act is unconstitutional, if not a judgment that it allows them to do what they want to do. So far, well, explicitly, it says that county judges, namely as local officials, are the governor's agents in executing state response during disasters. And so that's empowered. I remember it popped up in the lawsuit between El Paso County and the state over shutdown and lockdown orders there. And the county had argued that the TDA supported their lockdowns. And so now San Antonio, now that Abbott has, you know, if we remember he himself issued a statewide mask mandate, then ended it.

And now he's ended it in school districts as well. Now that we're on this side of it, Bexar County and San Antonio officials, where the Texas Disaster Act previously empowered them to issue masks, allegedly, are now fighting against it, arguing that it's unconstitutional. So it's an interesting switch. But it's, it was kind of a memory blast to read again, like, oh, I remember when there was all this mounting pressure against the TDA, and that kind of slipped under the rug, I think during the specials, because Abbott's probably not going to put it on there. So, but yeah, so that's, I was kind of expecting, I think a lot of people were expecting a legislative approach to TDA reform. And now it seems like that might happen in the courts because it's a central issue in San Antonio's complaint.

And so the Supreme Court, if they find the role in this case anytime soon, is going to have to address it. You're right. You're absolutely right. And going back to the beginning of the regular session, you ask anybody in Austin and even those watching throughout the state, what one of the biggest issues, if not the biggest issue the legislature would be tackling or talking about, at the very least debating with bipartisan support, was going to be emergency power reform, particularly in regard to the governor's executive actions taken during COVID-19. So interesting to see this back in the news. And you're right, the legislature, you know, a lot of things that were supported just did not end up materializing. So, Isaiah, thank you for covering that for us. Let's get to a fun topic, boys. This weekend is Labor Day weekend. Do you guys have any fun Labor Day weekend plans?

Is there something, you know, if you don't, if you're just laying low, is there anything that you want to do? You want to check off your summer bucket list before summer ends? Well, it's not really my bucket. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. It's not quite my bucket list, but I'm going to be dog sitting a very large German shepherd this weekend while some friends of mine in San Antonio go.

I don't know where they're going, actually, but they're gone. And I'm going to watch the dog. So that's awesome. That'll be so, so fun. Do you like big dogs? Is that something that you're comfortable with is having a giant animal that you get to spend time with? Obviously like friendly dogs, big dogs tend to be friendlier, but that's not a hard and fast rule, but this one is very excitable. He's, he's a fun dog. That's awesome. Well, that'll be fun. Bradley? I am heading back home again. Second time in like two weeks. I am going back for Labor Day weekend to see my grandparents. My grandpa just retired. He sold, he owned a luncheon at a a restaurant in Jamestown, New York, and just sold it. So now he is living it up in retirement. And I'm sure he is, you know, in a jolly good mood.

And so this weekend will be a lot of fun. That's fantastic. Hayden, do you have anything fun going on this weekend? No, no. I'm going to have a boring, boring Labor Day. And I could pretend that I have all these exciting plans, but in reality, I will probably just stay home. I'm kidding. I might go visit some places in the Austin area that I haven't been yet,

that I have lived here for eight months and there are some things I want to go do, but haven't had a chance to yet. So I might go visit some new restaurants. Like what? I don't know. Damn it. You haven't figured this out? Brad was so insistent on asking the follow-up question.

Like what? Like what? It was like a broken record. I thought he didn't hear me the first time. I just got my segment, honestly. What, Hayden? Oh, we lost Hayden. Oh, well. Well, love that. Danieliel friend is there anything exciting that you're you have going on rather what is something you want to do before summer ends that's on your

bucket list you know i'd love to write a book oh my gosh well maybe you can just whip one up in a couple days in fact i don't think i want to just like write a book i'm going to turn it into like an audio thing it'll be fun that's what i'm going to do that sounds like a good idea so i know that's kind of been my go-to answer for the past two years but it works pretty good right exactly always a good one to fall back on um i'm going up to dallas this weekend two of my best friends growing up uh in washington state moved to dallas with their husbands and so we will all be going to um or i'll be going up to dallas to see them while we spend the weekend together and then maybe monday i'll i have an

inflatable kayak um we'll be back in town on monday and hopefully i'll be able to bring out the inflatable kayak and and go out on the river it's i've already done it once this year but i want to do it again before the summer ends so that's on my little summer bucket list that's pretty easy to accomplish so there you go yeah we're well we're hoping although the parking for Labor Day and kayaks and water and access in Austin will be a little bit of an ask. So, we'll see if that actually works out. Just portage that boat down there all the way from wherever you live. I'll just, yeah, I'll inflate it ahead of time and then just drop it from a tree on the water. That's what I'll do. Well, gentlemen, thank you for all your insight, your reporting. We appreciate you folks. Thanks for listening and we will catch you next week. Thank you all so much for listening. If you've been enjoying our podcast, it would be awesome if you would review us on iTunes. And if there's a

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