The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - September 4, 2026

Episode Date: September 4, 2026

The Texan’s Weekly Roundup brings you the latest news in Texas politics, breaking down the top stories of the week with our team of reporters who give you the facts so you can form your own opinion.SBOE to Vote on Standards for High School Social Studies, Financial Literacy CoursesTrump Rallies for Paxton, Gives Medals to Artemis II Crew in Houston TripState Agency Approves First 'Permian Basin Reliability Plan' Transmission Lines as Paxton Joins OppositionDallas-Fort Worth Local Officials, Law Enforcement Weigh Flock CamerasState Senate Hearing Highlights Communication Gaps on Data Center Water Usage‘First of Its Kind’ Texas Property Tax Analysis Finds Declining ISD Levies, Growth in Overall RevenueTexas Senators Eye Expanding Last Year's Housing Affordability BillsEnjoy what you hear? Be sure to check out our articles at The Texan and leave us a review!Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast.

I feel like every part of the country has some, I don't know, kind of generic beast or creature of some sort. But I'm actually seeing this here. I'm looking this up. And it says, this is a legendary half man, half goat that apparently sparked a mass panic and media frenzy near Fort Worth in the summer of 1969. So that's a terrifying. Given what people were getting up to in the late 60s, it would not be surprising if they were seeing tons of half human monsters of. just sort of running around all over the place. Well, howdy folks?

Welcome back to another episode of the Texans' Weekly Roundup podcast. I'm the Texan senior editor Rob Lauchess, and joining me today are reporters Mary Elise Obar, Meredith Dyer, Isaiah Mitchell, and Stefan Kapuska. Fall has fallen. How is everybody enjoying these wonderful autumnal temperatures that we are seeing? It got under 100 this week. So I'm thinking that I'm going to bust out my sweatpants and my winter jacket and all that stuff that sits in a suitcase under my bed for nine months of the year. Yeah.

Sorry, God. I don't know if the very smooth intro, sorry. I know, I know. Great minds think alike, though. I was just going to say, I don't think the temperatures are quite there yet, but I almost feel like there's a little bit less humidity in the air. and then you kind of get that like crisp autumn feeling. We're still working our way towards actual autumn weather, especially here in Houston. And with the storm, it's like pretty muggy.

I was going to say that. It's such a Houston thing to say, oh, it's like a little bit less humidity. It feels crisp. Just a little bit. No, fall is my favorite holiday or holiday. It feels like a holiday, but it's my favorite season. And I do mourn the loss of it here in Texas because I've never, I know there are areas of Texas that. experience kind of certain foliage and things like that, but I've never lived in those areas.

And my favorite movie is you've got mail. Anyone's seen that? Classic. No, oh my gosh. Okay, sorry. Never seen it. Oh, my gosh. You need to watch it.

You love a good movie. It's really good, like, rom-com, a good one. And there's a part where he's like, don't you just love New York in the fall? It makes me, it makes you want to buy school supplies. And he tells her, like, that he wants to buy her, like a bouquet of sharpened pencils, which someone bought me one of those when I was teacher and it made very happy. So I do love, I love the fall. It has been getting a little, it's been getting a little, you know, more cloud covery over here, a little shadier.

Which is funny because I always hear all this news from the Gulf Coast about these terrible storms that are going to wreak havoc. And all we experienced in North Texas is just like some gentle shade, which is pretty nice. Yeah, but don't you guys have to deal with tornadoes and stuff up there? I mean, I've never lived up. in the North Texas area, but I think I'd rather deal with rain than tornadoes. We do have tornadoes. It's something I had to explain to Ruth, which maybe we can talk about towards the end of the podcast, because there's a funny story there.

The only time I've ever done a tornado drill when I was teacher was in Houston. I had never, we had to get in the hallway. I don't know. So I haven't had it in North Houston. I seem to remember something like that. It was either 2017 or 2018. I was still in high school, and I remember we did actually have to go out into the hallway, which was funny because our hallway at my high school had like these huge windows. And we were all sitting there like, if an actual tornado comes, we're all going to get shredded to ribbons by the broken glass.

But they did make us go out into the hallway because there was this one really big tornado warning. I remember. It must have been my junior or senior year. But maybe. I was going to say that shows our age because I was teaching that exact year. and that's the year that we took the kids on. Well, then there you go. There you go.

I don't know. I think growing up in Houston, Mary Elise, maybe you can relate to this. But, you know, hurricanes are terrifying. But you do kind of know what to do with a hurricane once you've gone through like five of them. You know what I mean? Whereas I feel like a tornado. Also, they appear without warning. With a hurricane, you generally know that it's coming and you can prepare for it.

But tornadoes seem freaky because they can just show up like that. Yeah, they pop up. It gets really quiet outside. kind of the sky changes colors a little bit. And then when we had one that was pretty close by, it sounded like there was a train coming through the trees. And it was a fair distance away, but that's a terrifying sound.

Very bizarre because everything else is very quiet. I was going to say, I remember my dad grew up in Illinois, and he said, the scariest thing about tornadoes isn't the noise. It's when everything gets really quiet. And that's when you know you have to run for cover. But yeah, speaking of the fall and speaking of school supplies and education in general, Meredith, this week, you were at the State Board of Education to cover their preparations to vote on finalized standards for high school social studies courses and a personal financial literacy course.

And you got some really good photos that everybody can view on X or Twitter or whatever you want to. call it. But tell us about the State Board of Education. Yeah, I do love, especially Monday, which is usually the big public testimony day for whatever the large votes are going to be on. There's always really good photo opportunities, lots of people there, lots of faces and emotions and a lot of characters. There was a guy dressed up as George Washington that testified in first person as George Washington. So there's always somebody around. The difference between this set of meetings and the last time where they finalized the K through 8 and approved those standards was really the presence of the Muslim community. They had come out quite a bit stronger

and were very vocal in their testimony of specific standards that they had issues with, which there was a handful of them and they were things related to Islam, the description of Islam, or things like words like Prophet Muhammad's brutal military. campaign, they would have talk about the word brutal or different things like that. Or there was one specific where it talks about the normalization of slavery during that time. And then the taking of female captives as harem slaves was something that people had a lot of conflict with. Some things with September 11th and Islam and the use of radical with Islam. So there was a lot of like very specific standards and wordings that they wanted to see changed. And they came out, it was like

majority against this time, where in the last time, there were more people, but there were, it felt a little bit more mixed, and it definitely felt like there were more people there in favor. I think that seeing how the K-8 ones passed very easily, and then with these ones, it's the same group of people passing them. We didn't see as many people in favor of it out there as well. So that was on Monday. Then they went through amendments on Tuesday. When you see this on Friday, we'll have a final article out, just solidifying and confirming those final votes. But there's, I'm pretty positive that all of those final votes will go through. And then we'll have a little bit more on that personal financial literacy course because they,

as well, will take that final vote on Friday. So nothing crazy happened, but as usual, there's people coming to do their civic, like, use their right and they're doing their duty of sharing things that they disagree with. And so these will be the double-by-stand, numerous by-standards for social studies are likely to go through. Well, I'm curious. From what I understand, the, you know, we've talked about the social studies bit,

but there is some opposition, if I recall correctly, to the personal financial literacy course. Now, in my mind, that seems like something that would be a lot more uncontroversial. And yet it does seem to have drawn some criticism, I think, from the, the Cicerole, Institute, which is a conservative think tank based here in Austin, can you speak a little as to why personal financial literacy would also be generating a bit of political buzz?

So the issue that the Cicero Institute and TPPF had with things related to personal financial literacy were a specific course that is allowed to be taught in Texas class schools right now, but in the article that I wrote last week, or this week I asked earlier this week, giving a preview of what's going to be happening, I talked to the chairman, Aaron Kinsey, and his main point was he's aware of the issues that people have with this one course,

but what they're focusing on right now is making the standards, and they're not going to be just at this point, that course, or even the idea of wanting to take one course, and he said, like, backwards engineer it. So he's kind of saying, listen, we're starting from the beginning. We're coming up with the standards that we, like, the expectations, the standards, what will they be learning? And then we can kind of, courses will come in after that. So he's kind of just saying, um,

our job statutorily is to figure out what needs to be in the standard versus like deciding and picking if one of these classes or one of these things is going to be the one or we're going to try to shove things and they're based on a, on a course that already exists. And so what they did, um, this is where I, lose track of days because it's Monday to Friday, so there's all these meetings. I want to say Wednesday, maybe, they went through the wording of the exact standard, not really looking at any courses yet, but like, and the things that were controversial before that they're going to be voting on, and like I said, we'll have kind of a confirmation of how that all plays out. There are things like

they wanted to make sure, the things that get controversial, even in the standards are free market, including that entrepreneurship, not just making it, can you, you know, there's groups that are like, this is just for personal financial literacy to help students personally. Like, can you know how much money you need? Can you budget those things? But there's groups, another side that would be, would say the conservatives more are like, we need to make sure we include ideas that help people understand money, not just like, do this, do this, do this, but like, why would you need to do this? How can this help you be successful, generating wealth? And, kind of why American values and things, like I said, entrepreneurship and free market capitals and

things like that. So that's where the controversy comes in because you would think, okay, it's just a personal financial literacy class. And then there's even discussion of, are we trying to jam too much stuff into a half credit course that's required? So in the past, there was a required economics course for high schoolers that had things like an emphasis on free free enterprise system and its benefits. And then it was changed in 2025 where economics was no longer required. It was like an option of three different things, but the personal financial literacy courts was pulled out and is required. I think they, so people want to make sure that whatever's required for students, they're getting exactly what SBOE members on whatever side you are think

that they need to get in the required class. Well, that makes sense, especially since as we've seen with previous educational standards that teachers and, you know, schools will really, really, really try to follow the letter of the law, but not necessarily the spirit of the law when it comes to teaching certain standards. I think that some schools and teachers try their best to stay on the fully legal side of what the state requires while also kind of doing their own thing. So as you said, it really matters as long as you get, it matters to get those, that wording very precise. So I look forward to seeing how the vote goes by the time, as you said, this podcast goes out on Friday. On Friday, well, it'll go out on Friday morning, of course, but then you'll be at the SPOE again for the final vote. And if you can grab an interview with George Washington, I think that'd be fantastic.

I think he's had a lot of important things to say. I'll do our best. Oh, it's true. But speaking of other American presidents, Steve and Mary Elise, President Donald Trump, visited Houston last weekend. This was his, or not last weekend, I'm sorry. No, it would have been last week.

Last week. And this was his first visit to Houston during his second term as president. But on Thursday, he was here for a fundraiser for Attorney General Ken Paxton. And on Friday, he went to NASA, as every tourist to Houston has to do. So, Steve, can you speak a little to this fundraiser he had for Paxton? Tell us kind of what's going on there and why Trump might feel a need to get involved. in this race? Yeah, yeah.

So the kind of background here is that Paxon is locked in a very, very, very, very tight race with a state rep James Tauroko. The polling has been extremely tight, but it tends to show Tala RICO with a very narrow lead. Trump, who obviously wants Republicans to keep a control of the Senate and to actually endorse Paxon over the incumbent GOP Satter, John Cornyn. You know, he has a lot riding on this. And one of the problems Paxon has been facing

is that Tau Rico has been really outraising him and has been really dominating on the airwaves in terms of advertising and whatnot. So Trump came to Houston to host a fundraiser for Paxton. And I think what his thinking there is is that if he can help Paxton raise money, that will help Paxton pull this out potentially. Yeah. And I mean, for the kind of addressing the concern that Republicans have that the turnout that

Tala Rica is going to bring about is going to affect down ballot races, I'm sure that that's also part of Trump's thinking there. It's like if we can help Paxton here, maybe we can also support some of those other races in Texas. But I would imagine that the top of ticket races is pretty darn important in his mind. We also didn't, we saw some reporting afterwards that the money, the funds that were raised, and Steve, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but the funds that were raised went directly to the National Republican Committee.

And there's still some questions about how much of that money is actually going to be doled out to Paxton and to his campaign. Yeah, it's just wild to see really the fundraising prowess that Tallarico has. And something that you mentioned in the piece, Steve mentioned, was that he's been raising so much money. He's had to return over $1 million in excess contributions. But I wrote about a little bit in the newsletter, kind of some of the conversation's been happening around President Trump and just general, like, higher up Republican leadership and their approach towards Pakistan. And why in general we haven't seen that much support. I mean, here we are just right before Labor Day. And the election is just really coming up quickly.

I think early voting starts in almost less than 50 days. it's October 19th. So it's, you know, the, the clock is ticking here for them to, like, really step in and and help Paxton with fundraising. And there's a couple different, like, theories floating around about why maybe he hasn't received so much support. One that's been floated is that, you know, maybe the kind of Republican leadership is wanting to give primary voters the wet for because, you know, seeing as they picked,

they didn't pick the desired incumbent. Ultimately, they picked Paxton. There's also thoughts of, okay, well, maybe they just think he's a sinking ship and they don't want to put their money behind him or that he's just so well off that it's not necessary to pour money into his race where this money could be used elsewhere. But it's just been really fascinating and watch the money theme. I'll mention or give you all a little bit of a picture of this other event that Trump was in town for in Houston. It was a really cool event to be present for as a reporter. So he visited NASA's Johnson Space Center for a medal ceremony. He gave the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to the Artemis II crew.

And that was Friday. So the Friday before this podcast goes out. So all these astronauts are joining 34 other astronauts who received this medal since 1978. And the first one of those was Neil Armstrong. So historical moment. One really cool aspect of this event was that it was held in the space vehicle mockup facility where they have, I think, all of their space vehicle, but mockup versions in this warehouse. And so they had set it up for this event very nicely. They had a nice stage, you know, and then we had the bleachers for the press.

But there was also, it was just very, it still was like a warehouse. And there were still people's desks out and they had kind of put some like tape around them and some. ropes, but there were people's desk where you can see that they've been, you know, working there very recently, and they just kind of roped it off for this event. So it was fun because there was a bit of a lag in between some of the scheduling and just, you know, when the press arrived there, high securities were there pretty early. So it was very interesting to walk around and kind of just glance around at these space vehicle mockups and just kind of walk past some of these desks where you see that, um, I, I know.

noticed I was not snooping, but I didn't notice a notepad where there was a very interesting drawing of a space vehicle on it. And it was just, it was a cool experience just to kind of be walking around to this warehouse where some of the, some really incredible minds have been working for NASA. So yeah, President Trump was there. Of course, he awarded this honor. And he was, there were a couple of speakers that went before him. One of them was Apollo 17, Ashraf. astronaut Harrison Schmidt. And he spoke, one thing I felt was interesting about his speech. He talked about his experience getting to walk on the moon. And they said, he referenced several times.

He said, you know, I acknowledge this wouldn't have been possible without the taxpayer. And I think a lot of people appreciated that he acknowledged that. He was like, you know, this is an incredible endeavor. He said, as an astronaut, we have to keep in mind, too, whose money is. is supporting us and the reason that we're even able to do this. And he said he also, as they were training, he was very mindful of the fact that, you know, they were spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars by the minute during their experiments and training, et cetera. Also, chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Science Space and Tech, Brian Babin was there.

He spoke. Then also Senator Ted Cruz was there. of course, he's chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. So those two spoke a bit. They all really just thanked President Trump for his impact on NASA and kind of reviving the space world for America. And also NASA administrator, Jared Isaacman, spoke. And then he was the one that ultimately introduced Trump to the crowd. it was very interesting

to see Trump speak in person because he you know you could tell that he had a written speech and he stuck to it for a bit but then there was a solid I don't know maybe 45 minutes where he was off script and he had the crowd laughing

quite a lot and sometimes it was just from a funny joker he would just say something that was so shocking and kind of out of context that people would start laughing and so that was interesting to see because for the most part

It was a very, you know, this crowd was very, there was some very high up individuals, some very influential individuals sitting in this crowd. And some of them were just cracking up listening to him, listening to him speak. So that was interesting to just be in the, you know, as press there listening. But what were you going to say, Meredith? I was just going to say that speaking of seeing him in person, me and Isaiah are going to be at this Dallas midterm election or midterm conditions. convention next week. And he's supposed to speak both nights. That's apparently. And so it will be, I guess I haven't, I know I'm going to be there and we're planning things. But I'm like,

oh, yeah, I guess I've never, I've never been in the same room as a president. So that will be very interesting experience like you had. And also just to see, yeah, what is it like in real life? Can you notice when he's, I mean, we can see it on TV, but what does it look like with the crowd when he starts to go off script and really change. I always wonder what his handle or what his staff and everybody thinks when they're like, oh, here we go. It seems to have worked for him so far. Also, he's been going and speaking of him in Paxton, he's been saying a lot of comments about Paxton trying to help him, but also with a pretty few underhanded comment. Like, they're not even actually backhanded compliments. They're just like straight up in falls. Like people don't, or like saying people don't like the way he looks. People don't like the way he dresses. People don't like the way he talks. I'm like, wow, okay. Are we trying to help him here or not?

And so I had noticed, and you guys can all chime in if you've seen anything else, that he, Jackson has gotten a lot of flack online for wearing a very expensive watch that was supposedly $40,000. Someone did a little screenshot of how much that exact watch, looking watch costs. And then like a four seasons Orlando golf polo when he's out campaigning. And it just seems very, a little out of touch because we're in Texas. And yeah, so it just we've been, we've talked to the staff about like how much does how you dress affect the way people perceive you and it's a distraction which it seems to be right now for him oh yeah isaiah what do you think of all i mean to me to my mind the frat style is in right now

you know all the whole golf look you know a certain affluence i feel like that's kind of having a moment of popularity at the moment i don't know if it's going to translate well to um to a politician because every politician in America has to run to some degree as a man of the people. But I think it also helps that not everyone is analyzing the price of someone's watch. Because to me, someone who doesn't, who's not really into watches, I can't really tell one from another, aside from like color and material. And so I do think there's a lot of Americans who could look at Paxon's watch and think that it probably looks pretty much like their own watch. So that might help them to some degree. Yeah, I think the real value of the watch, it usually is like what's inside, right?

It's usually if it's like a mechanical watch and I don't know, it's made with solid gold or something on the inside. But something I always find interesting about the clothes politicians wear is that Trump wears his suit everywhere. When he is really no matter what he's doing, he is always in his suit. He loves the big red power tie. Unless he's golfing. unless he's golfing. The only time that he's because I thought

when have I seen him? But whenever he's at like a political event, really whenever he's talking to people, he's generally always in that suit. Even when he's, you know, when he was,

worked at McDonald's, all he did was take his coat off, right? Yeah, and just throw his apron on. Yeah, there's something. And of course, you know,

these are not super tailored suits. They're not these super slick, like, well tailored suits. They're usually these like big, chunky, two thousand styles. you know, the big bulky American suit.

But I think there's something about it that he always dresses in that way, but it's also clearly not some kind of, I don't know, super slick, well-tailored suit that creates almost a kind of unique aesthetic, you know, for a figure like Trump, which is actually something else interesting, that New York mayor, Zeran Mamdani is also often depicted wearing a suit. And as we saw in their little meeting in the White House, where Mamdani brought Trump like a big fake newspaper that said, well, I don't know, not fake, it just wasn't a newspaper.

It was saying like Trump is, you know, helps New York build lots of stuff, you know, and Trump had this big grin on his face. He loves that kind of thing. So maybe Mamdani is taking a page out of Trump's book on the clothing side of things. But Isaiah, something else I wanted to talk about today was that Paxton is, of course, candidate for U.S. Senate, but it's also important to remember that he is still the state attorney general, and he is chiming in on a big state issue at the moment. The Permian Basin Reliability Plan, the plan to connect a bunch of power generators in East Texas with a bunch of users in West

Texas through these high voltage power lines that would cut across the state and have become kind of a giant headache for lawmakers. So tell us what Paxton is doing on that issue. Paxton filed an amicus brief in support of an advocacy group, which primarily has a focus on private land rights. And so Paxton, to put it simply, Paxton joined in opposition to the Permian Base of Reliability Plan, or at least in support of postponing further progress on the plan. And on the same day, the Public Utility Commission, which is really the chief regulatory agency overseeing this whole project, gave approval to the first two lines in this project. And these are both projects of,

both of these lines are projects of Encore, a Dallas-based transmission provider. And there are five in total. It's the first two of the five that make up this big spider web. And you might have seen a lot of headlines saying, you know, state administrative law judges strike down this or that.

or they clear this regulatory hurdle. So it can be difficult to make out how much each of these steps in the regulatory process are significant compared to each other. And this is a big deal because this is really the agency that's in charge of this process. Something that I think is worth pointing out is that the PUC and the State Office of Administrative Hearings are both under the executive branch. And the administrative law judges recommended that the PUC deny permits for these projects based on some other factors, you know, dawning eyes, proscianties and that kind of thing. And so we've got these two state agencies

both under the executive branch that are in a bit of friction over this project. But they're both under Governor Greg Abbott, who hasn't yet publicly weighed in on the issue, which I think is worth pointing out. But Paxton, who, like you pointed out, is still the state attorney general called on the state to postpone this project,

delay it until the legislation. legislature can address it more directly. So the legislative session is going to start in January unless Governor Abbott decides to call a special session before that point, which he can do on a particular given issue. And Paxton's argument was essentially, there's a few facets to it. One that I think is interesting is that these reliability plans were authorized or called for by a state law, by statute. But the statute didn't, this is Paxton's argument. The statute didn't authorize the PUC to implement a plan. And so one of Paxson's key arguments is that it's one thing for the PUC to draft an idea,

but it's another thing for the PUC to authorize construction and actually put shovels in the ground. I mean, the PUC is not the one doing it. It's on core in this case. And eventually these other transmission providing companies. But Paxton considers that argues that that is implementation rather than simply, you know, a drafting of a plan for the state to consider. So this will continue to take some time. And so it'll still almost certainly be a hot topic at the time of the legislature convenes.

But for now, lawmakers are going to have to wait for the session in order to take actual legislative action on the issue if they want to. Well, I'm also curious because I saw that Railroad Commissioner Wayne Christian, I believe, was also criticizing the project. And there's been some opposition to even the idea that West Texas should be trying to get power from East Texas. Can you talk a little bit to that and kind of explain why some of these people think maybe West Texas should be generating its own power? Christian's argument is in a nutshell that there is enough geothermal energy in the Permian Basin to supply local electric generation. And what the Permian Basin Reliability Plan does is take power that's being generated in large part by wind and solar plants over in East and Central Texas and pipe it over to the Permian Basin for industrial use primarily. And that's really the need that the PUC and the state saw that's at the bottom of this whole plan is industrial development. A lot of those are oil and gas. A lot of that is data centers in crypto mining.

But the Texas Oil and Gas Association supports the Permian Basin Reli Reliability Plan. They support these transmission lines being constructed. And so there are some advocates within the industry who say that oil and gas producers need electricity provided by these plants elsewhere in the state in order to operate in the Permian Basin. And Christian, on the other hand, along with TPF, argue that, the PUC's plan presumes that wind and solar are going to continue to be developed profitably over, you know, the next few years in the state, and that that's due to market distortions caused by government subsidies to wind and solar. And that without those, the market would be more favorable to oil than gas. There's also, those are kind of the big institutional positions. There's also, you know, the private citizen position.

And there's a lot of landowners who showed up and testified at the, PUC and in some committee hearings that have taken place on this issue, who simply just don't want these lines to cut through their property. So the issue of generational ranches that have been preserved in the state that they're in right now for, you know, 100, 150 years, a lot of those landowners feel threatened by the possibility of construction going through their land. We've heard a lot from also local government officials, and this is just a perennial friction in Texas politics, right, state versus local. But we've got a lot of county officials who have showed up and testified and said that the PUC is,

you know, stepping over them, basically, and that they haven't been given enough authority as local officials to make these determinations about where these lines are going to go, how they're going to be constructed, that sort of thing. So there's a few different, there's a few different facets to the debate. But, yeah, the big institutional positions are sort of pit Texas Rail, Commissioner Wayne Christian, and the RRC is the regulatory body in charge of oil and gas. Wayne Christian is very pro-o-oil-and-gas, but we've also got him in opposition to the Texas Oil and Gas Association. But there are also smaller producers who testified on behalf of themselves

or their companies in opposition to the TXOGA. So, yeah, there's a lot of different camps and some allies who aren't typically forming alliances in the state capital, including the TPPF and the local officials that I mentioned. Because for the most part, when you hear the buzzer with local control, that's usually on an issue that will split TBPF from whatever county or municipal official is, for example, testifying before a committee at that moment. It's employing that term. for the most part, TPPF prefers state preemption over, I guess, what they would characterize as like a patchwork of local regulation and authority that can differ from county to county, city to city. But now we've got those two camps on the same side in this issue, which is unusual to see. It's definitely interesting that this is one of those very classic Texas issues.

And as you said, local versus state. but it's also kind of drawing in like an East Texas versus West Texas thing. Of course, some people saying, you know, why can't West Texas just make their own power and all of the controversy over that? But it'll definitely be interesting to see where this goes. So thank you, Isaiah. Steve, I think we can turn the temperature down a bit and turn to a relatively uncontestable and uncontroversial issue, which is flock cameras. and flock cameras have been seeing some major criticism and controversy, and you wrote a piece about flock in the DFW area with Tarrant County and also the Dallas Police Department.

Tell us a little bit about what's going on in the DFW area with flock. Sure, sure. So the upshot is that last week, Governor, Abbott, he said that state funds could not be used for flock cameras, right? And so, as a result, the city of Dallas shut down about 300 of theirs, but they still have about 300 more that will keep operating even still. And right next door in Tarrant County, the county commissioners, they had a kind of hearing on block cameras where they were briefed by the sheriff, Bill Waybourne. And Wayborn was very emphatic that he felt that the flock cameras were very needed. He cited everything from from a car thefts to murders to a child kidnappings that that he said were only solved as a result of the flock cameras. And I think that the county commissioners were all very taken by that.

But at the same time, they were also very concerned about the potential for over surveillance, for an infringement on people's fourth Amendment rights and also the subtext that flock cameras are not popular. People hate these things. And so overall, the commissioners seemed very torn. The county judge O'Hare, he asked about ways to limit how flock cameras were used in terms of how long data was stored, in terms of many people when the police foreman had access to it. And Weber really wouldn't budge. He said that his department needed those to have maximal effectiveness, basically. And so we will really have to see where this goes.

It seems very likely that when the legislature comes back into session, that something will be passed on this. Actually, in the piece, I got a very strong statement from a state rep Brian Harrison, who actually accused the Republican leadership of not bringing bills on that topic up for consideration and warned that Texas was becoming a surveillance state. So it will be very interesting to see where things go from here. Yeah, I'll be curious to see, speaking of local versus state issues, if there isn't going to be any kind of legislation to perhaps try to regulate or even ban, well, of course, as you mentioned, Steve, Harrison, I think, is going to try to ban them. But I wonder where Republican leadership will go, because as you mentioned, the Tarrant County Sheriff is very much in favor of this as a crime fighting tool. And so you have to wonder if the tough on crime side of the GOP is going to really come out more in support of this.

Or if the sort of continuous, I don't know what you would call it, like tech skeptical side of the GOP on things like data centers and, of course, flock cameras is going to win out in the end. I think it's interesting how tech in a very general way is sort of becoming such a controversial issue. especially as regards just development in Texas in general. And Meredith, speaking of tech development in Texas, the Texas Senate Committee on something or other had a hearing about water usage by data centers. So another very small, uncontroversial issue. You know, if you feel like it,

could you tell us a little bit about what's going on there? Yeah, just hours and hours of testimony about this issue. So this was the Committee on Water, Agriculture, and Rural Affairs. And so they have this hearing specifically about water usage. I will say it is interesting how sometimes they would even have to kind of make sure they would come back to water usage. Or sometimes it seems like they even went off on other topics related to data centers. It didn't directly relate to water usage. So it's just it's such a huge topic that people are concerned about so many things.

And so it feels like whenever it comes up, they just want to jump in on all of the things that they're concerned about. So they heard from a few different panels. So they had state agencies that testified, and I'll tell what kind of the main takeaways from each of those were. They had a couple of academic researchers that shared some information and their studies. And then there were some data center operators, including Google that were there, and then local stakeholders, stakeholders, people from the communities of the counties and things like that. But it started off with chairman Charles Perry, Senator Charles Perry, who just he, I remember, remember he said something along the lines of, you know, even if you clip me, I don't care,

because he was about to go off and really make some opening comments about how he feels that the legislators and local officials and everyone have been treated throughout the process related to data centers. And so he, um, he was just making the point like this has affected every Texas legislature members district. We're all having some kind of data center conversation. Obviously, he's talked about we've, I think Isaiah mentioned last week, the Good Act versus bad actor idea that nobody ever comes out and talks about, like, who are these bad actors? Because they bring in people, like the panel they have, that they're like, we're doing this, we're doing this, we're following everything. Yes, yes, yes. And obviously, they still have questions

for them, but if they're doing everything that's been asked of them, they're not going to be the bad actors. So he starts out by being very clear that Beacon Data Centers that's working in his district is a bad actor. And so he was just saying, they haven't answered phone calls. They're not communicating on the local level. They've chosen to operate in secrecy with something. that he made clear. And he's like, and for that, and this is his quote, and not alone as of today, whatever I need to do to keep them from implementing whatever they're doing. I don't believe, he said, I don't believe they're actually a data center. So people are getting very, when they're, the lack of communication was kind of one of the main takeaways from this whole hearing. And state

lawmakers kind of, they're not happy with that. They're not satisfied with that level of communication. The other thing that Charles Perry wanted to point out was the bill that everyone talks about that gives certain tax incentives to data centers that was from 2013 bill quite a while ago. He just really was emphasizing in so many words that he believes that this, he says, you know, there's political rhetoric that the legislature decided to incentivize these data centers over the last few sessions to come in here and he said, do what they're doing. So whatever's happening now, he's just saying it's his opinion. It's not factually accurate. He said that that was the intent of the bill when it was made. He just says, you know, they saw this incentive that they qualified for. They took advantage of. He doesn't begrudge them for that. But obviously, there's, they need to, things are going to change with that. He said he's neutral personally on the subject. He can sees they can provide benefits, but then he said that the ones that are irresponsible will quote,

never see the light of day. So they heard from people from the Texas Water Development Board, which has shown up at multiple hearings. I know that Isaiah also wrote, they showed up at a hearing that he went to. So there's a lot of overlap in all of these hearings that related to anything data center. So there seems to be some things that are repeated and then some things that kind of unfold more throughout different hearings. And so the representative spoke about the director, about a survey that they had done. And actually, Perry at one point did clarify that it seemed very confusing because there was Texas Water Development Board and then there was the PUC. And they were both talking about separate sounding surveys, but really it was like kind of the same one. And so

Perry did say at one point, this is kind of confusing. Next time we do this, we'll kind of make sure that this is ironed out and doesn't sound like there's, it's a little confusing, he said. So the Texas this water development board, they do a survey that they've done, I think, since 2020 or 2021, where they look at water, just water use. What did was the water usage in these different facilities? And so they said that as of August 26, 30% of these facilities, which include data centers, had responded. And so that was something that with the lawmakers of centers were not happy with and kind of like, how can we, I know you can't, like, how do we fix this to make sure that we actually get this data. And then the Texas Water Development Board worked

with the PUC on a requirement that came from a budget writer last year to come up with questions to talk about the idea of future water usage. So they had gotten data on actual water usage from last year, but they were looking to look into future water usage. So this PUC survey, they said, was a one-time ask of projected power use by data centers so that they could estimate water usage. So yeah, a lot of back and forth and a lot of numbers and different things that were kind of separate but kind of together. So it's been talked about and discussed as like this survey. And so also the PUC said in the survey that they did, they did not get, they did not get, they got 57 companies out of 160 facilities, 144 of which our data centers. So once again,

not great, not a great response. And so Senator Lois Cole, was talking about like, okay, this survey gives us an idea of what these good and bad actors are. If you're not abided by the law, which she was making a point that this survey is part of a legal requirement, then that would be like a bad actor. And I know that Senator Cesar Blanco talked about the need for like having a clear understanding of water use for long-term planning. Like, we have to know what these numbers are. The next they heard from some academics from the University of Texas at Austin. And one of the things that came out here that would come up again throughout the hearing was the idea of produced water, which has once again come up in other hearings

as well. Water that naturally comes is wastewater that surfaces during oil and natural gas extraction, that that could be an option for cooling data centers. It has a very high saline salinity in it. And so it would need to be treated, which could be expensive. But it was just this idea of like there's a lot of this type of water that if we could even despite the cost, it could be an option and could be a solution to some of the problems that people are worried about when it comes to using like potable water. So then they obviously had different data center operators or practitioners, as they call them, come up. And like I said, obviously they're going to, they're there and they're wanting to show that

they are a good actor and what they're doing, things. that they're like reporting their water level usage. I know Google highlighted that they became the first major cloud provider to begin reporting site level water usage. And then other ones highlighted that they, you know, we understand this is our responsibility. We don't want to put this on to the people of Texas kind of thing. And then throughout that there were some interesting comments from Cole Cors

from Senator Roland Gutierrez about just people, lack of understanding about data centers and what they do, surveillance came up with both of those senators, the idea of the senator Roland Gutieris was like, I don't know who the heck is looking inside my house, my computer, figuring out what I'm going to buy next and what I'm going to ask. And he's highlighting and he said, people have a legitimate concern about this, which when I was at the Democratic event with Beto and Vicki Goodwin and different people like that, they talked about surveillance in relationship to data centers. So something that's starting to come up more with the idea of surveillance linked with data centers. And then lastly, there were just county judges and

county representatives that were, made an interesting point that sometimes they felt that the backlash on them was not fair because these are private land sales. And so someone will sell their land to a data center. And then they will already be talking with the utility companies and things like that. And before they even find out at the county level, this is a thing that's happening. And so, Perry made a point to say that he wanted to make sure that, like, legislators need to be, he said, need to be, quote, really clear and really careful how we start meddling in the contract laws between private seller and private buyer. So that's a sticky situation that might not be able to do anything about that. And just, yeah, at the end of the day, the legislature is looking that, you know, they're talking about. taxes. They're talking about working with people that will work with them. They're talking them. Perry said, let's just say there's going to be a hierarchy enough people in the pipeline that those processes are still under our guys to work with when it talked about whether they

could require communication. And so they're going to do their best to try to legally find a way to get the things done. They want to get done in the 90th. Yeah, like you mentioned, on the other side the Capitol and during a State House committee on data centers a little while ago, we heard from a panel of data center developers who spoke, and they and many other testifiers were very willing to criticize, but they called the bad actors in the industry. And there is some mounting frustration about who these people were, and I think politeness and courtesy prevented a lot of people from naming names.

But eventually, I remember State Rep. Raphael and Chia said, Just once I'd like someone to come to this committee and say, I'm it, I'm the bad actor, I'm the one you've been looking for. I just think that'd be really refreshing, which I thought was funny. Well, I think the survey thing was interesting. If people aren't willing to share things, not like private, but water usage, which is a public, what's the word, a resource, if they're not responding to something from the government, then, I mean, the lack of transparency, kind of the running away. or the privacy that like Perry pointed out with Beacon that they won't talk, that's going to be something that's going to start getting you on the naughty list for sure. The naughty list, yeah.

I mean, it is, right? Like, they're making a list. They're checking it twice, right, with these data centers. They are. And it is September. It's September now. So the naughty list is ever more on people's minds. So speaking of lists, there was another committee.

in the Senate that met the local government committee that had two very interesting meetings, at least to me, back to back last week. And one was on property taxes, in particular school district taxes, and the other maybe relatedly was on housing affordability bills, which went through the committee last session. So that's current statutes that recently took effect. And something that actually, you know, made the hairs on the back of my next stand up was when Chairman Paul Bettencourt said

that he was going to prevent, present some data. that had never been seen before, it would be a comprehensive property tax analysis of the whole state. I thought, you know, gee whiz, that sounds great. Because as a data and charts guy, I can tell you that it's difficult to round up all of that information

for our very vast, the very vast state of Texas. So Betancourt's analysis found that, it found a few things. Overall property tax levies have increased. over the last decade. And I'm way back to 2014, really, so really more than a decade. In 2014, taxing entities collected a total of $48.8 billion in property tax revenue.

And last year, they collected $80.9.5 billion in property tax revenue. So that's an 83% increase overall. However, the average independent school district tax bill has shrunk, and the share of taxes you pay no school district property tax at all has actually grown a lot. And a lot of this is due to exemptions because we see the growth of this population of people who pay no ISD attacks, especially concentrated among seniors, people who were 65, and also disabled homeowners. And Betancourt repeatedly said, this is a success, anyway you slice it, and I think one secondary purpose of this study was to tout the benefits of previous property tax reforms that the legislature has passed. and the actual interim charge, which was assigned by Dan Patrick, was to study the results of property tax relief bills dating back to 2015.

And so it was a bit of an opportunity for a victory lap, for the Senate, for the legislature in general, but also pretty useful for seeing how these property tax relief bills have actually deteriorized statewide. Because here to four, we've been relying on, you know, not only anecdotal evidence, but piecemeal evidence from certain taxing entities, jurisdictions, things like that. So again, one result that came up a lot was that if you're over 65 or disabled, then the average

homeowner who fits that bill has actually seen a pretty good deal of reduction in the school property tax. And one reason why this component of the property tax burden is particularly relevant is that it tends to be on average the largest component of any Texas homeowners tax bill, is the ISD tax. Some context that's worth mentioning here is that the legislature has increased the homestead exemption, which is a property tax break for people who live in the property from 15,000 in 2015 to 140,000 this year, or last year, and that's actually up to 200,000 for homeowners who are disabled to over 65.

As you learned, about a quarter of all homesteads don't pay ISD property taxes at all, according to the presentation. and ISD levies across the state actually decreased from 41.66 billion, 2024 to 41.65 billion in 2025. So I had to go to the second decimal place there. So it's a slight decrease, but it doesn't apply to other tax and jurisdictions. So it's an interesting result there, and definitely relevant in election year that focuses a lot on home affordability, cost of living in general, and as a portion of that, property tax. taxes. Next day, the local government committee heard some invited testimony on a few housing affordability related bills. And something that came up a lot in this hearing was that a lot of these bills have population thresholds. And so they only apply to cities or jurisdictions above that meet a certain population limit. I think it's safe to say that the most, I hate to

say controversial because that only feels like a critique. But the bill that has actually, like, we could say led to the longest hearings in the Capitol is SB 840, which requires cities to allow residential development and commercial areas without rezoning. And it passed a Senate unanimously in the House 106 to 33. And this was passed last year. Another one passed last year is Senate Bill 1567. This was really aimed squarely at college station, which had been enforcing a kinship-based occupancy ordinance. And so Aggies couldn't live with four other Aggies in an apartment or a rental home unless they were related to each other, basically. And SB 1567 banned those kinds of municipal ordinances for cities of a certain population threshold. And then a bit of an older one

passed in 2023 is SB 2038, which created a way for residents to get out of a city's ETJ, extraterritorial jurisdiction by petition or vote. We talked a little bit on the data center topic about some unusual alliances that formed, you know, in that issue. In this one, we heard, in this hearing, we heard from every Texan, which is a progressive think tank and also TPPF, which is conservative, who both asked the Senate to consider expanding these state laws. And every, every Texan spokesman, Shannon Holbrook, who's a researcher there, said something

interesting. He said that the group favors local control wherever possible, and they're generally opposed to preemption. But he said, that being said, we've heard about the results that these bills have had so far. We've talked about this a lot previously. We've had a lot of cities passing ordinances that, for example, in response to SB 840, make it hard or almost impossible to build, for example, an apartment where an office used to be due to minimum high requirements, amenity requirements, that sort of thing. And so Texans for reasonable solutions, which is a non-profit focused only on this issue, said that we are seeing some cities work very hard to plant the impact of these reforms. And so to have TPPF in every Texan and Texans for reasonable solutions on one side of this issue

is an interesting situation. But the signal that we got from the committee was that they're going to consider eliminating these population thresholds for at least some of these laws to make them apply more widely across the state. Yeah, I think housing affordability, that was definitely one of your stories, Isaiah, that has been on our trending page for, at this point, well over a month on housing affordability resurfacing as a potential legislative priority in the next session. Obviously, a perennial issue. Everybody wants cheaper rent and cheaper housing, if possible. and it'll be interesting to see how these laws from last year are expanded going forward if, of course, data centers and flock and power lines and all the other tech-related stuff

doesn't completely consume all the political oxygen in the room. I think it's going to be an interesting session. But speaking of interesting stuff, did anybody see anything interesting on Twitter? Any interesting tweeterie? the city of Fort Worth put out this tweet. It's an exhibit on the Lake Worth Monster. And it said the Lake Worth Monster's bag and had the little eyeballs emoji. So the legend continues to intrigue residents.

And now there's an exhibit on display in the lobby at Fort Worth City Hall. And my first thought was, what is the Lake Worth Monster? Because what caught my eye before the actual caption is a picture of this hairy beast and a lot of different masks and a lot of different masks and a lot of documents and frames. I have never heard of it before. I've been living in North Texas almost all my life and I didn't know that we had any cryptids. I also had a cryptid book when I was a kid. It was triangular and it, you know, the cover was like that eyeball on the dollar bill and, you know, inside it told me all about the Bermuda Triangle and Bigfoot and the

Loch Ness Monster and all of their mysteries. I never heard about the Lake Worth Monster ever. Yeah, I can't say I've ever heard of that one. I feel like every part of the country has some, I don't know, kind of generic beast or creature of some sort. But I'm actually seeing this here. I'm looking this up. And it says, this is a legendary half man, half goat that apparently sparked a mass panic and media frenzy near Fort Worth in the summer of 1969. So that's so amazing.

Given what people were getting up to in the late 60s, it would not be surprising if they we're seeing tons of half human monsters just sort of running around all over the place. But that is pretty interesting, a half goat. So now we can see a big sculpture of this. Or is this the real one? And they actually caught it, stuffed it, and they're passing it off as fake. You know, I won't even look into it because I want to believe, I'm like Mulder. I want to believe the late birth monster is real.

But it does, I do get the impression that, like, it's funny that this is a subject of civic pride now for Fort Worth. There you go. I know McKenzie, of course, was always a big, Bigfoot truther, you know, being originally from the Pacific Northwest. But I'm curious, does anybody else here have any specific beliefs in certain cryptids being absolutely real? No. I think they're all weird. Well, weird doesn't mean fake. Yeah. I was in, I was in Broken Bowler. Oklahoma and apparently like their

seems as their town theme or like their mascot is Bigfoot and that was really interesting. I didn't realize Broken Bo Oklahoma. That's like so many stores are names have names referencing it and there's like these big images of Bigfoot everywhere.

So I guess they're one town that's kind of claimed Bigfoot. There probably was a supposed siding there. I would imagine at some point maybe that's why they're making that their mascot. I've also been to Broken Bow, and that was surprising. It was like out of the random. You're in like a cute little shop, and you're like, okay, everything is big.

Everything is big fun. Yeah. There you go. It sounds like McKenzie's dream. Yeah. Well, okay, my tweeterie is a little bit more political. It's not quite fun, but Vice President, J.D. Vance is supposedly conducting the press conference today, which is the first White House press briefing that they've had since Caroline Levitt conducted our last one and left as press secretary. And they haven't, from when I know, appointed a new press secretary yet, but apparently Vance will be taking the stage. So I'm curious if there's going to be, I don't know, a big announcement from Vance or is he just going to be answering questions? Because they did that while she was on maternity leave. They did, like Vance and Rubio took turns holding the briefing. So maybe this is just them filling in the gap.

But I might tune into that at some point. Well, you know, as someone who's been there before, so how it worked back when Caroline was on a maturity leave, was that they would kind of have various cabinets. Secretaries cycle through doing the briefing. So that's what I imagine will. I imagine that they will keep doing that until they settle on like a full-time new press secretary. Okay.

Yeah, that's you're probably correct then. My tweeter is also political, but it is in Austin. Hassan Piker is coming to UT. I believe the Democratic Club at UT is hosting him. And that will just, we've already all, we looked into it. You know, you have to be a UT student to be in the room. But I'm curious if there will be any protests or any events outside, you know, people speaking or that'll be kind of interesting. Just because he's so controversial.

There will be protests. Yeah. I mean, in Austin, though, they'd have to come in from, I feel like out of Austin. Because Austin would not protest that, it seems like. So, yeah, he's said and done quite a few controversial things and the Democratic Socialist uprising that's happening kind of been popping up. I shouldn't say uprising. It's popping up in different places with different candidates that are winning. They've just had more, what's the word? Like, what's that word? Momentum. Yes, momentum. So with the growth and momentum of that,

It's just, I mean, and he also is just like a very kind of larger than life figure. He's physically a big guy. He wears these kind of crazy, you know, who like the suits that are kind of like, is it Mao and Kim Jong? Oh, like the Maoist style coat. Yeah. It's a lot. So, yeah, we'll see what happens. Interesting.

Yeah, the end of the month. Yeah, it's interesting how. streamers like Piker, you know, he doesn't do like a podcast or something. He does live streams. And there's all sorts of streamers who've gotten really big on politics in particular, which is something I think is interesting. And then just all of the, there's a lot of, there's a lot of like individual pieces of drama around Hassan Piker. Um, but yeah, I'm, I'm interested. And also, there were a lot of articles that came out about him. I remember, it was like earlier this year, there was articles, I think, one in the New York Times, might have been one in

New York Magazine. But there are a lot of pieces of people saying, you know, oh, is he for a term that was used a lot during the 2024 election, the Joe Rogan of the left, right? You know, who's the Joe Rogan of the left? Who's the sort of podcaster or media person with mass appeal? Because, of course, at that time, Rogan was, you know, leaning more towards Trump and had Trump on his podcast. Whereas now I think Rogan is breaking a little bit more with the Trump coalition. I mean, I don't think he was ever really like a Trump diehard to begin with. But Piker, of course, is a big critic of the mainstream Democratic Party. And he's a big supporter of these, as you mentioned, Meredith, these DSA candidates who are gaining more and more prominence within the party. So I'll

be interested to see not only if there are protests from, uh, conservatives who are opposed to Pikers' politics in general, but also if there are any moderate Democrats who might want to push back on anything he says, I'm not sure. But something interesting for those of y'all who do not know is if you have ever seen The Young Turks, that show online, Chank Weeger is Hassan Piker's uncle. So if you didn't know that, now you know that. I believe he started out as like an intern of sorts. And I listened to a brief interview where he was kind of talking about how he didn't feel and jokingly. He was like, I don't really get like, I didn't get paid that much for my uncle, you know, kind of joking about his beginnings. But we got started.

If you ever want to watch something really funny, I would recommend watching the interview that was done with, it was sort of a roundtable that included after the 2024 election. that included Alan Lickman, who is the, I believe he's the professor who created his keys theory to determining who would win an election, every presidential election. He's predicted a lot of them correctly, but he did not get the 2024 one. And also, Chank Wigger was there. And the two of them got into a really hilarious spad. And Wiger was like taking his keys and was like jangling them in front of the camera. And Lickman got really, really mad about it. And it was hilarious.

So if you want something funny, after this podcast, of course, you've gotten all your yucks you need from the Texan. But if you need any more, I would recommend going to go watch that because it was really funny. But thank you to everybody for joining us. And we will catch you all right here at the Texan or YouTube or wherever you get podcasts next Friday morning. Thank you to everyone for listening. If you enjoy our show, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you want more of our stories, visit us at the texan. News. Follow us on social media for the latest in Texas politics

and send any questions for our team to our mailbag by DMing us on Twitter or shooting us an email to editor at the texan.com. Tune in next week for another episode of our weekly roundup. God bless you and God bless Texas.