The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - September 8, 2023

Episode Date: September 8, 2023

Show off your Lone Star spirit with a free Texas flag hat with an annual subscription to The Texan: https://thetexan.news/subscribe/ The Texan’s Weekly Roundup brings you the latest news in Texas politics, breaking down the top stories of the week with our team of reporters who give you the facts so you can form your own opinion. Enjoy what you hear? Be sure to subscribe and leave a review!  Got questions for the reporting team? Email [e-mail] — they just might be answered on a future podcast.  This week on The Texan’s Weekly Roundup, the team discusses: The debate over the controversial “forgiveness doctrine” in the Paxton impeachment caseA U.S. district judge blocking a state law requiring age verification for pornographic websitesThe divide between Texas Republicans and conservatives over the Paxton impeachmentNueces County District Attorney Mark Gonzales resigning before his removal trial to run for U.S. SenateThe 187th anniversary of Sam Houston being elected as the first president of TexasA report that a Chinese-owned social media app fostered opposition to a Texas land billTexas’ ERCOT grid triggering emergency conditions but avoiding any rotating outagesThe day the Republic of Texas’ “floating capitol” was sold and disappeared from the historical recordAlmost 30,000 Texas students leaving public school for homeschooling in the 2021-2022 school yearTexas dove hunting season opening on September 1

Happy Friday, folks. Senior Editor Mackenzie DeLulo here, and welcome back to the Texans Weekly Roundup podcast. This week, the team discusses the debate over the controversial forgiveness doctrine in the Paxton impeachment case. A U.S. district judge blocking a state law requiring age verification for pornographic websites. The divide between Texas Republicans and conservatives over the Paxton impeachment. Nueces County District Attorney Mark Gonzalez resigning before his removal trial to run for U.S. Senate. The 187th anniversary of Sam Houston being elected as the first president of Texas.

A report that a Chinese-owned social media app fostered opposition to a Texas land bill. Texas' ERCOT grid triggering emergency conditions but avoiding any rotating outages. The day the Republic of Texas's floating capital was sold and disappeared from the historical record. Almost 30,000 Texas students leaving public school for homeschooling in the 2021-2022 school year. And Texas dove hunting season opening on September 1st. Thanks for listening and enjoy this episode. Howdy folks, Mackenzie DeLulo here with Brad, Cameron, Matt, and Rob. And Matt, it's your first time back in

the office in a long time, so welcome back to Austin. Howdy, I'm pleased to be here. We pulled you out of the mountains of West Texas, which I know was much to your chagrin, but we appreciate you being here, especially the timing of you getting back here as the trial has started this week i hit the ground running and it's been nothing but excitement when i drove into work this morning i saw your truck and i was like yes he's here it's my first day back with you i've been out the last couple days in the building with a truck so you can tell there are actually a lot of trucks in this building which cracks me up i would not want to drive a big pickup truck in Austin.

That's great. I guess it's Texas. Yeah, there you go. The big old steel bumper for Austin traffic. We are currently recording as the House, excuse me, the Senate is taking its break in the impeachment trial of Attorney General Ken Paxton. So we're going to try and make this as succinct as possible so we can get back to listening to the proceedings and make sure we're up to date to record our episode of Inside the Impeachment for later this evening. So, Brad, with that, let's start off with an impeachment piece this week. One of the first hurdles that had to be cleared in the trial was the forgiveness doctrine. Tell us what that is.

Texas government code reads an officer in the state may not be removed from office for an act the officer may have committed before the officer's election to office. That's a lot. You got that straight? Totally. Okay. Basically, the idea is that Paxton and any official cannot be impeached for charges that preceded their most recent election. And that has been a pillar of Paxton's defense team's arguments in this. Again, to restate it, the idea is that voters did not care about these allegations

when they reelected Ken Paxton last year in 2022 and put him back in office anyway. To make their case, the defense pointed to multiple examples of local elected officials avoiding removal from office due to the provision, including the much-cited one of a 1924 case involving Titus County Sheriff John Reeves. They also, to betress their case, they pointed to the 2022 GOP primary for Attorney General in which challengers George P. Bush and Eva Guzman made those allegations an issue in the campaign when George P. Bush announced, I think it was announced his exploration of running for Attorney General. He told Dallas Radio host Mark Davis that this was a big feature exploration of running for attorney that's right yeah he told uh dallas radio host mark davis

that this was a big feature of the interview that um he didn't have any real differences with paxton on policy it was these allegations of abuse of office from his uh top assistants that we are now seeing as a feature in this impeachment case. So they made that case. They filed a motion to dismiss. The House Board of Managers responded. And this was, for the last couple months, something that was hotly debated between the two sides. So essentially Paxton's side is saying these issues were publicly available enough, publicly discussed enough for voters to have the opportunity to take them into consideration when they reelected the attorney general.

Right. Hence, forgiveness of wrongs. Forgiveness doctrine. So how did the House Board of Managers address that? that assertion saying that the forgiveness doctrine does not apply to impeachment as it is different from the removal process and this impeachment process is outlined in the Texas Constitution. He wrote that in a memo that was handed out on the House floor to members before the original impeachment vote and he was trying to preempt these arguments about the forgiveness doctrine added to that in their own filing addressing the motion to dismiss the managers wrote paxton claims the public knew about all his misconduct and by re-elect him re-electing him in 2022 must have forgiven him for his offenses. Substantial evidence shows otherwise. Paxton's denials, half-truths, and downright lies enabled him to conceal the truth

from the public, end quote. Additionally, both in the memo and in the filing, the managers point to two recent examples, the two recent examples of impeachment of state officials, O.P. Carrillo, a district judge from Duval County in 1976, and Governor Pa Ferguson in 1917, the last time a statewide official had been impeached. They were both impeached on counts that preceded their last election. So while if you read that provision without any other context, it sounds like they have a strong case to make about forgiveness doctrine. But if you look at precedent, that's just in those two instances lies with the board of managers. So both sides had, like I mentioned, the defense pointed to the Titus County Sheriff example. So they each cited precedent in this. But overall, it seems that there's a line drawn between local elected officials and state constitution-sanctioned officials.

And so that seemed to be how the divide came down. So what did the result end up being? How did it play out in the Senate? You know, after they gaveled in and did the invocation and got started, this was, I think, the second or third motion that was brought up. And it failed overwhelmingly. Voted down 22 to 8, notably. That would clear the two-thirds requirement to get to impeach pax on any one of these so that's not exactly you know it doesn't mean that's gonna how it's gonna end up but

that along with many other votes of these reached that two-thirds threshold so it was an interesting start but ultimately the forgiveness doctrine was short lived as an issue. Yeah, absolutely. And that was notable. I mean, all those votes on those motions, which y'all talked about on day one, very notable in that the senators had been under gag order. And even before they were under gag order, statements began rolling out as soon as the impeachment in the house was done from those, from a lot of senators saying, you know, this is a trial, we'll be quiet is a trial will be quiet until the trial and we're going to listen to the evidence. And so we really have not heard anything

from the Senate as to where each individual senator, particularly particularly the Republicans, would be leaning. And it could still play a factor in their decision making. It's just that when the question was presented of the forgiveness doctrine, it was rejected in this case. Absolutely. There you go. Bradley, thank you. Cameron, coming to you. The bill to require websites that publish sexual material to require age verification for access recently had a judge rule against its implementation. Tell us what happened. Yeah. So an adult entertainment advocacy group filed the lawsuit on behalf of a group of pornographic websites saying that this bill was overbroad and it would fail strict scrutiny. The lawsuit also said the bill would be not just unconstitutional but unenforceable.

And, well, the judge partially agreed with that. I went into the piece and provided a lot of things from the order itself because it was very interesting. I will read one section here for our listeners. This is from the order. The state has a legitimate goal in protecting children from sexually explicit material online. But that goal, however crucial, does not negate this court's burden to ensure that the laws passed in its pursuit comport with established First Amendment doctrine. So that was the main argument put forward by not only the lawsuit, but in the judge's opinion. And the judge also went on to explain that the bill is not narrowly tailored enough, and it would actually chill the speech of adults who would want to access these websites.

And so, understandably, the bill's author, Matt Shaheen, he was a bit perturbed by the ruling, and he sent us some statements and put things out on social media and said, despite expecting a ruling like this to occur, he would continue to fight and not allow for, quote, predatory extremists, unquote, to prevail. There you go. And Matt Shaheen, of course, a state representative Republican from Plano, I believe. That is correct. There you go. Thank you, Cameron. Bradley, coming to you. Ahead of the trial, a new poll was released. Was this actually ahead of the trial? Was it like before the trial started? Yeah, they released the original poll was released, I think, last week. And then they released these crosstabs the morning of the trial. Got it.

Okay. So it was released to show voters thoughts on the proceedings themselves. What did it end up showing? Overall, respondents agreed that the impeachment was justified. But broken down into political affiliations, I thought that yielded the most interesting results. For example, asked whether the impeachment by the House was justified. 28% of Republicans said yes, compared with 33% who said no,

and 39% who said unsure. Now, that's not exactly a clear trend one way or the other. Those are pretty close percentages, and especially the largest percentage said they were unsure, and that's registered Republicans. So I thought that was— Which I think a much wider spread than we would have expected. Yeah, yeah, I think so.

I would have expected no to be higher in that. Among conservatives, they also pulled ideology here. Among conservatives, those who lean conservative register the largest percentage of those who believe it is justified while those who are extremely conservative post the extremely conservative say the that it was unjustified but those were both at 44 respectively but in each question and each subcategory, we saw a lot of respondents say they either don't know or have no opinion. Obviously, it's one poll. But if Republicans and conservatives are saying that the argument that I just mentioned about the forgiveness doctrine,

that voters were aware of this and forgave him, that is, that is one knock against it. You know, obviously it's not the entire case, but I just thought in the context of some of those arguments, especially with the forgiveness doctrine, the amount of people who didn't know was pretty surprising to me, especially with how big this issue has been. But, you know, voters, you know, when you get into the weeds on issues, people have lives to live. They don't pay attention to everything. So, you know, I just I thought it was interesting. And ultimately, because the forgiveness doctrine got shot down, it doesn't really matter anymore. But that was some, you know, they gauged the public opinion on this. Yeah. And I know that a lot of Republican senators in the back of their mind have

primary voters in mind when they're looking at this. And, you know, I think so far the Senate has been very, and watching the Lieutenant Governor, been very neutral about going about everything. They've been very reserved in their takes on everything. So, but you know, they're sitting there thinking, okay, I'm up for reelection in two years. Where are the voters on this? And it is a political trial. It's part you can't take out of it. Yeah. Cameron mentioned this earlier that, you know, we call them a jury, but jurors in actual cases don't have to face voters. Yeah, exactly. Or not no no consequences that's not fair at all but like they don't have exactly like you're saying constituents that hope that they side with one

way or another right and so that's just there are a lot of efforts to try and get politics out of this but it's a political situation yeah there's no getting politics out of this yeah and even just watching the trial it's very interesting we've talked about this it's just and hayden said it on the other inside the impeachment podcast is it's fascinating to watch something that's supposed to be a trial happen in the senate chamber that isn't actually a trial and there's no actual presiding judge who's a member of the bench it's just like a very interesting thing to watch but there are lawyers and criminal defense lawyers and trial lawyers and they're making their case it's just a very interesting dynamic um it's fascinating pro-wrestling it's like karen says it's like pro-wrestling um thank you brad okay matt we're coming to you

jumping out of controversy and into a campaign the embattled Nueces County District Attorney Mark Gonzalez resigned his office and avoided a trial seeking his ouster. Give us those details. Well, District Attorney Mark Gonzalez, who's the twice elected DA for Nueces County, which includes the Corpus Christi area, was facing a removal trial brought by a watchdog organization, Citizens for Defending Freedom. And the charges included incompetency, a numerous week on crime policies, and a failure to legally qualify for the office, which was the fact he failed to execute a bond that the law requires for most public offices. Now, Gonzalez is a Democrat and faced a host of allegations in the removal lawsuit that was greenlit to go forward by a state district judge after the Nueces County attorney, Jenny Dorsey, endorsed the suit, meaning she intended to prosecute the case for removing Gonzalez. Gonzalez rebuffed these allegations using some, I'll just say, colorful language

in multiple livestream videos that he's posted to social media and had pledged to fight the case and defend himself. However, this week he chose another path forward, announcing that he has resigned his office and also immediately announcing his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for United States Senator from Texas, hopefully gaining the nomination to challenge incumbent Republican Senator Ted Cruz. The resignation moots the removal trial, and Gonzalez has already released a campaign video on YouTube. With the DA's office now vacant, Republican Governor Greg Abbott will be allowed to make an appointment to fill the office for the unexpired term,

which likely means a Republican will succeed Gonzalez as the NOAS District Attorney. Citizens Defending Freedom has expressed hope that many of the criminal cases that Gonzalez, they say, refused to prosecute are still within the statute of limitations and can be reopened by the new DA once they assume office. Meanwhile, Gonzalez will be off campaigning, I guess, statewide alongside other Democrats seeking the nomination, including State Senator Roland Gutierrez, Congressman Allred, as well as, I believe, about nine other people who have filed as candidates in that Democratic Senate primary. Yeah, absolutely. And I believe Gonzalez's messaging so far has been, they tried to kick me out of office, not happening, I'm still fighting for your values, now I'm running for U.S. Senate. That seems to be the messaging I've of his social media videos that he's posted during this go-around have been kind of interesting. And I think he even put this in his campaign video.

But he has a tattoo across his chest that very eloquently spells not guilty. Oh, wow. I'm pretty sure it wasn't a spray-on. You never know. And yeah, there's some interesting reads or watches there. So if you're bored and want to have time, you can always go find those videos.

Check out his Twitter. There you go, Matt. Thank you. Rob, coming to you for some Texas history from 1836 to 1845, Texas was an independent republic. What happened on this day in 1836 that was central to Texas history? So unfortunately, it wasn't on this day. I actually wrote that wrong, but it was two days ago. You're right. And I just went bad, not yours. And I just went with it knowing full well it did not happen on this day.

Indeed. But 187 years and two days ago on September 5th, 1836, Sam Houston was elected as the first president of the Republic of Texas. Houston was already well known throughout Texas for leading the Texas Army against General Santa Ana at the Battle of San Jacinto in April 1836 and helping to win Texas' independence. But he already had a lot of political experience at that time. He actually lived a very long and interesting life filled with political activity. So tell us about that political experience. So he was born in Virginia in 1793 and was raised in Tennessee. He was involved in politics for most of his life.

As a younger man, he fought under General Andrew Jackson in the war of 1812, and he later became a Jacksonian Democrat in the U.S. Congress when Jackson entered politics. A small name in American history. Yeah, Andrew Jackson. He also was later the president. As a young man, Houston also spent time with a band of Cherokees whose chief, and I believe I'm pronouncing this name correctly, Uluteca, adopted Houston and gave him the Cherokee name Colonna, which means the raven. Uluteca, actually, who was also known as John Jolly, lived in Hewasi Island in Tennessee. He sort of lived, I believe he was a mixed race

man who lived sort of a life like a southern planter sort of thing. He was a wealthy man on that island in Tennessee. But after a failed marriage to Eliza Allen in 1829, Houston left politics for I believe a period of three years. He returned to live with those Cherokees before he eventually returned to politics. Now what's interesting is that this failed marriage was shortly after Andrew Jackson was elected to president. And in fact, some people actually believe that Sam Houston was going to be Jackson's successor as part of the Jacksonian Democrats to eventually run for president of the United States. But that ended up not happening. What happened is that after he returned to politics in the 1830s, he decided to move to Texas, where he eventually took up the cause of the Texians, those being the Anglo-American

settlers who were resisting the Mexican government at the time, eventually becoming a military leader who would help Texas obtain its independence. And a funny thing about the word Texian is that apparently, I believe this was in the mid to late 19th century when the term Texian was sort of phased out in favor of Texan. There was actually some controversy about this because some people thought Texian sounded really good, but they thought that Texan did not sound very good. Interesting. There was an interesting kind of... When was it phased out, did you say?

I believe it was in the mid to late 19th century. Okay. So I believe after the Civil War was when the change had been sort of fully made. Yeah. But there was... But may have been sparked prior. It could have been, yeah. But there was this sort of change. I remember reading something where someone's like, oh, it sounds so much worse when I was reading about this article. Because there was a lot to read about to write this because Sam Houston lived a very, very full life before eventually being the namesake for the city that I grew up in. That's exactly right. So who else ran in 1836 for the presidency? So one of Houston's opponents was Stephen F. Austin,

who helped lead the movement of Anglo-American settlers into Texas. So he was a big deal, but he did not beat out Sam Houston. But another one of Houston's opponents was Mirabou B. Lamar. He's a fellow veteran of San Jacinto who became Houston's vice president and later his political rival, because they actually disagreed on a little bit. Whereas Houston was in favor of Texas joining the United States. And he took a more conciliatory approach to the American Indians, which some people believe is because of his time spent with the Cherokees. Lamar wanted Texas to remain independent and expansionist. And he took a very hard line stance against the Indians. He was happy believe is because of his time spent with the Cherokees. Lamar wanted Texas to remain independent and expansionist, and he took a very hardline stance against the Indians. He was happy to use

warfare and violence to sort of force them out of Texas's territory. So when Houston's first presidential term ended, he ended up serving two terms before Texas was admitted into the union. And when Lamar became president after him, Houston became a member of the Texas House of Representatives and sort of led the opposition there against Lamar. So he was a union man, Sam Houston, I believe he sort of characterized himself as a southern union man. He was serving as governor of Texas in 1861, when the state seceded from the union and joined the Confederate States of America, but Houston refused to pledge his loyalty to the CSA. He ended up retiring from politics,

and he lived with his family until his death in 1863. He never saw Texas reunited to the Union. So one can only imagine sort of what he felt like at the end of his life. If he perhaps felt like at the end of his life, if he perhaps felt like his dream of making Texas a sort of part of the U.S. had failed. But it's still a nonetheless very interesting life that he lived because, of course, Texas was eventually reunited to the to the Union. Yeah. And not very long after he passed away. There you go, Rob. Thank you so much. It was actually before when he died in 1863. Oh, he died in 1863. Yeah. There you go. Crazy, crazy life. He said he never saw Texas reunited to the union. Yeah. Cause he died in 1863 before the war ended in 65. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We're on the same page then. I believe

we are on the same page. I don't know if I misheard something. Okay. What did you think I said? I thought you said that he died not long after that. Or did you say not? I meant to say the state was then reunited to the union not long after he died. Ah, okay. But I could have not said that. I could have said the exact opposite. I mean, you know, we all.

That's where we're at these days. Rob, thank you. Is there something big going on maybe that our minds are drifting towards? Yeah, we're working on it. Thanks, Rob. Cameron, coming to you. The controversy surrounding the effort to protect Texas land from ownership by citizens or agents of foreign governments hostile to the U.S. has a new wrinkle. Tell us about this new information. leading up to the bill's introduction. And even after its introduction, there was many protests,

there was conferences, there was Democratic lawmakers railing against this bill, this bill being SB 147. But new information has been presented to the public. And this was a document obtained by the Epoch Times that showed how the Chinese Communist Party, or the CCP, launched an information warfare campaign against the bill. The document slide that was labeled the China threat details how the social media platform WeChat, WeChat has billions of users. This platform, WeChat, was used to coordinate misinformation campaigns and create emerging narratives in an effort to sabotage this bill. The China threat document highlighted how anti-SB147 efforts were being targeted at Texas representatives like Gene Wu and U.S. Congresswoman Judy Chu to oppose the bill. The document did note, though, that those two individuals, they were unlikely aware that they were being aligned with the CCP on the issue. And this has been a bill that has gained a lot of traction and a lot of support,

but a lot of pushback as well. And since the fallout of it not passing. There's been a lot of people saying, why was this happening? What's the reason for it? And this is just another bit of information to show why there was so much opposition to something like this. Yeah. And the bill never did end up passing this legislative session, which was a big crux of some of the criticisms from some of the conservative activists around the state. Correct? There you go. Bradley, coming to you. Cameron, thank you for that. On Wednesday, ERCOT ran into some problems. What happened?

ERCOT issued another conservation alert in the late afternoon on Wednesday, something it's done a lot in the last few weeks. But around 7.30, the regulator dipped into emergency conditions suddenly, going right into energy emergency alert 2, the second level. This allowed the operator to trigger protocols, such as moving large industrial users offline to reduce demand on the grid. All standard practice. The tight conditions were caused by the usual dynamic from the last few weeks high demand

caused by the extreme heat the sun setting fast at dusk and low wind output to compensate for the waning solar generation now what caused the sudden dip into emergency conditions was a frequency drop. Drop below 59.9 hertz, and normally they like to keep that at 60 hertz, but if it drops below the 59.9, that allows them to immediately trigger emergency conditions. That frequency drop coincided with a sudden 1,300 megawatt drop in wind power. If you look at the chart, wind was pretty low for look at the chart,

wind was pretty low for most of the afternoon, for all of the afternoon, and then it started to kick back up as it usually does overnight as the evening hits. And that is generally how wind and solar complement each other. Solar is producing at high levels during the day when the sun's out, and then as the sun sets, the wind kicks up. That's generally how it works, although not always always um and with this if you look at the chart

wind starts to kick back up and then all of a sudden there's just a dip and around the time that this frequency issue occurred and so after that after about 30 minutes you see the wind start to kick back up again um but there was that 30 minute window where things were in flux and ercot was alarmed uh enough to trigger this this issue or this um emergency alert so that's what caused it ultimately nothing happened happened no rotating outages were issued um and but it uh it was it did take me by surprise because it happened so suddenly and the time of day seemed a little bit interesting too or was it right when peak demand can tend to be well it felt later than it might have been? Peak demand has, I should say, the tightest conditions have stretched further into the evening because it has stayed hotter longer.

And so when you no longer have the sun out, you lose a cushion, basically, especially if the wind runs into problems kicking back up so i think peak demand occurred if i remember correctly like six and we said it all the time september record last night but the point of really tight conditions occurred from like 7 30 to 8 because that's when solar dropped off. Got it. Makes sense. So what's significant about the frequency that you're talking about here? So normally if you're talking about EEAs, it's monitoring operating reserves. We never really had issues. We dipped below the first level, but we didn't hit the second level in order for that

to be triggered on the reserve side, but we did the frequency. The frequency is the balance between supply and demand on the grid. As I said earlier, it is supposed to remain between 60 and 59.9 hertz, which itself is a very minuscule measurement, but when talking about this, slight deviations can cause big problems such as in 2021 if you remember the discussions about a black start event potential weeks or months long outages that was because the frequency deviated from its mean for too long we were about four minutes or so away from that happening and when that happens the only way

for them to balance out the frequency is to shed load which is an outage and so back in 21 they shed 20 000 megawatts if that had occurred last night they would not have had to shed that much because you didn't have these cold weather issues just knocking tons of plants out. So overall, that's the importance. If it deviates for too long, circuitry breaks. Other mechanical issues follow. So that's why it could have led to weeks or months long outages. But overall, nothing like that occurred.

The frequency got rebalanced fairly quickly. And overnight, there were no issues. Wow. So what's the historic context of this? So this was the first time since February 2021 that emergency conditions were triggered. Despite the long, hot summers we've had over the last couple of years, we've seen, especially this summer, a lot of conservation appeals i've lost track frankly how many but we have not dipped into emergency conditions until last night as i mentioned in 21 they had to cut 20 000 megawatts of power which is a lot um you know that the state generally operates right now anyway between 70 and 85 000 megawatts

of demand so that's a sizable sizable portion but the previous examples the three previous examples of um rotating outages that have occurred on ercot over the last three four decades is a much smaller amount that had to be cut. Regardless, we didn't have to cut anything. Rotating outages didn't occur. But even if they had, the conditions were not there for it to be even close to what happened two years ago now. There you go. Bradley, thank you. Matt, we're coming to you on September 4th, 1839, a steamboat that temporarily served as the capital of the Republic of Texas sold at auction and disappeared from the history books. Tell us about your story

you wrote this week. Yeah, this was a very interesting part of early Texas history that I had no idea about before I researched and wrote about it. But here's the story uh a steamboat riverboat whatever you want to call it named the cayuga um which i looked up the meaning of that word it's uh in reference to a early indian tribe from the new york state area but i thought it kind of sounded like a steamboat anyway uh it played several different really interesting roles in texas history first it was the first commercially uh successful steamboat in the state region area whatever you want to call it uh it was it it was the first so just on that prong alone, pretty interesting historical fact. the steamboat in order to escape the quickly approaching army of General Santa Anna from a period ranging from April 15th to April 26th. And during that time, it officially became essentially

the floating capital of Texas, the government headquarters. And as the army was approaching, the government essentially had to borrow without asking, I guess for lack of a better way to describe it. But they ultimately purchased the vessel for $5,000. Now after they were done using it, they sold it at auction at the end of the year, and the new owners renamed it the Branch T. Archer and used it for a while in the Houston and Galveston Bay areas. Then, on September 4, 1839, the ship was sold at auction by the Liberty County Sheriff and was reportedly lying near a residence in the Old River. From this point, the Cayuga vanished from Texas history books,

and to this day it remains unknown what happened to the final destination of the floating capital of Texas. Which is kind of crazy to think about. I love this story. I think it's fascinating, and make sure to go read it at the texan.news, folks. Thank you, Matthew. Cameron, coming to you, we saw many parents decide to choose homeschooling in the years following the COVID-19 lockdowns. Tell us about this new information that has come out about homeschooling in Texas more recently. Yeah, that's right. Many parents, like you said, decided to withdraw their children from Texas public schools following the COVID-19 lockdowns. And according to the Texas Homeschool Coalition, that trend has continued. They

filed an open records request, and that revealed 29,765 withdrawals from public schools in favor of homeschooling in the 2021-2022 school year. And these students are ranging from the 7th to the 12th grade. And compared to the peak of the COVID-19 lockdown withdrawals, that is less than 100 withdrawals different. Very, very comparable. So close to 30,000 in both those years. This all with everyone expecting a school choice special session. And going through a lot of the information in regards to homeschooling, school choice vouchers, there continues to be a lot of support for an initiative like that. There's been polling from University of Houston showing strong support for school choice among all different demographics, whether it's different racial minorities or urban versus rural.

There is support there. And there's been preparation from the legislature. For example, the Texas House Select Committee on Educational Opportunity and Enrichment released a report where they make a recommendation where they will continue identifying opportunities to scale and improve public school choice. So homeschooling continues to be popular post-pandemic, and there is public support for it. Absolutely, Cameron. Thank you. And school choice, folks, just like Cameron reminded us, this is going to be another huge issue. It already has been this year. I think we're all embroiled in the Paxton trial right now, but we're expecting a special session on school choice very soon thereafter.

So just get ready for that. We're going back-to-back big legislative happenings here in Austin. Cameron, thank you. Matt, coming to you, you have the latest update on some very fun outdoorsy news with the first major hunting season of the year now open in Texas. That's right, Mackenzie. Texas is divided into three hunting zones for the most popular game bird in America, the dove, the north zone, the central zone, and the south zone. The north and central zones both opened on September 1st and is presently underway, and the south zone opens up pretty soon here next week on september

14th we included a map in the story that our readers can go check out you can also find the map on texas parks and wildlife but in a nutshell the north zone is kind of separated by i-20 running all the way across the strait from fort hancock on the west side to Texarkana on the other side. The central zone, its southern border, runs from Del Rio across Orange. And then you have the south zone that's kind of that bottom area of Texas. Anyway, under our story, we covered that Texas Parks and Wildlife biologists estimate that it's going to be a strong year for dove season. The study showed that there was 44% more mourning dove than last hunting season and 20% more white-winged dove and with dry conditions, which it's still dry out there since we published this story,

but if you sit next to a good source of water like a pond, you should be able to limit out pretty quick. There's also a lot of public hunting options out there. If you don't have your own ranch or place to go to. Texas Parks and Wildlife makes numerous leases available to the public, and other government agencies do so as well. We highlighted the International Boundary Commission, which is in charge of certain portions of the southern border along the Rio Grande is allowing hunting in certain regions along the Rio Grande that you can apply for and get permission to go out and hunt on so you can check that information out with the International Boundary Commission. One fun fact over 300,000 hunters participate in dove season each year in Texas and the proceeds from sales tax

this is derived from hunting and fishing gear, hunting licenses, et cetera. Goes to fund not only wildlife conservation efforts, but also fund game law enforcement. Very good. Very popular story this last week, Matt. Thanks for your coverage there. Gentlemen, for our tweeter-y section, I want to talk about the trial.

We are obviously covering it in depth over at Inside the Impeachment. Folks, make sure to go check that out each day as we publish new episodes recapping all the craziness going on with the proceedings in the Senate. at it ad nauseum at this point it's just what's happening in texas politics so let's let's pick some a lot of these are more light-hearted interesting kind of little uh sidebars here sidebars um but let's go ahead and talk like actually cameron we're going to start with you this was like a this is a pretty interesting thing to watch occur? Well, everyone watching the trial on the live stream, there is a noticeably different shade to one of the attorneys. That attorney being Tony Busby. Who so far has been like the lead for Paxton's defense. Yes. And there's been a lot of commentary on the depth of his tan, let's say. Yes. It's a noticeable shade of orange, you could say. Well, he's noticed as well, the fodder online. So he decided to go on a frontal attack against the chatter, saying that

somehow the media is altering his photos. And he actually put up a side-by-side of two different news organizations that have taken photos during the trial. One, he is a noticeably lighter shade, and then the other, quite a bit darker. And in his post, which is on Instagram, he makes sure to put the word tan in quotes, saying, I am out in the sun a lot, but I don't think my skin has ever been that, quote, tan. So he's asking the public, why would they doctor my pic? I'm sure you could take a guess. So you think the news isn't biased? Think again. So he puts it out there for everyone. And I want our listeners to comment. Are they doctoring this photo? Has he gotten a spray tan have you seen tony busby jogging outside we need to know is the tan real or not comment down below this has become

this is going to become a particularly important fact i'm going to get my binoculars after this out of the truck and walk over to the cap Capitol and just sit up in the gallery and be looking down to see what the deal is here. I think that's what Rob and I were seeing earlier during the trial. Charlie Guerin, a house member who sits on the board of managers, had his fingers kind of cupped around his eyes like binoculars. And I was like, what is... I wondered if he was actually holding binoculars, but then he moved. I don't think he was. I think he was, I don't know what he was doing, but it's funny the things you see on TV when you're watching these live streams, people are like, yeah, exactly. Like Senator Bob Hall was putting

in eye drops in the background at one point. I mean, they're there all day and they forget the cameras are on them for some part of it. And, you know, it's pretty funny. Anyway, delightful, Cameron. Love it. Let's go to, let's see here. Matt's last one is a little bit more. Well, actually, no, Matt, we're going to go with you. You can go next. Oh, okay.

Well, here starting up pretty quick, they're actually going to be resuming what I'm talking about now, and that was today a new attorney. I guess you pronounce that Oso? I believe so, yeah. Which this is his first day conducting cross-examination. He was cross-examining one of these OAG whistleblowers, a guy named Bangert. And basically what I'm talking about is what I perceived Oso trying to accomplish with his cross-examination of Bangert today,

and that is they're trying to punch holes in a narrative that was set by the first witness, Jeff Mateer, whenever he kind of said, described how Ken Paxton turned the keys of the attorney general's office over to Nate Paul, you know, basically saying, you know, Nate Paul and his attorneys came in here and just got all this stuff to benefit the people of all Texas, not, and, you know, specifically under statute, serve specific state entities, etc., not basically be there at Nate Paul's disposal. So in doing this, one of the things that they were going after was the infamous midnight opinion, I guess is what they call it, the opinion letter that they say that Paxton influenced in order to stop foreclosure sales that benefited Nate Paul. So under that cross-examination, Oso worked to establish that it wasn't a normal Attorney General opinion and that it literally said at the bottom, this is not a regular Attorney General's opinion. This is a guidance, non-binding guidance sort of thing. And he also revealed a text message that wasn't revealed

before from Ken Paxton to Bangert saying, thank you for your work on this. This will benefit hundreds of Texans who are impacted during COVID and stop them from, you know, being evicted, etc., etc. Their places foreclosed because of the economic hardship, etc., etc. Read off that text message and then also questioned whether or not Bangert had also reason to believe that the guidance wouldn't have only just benefited Paul. And he did that by talking about how Paul had filed a bankruptcy and asked him, you know, you're a legal guy, don't you know that bankruptcy causes a foreclosure sale to stop? And Bangert said he wasn't aware of that, and he said, well, you know, is it likely that it did? And he kind of acknowledged that way, and he's like, so you really can't say for certain that this guidance benefited Paul. And that's whenever we kind of saw for the first time, I mean, Ben-Gurid had been a very cool and composed up there on the stand. And I think you started seeing that kind of get

to him there, and it started getting pretty intense. And then you started seeing the prosecution chime in and all this other stuff, and then we ended up breaking for lunch. But the whole point of it was to create reasonable doubt in the prosecution's narrative. You know, yeah, y'all might have assumed this, but could this also have been true? You know, basically painting that image in the jury's mind that was there another reasonable explanation out there? Was there a possibility? Was it just as good or even better than what you say prompted you to act on? And it was interesting to see him work. I actually, I don't know if this is true or not. I got a text message from a friend of mine who's been watching. He said that there's been a lot of people saying that Oso is a relatively new

attorney, I think licensed in 2019 or so, which is pretty interesting if that's true, because you have a pretty new attorney up there litigating with some, I mean, absolute pillars in Texas trial law, you know, Rusty Hardin, or is it Randy Hardin? Rusty Hardin. Rusty Hardin, Tony Busby, Dick DeGaran, et cetera, et cetera. You know, these are guys with a lot of trial experience. So it was interesting to see this exchange. And, of course, this is literally just now picking back up

as we're wrapping up this podcast. So it will be very interesting to see how this cross-examination concludes. And we'll talk about it more on our podcast specifically on the impeachment coverage. It looks like Oso's a partner at Cogdell's law firm, so the other leading voice in a lot of... In the defense. In the defense. In the defense. And he graduated from South Texas College of Law in 2018. Wow. Yeah.

So he could have probably become licensed in 2019. Probably. Yeah, the timeline is probably pretty close to reality. A relatively fresh lawyer. And whenever compared up against these other guys who are up there, you know, these are giants in trial law in Texas. I mean, do the names get any bigger? I don't know. I don't think so. I can't think of any.

So it'll be interesting to see how he concludes his cross-examination, but it has been amazing to watch. Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you, Matthew. Bradley, let's go to you next well this whole ordeal has yielded quite a few uh great quotes we had um anthony fauci name dropped by jeff matier in describing the way in which that opinion was written about closing things rather than opening things in COVID. Tony Busby accused the, I think it was Mateer at the time, on the stand of any other whistleblowers of mounting a coup or trying to mount a coup. There's been,

I can't tell you how many objections using the word hearsay in it. It's just been nonstop. Did you watch any of the Johnny Depp Amber Heard trial? No. Okay. Well, they just said hearsay all the time. That was like an internet meme. It seems to be a strategy by the defense to try and slow things down a bit and gum things up,

gum the prosecution's line of questioning up. And it's working. It is. But then the most quotable, I think, was something Cogdale said during the closing of their opening comments, opening arguments, and he said the quote,

that's just dumber than a bucket of hair. And I've never heard that saying before in my life, but that is already a meme on Twitter, or X, or whatever it is. He has the other big one that's already making it around on Twitter. What are we doing here? What are we doing here? What are we doing here?

I love, yeah, the specific things like, for God's sakes, what are we doing here? What are we doing here? I don't know what we're doing here. But, yeah, I guess there really is nothing dumber than a bucket of hair. So I mean, you say that, you know, you don't know if you've ever heard that phrase be used before. I'm not sure if anyone has ever used that phrase. I've heard dumber than a bag of hammers, dumber than a box of rocks. But I've never heard a bucket of hammers.

I've never heard that. You have to watch the classic film, A Brother Where Art Thou. Oh, gotcha. In which one character says, you two are dumber than a bag of hammers? I've never heard that. You have to watch the classic film, A Brother Where Art Thou. Oh, gotcha. In which one character says, you two are dumber than a bag of hammers. Well, it was funny to hear that and added a bit of comedy to this tense situation. I mean, these attorneys are going at each other.

I will say this. It has inspired us at the office to where every time there's a break, we switch the TV over to watch some of our favorite lawyer segments and movies and also some of our favorite law firm commercials. Texas Law Hawk.

I was going to say, does Texas Law Hawk make that list? The Texas Law Hawk. Almost as good as the Texas hammer. Oh, gosh. But I think we've seen the great ending scenes from My Cousin Vinny and Legally Blonde, which are two great, great courtroom scenes. Wow.

Maybe we'll just have to come up with a- My Cousin Vinny's the best. We'll have to come up with a blooper reel or a highlight reel. It's like the funny moments, the memeable moments of the trial uh rob speaking of memeable moments of the trial please tell us about your highlight yes eric could you please bring up rob's highlight so eric so there is a um a a figure i don't know if he's actually appeared on the senate's live stream but he... He has, yeah. Yeah, he has. Very briefly. Busby made him stand up once. There's a gentleman named Eric who is working.

I don't know if he actually works for Cogdell or for Busby specifically, but he is their guy who's grabbing exhibits during the case of this whole trial. So it's been very, very funny to see every time that the Paxton defense team calls for exhibits, they turn and they say, Eric, can we get this up? Eric, can we do this? Eric, can we do that? Eric, can we do this? This is making the rounds on text ledge Twitter, there are parody Twitter accounts for Eric, there's one which is like, referencing Busby's, the way that his his tan shows up very strongly in the Senate's live feed saying the orange man has called my name X number of times, Y number of times, Z number of times. It was funny, actually, because during Busby's cross-examination of Matier yesterday,

he actually spoke to Dan Patrick and said, just that you know, when I say Eric, this is who I'm referring to. Because I think for some of us, we're like, who's Eric? So Eric has already become a classic text-ledged meme in a trial that is so full of text-ledged meme moments. So it's been a lot of fun. If you just so happen to listen to this, Eric, keep up the great work. Absolutely. It was funny walking into the office.

I've been ill for a few days, and immediately Eric jokes were traded among y'all made me laugh it's so much more fun to watch with you guys than at home by myself yeah you were saying that at the beginning of this

beginning of the of the pod you were saying you know welcome back Matt to the office but I was gonna say welcome back Mac to the office I know i haven't been in since last week what a shame so glad i was missed we missed you mac thank you matt oh my gosh oh my goodness um well folks with the trial has started once again so i think we're gonna hop off here and cut our time a little bit shorter than usual today. We so appreciate you listening again. Make sure to go listen to Inside the Impeachment and listen to all things.

Our new podcast will break things down daily. We have awesome guests joining us a lot of the days that we're breaking down the proceedings. So make sure you go check it out. Thank you for listening to our weekly roundup and we will catch you next week. Thank you to everyone for listening. If you enjoy our show, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you want more of our stories, subscribe to The Texan at thetexan.news. Follow us on social media for the latest in Texas politics and send any questions for our team to our mailbag by DMing us on Twitter or shooting an email to editor at the texan.news. We are funded entirely by readers

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