The Texan Podcast - White House Calls Fox News Videos ‘Cheap Fakes,’ Democrats Hope to Flip Texas, and more: SMSS Ep. 4

Episode Date: June 25, 2024

In this episode of “Send Me Some Stuff,” reporters Brad Johnson and Cameron Abrams take a deep dive into the difference between a “cheap fake” and a “deep fake”, the prospects of Democrats flipping Texas House seats, the new and staggering number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits, and more.Want to send Brad and Cameron some stuff to discuss on the next episode? Email [e-mail]****Be sure to subscribe to The Texan for full access: https://thetexan.news/subscribe/

Well, and under Trump and under Biden, there's been a lot of printing of money. Yeah. And a lot of fake money going out and a lot of fake success going out where people are- What do you mean fake money? Well, the issuing of- Monopoly money? Well, it's not fake money, but you know what I mean, like... Hello, and welcome in to the third episode of Send Me Some Stuff here at the Texan.News.

My name's Cameron Abrams. I'm a reporter here. I'm joined today, once again, by our senior reporter, Brad Johnson. Brad, how's it going? It's going. It's going. You know, I'm here, contractually obligated to be here, as usual. Yes. And excited for the third episode of whatever this is. Whatever this is.

It's an evolving thing. It's different every week. We talk about all sorts of different topics, not just political news, as you'll see. We get into all sorts of different things. I thought we'd start off with talking about the breaking news over the past few days. Justin Timberlake arrested. Yeah.

And what I thought was so funny is if you are in your late 20s, early 30s, even in your 40s, you know Justin Timberlake. Oh, of course. You know, he used to be living under a rock, not to. He's a huge star. But apparently the cop that pulled him over had no idea who he was, didn't recognize him. And so he didn't get the star treatment. You know, these celebrities, they get pulled over, maybe just get a stern warning.

It reminds me of the cop who arrested Scotty Scheffler when he was trying to enter the tournament. Right. And I was looking at some different reports about this arrest and um apparently a source told um someone about during the arrest timberlake said under his breath that this is going to ruin the tour so so i didn't know they were touring i think it's just him you know he went solo okay you know sexy back you know i don't know how long you can keep bringing sexy back it's been a few decades it's him it's been a few decades now but i wanted to play a little game with you okay this cop was unable to recognize justin timberlake because the cop was so young.

So I thought I would pull up the Billboard Artist 100. Okay. You know, obviously names on there like Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Morgan Wayland. You'd be able to recognize them if you were the cop and you pulled them over. Yeah. But number four on this list, Sabrina Carpenter. Do you have any idea who that is? I only do because I've seen her on Twitter recently, like literally the last two days. Before then, I would not have known who the heck that is. See, there are names on this

list. I would have no clue. Number 13, Shaboosie. That cannot be a person. That is Shaboosie. That's how you say it. What in tarantula? I've never heard of this person. Number 17, Benson Boone. I don't know who this is. Number 18, Teddy Swims.

No clue. There needs to be more creativity in these names. I think Shaboosie is pretty creative. That's pretty good. I don't know if this is the TikTok era of people getting big online and then they get some mainstream appeal, but I would not be able to recognize them either. And you're far more cultured on this stuff than i am hardly i do like some pop music but most of the time i'm not listening to

that stuff i'm like patrick star on this like i'm a rock but let's get into some of these stories that we're going to be going through today i think the first one we're going to be going through today. I think the first one we're going to talk about is the cheap fake comments. Is that a new term? This is the first time I've heard this. Yeah. So this was the first time I heard it as well. From my understanding, it's the, I guess the reason why. Did Shaboosie come up with that? Shaboosie. Well, I think it might have been a slip of the tongue or not, but maybe it's a difference between a deep fake and a cheap fake

because apparently these comments from Kareem Jean-Pierre talking about a lot of these videos that have come out recently of Joe Biden where we've seen these on Twitter where he's like trying to sit down and it kind of looks like he's not knowing if a chair is there or not or like being let off a stage and you know he kind of freezes i mean the man's how old he's like almost 80 or over 80 yeah he's i don't know his exact age i think he's like 79 or something but uh a lot of 81 81 okay so and a lot of these videos they're not altered or there's no AI sort of manipulating the video so they're not deep fakes but what they're calling them out are cheap fakes because apparently what the White House is essentially saying is they're being shown manipulatively with different camera angles.

And so I just thought this was an interesting turn of phrase. We've heard misinformation, disinformation, alternative facts. Now we have cheap fakes. But I think this brings up a larger point with how technology is being used in political campaigns. You know, we've seen lots of videos on X where people do create like those edited videos, deep fakes and things. Do you think over the next five or ten years it's going to be to a point where people are going to be unable to differentiate truth from reality with some of these videos? Or do you think government is going to have to step in somehow and put regulations on how political campaign videos are put out or pictures?

Do you think somehow the free market is going to sort of sort it out itself? I mean, we saw Ted Cruz introduce the bill this week on banning AI. Yeah, the take It Down Act. Child porn? Yeah, that had to do with AI-generated revenge porn. Revenge porn, that's right. So, yeah, I mean, there's probably going to have to, the government will do something at some point.

You know, there's already talk in the legislature, the Texas legislature, about how to handle AI, how to handle deep fakes. You know, we saw during the primary there was an image put on a mailer by Club for Growth in the HD21 race. Oh, yeah, with dade feeling they put um i think it was hakeem jeffrey's body um there's a photo of him hugging nancy pelosi and they put dade feeling's head on it and that really pissed off the feeling camp um you know as far that is i would, less severe than, you know, something actual, you know, AI video of something that we can think of that, you know, is probably going to be a thing at some point. Yeah, there's definitely going to be government action on this. What that is, I don't know.

Is it even effective? That's the other question. I don't know. Because once it's out there, it's sort of already out there right and people will form an opinion on it once they see it it's very difficult to call that back I guess the only way to do it is prevent it from happening in the first place but yeah is that even doable I don't I don't know is it you know there's often quite the question of is the there ought to be a law mindset

is that even legit is does it does it work is it efficient can even be done in any efficient manner that depends on what you're talking about in this i i don't know you don't know. I don't know. But, you know, like you said, this is not deepfake. This is an actual video of Biden that allegedly is being taken out of context or is being twisted in some manner based on the angle. I don't know. And the most recent example is there was a fundraising event with Biden, Obama and Jimmy Kimmel. And we saw this video of Biden on stage at the end of this event, like freezing up and Obama, like putting his hand on his back and like kind of ushering him off the stage. And what we saw is people trying to present evidence that things have happened similarly with Trump. And like I saw someone post a picture of Trump walking off the stage and he's holding Donald Trump Jr.'s hand.

And this person commenting was like, people talk about biden's decline what about trump blah blah blah and then with x and their community note feature it said this is fake because if you watch the full video it was trump walking down this aisle off the stage and he's waving and like doing this little fist bump thing you You see Donald Trump Jr. reach his hand out like for a handshake. And Trump reaches down, grabs his hand, and that's where the picture is taken. But then he immediately releases his hand and keeps walking. I mean, it's Trump's eccentricity that is what has traditionally been the knock against him. The flailing his arms and making jokes about things or people or things he said, that's not a result of his age.

And it's clear that the dynamic here is Biden is very aged and showing it. Everybody who sees this knows it. And we have a debate coming up too. Yes, there's a debate. And, you know, Democrats, whether they'll admit it publicly or not, are having discussions behind the scenes about should we run him again? Okay. That doesn't mean that they're going to decide, no, we shouldn't.

I think probably they'll just decide, yeah, let's stick with the horse that brought us. We're not going to abandon him at halftime, you know. But it's very clear what this is. The president is losing a step. And you can debate whether that means he shouldn't be president or not. That's totally, there are fair points on both sides of that but like come on this is the issues people have with trump are not the same as the issues people have with obama or now obama with biden and it's just like yeah and i'm i completely agree

and i think it's going to be interesting with the upcoming debate. It's next week, I believe. So we've had lots of discussions about what's going to happen if there's a poor performance by Biden. For our listeners, I'd love to hear your thoughts. If Biden has a poor performance in this upcoming debate, will the DNC swap him out for someone else? And who would that other person be? Would it be Gavin Newsom? Would it be Michelle Obama? Would they put Kamala? She's even less popular than Biden.

But, yeah, it's very apparent that the age of Biden is showing. And I don't think it's— I mean, the man's 81. Yeah. I don't think this should be that surprising, you know? Like, what are we doing here? Yeah, it's interesting, too, like how old precedents are and our presidential candidates are. And if people ask themselves, like, what other job would Biden qualify for if it wasn't president?

Like Costco greeter? I don't know. Like, but it's not like you want him being your attorney or something. I don't know. It's just strange. You know, also, the other side is he's not always showing signs of mental fog or more extreme mental fog. Well, so that brings up another question. It's like, is he on sort of some medications that give them energy in certain moments.

The man's 81, probably. I know, but it's like, should that be disclosed to the public? Like, he's going to Delaware all the time. Like, what's he doing there? Yeah. I mean, really what this comes down to is we're in the heat of a re-election campaign and both sides are using anything and everything they possibly can to get an edge. Yeah. That's not new. Never has been. Campaigns will always do that. And I mean, of course, it gets away from the actual policy debate that is going on in this race.

You know what to do about the expiring tax cuts. I think they expire next year, the year after that, maybe in 27. I can't remember. But, you know, that's going to be huge. Obviously, it will depend on who's in office, but that's a debate that's absolutely going to be had. You know, what to do about abortion, which we'll talk about in a little bit. Yeah. Should there be national policy? You know, this is just campaigns doing campaign things.

Well, I think it's interesting with what you're saying that things have always been this way with personal attacks on political opponents. But our news cycle has evolved where when CNN went to the 24-hour news cycle, that changed things dramatically. But now we're in a essentially hour-to-hour news cycle with new things popping up all the time. And you feel like you know these candidates personally because you have them in your pocket 24-7 and so I it's the same way like how people relate to reality TV stars almost like in a Big Brother type of mindset where there's a camera on them 24-7 and you can watch them and all their greatness and all their flaws and you can nitpick as much as you want. And I think we're still trying to adjust to

that. And I think we're just at the beginning of it, but with how we started this segment, talking about cheap fakes and deep fakes and now with information 24 7 in our pocket knowing these candidates personally i think it's only gonna continue to ramp up so um there's gonna have to be an adjustment what that is don't know but i think it'll probably happen organically whatever it is yeah but let's move on to the next topic here. You sent me this. This was a Texas Tribune story. Headline, Democrats think they can flip Texas House seats by going after GOP's education funding and school voucher policies.

Do you want to give us a little rundown about what they talked about here? Sure. So this is written by Jasper Scherer at the Tribune. He mentions the messaging that kind of formed at the Democratic, Texas Democratic Convention a week or two ago. And specifically, you know, they took aim at Greg Abbott and his crusade for school choice, vouchers, education savings accounts, whatever you want to call it. And, you know, it has a lot more momentum in the legislature now, at least once we reconvene, because of what we've talked about on probably on this podcast, but also the Smoke-Filled Room podcast, the gains made by Abbott during the recent primary and runoff. The votes are there for some form of school choice plan. What that ends up looking like, I don't know. But the thing that it has been tied to up until now,

and it probably will be tied to it again is school funding and there's a broad assessment understanding during the legislature that if any school choice program was going to pass it had to be tied to school funding increase and teacher pay raises and that's what the omnibus bill laid out school funding got and a school choice got removed from that omnibus bill laid out. School funding got, or not school choice, got removed from that omnibus bill, and then the bill died because that was the deal. You know, so there's a fight over who's to blame on this, and, you know, both sides have their points.

You know, the deal, the legislative deal was all three of those things or none of them. I mean, that was the broad understanding. That's what Abbott made clear. That's what Chairman Brad Buckley laid out in both of his omnibus bills that he proposed. And I think they lumped them in together at least broadly during the regular session, too, when things really didn't get moving at all on the issue. So, you know, there's that side that says that was the deal and you removed the school choice and so no more deal.

You know, the other side says that the bill that increased school funding sans the school choice provision could have been passed anyway. Sure, absolutely, it could have. But that didn't happen, and that wasn't part of the political strategy the deal made. Regardless, you know, schools are hurting on budget. And that's very much a reality. Part of, if I recall correctly, part of that is a lot of these ARPA funds running out, the COVID funds. You know, there are others with just difficulty of maintaining, retaining teachers with the pay they're getting.

In this debate, there are points to be made on both sides, and the finger of blame is being pointed in all directions. But ultimately, if there's going to be a school choice provision next session, it is probably going to have to be tied to a school funding increase. And so anyway, getting to this piece, Democrats see an opportunity to make some gains on this issue. And it's a big question mark because it hasn't really been an issue to this point in a general election. Obviously, it was one of the big two, three issues in the Republican primary. But when it comes to head-to-head Republicans, Democrats, who wins on this? And Democrats are taking the route of, you guys, the Republicans killed school funding increase. And so we'll see if that plays with voters. They feel like they can make gains in a couple battleground seats.

HD 118 is one that comes to mind. John Lujan, that's a dead even district. They also see that possibility in HD 121, also in Bexar County. Lujan is in San Antonio, and so is Steve Allison's district. Allison lost to Markle Hood, who was an Abbott-backed pro-school choice candidate. And so Democrats feel like they might be able to give a run at that one. And that one, that district is, I think, like R54. So it's Republican favorable, but not overwhelmingly so. Then you've got HD37 in the Valley that Democrats are going to be eyeing to flip. That's Janie Lopez is the Republican incumbent.

Different environment. You know, that's the valley that's right by the border. So the border is even more important in that respect. But Democrats are trying to find an issue that they can make appeals on, that they can make gains on. In regards to public schools, right? Public schools and school choice. Because it seems like there's three issues in the public school debate. There's the school funding.

There is the curriculum issue. Yes. And then there is the parental rights school choice, right? And so Democrats, at least from this article's assessment, are going to try and rely heavily on the school funding portion of those three issues. But like you mentioned, is that going to play with voters? Because I don't know if I'm just in a bubble with what I'm seeing. You can tell me if I'm wrong, but it seems like curriculum and school choice are the two biggest things that voters care about right now. When it comes to curriculum, it's everything from the CRT, gender issues, sexualized books, those sorts of things get a lot of not just state and local attention, but national attention. And then school choice. Again, parents post-COVID

really want to be able to send their kids to whether it be the school of their choice, homeschool, learning pods, whatever. The parents want that choice. And that seems to be, those two issues are much more attractive to voters than telling them schools aren't getting enough funding or teachers are not getting enough funding. Because if you tell, at least in my mind, again, correct me if I'm wrong, if you tell a parent schools aren't getting enough money, and the parent will say, well, the curriculum is not the type of curriculum that I want my kid to learn from. So why should I send a school money if they're not even teaching things that I want them to teach? Or you say, you tell a voter, schools or teachers aren't

getting enough funding. And the parent says, well, if I just looked at math and reading scores over the past decade, they're continuing to fall. You want us to send these schools more money? We're not getting the results. So I don't know how they're going to tailor that message of school funding when the emphasis, at least what I'm seeing, is the curriculum is not tailored to what the parents want, and it's not producing the results that parents want either. Well, on the polling, it depends on who you're asking, right? Yeah. Polling has shown this is a very difficult

issue to poll school choice specifically, because if you word it as something like, should parents have the freedom to take their kids to whatever school they decide or choose, then that polls really well among virtually all demographics. If you frame it as, should tax dollars go to religious schools, then the polling dips significantly. So it's very difficult to poll that question. If you poll the question of should schools get more funding, I think you'd probably see, if I remember correctly, this question has been asked, you'd see a lot of support among all kinds of voters. But if you pull the question of should schools focus more on the three R's rather than all

this other stuff, the curriculum side of this that you're asking, they're going to say yes, absolutely. I don't know if people really have made up their mind on what the prevailing aspect of this issue is. And that's one thing that's going to be interesting to see in this ballot test. I'm sure Democrats are going to fashion the message about Abbott's crusade against – crusade for school choice, vouchers, whatever, that killed a funding increase to schools. And there are a lot of schools in the state that are really struggling financially. Right.

Whether that's of their own making or not is a different debate, right? But I think parents also see a lot of problems stemming from lesser funding than they have seen in the immediate past. You know, there's also the point that the state education budget is bigger than it's ever been. So where's this money going? Is it going to administrators, like heavily administrators like we're seeing at the higher ed side of things? Maybe. I don't know if there's been a real good accounting of this

and what the actual, you know, pluses and minuses are of this budget, this funding debate. But it doesn't matter because we're still going to have the political fight over it. Yeah, and I think what will be interesting in the 89th session is having the single-issue bills in regards to education being brought to the floor. Because when we saw with the omnibus education bill in the special session, when school choice was stripped out, the entire bill died. If they're able to bring individual school funding or school choice in an individual piece of legislation, that will give the legislators an opportunity to actually debate the issue itself.

Yes, it would. But I disagree that that's going to happen. I think there's going to be another omnibus plan. Oh, man. I don't think the legislature is where very pro-school choice activists like Corey DeAngelis would like it to be as a standalone issue. You might be able to get the school choice program you want in the context of other funding. But, you know, take the omnibus bill that died. I mean, that was, I think, technically universal school choice. But it, A, had a budget cap.

So it was not going to be applied to everyone who wanted it. And, B, it prioritized, if I remember correctly, certain demographics like those in failing schools and I think special education as well. So this is not this, you know, can I describe it as libertarian approach to the school choice issue? There are a lot of guardrails on it, and there will be.

And if you don't put any guardrails on it, you're going to lose votes you otherwise would have had. So I think Abbott knows that. Abbott's team knows that. Chair Buckley knows that. So we've seen, you know, we just saw a letter go out for the Texas conservative commitment, and it had, in addition to taxpayer-funded lobbying commitment, it had a universal school choice plan. And we saw two members who voted for the Rainey Amendment that stripped school choice from the omnibus bill sign on to that. That was Ken King, who carried the school funding bill, I think, during session and then maybe during special session. It all runs together.

And then Keith Bell is the other one. And those two were very involved in discussions behind the scenes on how to fashion this Onabit spill. So, I mean, that right there shows momentum for Abbott, for Abbott's side. But this is not going to be some, you know, cut everything loose. Yeah, there's still going to be guardrails oversight and that's why i think it has it's going to have to be tied to funding of some sort and obviously the debate will be had over what what's included in that what that looks like but um it is not democrats i think have an, and we'll see if it works for them, to message this in such a way that they might be able to flip one or two House seats, the most obvious one being Lujan and San Antonio.

Yeah. Just because of the partisan makeup, it's dead even. Yeah. Lujan's a very formidable candidate, and I think it'll be a tough race to beat him. It's, it won't be a shoe in. And also the overarching environment is not there that existed in 2018 when Democrats took 12 house seats or flip 12 house seats.

But the opportunity is there and Democrats feel like they, they have a chance. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see how the messaging goes moving forward. The other side, sorry to cut you off, but the other side of this was I don't think we saw, you know, teachers' unions and just the public school environment really turn out in a significant manner for these anti-voucher Republicans. Maybe that's different when a Democrat's on the ballot. I don't know.

But it didn't really happen in the primaries we just saw. So that's an indication that the voting strength of that population that really cares about this issue is not there. Now, again, that may change in a general election, especially with the presidential race on the ballot. Right. But the jury's still out on it. Yeah, the school choice issue in Texas is far from being decided. It's going to be something we'll be talking about for the next year. So that was a great breakdown though, Brad. Thanks for that. And we'll move on to the next

story here. This is another story you sent me about abortion. And this is from the Wall Street Journal headline, Abortion Rights Advocates Deploy a New Red State Playbook. And you actually wrote about the abortion debate in your newsletter, fourth reading. So tell us a little bit about this article. So it focuses on Ohio, which is one of the two states, the two red states that had a constitutional amendment placed on the ballot and passed that created a constitutional right to abortion following the overturning of Roe, following

the Dobbs decision in 22. And it passed. I'm from Ohio. Ohio has gone very red, but it's not Oklahoma. It's a different environment. The kind of red it is there is significantly different. For example, Sherrod Brown is a Democratic senator. He's on the ballot this year,

but he has withstood multiple significant challenges from Republicans who've taken basically every other statewide office, but he maintains a foothold on it. And I think that that's not the case in Texas. There's no Democrat that's held statewide office in 30 years. But Ohio has that tinge of blue collar, rust belt heavy voters. And they like someone like Sherrod Brown. He'll probably win again, frankly. I think that's probably the case. It would be an upset if he lost.

So anyway, pro-abortion activists, pro-choice activists are taking what happened in those ballot referendums and trying to – now they're on the offensive. Whereas they were defending Roe for five decades, they have now – basically the tables have flipped. And so Republicans are trying to figure out a way to message more restrictions on abortion rather than beating the drum against Roe. And Democrats are trying to figure out a way to pare back those new restrictions or somehow reinstate Roe as policy. And so they have begun to cite these, according to the Wall Street Journal, they've begun to cite these referendum results in court cases. And so I'm not sure, that's not like a true legal argument, but it is an example of red issue is pretty interesting because voters broadly oppose abortion in the third trimester. And that goes for all across the board.

It's not just among Republicans. It's not just among Democrats. And then voters, same thing on the flip side, voters broadly oppose bans in the first trimester. It's the second trimester where we all fight about it. Right. Now, with some of these gains Republicans have made in the elimination of Roe, take Texas, that line of debate has moved into the first trimester. You had the heartbeat bill, but now we have a total ban in Texas. In the newsletter, I talk about the next battle lines because there are still abortions happening.

You know, there's a lot of mailed-in abortion pills. Those are abortions that aren't tracked. Republicans are going to try and likely try and address that somehow. Meanwhile, you have Democrats who are wanting to try and instate, you know, rape and incest exceptions. And that's something that polls very well. Well, and we've seen the abortion issue, pro-life advocates winning on the national level, the overturning a row. The messaging has been great there. And we saw a couple months ago, Trump put that video out saying abortion is the will of the people. They can vote on it however they want. Should be addressed at the state level.

Should be addressed at the state level. And he caught some flack for that but it was essentially moving the debate to the state level where we're seeing like with ohio maybe the ground game wasn't there as much for pro-life advocates we're now pro-choice advocates see an opportunity to make gains on their issue. What I think is going to be interesting is seeing, again, coming back to messaging, is we've seen on the national level when pro-life advocates are messaging on their issue, they're pointing to the pro-choice, let's call them zealots, who are advocating for that third trimester ability to abort a child. And those make, for gray clips, put on X and spread around. But when it comes down to the state level, we're seeing in the red states like Ohio,

it's a much different conversation that is happening. So I think it's going to be interesting to see how that, if there's going to be more pressure moving back towards the national level, trying to, if a Republican like Trump wins the presidential election, attempting to put a national ban, or is it going to remain at the state level? Well, I mean, Trump has planted his flag on that, and I think a lot of Republicans will acknowledge

that trying to institute a national ban is politically not a winning issue. It's not a winning issue to get elected. Or to stay elected. Or stay elected. But once that person is elected, it can be a different conversation. Sure. But we have seen politicians of all stripes, they are most concerned with winning re-election and staying in office, at least broadly speaking.

They're obviously counterexamples to that. And that question is totally separate from whether this is morally the correct or incorrect position, whichever way you fall on the issue. But there are a lot of Republicans, and it seems like Trump is one of them, who worry about the recoil if they institute a national abortion ban rather than let this, the political recoil, rather than let this play out. You know, we saw the Tea Party really kicked up when Democrats got Obamacare passed, and that was a massive reform that they had been searching for for a long time, and it wasn't exactly as they had hoped entirely, I think, but they got it, and it cost them at the ballot box.

You know, so we saw Republicans in 2017 tank their own repeal of Obamacare because they were worried. And Trump was one of them that did this. He called it heartless, and that killed it. They were worried about the pushback at the polls so i don't see any reason to think this will be anything different and that's why this is probably going to status quo is probably going to remain where you have hodgepodge of policies across the country. And now states are going to have to figure out how they address the existence of opposite policies in other states. For example, Republicans in Texas are probably going to try and figure out a way to try and prevent or at least dissuade Texas women from going to California to get an abortion. Or Colorado.

Or Colorado, I think New Mexico or wherever else. And then the reverse is probably true in these other states. You know, they'll try and find ways to hit back at Texas for having its ban on abortion. And then, you know, we see this legal strategy. There are going to be more challenges to Texas's abortion laws, just as there were constant challenges over the five decades against Roe. And these strategies will evolve. But we're seeing the basis for it right now setting forth in Ohio and Kansas. And will it be effective to impact Texas?

I don't know. But the last battle over Roe lasted five decades. The next battle over what's next is going to last decades. And it's just not going to be. This is a very contentious issue for obvious reasons. And people disagree vehemently. positions of, you know, the essentially united position of opposing it in the third trimester, of supporting it in the first trimester. But that leaves a lot of room. Leaves a lot of room. And I think what you mentioned about how women are traveling to

other states, I think that's going to be an interesting debate that's going to be had because it involves multiple states. You know, Texas women going to Colorado or New Mexico, like you mentioned. Is there a way that the Texas legislature can write a law that is going to somehow hold women accountable or prevent them from doing that. That brings up a lot of controversy when you get into something like that. That brings up the abolition of abortion, which is basically establishing equal protection of the law for the unborn child and prosecuting women for terminating their pregnancy. And that is something that Republicans haven't wanted to do.

That haven't wanted to do. Yeah, and that's going to be something I think a lot of people are going to keep their eye on. When we talk about a problematic message, you know, a losing message. A losing message. But those pushing it say this is a moral issue, and that's that. Yeah. Regardless, also one more thing I want to say about this. Go ahead.

It hasn't, abortion has not played as a political issue for Democratsterms, Democrats, they didn't have a great midterm. They also avoided losing the House by a country mile, which is what everyone thought would happen. They also kept the Senate. But the jury's still out on the potency of this as an issue electorally, especially when you have something like the border that is predominant in everything. And that's something Democrats are fighting an uphill battle on politically. They're trying to find a winning message. Yes. Yeah, so the debate is not going to stop. on politically. They're trying to find a winning message. Yes. Yeah.

So the debate is not going to stop. It's going to continue into this next session. It's going to be at the national level. It's going to be at the state level. It's going to be at the local level. So but let's move on to the next story here. Came across this in Fox Business where they were talking about the number, this is the headline here, the number of Americans filing for jobless benefits unexpectedly spikes to 10-month high. I'll read from the article here. The number of American filing for unemployment benefits last

week unexpectedly jumped to the highest level in 10 months, the latest sign that the labor market is starting to cool in the face of high interest rates. Figures released Thursday, this article was published on June 13th. So figures released Thursday by the Labor Department show initial claims for the week ending June 8th increased 13,000 to 242,000 above the 2019 pre-pandemic average of 218,000 claims. It marks the highest level of jobless claims since August 2023. Continuing claims filed by Americans who are consecutively receiving unemployment benefits also rose to 1.82 million for the weekend June 1st, an increase of 30,000 from the previous week. I thought this was interesting to bring up because I've constantly

seen messaging about how the labor market is improving, job market is improving. But with these numbers, it's showing the opposite, that we're seeing unemployment benefits, filings going up, jobless claims going up. I'll read a little bit more here from the article where it says, the weaker than expected data could have major implications for the Federal Reserve, which raised interest rates in 2022 and 2023 to the highest level in two decades in an attempt to cool the economy and the labor market. Policymakers have signaled that they will hold rates at elevated levels until they are certain that high inflation is conquered. So seeing jobless and unemployment rates rising, we've been seeing inflation going up. What do you think in your estimation

might be the cause of this? Do you think it has to do with national level policy? Do you think it has to do with something else entirely, maybe? In your estimation, based upon what I stated here, what do you think the issue is? Well, I think the rates is probably the biggest reason. And the logical thinking behind that is keep rates high to dissuade more prolific borrowing cool the labor cool the um the inflation because it's harder to get dollars people don't spend as much um and try and get try and stabilize prices, which is what inflation is. It worked back in the 80s when Reagan was president,

and now it took a very rough term to get that to become effective, to show ground gained. But that's effectively what they're doing here. And, you know, every action has an equal and opposite reaction, which is what the Fed is counting on here. It's the rates have dissuaded people from borrowing money. And they're counting on that because they want fewer dollars in circulation. So I don't know.

It makes sense to me. If money is at a higher premium, you're not going to hire as much as a business owner, and especially if at the same time inflation is fairly high. So like the prices you're paying for whatever good you need to do business, if it's a fast food restaurant, money you're paying for food, that's going to dissuade you from adding more help. Right. And that causes more people to be unemployed.

It's just, it makes sense, I think. Yeah, and we've seen someone like Trump recently. He said he was not going to tax tips. He said possibly eliminating income tax. Replacing it with tariffs. Replacing it with tariffs. But I think all that together is sort of signaling to how people are feeling in the current economy is something is not right and with the the jobless claims going up and I think we've seen over the past few months with

the national credit card debt being almost a trillion over a trillion dollars now so people are borrowing a lot of money to just pay for regular household I don't have them they have been because rates over the past four So people are borrowing a lot of money to just pay for regular household items. Have been. Have been. They have been. Because rates over the past four years mostly have been really low because of COVID. Right. So people borrowed a lot when the rates were super low and there wasn't as much dissuasion to do that. Well, and under Trump and under Biden, there's been a lot of printing of money.

Yeah. And a lot of fake money going out and a lot of fake success going out where people are— What do you mean fake money? Well, the issuing of— Monopoly money? Well, it's not fake money, but you know what I mean, like it causing inflation to go up and where people are. We saw during COVID people were applying for COVID relief funds and grants and things. And there was a lot of fraud going on at that time as well. this reckless spending with people who are getting money from the government and then not

going back into the workforce after COVID as jobs appear not to have recovered as well as we thought they would? Something to keep in mind when talking about unemployment, what qualifies as someone who's on the unemployment rolls, you have to be looking for a job. Yeah. So if you're not looking for a job, then you're no longer counted as among the unemployed. That's, I think, part of it.

The segment of the workforce that has stopped looking for jobs. Now, the economy has also improved from COVID. I mean, it's easy to go up from zero, right? So, yeah, you have to keep that in mind too when we're talking about unemployment. But unemployment is pretty low rate-wise. You know, it's high threes, low fours, I think. And it varies based on states and i think texas has

been outperforming the u.s recently but that's still there's still that uncounted population in that and i don't know if there's a way to measure that you know to account for it it's an interesting issue it's um it's something the economy is always either the number one or number two issue for people going to the polls uh in a national election not now not now well it is number two it's number two now roughly immigration and yeah immigration is number one but And border, yeah. It's interesting with how Trump is signaling elimination of income tax and funding the government through tariffs or eliminating taxing tips. I think that's him signaling that he's aware that there's an issue. It's funny that a solution to goods being of higher cost or higher price is to levy more tariffs that will then cause the price of goods to increase because that is going to trickle down to the consumer,

the person who's buying the product at the Z point of the supply chain rather than point A. Now, you might say that's worth it. There are arguments to be made, but let's not pretend like this is not an income tax. It's not an increase to the income tax. It's an increase to the price of goods and the taxes paid therein. It's not really going to be China that is paying for these tariffs. It's ultimately going to be the American consumer, the person that's buying these imported goods. Yeah, it would have to work in conjunction with other policy initiatives, obviously,

if you're going to try and have some sort of control over consumer prices. So I think it's a good message. It plays well, especially with them. But it'd have to work in conjunction with other policies. But let's move on to... Let's do the debate one. All right, let me move on to, let's do the, uh, the debate one. All right. Let me pull this up here.

Um, this is a Daily Mail article. Okay. Starting off. Uh, this was published on June 13th. Um, I'll read out the headline here. Half of voters expect Biden to forget where he is during first debate in atlanta and walk off the wrong side of the stage but could those low expectations spell trouble for trump and so by the way these news websites have so many advertisements you don't get that on the text we have no advertisements but. So from the article here,

almost half of likely voters expect President Joe Biden to make a series of embarrassing flubs when he goes head-to-head with Donald Trump in their first debate this month. Some 49% think he will forget where he is. 41% said they expect him to walk off the wrong side of the stage, according to a new poll by JL Partners. Another 40% think

he will have trouble standing up during the CNN debate in Atlanta Georgia on June 27 so they have a little chart here where people pulled they were asked do you expect or not expect the following things to happen in the debate? Trump to interrupt Biden, 79%. Biden to mess up his words, 70%. Trump to tell a rambling story, 61%. Trump, Mike, to be cut off, 54%. Biden to forget where he is, 49%.

And they have some other things here. This is where we started with our conversation about Trump and Biden. And they have a debate coming up. What do you think these, what do these numbers tell you? How people are feeling about our two candidates, about the debate coming up? What does it say to you? Well, first of all, I want to point out that the poll was 500 likely voters okay so 500 people i think obviously depends on modeling but i think it's

that's pretty low it's not the lowest i've ever seen in a poll but that makes me a bit skeptical. Okay. But I don't think it's directionally wrong. You know, I think people are pretty unenthused about the two candidates. Although I will say, you know, I just saw by the time this goes out, the poll will have gone out. But at this point, it's embargoed. But there was a question done by the Texas Politics Project in a recent poll that you can now read about on Texan at this point. The voters who support Joe Biden in the poll were asked, do you want Joe Biden to be president or do you just not want Trump to be president? And the breakdown was close to 50-50 there, I think, if I remember correctly.

It was pretty close. But then for Trump, the breakdown of do you want Trump to be president or do you just for wanting Trump to be president. So there's a significant difference there. A lot of energy on the Trump side. Yeah. Now, those were of Texas voters. Right. Well, I think what's interesting is with what you just mentioned

in terms of the energy for voters between Biden and Trump. And Trump has, over the past few weeks, been trying to, even before that, like we were just talking about abortion, trying to position himself as a more moderate candidate on some respects than maybe the media has told people about, like how he is. Like, for example, he went to the Libertarian Party Convention a couple weeks ago. And I think that's a huge deal because if libertarians, a certain percentage of them who would maybe vote third party for a libertarian candidate, vote for Trump, that could flip a lot of states in Trump's direction. And during that Libertarian Party Convention speech that he gave, he made some promises to those libertarians there. He said he'd put a libertarian

in his cabinet, said he would communicate the sentence of Ross Ulbrich. If people aren't familiar with him, he started up the website Silk Road. So he made some promises to these libertarians that are more in alignment with their views. He's made centrist arguments with the abortion issue. He's made some alternative arguments for the income tax and the tariffs issue on the economy. So trying to position himself in a different way than maybe the media portrays him as. But going back to what we were talking about with the debate, there's some rules that have been set for this debate. So, for example, Trump're going to be Trump and Biden

will be standing at neutral podiums. And the positioning of these podiums will be determined via coin flip. Microphones will be muted during the debate. So if Biden's speaking, Trump's mic will be muted. If Trump is speaking, Biden's mic will be muted. So what made Trump's debate so electric during the, in 2015, and then going into 2016 was him interrupting and cutting into when people are talking. We're not going to see that in this upcoming debate. And what I think is also is very interesting with this debate, one of these rules, is they will not be permitted to bring up any pre-written notes. So as we've seen in Biden's— That sounds like a Trump campaign demand.

Well, I think if we're going a Biden win or Trump win with these rules, that's a Trump win. Absolutely. Because we've seen during the Biden presidency pictures of him behind a podium holding little index cards, you know, with notes or people's faces and that. And that's not anything unusual. But when it almost seems preplanned that he's going to call on certain people and they're promised to ask certain questions. That's when there's some eyebrows raised about what is actually going on between the separation between the president and the press there. And we know Trump, he can just ramble and tell stories and go on ad nauseum about all sorts of different things. So without having pre-written notes, I think that's going to be very interesting.

I'm actually really looking forward to this debate. I've watched all the— You're a glutton for punishment. I watched all the Republican candidate debates. Those were really fun. And this is going to be the first time we've seen Trump on a stage against a political opponent. This time, yeah. In a long time. So are you going to plan on watching it?

I would rather commit toaster bath. I don't know. Maybe. We'll see. We'll see. Well, as we wrap up here, is there anything you want to shout out, anything you want to plug before we sign off here um no just that you know we're hitting kind of the dead period politically and

if you got you know story ideas interesting story ideas i should say that if you got interesting story ideas send us send them our way. Well, how about what's something you have your eye on right now that maybe the average reader or listener might not be paying attention to? Well, I know there's the speaker's race, but I won't go into that here. Well, I'll plug this one. The Texas Supreme Court issued decisions in ERCOT power grid-related cases last week, and it has a lot of implications for the strength of the administrative state,

specifically in this case the Public Utility Commission. And there were challenges to pricing orders made in 2021 following the blackouts. And the court just basically sided with the state saying, it's your prerogative on this. And we're not going to step in and open the door to repricing the market from the blackouts and give you essentially sole discretion on when to set electricity rates at their max, at their cap. So, you know, the industry is divided on this. But it's an interesting dynamic that the court continues to side with the agency. You know, we saw another case last year come out that ruled that ERCOT possessed sovereign immunity from lawsuits, and that was unrelated, that case was unrelated to the blackouts. But it's an interesting debate. There really was no good option, I think, for the court

because either they kind of took a hack at the administrative state, the PUC's ability to decide things, and in doing that would have opened the door to relitigating the money that exchanged hands during the blackouts, which was billions of dollars, or they take a whack at the industry and the industry's ability to challenge what the PUC says because they basically say that the venue for challenging such a thing, at least one of its orders, is the PUC itself.

Industry, at least the ones challenging this, don't feel like that's a fair venue for them. That's why they took it to court. But the court decided otherwise. So, yeah, it's very weedy. Yeah, it's interesting, though, and you break it down really well in all the articles that you've written about it.

And you've written newsletters on the topic where you dive even deeper. So I'd encourage everyone to go check it out. And I'll shout out, before we sign off, I'll shout out my newsletter, Redacted. There's been lots of controversy over the True Texas Project and their 15th anniversary and some of the speakers that they're going to be having, some of the topics that they're going to be covering. In my newsletter this week, I cover the event and why we're seeing this divide between how the media is presenting some of these ideas

and how that's affected even people on the right and how they're approaching these ideas as well, because they are talking about things at this event, such as great replacement theory or multiculturalism. And in my newsletter this week, I dive into that, talk about how media has presented certain ideas and used terms like racism, like homophobia, intentionally to inflame certain moral foundations that people have. So if people are interested in that, go check it out at the texan.news and for me and brad here on send me some stuff thank you for listening and we will check you next time yeah how do i look like a dweeb. Perfect.

And whenever you're ready. Alright.