UNBIASED - Debt Ceiling Agreement Reached, Texas House Votes to Impeach AG Paxton, Uganda's New Anti-Homosexuality Law

Episode Date: May 30, 2023

1. Biden and McCarthy Reach Debt Ceiling Agreement; Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023; What Will Congress Do? (1:35)2. Texas House Votes to Impeach Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton (7:50)3. Uganda President Signs Anti-Homosexuality Bill; 'Aggravated Homosexuality' Now Punishable by Death (19:13)If you enjoyed this episode, please leave me a review and share it with those you know that also appreciate unbiased news!Follow Jordan on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. All sources for this episode can be found here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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You are listening to the Jordan Is My Lawyer podcast, your favorite source of unbiased news and legal analysis. Enjoy the show. Welcome back to the Jordan is my lawyer podcast. Happy Tuesday. I have three stories for you today. The first story is about the debt ceiling deal. That is the fiscal responsibility act of 2023. The second story is about Ken Paxton, Texas's attorney general that the Texas house just voted to impeach. And that will now go to the Senate in Texas. And the last and third story is about Uganda's new anti homosexuality bill. That's a fairly short story, but it is now among the most strict pieces of

LGBTQ legislation in the world. So we're going to touch on that before we get into the stories. Let me just remind you to please review my podcast on whichever platform you listen, whether that be Apple podcasts, Spotify, wherever it is, it really helps support my show, lets other people know why you enjoy my show. And finally, please share my show with anyone you feel will appreciate Unbiased News, just the facts and the ability to think for themselves. Without further ado, let's get into today's stories. President Biden and Speaker McCarthy have reached an agreement in principle to raise the debt ceiling and cut spending. What does this mean? What does the deal look like? Where do we go from here? Let's talk about it. So what this means is that there

has been an agreement between the two, obviously, but it's called a deal in principle because it's not solidified yet. So now it has to go to Congress, which could be a battle in and of itself. What does this deal include? Well, after this deal was struck, then they had to draft up the actual bill text, right? So on Sunday night, the bill text was released. It's known as the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023. I do have it linked for you on my website, jordanismylawyer.com. And by the way, you can always click, there's a link in the podcast description that says all sources are here. If you just click that here link, it'll take you directly to the webpage where I provide all of the sources.

So I do have the bill text linked for you if you want to read it. It's 99 pages in total, but I'm going to summarize it into some bullet points for you if you want to read it. It's 99 pages in total, but I'm going to summarize it into some bullet points for you just because it is a pretty, it doesn't read very easy. I'll say that. So first and foremost, it raises the debt ceiling by $4 trillion through January 1st, 2025. It also keeps the non-defense discretionary spending at the current year levels in 2024 when you factor in appropriations adjustments. So they estimate that total non-defense discretionary spending, excluding benefits for veterans, would total about $637 billion for the 2024 fiscal year. Now that number is down about a billion dollars from the year prior. That total, that $637 billion, would then increase by 1% in 2025 per the deal. The bill also

increases defense spending to $886 billion, which is about a 3% increase from the $858 billion allocated in the current budget. It prevents cuts to social security and Medicare. It claws back $10 billion in funding to the IRS in both 2024 and 2025. So that total is about $20 billion. Now this is part of that $80 billion in new funding for the IRS and the Inflation Reduction Act. So I covered the Inflation Reduction Act months ago, but as part of that bill, there was $80 billion in funding for the IRS. And that was specifically designated for hiring and cracking down and things of that nature. So this will take back about $10 billion in funding for both years 2024 and 2025. It also takes back billions of unspent dollars in COVID relief funds, which is estimated to be between 50 and 70 million, though White House officials

did say that some funds would need to be retained. There are no changes to Medicaid, but the deal increases the SNAP age eligibility requirement from 50 years old to 54 years old and requires that people work at least 20 hours a week to receive SNAP food aid benefits. At the same time, it eliminates requirements for veterans and homeless people. The deal ends the pause on student loan payments while also allowing the loan forgiveness plan to continue in the review by the Supreme Court. So it didn't, you know, revoke that loan forgiveness plan, but rather said that can go forward, you know, we'll let it play out at the Supreme Court level, but those student loan payments do need to resume. There's also a budgeting mechanism

called PAYGO. This is short for pay as you go. And it says that new government agency actions that affect revenues and spending should be offset by savings. However, this law does allow the Biden administration budget director the opportunity to issue waivers and would also limit judicial review of the decisions. So a bit of a give and take there. I mean, but that's what we see throughout this entire deal, right? A give and take by both sides. There are also new rules that implement an easier process for obtaining permit approval for energy projects. So specifically, this included the expedited approval for the Mountain Valley Pipeline. This is a billion-dollar project. It's 94% complete, but it has been held up for years in a lengthy permitting process. So they decided to go ahead and make that process easier and also expedite specifically that

mountain valley pipeline that is the fiscal responsibility act you know bullet pointed again it's 99 pages if you want to read through it feel free but some republicans in congress are saying there's not enough spending cuts some democrats in congress are saying there's too many cuts so not everyone is happy but both president President Biden and McCarthy, you know, they each said, not everyone's going to be happy here. This is something where you got to work with both sides. And that entails giving things up. So obviously, you have your extremes on both sides that probably won't vote to pass this bill. But the thought is that there are enough lawmakers in Congress open enough to compromise to pass it. So both Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Speaker

McCarthy said that they expect enough of their respective parties to come together and vote to pass it. So what's next? The House will vote on Wednesday. If it passes, it'll go to the Senate, which some senators like Chuck Schumer are saying it could take until the weekend to get a vote. Treasury Secretary Yellen recently extended the default date to June 5th. So if it doesn't pass Congress and get the president's signature by then, that is when the default would happen. That's the breakdown I have for you as of now, but I will update you again at the end of the week, obviously, depending on what happens in both the House and the Senate. That takes us into story number two, which is that on Saturday, the Texas House voted to impeach

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a 121 to 23 vote. Now, here's what you need to know. So as of now, I'm recording this at 3.30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Monday. So the Senate's last day of its term is Monday, today, the day I'm recording this. If they don't vote by the end of their term to impeach him, then this is put on hold for now. He will remain temporarily suspended from office and nothing will be solidified until the Senate votes on his impeachment. However, if by the end of the night, the Senate does vote to impeach him, then he goes from being temporarily suspended as he is now, to permanently removed from office. If he is impeached, he will become the first attorney general to ever be impeached in Texas.

Since 1876, Texas has only impeached two officials, but never an attorney general. So we're going to kind of break down what started this whole impeachment process. There's a lot going on here. In total, there were 20 articles of impeachment, but the charges mainly center on Paxton's relationship with one individual named Nate Paul. Nate Paul is a real estate investor in Austin, Texas. He was both a friend and political donor of Paxton. So when you break down the 20

articles of impeachment, it really boils down to seven charges of disregard of official duty, two charges of constitutional bribery, two charges of obstruction of justice, three charges of false statements in official records. There's also a charge for conspiracy and attempted conspiracy, misappropriation and misapplication of public resources, dereliction of duty, unfitness for office, and abuse of public trust. So this kind of all started in 2018, but let's talk about 2020 first, because something pretty significant happened in 2020, which is what really led to the Texas House impeaching him. So in 2020, these four whistleblowers come forward and they say that they had been wrongly fired from their jobs because they reported Paxton for taking bribes. And in filing their

lawsuit against Paxton, they allege many things, you know, things that they had found out through working for him. And some of those things included that Paxton had abused his power in using it to benefit his own friend and political donor, Nate Paul. But following the filing of the lawsuit in February of this year, Paxton was ordered to pay $3.3 million to settle the lawsuit. However, the agreement, the settlement agreement, needed to be approved by state lawmakers, which meant that the settlement payment of $3.3 million would come from taxpayers. The lawmakers didn't want to use taxpayer dollars to settle Paxton's case, and they were kind of wondering why this was even agreed to in the first place. That triggered an investigation into Paxton. So a few weeks after the settlement is entered, the Texas legislature opens an investigation into Paxton and why the employees were fired. Those investigators testified about a week ago in a committee hearing,

and this is what we know from their testimony. As I said, Nate Paul is a real estate developer in Austin. He is the CEO of a company called World Class Holdings. In 2017, Forbes had estimated that Nate Paul's commercial property portfolio was valued at about $800 million. But by 2019, 18 of his companies had declared bankruptcy. He was facing up to 13 foreclosures and he had multiple lawsuits filed against him. One of those lawsuits was brought by a nonprofit organization called the Middy Foundation. Middy had invested a few million dollars into Nate's company, World Class, back in 2011. When Mitty later requested to view the books of World Class, Nate Paul refused to let them. So Mitty eventually brings this lawsuit in 2018

against World Class. That lawsuit reached a settlement in which World Class would buy out the Mitty organization for roughly $10.5 million. Well, days before the settlement is to go forward and be finalized, the FBI raids Nate Paul's house and his businesses. He defaults on the settlement and it never happens. Mitty then notifies the Office of the Attorney General of the pending lawsuit because under Texas law, the state government should aid Texas charitable organizations that are in need. This particular policy designates the attorney general as the one who represents the public interest in charitable organizations. So maybe you can kind of see how this is playing out. The attorney general is the one who's supposed to have charitable organizations best

interest, yet this charitable organization is suing one of Paxson's friends and political donors. So the Office of the Attorney General has a financial litigation and charitable trust division. This division receives notice of litigation involving non-profit charitable organizations. Then the attorneys within that division review the situation, determine if the charity is capable of having the lawsuit or if their interests need to be protected. And if their interests need to be protected, the Office of the Attorney General intervenes. But it's not always the case that the Attorney General needs to get involved. So in January 2020, the attorneys in the division review the case between Mighty and Paul and determine there was no need to get involved.

There's nothing more that the attorney general could have done for Mighty that they weren't already doing for themselves. Well, Paxton disagrees and he insists on intervening. So the office of the attorney general ends up intervening despite multiple people telling him, no, you know, you know that this lawsuit is against Nate Paul. It's not good for you to get involved. But Paxton anyway says, no, we're going to get involved in this. So Paxton has his subordinates, if you will, intervene and basically put the lawsuit on pause. And what they do is they file this motion that requests a mediation and says that nothing can happen until a mediation takes place. Well, this case

had already gone through mediation. It had already gone through arbitration. So this kind of appears as a stall tactic more than anything else, but it does eventually go to mediation again. Nate Paul refuses to participate, refuses to allow his attorneys to participate, and so he's not doing anything. The negotiations end up being between the Office of the Attorney General and Mighty, when usually the Office of the Attorney General and the charitable organization are on the same side. So investigators are saying that Mighty received no benefit from the Attorney General's intervention. The only benefit of the Attorney General's intervention was to Nate Paul. Coincidentally, right before the Office of

the Attorney General, or Paxton, decides that they need to intervene in this case, Nate Paul contributed $25,000 to Paxton's campaign fund. The Office of the Attorney General ends up withdrawing from this lawsuit in late 2020, right before the whistleblower letter goes public that accuses Paxton of all of these wrongdoings. Whistleblowers end up filing a lawsuit. That's the lawsuit we talked about before, which led to this investigation once the settlement was reached. Through this lawsuit, though, the public also found out not only did the Office of the Attorney General intervene in that case and Nate Paul contributed to Paxton's campaign fund, but also they found out that in 2020, Paxton was bypassing

his security detail to come and go for meetings and instead would use a staffer. And this was to kind of keep his meetings in secret. So he would sometimes leave meetings off of his schedule entirely. The second time that this happened, one of his staffers asked him who he was meeting with, and he said, Nate Paul. We also found out through this lawsuit that Paxton was having an affair with a woman. His wife found out about it in 2019. The affair ended for a little bit. It started back up again in 2020. And then at some point in 2020, this woman that Paxton was having an affair with goes and works for Nate Paul. We also found out in 2020, Paxton's home was being renovated. And one of the Office of the Attorney General employees was present for some of the conversations between Paxton and the contractor working on his house. And this employee testified to the fact

that when Paxton and the contractor were discussing home renovation plans, specifically a countertop upgrade that cost $20,000, the contractor told Paxton, I'll have to check with Nate. So there's something going on there too. Now, on top of all of this, Pason also has a pending 2015 felony securities fraud case that stemmed from misleading investors and failing to disclose money he had made from referring clients as part of his private business. This was before he was attorney general, when he was just with the Texas legislature. Now, the supporters of his impeachment say that this is necessary to protect the integrity of the legislature, to protect Texan citizens. But the opponents, on the other hand, say that these

proceedings were rushed, they were secretive, based on hearsay accounts, and this cheapens the act of impeachment. As for Paxton himself, he says that the charges are based on, quote, hearsay and gossip, parroting long disproven claims, end quote. So that's what's going on with him. Remember I said I'm recording this at 3.30 p.m. on Monday. So if the Senate does vote to impeach him, he will be permanently removed from office. As of now, though, when just the House has voted to impeach him, he's temporarily suspended and he cannot perform any of his official duties. Now, as for the whistleblower case, where does this stand, right? Because that's an interesting, they settled this case for

$3.3 million, but they never saw the money because the Texas legislature doesn't want to use taxpayer dollars. So in March, the whistleblowers actually asked the Texas Supreme Court to take a look at this case. And in a court filing, they said that the Office of the Attorney General has basically verbally told them that they've put the whistleblowers in a quote-unquote gotcha position. Because if lawmakers don't approve the funding for the settlement by the end of the session, which ended yesterday on Monday, the case is on pause until the next legislative session in 2025. Paxton's team, though, says that the whistleblower's request with the Texas Supreme Court is misleading,

simply trying to undo an agreement while coordinating with the media to create drama. So there's a lot going on here, a lot to unpack, but we'll know more once the Senate votes, if the senate votes that takes us into our third and final story which is that on monday the president of uganda signed one of the world's strictest anti-lgTQ bills into law. It's not as harsh as countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran who have the strictest of anti-LGBTQ legislation, but it's still strict nonetheless. So we're going to go over some key provisions. I'm also going to talk to you a little bit about what President Biden had to say about it and compare it to some old legislation just

so you can see what changes Uganda made. While I'm going over these key provisions, though, just keep in mind that it's not necessarily easy to access Ugandan law like it is here in the United States. Usually, I'll just, you know, tell you guys what a law is by actually reading it for myself. In this case, I'm basing it off of reports out of the United States. So just keep that in mind. All right. So what does this law do? Let's start with the strictest of punishments and we'll work our way down. So there's aggravated homosexuality, which is defined as either transmitting a terminal illness like HIV or AIDS through same-sex

intercourse. It can be having same-sex relations with a person with a disability, or it can be having same-sex intercourse with a person under the age of 18. This is punishable by the death penalty. There are certain offenses involving same-sex intercourse punishable by life, though I do not know the details of that. Promotion of homosexuality, as it's called in the law, is punishable by 20 years. Attempting to commit same-sex acts is punishable by up to 10 years. So just note that that is attempting to commit same-sex acts, not actually committing them. It prohibits any form of sexual relations between persons of the same sex, and it prohibits the promotion of recognition of sexual relations between persons of the same sex. It bans same-sex marriages. It also says that children convicted of an offense involving

same-sex relations can be imprisoned, though their sentence cannot exceed three years. Any legal entities like the media and non-governmental organizations that knowingly promote homosexuality will incur a fine and a potential suspension. And it says that false or misleading allegations of homosexuality can carry a sentence of one year. Now, prior to this law, same-sex relations were already illegal in Uganda, but this law takes it further and it increases the penalty. So just to give you an idea of what the previous law looked like, intentionally transmitting HIV carried a maximum sentence of 10 years. Now, this didn't apply when the person who contracted HIV knew their partner had it. But this new law, A, doesn't differentiate between intentional and unintentional transmission. B, doesn't make any exception when the partner knew of the HIV status. And C, increased this from a maximum 10-year sentence to a death penalty sentence. of what the old law looks like versus what the new law looks like. President Biden called this

new law a, quote, tragic violation of human rights and said that Washington would evaluate the implications of the law on all aspects of United States engagement with Uganda, saying, quote, we are considering additional steps, including the application of sanctions and restrictions of entry into the United States against anyone involved in serious human rights abuses or corruption, end quote. Interestingly enough, this bill was put in front of Uganda's president back in March, but the president actually sent it back to parliament to tone down some of its provisions. So this version that the president signed is actually a watered down version of what it was before. So what did it look like before, you might ask? Well, some of the things that it changed was that merely identifying as LGBTQ was a crime. So in

the new bill, it's not. And the new bill also revised a measure that obliged people to report homosexual activity and changed that to only require reporting when children are involved. This law has been challenged via a lawsuit by a local human rights organization and 10 other individuals, and a similar law was struck down by the courts in 2014. So we'll see what happens with this one currently same-sex relations are only legal in 22 of africa's 54 countries that concludes this episode don't forget to check out the spotify poll if you're a spotify listener please share this episode with anyone who might enjoy it and i will talk to you on friday Bye.