No Prisoners

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I'm Jeremy Wallace of the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express News. And wow, this Texas legislature special session went from zero to 60, seemingly in seconds. So much has happened so quickly. We have new congressional... And we have the Democratic leader of the United States House.

He's actually in Austin trying to help rally people. That's Hakeem Jeffries, came all the way down here. Somebody who has as much to lose from the redistricting in Texas as just about anybody. He could be the Speaker of the House, except for maybe what's happening here in Texas.

We're going to get right into that. I don't want to waste any time. We're going to just dive straight into the redistricting fights here in a minute. But I want to make sure you all know we're going to hit a lot of other things too. I want to pack a lot into this episode because while the redistricting is taking top... billing right now because of all the activity like remember we have legislation that's going to change

your access to THC products. You might not be able to get any of that stuff later this summer. We need to talk about the STAR test. Is that going to go away? There's legislation trying to deal with what we're going to do with the STAR test.

Governor Greg Abbott still has another plan to deal with property taxes. He's not eliminating property taxes completely, as some on the right want him to do. But he has another plan to go after cities and counties and really make it even harder for them to use.

their budgets so we'll get into all of that and look I have something really cool at the end of the show that you're going to want to listen to it turns out 35 years ago just this last month I was in a small meeting with a few high school graduates recent high school graduates, and with President Ronald Reagan.

Well, he had some things to say about redistricting back then that really kind of shocked me. And here's the thing. I actually had the tapes of it still. And so you're going to hear something that very few people in America has ever heard. One of Ronald Reagan's last.

public speeches ever about redistricting. And you can hear some stuff about what he thinks about a potential third term for a president. Stay tuned for all of that. Let's just go deep into the redistricting right away here. First, this is zero mystery.

why we're dealing with all this, right? We know that President Donald Trump on the White House lawn basically issued an edict to the Texas legislature. He wants five more congressional districts drawn out of the state of Texas that would be favoring Republicans.

Republicans in next year's midterm elections. Why? Because he's expecting to lose seats next year in the midterms in other states to Democrats. And so he's trying to offset that and try to make sure Republicans stay in the majority because you know, If Democrats get the majority, they will be able to gum up the entire Trump administration for the remainder of his term in office. But look, while he's absolutely overt about what he wants to do, that's not making it any easier.

It's still producing a lot of ugly moments in the Texas legislature for a lot of reasons. Look what he's trying to have legislators do. Typically, normal redistricting processes take up to six months to do. In the state of Texas, they have hearings all over.

over the state they collect data they put it all together they go through a regular session they come up with maps eventually and then go through the whole process but what they're trying to do all of that in 30 days it's like speed dating for redistricting Nobody wants that, right?

They had very few public hearings so far on the redistricting. And the events that did happen didn't even have any maps for people to talk about. So like you could have a discussion in Houston about redistricting without anybody seeing what lawmakers were even.

even thinking about. So that kind of made the whole conversation a little just out there. It's just not very specific about anything that was going to be happening. What's more is the Texas Senate decided to have all of their hearings virtually.

The only way the public could testify was through video online conference programs. And look, there's a lot of people in Texas who just aren't familiar with those programs. It's like not everybody has a job where they have to be on a Zoom meeting every day. two or three times a day, right? And so look, there was so much glitchy stuff. There was feedback. And of course...

They would drop testimony in mid-testimony. Their disapproval and their dismay about this mid-decade. Ma'am, I'm sorry. You froze. What we're going to do is... Wait just a few minutes and when we're going to call you back, try it again. And can I just say, I'm really disappointed that nobody in Texas came up with a cat filter. I remember a couple of years ago, back in 2021, when that attorney in Presidio County tried to do a video conference program during the pandemic.

couldn't figure out how to get the cat filter off of his screen. So he looked like a cat. Well, we have the audio of it here. Mr. Ponton, I believe you have a filter turned on in the video settings. You might want to take a look. Can you hear me, Judge? I can hear you. I think it's a filter. It is, and I don't know how to remove it. I've got my assistant here. She's trying to.

i'm prepared to go forward with it that's i'm here live that's not that i'm not a cat i can i can see that But seriously, all those glitches in the redistricting hearing only made things worse, particularly for people like Senator Boris Miles of Houston, who was already frustrated that they were doing these meetings because, look.

There's like 7 million people in Texas who don't have access to broadband internet services. And there's obviously just thousands of people in his district in Houston that don't have computers even and wouldn't have easy access to try to even get into one. of these hearings to begin with before you even start talking about all the glitches. Here's what he was talking about.

and you receive more engagement with in-person testimony, Mr. Chair. I believe we're doing the constituents a disservice with our current testimony report.

And look, when people were able to get through and testify, State Senator Phil King, the chair of the Senate committee on redistricting, just wasn't happy with some of the stuff he ended up hearing. Here's some of the responses people were giving him. But no, you have to bow to the bully and try to kill the votes of millions of people of color. That is racism. Trump ordered you to focus on four minority districts. That is racism.

A shameful scheme driven by the White House led by a convicted felon throwing a tantrum to silence Black, Latinos, Asian, Indigenous voices. Republicans claim to be Christians, but this behavior... And all the recent behavior of this administration in Washington, D.C., and the Texas government does not show the character of being a Christian when you rob poor people to give to the rich oligarchs.

That was just enough for Phil King. On Wednesday morning, he started off the hearing with a big admonishment of everything he had just been through. Over the last three days of hearings, Witness after witness have said some what I believe are very inappropriate and incorrect and frankly offensive comments specifically directed at the Republicans.

on the committee and just republicans in general i don't know how many times we've been referred to as racist as a racist party how many times We've been referred to as the party of Jim Crow, and frankly, if you read history, it was not. the republicans that passed and enacted the jim crow laws it was the democrats particularly the southern democrat party it was not the republicans that enacted the jim crow laws i've been called unchristian more than one time

Yesterday, even the party of pedophiles. I've also listened very patiently and quietly to what I think are just, not what I think are, what are very deriding. And simply ugly remarks about the president. And frankly, I've always believed that even if you don't like the person, you respect the office. But the references yesterday that were made.

and have been made all three days i think are just inappropriate in any public setting Now remember, the redistricting was justified by Governor Greg Abbott last week on this very show because he had concerns over four congressional districts drawn largely in Houston, one up in Dallas-Fort Worth, but mostly in Houston that had Black and Hispanic Democrats representing them. As we can imagine, a lot of the testimony focused on them singling out those districts.

redrawing and so that's why he was getting a lot of that response but after he admonished people for trying to bring up race and calling people racist and all that. Listen to the response from Senator Boris Miles when he finally had enough after King had made that speech. Now, remember, these guys are kind of friendly with each other.

And listen to what Boris Miles had to say to him. Texas are upset. And they have every right to be upset, Mr. Chairman. These witnesses have every right to call the process racist because it is racist. Chairman, four minority districts were targeted to be redistricted. You have no right to admonish them as you did this morning about how they feel about their actions that are being taken.

is being taken away and divided up. If you do racist things, Mr. Chairman, people will call it racist, as it is. It is your actions, not your words. Majority minority communities have been targeted, and that's... That's a racist act, Mr. Chair. Point blank, period. As a white man in America and in Texas, have no right to tell me or anyone else, a black man in America and Texas, that this process is not racist.

discriminatory. Too often, you all want to tell minorities how to feel about things aimed at them. Mr. Chairman, as your friend, as your colleague, And as a Christian brother, it is so totally disrespectful for you to try to tell us what's right for us. I mean that sincerely, Mr. Chairman.

Afterwards, I caught up with Miles in his office and he was still pretty frustrated. Look, he knows Democrats don't have many tools at all to even try to stop this. And I asked him, why do you want to even be in these hearings? What makes you keep?

wanting to get into these fights, knowing that ultimately the Republicans are kind of going to get whatever they want out of this thing unless something crazy happens. He told me he knows Democrats could get run over and all this stuff, but he's determined. to do the one thing he knows how to do, which is just make sure everybody in the chambers hears from him and the people in his community. Which means if there's going to be a hearing, yeah, I want to be on the committee.

If there's going to be a committee, yes, I want to be on the committee because I need to let them know if they're going to do this. I've got to expose it for what it really is. That's not much, of course. And Wednesday.

When we saw the maps finally drop, you could see how aggressive Trump... in the white house got with texas look the way these maps have been designed we would lose three of the longest serving democrats in the texas from texas in the united states congress

Lloyd Doggett out of Austin, Al Green out of Houston, and Henry Cuellar in Laredo would all be imperiled under the maps that just got dropped. You know, talk about going for the fences right out the gate. It's like there's no, you know, sugarcoating what Republicans... want to do here. On top of that, they jam, you know, U.S. Rep Julie Johnson and Mark Vesey, both in the Dallas-Worth area, into the same district.

And Vicente Gonzalez down in the valley, he's now in a district that President Trump would have won by 10 percentage points if it had been drawn the way it is under these maps. So you can see there's going to be a lot of blood on the map for Texas Democrats if this map does go through. Veronica Escobar out in El Paso was absolutely upset with everything she was hearing. This is what she said on a press conference I was at.

The map that was released this morning of Texas shows that Republicans are doing exactly what Trump instructed them to do. In Houston, I caught up with Otis Evagaro. He's the former Harris County Democratic chairman. And he told me the proposed maps are just so cruel because they're going straight at the black and brown communities in his county. Here's what he told me.

This isn't just about playing political games. They're attacking black and brown communities head on with masks designed to erase our power. People who look like me, you know, and you know, this Texas is over 60% black and brown. But only 13 of our 38 congressional districts give us a real shot at electing candidates who represent us. And now with these new maps, they've made that number shrink. I mean, it's absolutely disgusting.

And if you go over into San Antonio, I caught up with former mayor Ron Nuremberg. He said it's a tragedy watching how much the south side of San Antonio just keeps getting butchered up with each redistricting. They keep having to change members of Congress with people in the area.

don't even know really who represents them anymore because it's changed so frequently. And then you have members coming in to represent them who are having to learn the complexities and the nuances of these neighborhoods. Here's what Nuremberg told me. There is no logical reason. to have a district carved the way they have done over and over again to San Antonio.

Certainly, we have a lot more coverage of all of this at all the Hearst Papers. We've had some great stories at the Houston Chronicle, San Antonio Express News, and Austin American Statesman. We've been scrambling, trying to go through all these maps. Please check out all that coverage. You'll get a lot more. detail on each one of those areas specifically.

Look, y'all, look, while redistricting is the start of the show, we got to get to everything else that the Texas legislature is trying to tackle in the special session. Let's at least get a few of the items together. You know, first, we got to talk about the property tax provision that has been thrown into.

this legislative session. One of the things that Governor Greg Abbott put in the call was to address property taxes. And, you know, I want to bring in Benjamin Worman, who just wrote a story about this for us at the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express News about what the legislature is looking at doing and what the prospects are. So Ben, thanks for joining us on the show here. But I really want to get to, what are we even talking about at this point? What is the legislature looking at?

is realistic at this point? Yeah. So, you know, as you know, the legislature in the regular session put another three and a half billion dollars into driving down property taxes. The total now is up to, I think, 51 billion that the state is spending to keep property tax bills low. So lawmakers are starting to kind of look in other places for ways to keep the property tax bills down.

There's a proposal in the House that would cap city and county spending at it would tie it to inflation and population growth, similar to caps that are on state spending. And that. is sort of what Abbott has talked about pushing now. All y'all will remember, I just talked to Governor Greg Abbott a week ago, and one of the things I asked him about in that interview was what he wants to do with property taxes. Here's what he told me.

What I would like to see done is to make sure that every property taxing jurisdiction must live just within the same spending limits that the state has to live in. We're not asking them to do anything that we're not doing ourselves. And if they're confined in that. For one, their ability to impose greater property taxes is going to be hamstrung. In Texas, for the state, we have four limitations on spending, one of which is population.

growth plus inflation. And that seems like the most reasonable one. There are some fast-growing communities that have a greater population growth than some other communities, and they need to be able to adjust for that because the demands on government increase with that. increase in population, and obviously with the cost of inflation.

rising, they need to be able to keep up with that. But that is one spending standard. The state of Texas is required to live within. It should be a spending standard that all of our local governments are required to live within. And Ben, coming back to you, we already know the state just in 2019 put restrictions on what cities and counties can already do with their property taxes, right? If they want to go above 3.5%, they have to go to the voters for an election, right?

Yeah, that's what cities and counties are arguing. They're already incredibly boxed in and what they can do. Some of these are fast growing areas that need the flexibility they are going to spend. Currently, they have to go to voters if they're going to raise taxes more than three and a half percent. They also have restrictions on what they can do with law enforcement spending, which accounts for a huge chunk of a lot of these budgets. So their argument is basically.

We don't have much flexibility as it is. We need to build roads. We need to offer just kind of basic. you know in the city of austin their chief financial officer testified during the regular session in a hearing on this proposal that just labor costs alone they enter often enter labor agreements that have built-in annual raises to account for inflation, that alone could eat up some of these automatic increases.

Well, it seems like this is all an outgrowth of in spite of everything that the Texas legislation, the governors say they've done on property taxes, people don't really see their property tax bills drop. It's like they may stabilize everything they've done since 20. And some of it, again, sounds really impressive when you say it out loud, like historic tax cuts and all this stuff. But when you get down to it.

people's tax bills don't really go down much in the state of tax. If it does, it's by very little, not enough to notice after going up like 7,000 over 10 years. And now, Hey, we're down $40 from last year. Aren't you happy? And I think that's created this crazy.

pressure on the politicians to try to find ways like well how do we make sure people feel it and you can see you know abbott in the texas legislature which has already been at war with a lot of these you know cities and counties for years right they're not saying oh wait it's not our fault it's their fault

It's like the spending is out of control. And we've heard, you know, and I read this in your piece, too, where you remind us Abbott sees the cities and the counties is where he wants to put this in a fight. It's like it's not about the state doing anything on property taxes. Now he wants to. reign in cities and counties even more.

That's just like, you know, almost like a greatest hits for him, right? He just loves going after Houston these days, you know, particularly saying, see, the reason your tax bill is going up is because of these crazy locals and I'm going to hem them in. How aggressive do you think he's going to get? If he can't get this through in this session, is this one of these things that he turns into his next big priority item where he really squeezes these guys?

Yeah, I mean, I think he's talked about that, right? He wants to campaign on this issue in the same way that he did school vouchers and the same way that he did with bail reform during the regular session.

um it you know it's unclear when that sort of campaigning starts if that means you know they don't get it through this special if he's going to call another special session on it um he obviously wouldn't engage in that hypothetical um i think the other you know you mentioned going after cities is kind of a a hobby um but you know i think the question is how far they go with this because it's not just cities and counties that

are pushing up these property taxes. It's special districts in a lot of these places that, you know, muds and things like that, that account for a lot of the growth as well. And we've heard lawmakers talk. less about those than they have the cities and counties.

Yeah, they typically go after the school districts, the cities and the counties. Those are obviously the biggest part of your tax bills. But, you know, anybody listening in San Antonio or Houston, you know, you get all those muds out there. You got, you know, your your hospital districts, you get your library districts, you got.

the medical complex, they all have things that they're able to do with those taxes, too, that also affects that tax bill, which, again, explains to you why it is so hard for a state official to promise big tax cuts and be able to get them.

delivered you know people just don't feel them that often we've talked about that ad nauseum on the texas take over the years it's it's a pet peeve of mine if y'all remember like back when rick perry once told everybody everybody's gonna get a check in the mail uh to cut their property

Of course, nobody did. Like he didn't mean it literally, but people took it literally and nobody saw their tax bills go down. And they were always upset with that whole event that happened. And a lot of Republicans told him, don't do that ever again, please. It's just a hard.

thing to get at well ben thanks a lot for being on the show as i really appreciate it now i gotta get you know into the thc issue and where we stand with isaac you isaac let's bring you on here tell us about where we are right now on the thc

debate. It's like, what legislation are they working on and how close are we to getting some sort of agreement between the House and the Senate on this? Well, Abbott has kind of outlined more of the contours of what he would like to see. We don't actually have legislation to that effect yet. We do have a bill filed in the House. It's going to be House Bill 5. It's currently identical to Senate Bill 5.

although its sponsor, who's Gary Van Dever, the chair of the Public Health Committee that is supposed to be overseeing this bill during the special, he has told members of his committee that there will be other legislation. This is just a starting point.

So that may evolve in the coming days to closer to what Abbott has talked about. Abbott did lay out in his interview with you, Jeremy, that he would like to see a three milligram cap. That's what he's saying is the line between intoxicating, which should be. banned and non-intoxicating which should be allowed but it's not clear that

The last two weeks of the session are going to be enough to hammer out an agreement because Dan Patrick's still kind of where he's been at. He's really dug in on this issue. He's remained steadfast to his position, and it's not clear that Abbott's going to budge either.

so this is really complicated so this doesn't look like we're really that close to having a solution to this this is going to take to the very end of the special session if not further yeah this is definitely not something that's going to get picked off the list easily

And that's on top of the other issues that you've been discussing. Redistricting and flooding are still taking up most of the oxygen, despite this being the issue that kind of started the whole special. It doesn't seem like we're any closer to a compromise than we were two weeks ago.

And from one impossible issue to the star test, right? Like I know we have a lot of teachers who listen to the show and I wanted to kind of get a sense as to, you know, one of the things that Abbott wanted to have on this special session call was something to deal with the testing. Are we at this point? Is there any chance that we're doing anything with the start test at this point? Are we any more close to getting a start test bill passed?

this is another issue that's on the back burner you know we had thought for a moment that maybe this would kind of move along relatively quickly abbott kind of in his social media posts about the special head name star is within the kind of top three issues that he was in interested in, but so far we have no legislation filed in either chamber. We are expecting two different versions of a bill to come down in the Senate and in the House, similar to kind of where the negotiators on that.

ended up right at the end of the regular session. I think at this point, people are operating on the assumption that we're probably going to have a second special session, so more of a 60-day. timeline or potentially longer depending on how you know redistricting plays out of course if you know once you hit that 30-day you kind of have to rerun through the whole system again you know the committees and hearings but

Even if they were to pass something within the next 30, 60 days, it seems pretty unlikely that the STAR test will be done away with at least this year. Remember that this is the through-year proposal where there's a beginning, middle, and end test. you know, every year, three tests. And, you know, we're just days away from the start of the school year for some districts. So there's just no time to implement any kind of through-year testing this coming school year.

at the earliest, maybe the 2026 to 2027 school year. So sadly, all you teachers out there and all you students, you got another round of start tests coming to you this year, whether you like it or not. It's hard to find anybody who really likes the start test.

I know the complication within this bill is like if you get rid of the start test, there's got to be something else there, some kind of other testing and how you formulate all that. Clearly, a lot of work to be done on this issue, and we're running out of time really fast. Right.

Well, look, I appreciate the update, Isaac. Thank you on both these. And be sure to check out Isaac's work at both the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express News. He's tracking both these issues really closely. You're going to want to follow his coverage all the way down the stretch here.

Finally, y'all, as I promised at the beginning of the show, I have a really cool piece of history I wanted to share with y'all. It was 35 years ago this summer that I had my first encounter ever with the United States President. I was a student fresh out of high school at John... Marshall High School, go Rams. But I was at this awards ceremony in Chicago with Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan was two years after his presidency, and this was one of the last public speeches he actually ever did.

gave. By 1994 there are no other speeches that he gave as he battled Alzheimer's. But anyhow in this speech he talked to us a lot about his upbringing of course trying to inspire the next generation to pursue your dreams. kind of stuff, right? But it's interesting, in the question and answer period, he started talking about a couple issues that have a lot of interest for us today here in Texas. One, he started talking about redistricting.

in the evils of redistricting. You know, Reagan was clearly no fan of gerrymandering and was pretty upset after having to deal with more than 40 years of Democrats dominating the United States House of Representatives. Of course, when he was president, he had mostly a Democratic Congress he was constantly in battle with. That clearly didn't sit well with him. Listen to what he said about the redistricting back at that time period.

There is one last thing that must be done. That is we must have a new system of every 10 years reapportioning the congressional and legislative districts. there is gerrymandering going on no end today in which in the last election ninety-eight percent of the incumbents won re-election the people it's a conflict of interest the people who are elected by you are laying out the district lines in such a way that that's why for 55 of the last 59 years the Democratic Party has had the majority.

in the congress there have only been four years only four years in which a republican president had a demo had a republican congress ike had one for two years And the other one was in the administration of Harry Truman, a Democrat. But the president is the only person elected by all the people's votes. And then the people vote for one on the basis of what he said he'd do.

and then they go home and let congressmen get elected who are pledged to eliminate everything that this president says he would do we got to get that changed also Thank you. But what's interesting about those tapes is that it wasn't just that. He also talked about another issue that's coming up a little bit more frequently. He started talking about the evils of the 22nd Amendment. That's the amendment that limits presidents to just two terms.

terms in office. Of course, we've heard people around President Trump and Trump himself joking, sometimes not so jokey, talking about maybe going for a third term. Well, certainly Ronald Reagan would be in the camp of, yes, he should be able to do that. You'll hear Reagan here talk about how upset he is. that the 22nd Amendment is even there and why he thought it was a mistake. We got past the 22nd Amendment, limiting the president to two terms. That isn't a limit on one man.

That is an invasion of your right to vote for who you want to vote for in as many times as you want to vote for them, and that amendment should be repealed. It's all pretty wild, right? It's like, who knows what he would be saying in today's time period, but at least we have his words from back then. And, you know, how cool is it that I actually...

You know, spent time to make sure I got that audio back when I was a kid. Everybody else was buying cool souvenirs from Chicago. And here I was making sure I got a tape of Ronald Reagan so I could put it on the Texas tank. Do you think I could build that to this? the Hearst papers as part of my expenses? Ah, maybe not.

All right, y'all, one last thing as we close out. I'm hitting the road next week for a long overdue vacation, but keep an ear out for a special edition of the Texas Take. I'm going to have that entire Ronald Reagan speech. I'm going to put that out as a special episode. Just it's a cool piece of history. Not many people have heard it. I really just wanted to share that with you all. That said.

Thanks to everybody who joined the Texas Take for special interviews. I want to thank Senator Boris Miles and Senator Phil King. Also, Otis Ovegaru and Mayor Nuremberg all took out time to be on the Texas Take to speak to y'all. So I definitely appreciate it.

Appreciate that. And of course, thanks to Benjamin Werman and Isaac Yu. I hope you guys like having more voices on the Texas Take, getting us up to date on what's happening around the state of Texas, and especially with this special session.

Thanks to y'all for being, you know, listeners and making this the number one political podcast in the great state. But I have a favor to ask you. Can you hit that subscribe button? It really does help us. And also, please be sure to check out the Texas Tech newsletter if you're not already.

signed up for it. That comes out every weekday, and it's a quick, fast rundown of everything that's going on in Texas politics. Again, it's free. You don't have to be subscribed to either the Houston Chronicle or the San Antonio Express News, and you can still get that in your email. email every single day. Well, that's enough show for me, y'all. Thanks a lot for listening, and I will see y'all the next time.