Shutdowns and Showdowns

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Welcome to The Texas Take. I'm Jeremy Wallace with the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express News, and I'm going to warn you all right off the bat. I've been spending a lot of time in San Antonio lately. blame it on the Tex-Mex, but there's a lot happening down here that matters well outside of Loop 1604. First,

Maybe no city in Texas is affected by a government shutdown quite like Military City USA. Remember, we've got 80,000 active duty soldiers and civilians working on or around the bases down here. We'll get into the impact of that shutdown and what it means from a very Texas perspective.

And I'll dial up an older clip from back in March that tells you a little bit why we're in the shutdown to begin with. It has a lot to do with the political pressure that people like Beto O'Rourke were putting on Chuck Schumer. And y'all... We've got to talk about the new mayor in San Antonio. It's the second largest city in Texas, so it's important in that regard. But man, Gina Ortiz-Jones' first hundred days has been rough, to say the least.

She's had some nasty power struggles with other members of the city council. She's even got into a fight with a guy named Spurs Jesus. Seriously, she crashed a pro San Antonio Spurs rally where she ended up debating the guy known as. spurs Jesus over a proposed new arena for the team. The whole thing shifted somewhere between weird and awkward for like several minutes. Here's a little of it. We've never said that, but that's not the question.

i understand that but that but that is not and i understand people are trying to frankly scare people into into into that but again we have an opportunity to do this right my concern is folks No, I am answering the question. Look, y'all. The visual of it is even crazier when you can imagine what a guy named Spurs Jesus is dressed like. Just imagine it in your head or check out, you know, check him out on Instagram. You'll see like, you know, he definitely dresses in the right garb to be called.

Jesus. Plus, I'm also going to have U.S. Representative Joaquin Castro stopping by the show, and he's going to tell us once and for all... which twin brother he really is. What he's going to do is he's going to give us the latest on the shutdown, and he's going to tell us if he's still thinking about running for statewide office or if he's just going to run for re-election. He's been in that conversation for months now.

We've talked about him on the show quite a bit. It's like, what is his plan going forward? And by the way, since I'm down here, where the heck is the Alamo? Look, I know it's still in San Antonio. It hasn't been moved. I'm not trying to panic anybody. But it's a disaster zone around here. There's so much construction that it's pretty unrecognizable right now. Just trying to get to the Alamo with all the blocks.

roads and sidewalks and everything. If y'all are going to be visiting the city anytime soon, I'm going to have an update for you on what is going on down at the Alamo. And I'm going to have the expert at the San Antonio Express News help me break it all down. First, let's get into the proper mood for a pretty San Antonio heavy show. Hey, baby, what happened? Thought I was your only father Hey, baby, what happened? That, of course, is Que Paso.

from the Texas Tornadoes, of which the legendary Flaco Jimenez was a member. He was a San Antonio native, of course, who passed away in July at the age of 86.

But in this case, the answer to que paso is clearly the federal government has slipped into a real government shutdown. Every few months, Congress threatens to do something like this, right? Like we've been on the edge so many times, it's like loosing the football type stuff. But this time, it's real. It's actually shut down. Why?

Well, here's Dan Crenshaw explaining in ways that only he can to me earlier, talking about why he thinks the Democrats have just picked the wrong time to push this into a shutdown. like kind of random issue to die on a sword for and they're eventually just going to get pummeled for it because because their other spin is trying to blame us for it but it's just for anybody who's barely paying attention that's impossible to blame us when

You can, you know, we're the ones who pass a very clean, good faith CR. Of course, Democrats will say they are legitimately pushing to get... Republicans to give them concessions to protect the ACA. That's the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, or whatever you want to call it. They say the line in the sand for them is they're trying to get tax credits that are supposed to help people pay for.

the ACA, their Affordable Care Act, they're trying to get those tax credits reinstituted to make sure people don't have a spike in their premiums.

And I want to bring on Congressman Joaquin Castro to help us explain this from the Democratic perspective. Congressman, one, thanks for coming on The Texas Take. But secondly... What is it that is happening right now? Why is this shutdown happening and what are Democrats looking for out of this? Well, what we've been working to do is to preserve health tax credits for millions of Americans who.

if we don't do that if we don't take action as a congress they're going to lose hundreds or thousands of dollars in subsidies that allow them to pay for their health insurance and for some people that's literally a matter of life and death We did a press conference the other day with a woman who has pancreatic cancer, I believe, who talked about the importance of those tax credits. And even myself, as somebody who's diagnosed with neuroendocrine cancer, I've spoken to so many people.

who are insured in different ways, some people on Medicare, Medicaid, but certainly some people who have been able to use these enhanced tax credits. to afford health care insurance. And without them, they're not going to get the treatment they need. So this is a huge deal for the American people. And that's what we're fighting for is for people's health care. Also, Jeremy, you know, there's been, as I've seen on social media.

There's been a lot of disinformation and false information put out there about this idea that Democrats are holding out on voting. for a continuing resolution because they're holding out to fund healthcare for quote-unquote illegal aliens. One of the bad things about social media is that a lot of rumor and misinformation spreads very quickly and very deeply. And it is the law that somebody who is undocumented in this country doesn't qualify.

for these healthcare programs. I mean, that's not an opinion. That's not like trying to decide whether the Cowboys or the Texans are going to have a better football season. That's a fact. They do not qualify for these subsidies. And yet the president and the Speaker of the House and other Republicans have tried to sell that to the American people to get Americans angry and think, OK, well, then I don't like what the Democrats are doing. What they're doing is wrong.

The fact is we're taking a stand to protect health subsidies for the American people. You know, and I'll just say this because I know you've got more questions, but if these were tax credits or tax subsidies for billionaires. Republicans would absolutely agree to them or they would be holding out to protect billionaires. We're trying to negotiate to protect working American people who are just fighting to afford health care coverage.

And we're talking about the ACA specifically, right? We're talking about trying to protect, help people pay for the ACA premiums that they have. You know, there's still a cost for people to be enrolled into those programs. This is what you guys are. No, absolutely. Remember, people are still paying out of pocket for this insurance. They're not getting anything for free. What happened was...

the government puts in some of that cost or pays for some of that cost the way that an employer would, for example, if you were working for HEB or USAA. So what these tax credits have allowed people to do in Texas, for example, is to start their own business.

Because if you're a small business owner, there's no employer of yours who's subsidizing your health care anymore. It's on you. And so this has allowed people to start their own businesses. And then there are other categories of folks who also... have benefited as well. And again, you know, contrary to what Republicans are putting out there, this doesn't include undocumented immigrants. You know, these are Americans who are working hard and who are counting.

on the Congress to stand up and make it affordable for them to get health care coverage. Well, and certainly if I made this point earlier in the program that, you know, if there's one Texas city that can feel a government shutdown more than San Antonio, I don't know where it is. It's like we have obviously 80,000 people who work in and around the.

bases in San Antonio, a lot of people who are going to face furloughs or people having to go to work without pay. Tell me about the impact on San Antonio. What are you concerned about if this drags on for more than a couple of days? a couple of weeks even. Yeah. I mean, we have in San Antonio, of course, we're known as Military City USA. We have a large military presence. And so the civilian contractors, for example,

And we also have people that work for a lot of different federal agencies. In other words, a lot of federal agencies have satellite offices in San Antonio, as they do in a lot of other big Texas cities like Austin and Dallas and Houston and so forth. So there's a lot of people that if this goes on for a while could be really hurt and impacted. And so, you know, I want to be clear, you know, the government shutting down is not a good thing.

But the government shutting down and people losing their health care coverage is even worse. So it's a double front on this in case. So you guys, and so like how, how long, you know, look, I don't know. You don't have a crystal ball on this thing. There's a lot of negotiations that you're probably not in the room for some of them with the United States Senate and what they're doing.

But what are you feeling right here? Is this something that people need to be bracing for a month of maybe going with a shutdown? Or is this something that could get resolved sooner than that? Well, you're right. I mean, I think it's hard to have a crystal ball on it. Initially, President Trump said that he wasn't going to negotiate with Democrats at all. Remember, Republicans control the White House, the Senate and the House. So all levels of government right now.

I was glad to see that he changed his position and decided to meet with Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries. I think that's a positive thing. I think they need to meet again and continue to try to hammer out some kind of agreement because...

You know, obviously, the government being shut down is not a good thing for anyone. Well, I want to make a transition here. So there's a lot of Texas Tech listeners who probably want to know this answer, which is, OK, which brother are you really?

And how do I tell you from the other brother? Well, I know that the podcast I think you told me right now is audio only. So but if people could see the screen, they would see that I have a beard and my brother doesn't. For years, I used to tell people that. that he was one minute older and one minute uglier than I am. Now I just tell him that I've got the beard and he doesn't. So that makes it easy.

Well, and I always tell people, look, you know, Joaquin Castro is the legislating brother. You're the one who was in the Texas legislature. You know, and we know as a Democrat in the Texas legislature, you build up a pretty thick. outer coating to be able to manage the way the Texas House operates, but also then to be in Congress now for going on 14 years. That's a lot of seniority and experience. Tell people what it's like to be in Congress.

Congress now versus those early years? And specifically about that seniority, what kind of doors is that open for you to have influence in being able to talk about major national policy? Oh, yeah. I mean, in terms of what the seniority means and just understanding the system of Congress, those years have been invaluable for me and I hope invaluable for the people that I represent.

But certainly getting to be part of important legislation. You know, I I'm a senior member of the House Intelligence Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence going on my ninth year. And also been on the Foreign Affairs Committee since January of 2013. So as you can imagine, a lot of the major decisions and...

discussions on important topics for San Antonio and for Texas. I get to be a part of those and get to help shape them. So that's been very special. But I thought, Jeremy, you're going to ask me how has... being in politics change from 2003 to 2020, 2025. That was my next question. That was where I was going next. Yeah. Well, there was no podcast back then. Uh, there was no, um, you know, there was no social media literally when I started.

I took office when I was 28, and there was no Facebook even, which came around a few years later and was the first social media platform, really. There was hardly any online fundraising. And so... You know, politics in a good way has become a lot more democratized. People can express their opinion, voice their opinion directly to elected officials on their social media pages, for example. And, you know.

Probably 90 percent of elected officials catch at least some of those comments and everything. But it has also become a lot more cutthroat. And I think if you needed thick skin back in 2003. You probably need Teflon right now to be really in the mix in Congress. And certainly the higher up you go in politics, governor, senator, certainly running for president, you know, you really have to steel yourself for the politics of today.

Well, and that's a great transition to like asking about where you want to go next with your career. It's like, obviously, you have all the seniority in Congress. Are you certain to run for reelection or are you still considering potentially running for? statewide office. I've seen you campaigning in other parts of the state that are well far outside of San Antonio. And it made me wonder, it's like, you know, is this something that you're still considering?

Yeah. I mean, you know, well, first my work in Congress, as you know, it's been incredibly intense. And so it's taken a lot of my, I mean, it always takes my attention. It's my primary job, but it's been really, really intense, especially since. Donald Trump came back into the White House. But I have, over the last several months, been part of a group with Beto O'Rourke and James Tallarico and Jasmine Crockett and others that have tried to move around the state.

So really do a few things. First, talk about the issues that matter and hopefully rally people. Because as I've said, there's only one way out of this. It's to vote our way out of it in 2026, but also to give people some hope. There's a lot of people that are very anxious, very fearful right now and to offer some hope. And then, you know, I had been working on trying to piece together a statewide ticket.

But everybody wanted to run for Senate. I don't blame them. I'm just saying it was it got kind of got kind of tough to try to put it together. And so the long and short of it is, you know, I'll announce my own plan soon enough. But. You know, I think that the future for Democrats, even though it's been challenging for the last generation, I think it's getting brighter and brighter in Texas in the years ahead.

Do you feel like there's energy in the Democratic Party, regardless of who's on the ticket? Right. It just feels like there's like there's a lot of interest coming into this election cycle, obviously provoked a lot, probably from President Trump, who like in 2018.

kind of produced almost a similar kind of feel. We had a lot of Democrats or at least voters saying, oh, OK, wait, wait, I need to pay attention to what's happening. You're going to get the sense that we might be having a year where Democrats might be able to make a little more headway than we have. have seen in the last few years? Well, I mean, I think so because fundamentally Democrats stand for a country of opportunity.

for great schools and universities, a strong health care system, an economy that's built around well-paying jobs. And unfortunately, right now you have Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress who are shocking the American conscience. You know, when you have, for example, masked ICE agents who won't identify themselves, who won't present a warrant, who are going and picking up even American citizens off the street without explanation and holding them for days.

You know, when you have Donald Trump, who's putting out these racist memes of Hakeem Jeffries and his sombrero and, you know, and just all of these things now. getting us into a war, it looks like, with Venezuela, because he's declaring war on the cartels and has said that we're at war. All of these things that really start to shock the American conscience. I think that even a lot of his supporters... are reevaluating their support for him and for the Republican Party right now.

Well, OK, I cannot thank you enough for coming on the show. Thanks so much for spending the time and talking to us and being part of what is turning into a very San Antonio centric episode. So that's a good thing. Yeah, absolutely. A little bit more San Antonio can only help everybody in the state, right? Absolutely. Great. Thank you, sir.

Look, there's plenty of finger pointing going on with who's responsible for the shutdown, obviously, is it Democrats, Republicans, but it's unavoidable. to miss out on talking about Charles Schumer in this, that Senator Chuck Schumer, there's all kinds of pressure on him that really probably pushed him to have to do this. Remember, it was just last year, or actually earlier this year, that he said,

there's never a winner in shutting down the government. He was pretty stern in why he thought it was always bad to shut down the government. While the CR bill is very bad, the potential for a shutdown... has consequences for America that are much, much worse. Therefore, I will vote to keep the government open and not shut it down. But listen.

That did not go over well with the base of the Democratic Party. Remember, put yourself in the minds of where we were at that point. You know, Donald Trump's coming into office. They're doing all kinds of stuff that was much more aggressive than I think many Democrats expected. They're freaking out. want the party to fight more. And a couple of weeks after, you know,

Chuck Schumer decided to push Democrats to vote to keep the government open. Here was Beto O'Rourke down in Fort Bend County at a massive rally in which he had Minnesota Governor Tim Walsh with him. You know, they did this big rally and. In it, probably the biggest applause that night that I heard at least was when Beto O'Rourke just took it to Chuck Schumer and said, enough is enough. That guy's got to go.

So no more playing nice, in my opinion, just mine alone, Chuck Schumer needs to step aside, resign... Now, look, I'm not saying Beto O'Rourke caused this shutdown, but it was pressure from him and other Democrats throughout the country, the base of the party that was sitting there going, well, look, we understand there's never a good idea to shut down the government.

But maybe this is a totally different game at this point. Maybe we need a little more aggressive approach. So I think that politics is certainly in the atmosphere. And look, Chuck Schumer has been getting a lot of questions on this. He's been pushed over. and over again wait you said you wouldn't do this but here you are doing it now what's the difference here's him on cnn explaining why this time it was different yeah that was in march john

before they had done these horrible things to health care, before they had introduced these rescissions, which would allow them to ignore the budget process. And the bottom line is when I was majority leader, we had 13 times to vote on a budget. Well, look, who knows how long the shutdown is going to go. It could be over by the time you're listening to this podcast, depending on when you listen to it.

Anyhow, keeping the ear out for this, we'll see where this all lands in the next coming days or weeks or my gosh, would it be months? I don't, I highly doubt that.

But now let's shift back over to what's happening in San Antonio. I want to talk about this city council and the mayor relationship down here is just wild. I've never seen anything quite like it. In June, Gina Ortiz-Jones officially became the new mayor. She's replacing Ron Nuremberg, who you'll remember served his two terms and was term limited.

Well, Gina Ortiz-Jones, you might remember her. She ran for Congress in 2018 and 2020, losing to first Will Hurd and then losing to Tony Gonzalez, who holds that seat now. After that, she became an undersecretary in the Navy under the Biden administration. And now here she is as mayor. And boy, is it off to a rough start. She's had a lot of fights with members of the city council right out the gate. In fact, here's one from earlier in September that she had when they were fighting over her push.

to hire a communications firm to help support her. Do I have that right? You do, Councilman. What's the question? I'm getting there. I'm just trying to get some background. So the mayor has hired an outside group for, I believe, $10,000 a month to do communications. Is that your understanding? Let me lay it flat. You can ask me because it's my contract. Hold on. Let me answer your question.

Like other mayors who have had dedicated communications support, this is a comms support that is being provided commensurate at the same level of pay. previous mayors have had. And here's conservative council member Mark White pushing back against her in another meeting early in her tenure where she was trying to force these changes in the procedures and the way the city council is set up. He was clearly not happy and he had some advice for her that clearly didn't.

So I would say, Mayor, respectfully, perhaps... Watch how the system plays out for six months. Be a part of it before you want to make a change to a system that you've never been a part of. See how it works, and then perhaps you can make the recommendations because it's worked. pretty well. On the merits of this, I am struggling to understand how this benefits the community. Your pushback on those very simple enhancements.

And here's that rally I told you about earlier with the Spurs where she just crashed their event. This may be the first time I've ever heard somebody say go Spurs go at a rally with Spurs fans and it's absolute crickets. It tells you a lot about how well the whole thing was going over. Listen to as she's arguing with Spurs Jesus, then she tries to fire up the crowd to no avail. Not rushing through on this. That's right. Go Spurs, go! First Jesus, you had a question?

That all makes me want to know what is going on in San Antonio City Council. Thankfully, I have Molly Smith, who covers the city for the San Antonio Express News, to help kind of figure out what is happening down there. Molly, you just wrote a... her first 100 days as mayor. And I think it's safe to say it's been unlike any first 100 days we've seen of any mayor in the state here in quite some time.

Yes, her first 100 days have not, in the eyes of most people, gone very well. They have been defined by fights with city council. And a lot of lost votes where she has not been with the majority and has lost votes by a kind of a large, a large number. Yeah. And one of the parts that's important for people who don't know San Antonio politics, this is all pretty much a lot of Democratic people on the city council to begin with. This isn't like.

parties fighting each other. This is a lot of times internal politics, too. It's like she has her fights with conservative leader members of the city council. But this has gone beyond that. She's having a problem with a lot of city council members right now. Right. Yes. So Gina is more Gina Ortiz Jones is more progressive than some of the Democrats on council. But like you said.

Out of the 10 council members, only two are Republicans. And she came in with a lot of newcomers. And so many people said she's in a great position. She's with these new folks. They should be natural allies. And instead, she's really.

alienated people who should be aligned with her. And then the folks who are maybe more centrist Democrats, she's really, really pushed them, pushed them to almost work with more of their Republican candidates, Republican colleagues. So she just has had a hard time across the board.

finding folks to work with. And I think kind of the... kind of the root of the problem is she is working in a weak mayor's strong city manager system in which as mayor you're effectively the 11th member of city council.

And she just has not done a good job of working in that system in which to get anything done, you need five colleagues to side with you. You need a majority vote. And she has just shown that she's... either unable to do that, or I think sometimes unwilling to do what she needs to do to kind of build those coalitions.

Well, I think that speaks to how she went into this, you know, again, new into city government, had experience running for Congress, you know, had been an undersecretary with the Air Force. Right. Is that correct? And then like. She's going to city government relatively fresh and new, but she went in with a pretty aggressive idea of what she thought she could accomplish in her first 100 days. When she was campaigning, she was pretty strong on what she said she could get done in 100 days.

at what she's been able to get done at this point. It doesn't look like it's great so far. It's not a lot. She really had this long list of what she called action items. And most people said... You're not going to get these done because they really rely on staff. For example, we have a sales tax funded job training program. It hasn't met targets. And she said, we're going to come up with a way to fix this. Or we're going to create a home ownership incentive program for teachers and for.

responders, things that take time to only to research and then vet and get developed. She came in in mid-June, and that coincides with the start of the city's annual budget session. And so people know routinely nothing really gets done at City Hall except building a budget that council adopts in September. And so that really coincided. coincided with the 100 days, but because she was such a newcomer,

I don't really think she had that understanding of how City Hall works or the understanding that staff are doing a lot. They can't just drop what they're doing to focus on your things. She's also really, I think, been hampered by the fact that she has been unable to staff. her office and retain staff. Within her first 100 days, she's already on her second chief of staff. Her first chief left

After, I want to say, about three weeks, she's lost an events coordinator. She lost a communications director. kept the person on for less than a week, had him reassigned because it wasn't going well. She now has a Washington, D.C.-based firm helping her. She doesn't have any policy analysts. So she doesn't have kind of the people around her that a mayor's office needs to kind of get things done. And a lot of the things she wanted to do were kind of policy things.

Your staff needs to be kind of researching that. You can't just have city staff doing all of this for you. When I think you raised a really important point early in this interview, which is that like she, you know, is as a mayor of San Antonio, she doesn't have the same kind of power you might think of as a mayor. It's not a strong mayor system. It's not like she gets to. everything and everybody else has to follow along. Like she has to work with the other people.

she's on that board with. For all y'all down in Houston hearing this, this isn't totally unlike with what Lena Hildago is facing as the Harris County judge. She's important in leading this. county, but she still has to work with members of the...

Board of County Commissioners to get anything done. Right. And so I think we're kind of seeing that play out here, too, where you have a situation where you have somebody coming in trying to really push her agenda and having a hard time getting other people on board. And I think.

we have to talk about, you know, of all the things to touch in. San Antonio politics to go after the Spurs. Not necessarily going after Spurs, but let's catch people up with what's happening. What is it that she did that made some of these fights with the Spurs? and their push for a new stadium happen. Yeah, so I think the biggest issue she has kind of dealt with since taking office was the question, was deciding what to do about a term sheet that...

Spurs Sports and Entertainment had been working out with city staff for months. It hadn't been finished. before Ron Nuremberg left office. And so in early August, the Spurs finally revealed how much they were willing to contribute to the arena. And then they

the city revealed how much they were willing to contribute. And Gina Ortiz Jones, I think, had fair criticism of this deal. Most of it has been behind closed doors. She questioned this economic impact study that the city had commissioned. It was not as thorough as she would have liked. It was also done by a firm in which one of the Spurs minority investors owns a majority stake. So she brought that up as something she...

she had problems with. And I think a lot of people will say these are fair policy criticisms, but she was just unable to get anyone to side with her. And so leading into this vote...

She ended up kind of having this maneuvering with council members where she wanted to get the council to pass this resolution saying, we are not going to negotiate any further with the Spurs until we get this new... financial analysis of the arena and the larger sports and entertainment district that it would be a part of.

Council members didn't want to do that, and so they one-upped her by forcing the city manager to put an agenda, an item on the agenda, basically putting the term sheet up to a vote. And so in the days leading up to that vote, instead of kind of working her council members...

behind the scenes, making a case for why, you know, they should delay this. She went to kind of the court of public opinion, and I think she believed the public is with me, and if I have enough members of the public siding with me, the council will do what I want. So she held a press conference on a Monday with a lot of kind of more progressive groups that are very anti the arena deal and anti the sports district. That evening, she went to a city council member's budget town hall.

grabbed the mic, and then started kind of riling up the crowd to... pressure him to vote against this arena deal. It was really uncomfortable. And then she sat back down and didn't say anything. Then I want to say it was two days later, the business community was holding a presser on the steps of City Hall to make their case for this.

term sheet. She crashes the presser, gets the mic, goes off on this long tangent making her case. I think everyone was really caught off guard. It's just not how you kind of do things in San Antonio. gets in an argument with Spurs Jesus, the Spurs superfan, and then just leaves. And it was just kind of really, I think, surprising behavior. And then the vote happens. And it was a 7-4 vote. And she...

you know, could knock at council members on her side. Even on that vote, she did things that surprised people. She called up Peter Holt, who's the managing partner of the Spurs, really kind of grilled him, questioned him. And it just... You know, I think for supporters, they say this is what a mayor should be doing. You should be asking critical questions. You should be holding these, you know, multimillionaire team owners accountable. But a lot of folks just said this is not how we do things.

really alienated people with these behaviors. She really has not, I think, made an effort to meet with the business community, which is kind of a longstanding tradition in San Antonio, that the mayor really meets with them frequently, wants their support. I know it was, I want to say it was the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce had an event for the mayor relatively early in her term and she just didn't show up. Behavior like that.

Well, it's interesting to take a step back here. It's like so, you know, for folks who haven't been paying attention to what's happening in San Antonio, they're trying to move the Spurs Arena back to downtown. It's been moved out east where it's been for the last I don't know how many years.

trying to bring it downtown to be the kind of the centerpiece of a remake of downtown that, you know, they have this vision of it being the anchor to a whole new set of developments. So that's why if you're in San Antonio, you're going to see a ton of construction down there as they're trying to tear down buildings.

kind of set things up for kind of their vision of, you know, what they want to do in downtown. This has been a key component to it. And I think you kind of hit on a key point there because like her, like to take on the Holt family and the managing partners of. the Spurs. To go after them, to go after Spurs Jesus, short of taking on Wemby herself, I'm not sure if she can bring more attention to herself in San Antonio, and I'm not sure...

it's the greatest route to go at this point. It just feels like she's like, you know, really burning a lot of bridges early. in her tenure. And I'm wondering, can she get this back? Have you talked to people as the sense as to what lies ahead here is she doesn't sound like she's backing down on anything at this point. And it sounds almost like she's digging in further and just wants to keep.

pushing ahead. Do you get a sense that there's going to be any change in her approach to the city council in any time in the near future? It's so hard to say. She really deflects when you ask her, what are you doing to kind of work with council members to build these coalitions? I don't think that tons and tons has changed right now. I mean, they did get through a budget.

It was passed unanimously. I guess you would count that as a win for her. But I don't think she's kind of changed dramatically her approach to counsel. or even her approach to the Spurs Arena deal. There's going to be an election on November 4th on the county portion of the funding. She is not taking a position on that. She says she wants voters to decide.

started this whole new campaign in which she says if voters approve the county portion of the funding then in November then in May we should let city voters approve the city portion of the funding which is not required by state law. And...

I don't think she has the votes to do that. She insists that she does, but she really doesn't. It was, again, a 7-4 vote to pass this term sheet. And that's kind of been her new focus. Her slogan that she repeats everywhere is, you know, if you pay twice, you should vote. twice and so she's in campaign mode for that it's you know a divisive position um and isn't doing what she needs to get

to get people on her side or I think even what she needs to get people to pressure the city manager to get this new economic impact analysis that she wants. And, you know, there's been no progress on that. Yeah, and folks, y'all should really check out Molly Smith's work on the first hundred days of Gina Ortiz-Jones' tenure as mayor. It's on the San Antonio Express News website. You can find it through the Houston Chronicle as well and even through the Austin American Statesman.

You know, if you just Google searching for her name, you can find it all three of those. Certainly, Molly, I can't thank you enough for helping lead us through what is happening in the second largest city in Texas. Like this isn't like a small deal here. This is kind of a city that we're.

used to seeing these mayors operate very differently. Ron Nuremberg and Julian Castro and even back Henry Cisneros. You see like a different kind of approach to politics in San Antonio typically. And this has been a lot more combative out the gate than. I'm used to seeing. I've been around San Antonio politics for a really long time, and I just don't remember having this kind of tension so early in a mayoral ship.

So thanks again for joining us and don't be a stranger. We're going to have you on in the future to talk a little bit more as we look down the road is where we stand after the vote in San Antonio. Well, thanks so much for having me.

The city council isn't the only disaster zone out there, y'all. It's like in San Antonio right now. If you try to get to the Alamo, I'll tell you right now, it's a mess. Everything around it, just trying to walk there, the roads, everything around the Alamo right now seems pretty.

hard to kind of get around and navigate. And it's not just the Alamo. They just bulldozed the Institute of Texan Cultures and La Villita still isn't done. And so there's dust all over the city right now. It's hard to get in and out of downtown. But I want to bring on Scott Huddleston. He's from the Express News and has been there for a long time and particularly knows the Alamo in and out and what's going on there. And so, Scott, I want to get you on here to tell us.

Tell people what is going on at the Alamo right now and why there is so much construction first. Okay, well, just to kind of set the context, Jeremy, I have to say all of downtown is a mess right now, including Cesar Chavez and I think Santa Rosa, the lane closures. and... just kind of this maze of, you know, orange, orange and white, you know, barricades throughout the whole city. So I think that I could wear orange and white as camouflage right now and not be seen.

But at the Alamo, you know, you've got this $550 million expansion and improvement project to. first of all, reclaim what they call the historic footprint of the Alamo, which is the mission and the battle compound itself. But they also have closed... you know, portions of streets around that to make it more pedestrian friendly so that there's

There are places to chill and have coffee or spend time with your family in that immediate area around the historic footprint. And so they're basically creating what they're calling the... Alamo District. And, you know, it involves, you know, redoing the plaza. They've got two different plaza. There's, you know... There's the historic footprint of Alamo Plaza, but there's also what they call the Plaza de Valero to the immediate south and what they're calling the promenade extending from...

Commerce Street, where people are approaching the Alamo to that, what they call the Mission Gate exhibit, so that you get a sense of entering the mission. And so they're kind of like reconstructing a better understanding of the spatial relationships of where, you know, the walls of the Alamo were so that people. can understand that to the extent that's possible.

There's still those buildings where the museum's being built, where the west wall was, and part of the north wall was on land that's now covered by the federal building and the post office. So that obviously... That part will not be reconstructed, but, you know, they're reclaiming as much of the historic footprint as they can.

Well, and it's an amazing transformation when you kind of think about it, y'all. Remember after the siege of the Alamo, right? For years, the Alamo just kept changing hands. At one point, it was like a hardware store. It was crazy how many iterations of the Alamo and the parcel that was the Alamo just kept, you know, the Alamo battleground kept shrinking and shrinking and shrinking, obviously. And now we're kind of seeing it expand out and they're trying to make a more.

impressive display, essentially, right? That's the end goal here, right? Yeah, you're right. What we now call the Long Barrack was once a store, and the church was once a two-story warehouse used by the U.S. Army. And also kind of attached to it was a jail and a small police station. And I think a bar next door called the Alamo Bar. So, you know, it's had an interesting evolution in time. And now it's this revered historic site.

Well, and so tell us, how long is this construction supposed to go on? Is there a timetable of like, when is this going to start getting easier to see the Alamo and everything they're doing? two years from now, two, three years from now, it should all be completed. And it's really, it's moving forward, progressing pretty well right now. Once the issue of whether or not to move the cenotaph was resolved, and that was...

a very contentious issue, finally resolved in 2020. Once that was resolved, then... Things have moved forward really nicely, and I think that in two or three years, we'll have a complete project. For a construction site right now, it's a pretty clean site, I have to say. And they're also renovating that area connecting the Alamo to the Riverwalk. And that will be completed, too.

Yeah. And so like folks, you know, the Alamo is still open. You can still get to it. There's, you know, it's all there. So if you're traveling to San Antonio, it's all still there. It's just a little bit more construction getting to it. And you're going to see some clear differences. And I wanted to bring up.

back to the cenotaph, right? That obviously was a huge bone of contention for a lot of people in Texas politics. Like you said, that thing is staying put and they're doing renovations on that, right? That's the only thing that's happening right now. Yeah, it's going to be rededicated on November 11th, Veterans Day. So that'll be a major milestone for the site.

kind of closing a chapter on that very contentious issue about what to do about the cenotaph. Yeah, and that's that monument, y'all, that's right out front of the Alamo, that, you know, it's a big white structure that has owed to many in military history, right? It's a memorial, a monument to the defenders of the Alamo. And it's 56 feet tall.

made of marble on the exterior. And it's been under repairs. It will be illuminated and surrounded with landscaping. So it'll be looking really nice. But right now, yeah, it's been... surrounded by fencing and scaffolding. And I just went down to the Alamo today. There are two great big cranes at the site for the construction of the museum. really a lot going on. But like I said, you know, for a construction site, it's a pretty clean site and it's still accessible by foot.

Despite the federal government shutdown, the Alamo, which is state-owned, is still open for business. It's one of the five mission sites of San Antonio, and so it's still fully accessible.

Well, Scott, I certainly appreciate you coming on. And y'all, it's like if there's anybody who knows what's going on at the Alamo, it's Scott Huddleston. It's like he's always on top of it. Anytime I have a question, he's the guy I ping. So thanks a lot for joining the Texas Tech, Scott. And we'll talk to you soon. Thank you, Jeremy.

What better way to end a San Antonio-centric show with a little talk about the Alamo, right? Hey, thanks again to all y'all for listening to the Texas Tech Podcast. A special shout-out to everybody who joined me this week. Thanks for coming on, Scott Huddleston and Molly.

You know, definitely check out their work at the Express News. Follow them on all the socials. They know everything that's going on at the Alamo and the city council specifically. And look, a big thanks to Congressman Joaquin Castro and Dan. both taking time to be on the show, certainly added a lot more flavor to what we're talking about from a very Texas-centric viewpoint of the government shutdown.

Of course, check out my Tech to Tech newsletter. It is free. It comes out every weekday. I just had a piece in there about former U.S. rep Colin Allred, who is trying to do something really different in his campaigning. He's going to high school football games. Yeah.

He's hitting Friday Night Lights. He himself is a former high school football player, and you can see where he's trying to make that connection. Anyhow, check out the Texas Tech newsletter. I have a pinned post on my X page that shows you how to get there, or just Google it, Texas Tech newsletter.

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