Sleep Deprived

Sleep Deprived. Welcome. to The Texas Take, the number one politics podcast in the great state. I'm Scott Braddock, and he's Jeremy Wallace. His work, of course, is always at HoustonChronicle.com, and you can find the inside story on Texas politics at QuorumReport.com. I'm using... You know, the word sleep deprived this week, Jeremy, not just to describe myself, but a lot of people at the Texas Capitol. I was up until 630 Wednesday morning for a hearing that lasted.

20 hours or so about school vouchers. This was sort of the Super Bowl of this debate so far, and we'll see what happens on the Texas House floor. That may be even more intense. We'll find out. And we'll get to that in just a little bit. But because I was sleep deprived on Tuesday, Wednesday, my sleep schedule's still all screwed up here on Friday afternoon as we're recording the show.

And so this morning, and I mean early this morning at about 2.30, 3 o'clock, I was up because my sleep is all screwed up now. And I was going back through my notes, you know, from this hearing. and listening to some things and sending Evan some notes. And he's probably wondering why in the world I'm emailing him at two and three o'clock in the morning as I try to figure out what's going on.

And the first time I'm telling you all this to also say this, Jeremy, the first time that I saw this headline in the Houston Chronicle, I was probably sort of half asleep and couldn't really process it in the moment. It's a story from Ben Wormund. that he pushed out of the Austin Bureau. The headline is, Greg Abbott cites debunked claim that public schools catered to furries in his latest push for school vouchers. And I was trying to remember what that even means. A furry.

Do you remember this controversy, Jeremy, about furries? You know what he's talking about? That was a couple years ago, right? Yeah, and we'll explain it fully, but I want you to hear what... what Abbott said. And this is exclusive audio that Ben sent to me this morning. I reached out to him and said, Hey, great story. Did you happen to record Abbott saying that? And I was wondering if, you know, we could use the audio here on the show, but I was also.

wanting to make sure that people could hear what he said because they might think that we made it up because it is that stupid. And we'll get into exactly what he means by furries. He even had to say when he was saying this to a crowd gathered in Austin, Abbott had to say, hey, do you know what I'm talking about?

when it comes to these furries, because I'm pretty sure people had kind of forgotten about it. From Ben's story, he says that Abbott on Thursday resurrected debunked rumors that public schools are putting litter boxes... in classrooms for students dressed as cats, amplifying right wing criticism of some educators as he pushes for a statewide private school voucher program.

The Republican governor told a gathering of pastors at a Baptist church in Austin that the so-called furries trend is, quote, alive and well in communities across Texas. And I have to tell you, this would be news to me. I haven't seen a lot of this, Jeremy.

i had heard reports about it a couple of years ago that kids in some schools are pretending to be animals and eating out of bowls on the floor and uh and and the litter boxes were being placed in in some classrooms but none of this is true but i want you to hear the audio of this and dear listener you may have to turn up the volume on your earbuds however you're listening to the show uh to be able to hear what abbott is saying here

But take a listen. Small rural sections of school districts in the state of Texas, they have in their schools what are called furries. Y'all know what this is? Kids in two rural school district settings, kids go to school dressed up as cats with litter boxes in their classrooms. This has become so prolific. Stan Curtis, the state representative in the state of Texas, is actually having to file a piece of legislation.

Saying no buries in public schools in the state of Texas. But if you have a child in a public school, you have one expectation. Your child's going to be learning the fundamentals of education, reading and writing and math and science. If they're being distracted by furries, those parents have a right to move their child to a school of their choice.

Jeremy, we have chronicled here how Abbott will say anything in this push for school vouchers. You remember last year when he was saying that Texas House Republicans who disagreed with him. about the issue. He was saying that they were soft on border security. On that campaign, he just didn't even talk about vouchers. He talked about something else. Completely made it up. Those are the same House Republicans who voted. to allow local cops to march brown people.

to Mexico if they were suspected of being in the country undocumented. On this, he's bringing up something that was a right-wing conspiracy from, as you said, two years ago. And as I was sleep-deprived, in the middle of the night... At about three o'clock this morning, I was Googling around. I was, you know, asking the internet answer box, you know, what this is about. What is the furry thing? Because I couldn't quite remember. And just sort of squint and I was sitting at my desk.

You know, with only the light from the computer screen and trying to figure this out. And I found this report from Utah from a couple of years ago when there was a protest at a middle school. about furries. There was some kids dressed up as animals and I heard that another kid got bit by one of them. There's a lot of speculation surrounding the protest that happened at Nebo Middle School Wednesday morning.

Nearly 75 students and parents showed up facing the school saying they're unhappy with how administration is handling reports of harassment. This is video a Nebo Middle School student took last week. Parents say there's an issue between some students and others who call themselves furries or people who enjoy dressing up as cartoonish animals. Back when I went to school.

You know, you couldn't dress that way. You couldn't do certain things. And I think it kind of needs to go back a little bit. Like, I know kids need their own personalities, but it's ridiculous when kids are dressing like animals and licking and biting.

people. I just don't think that's OK. Yeah, that would not be OK. Now, if you looked at those reports and you looked at some of the other examples of this claim from around the country and including here in Texas, you would find, Jeremy, that none of this is true. Now, there may have been some kids who dressed up.

as animals at some point. I mean, kids like to make, you know, make-believe, right? They like, I mean, we were talking about PBS shows just last week. Kids like to make, you know, make-believe. They like to make stuff up. They like to pretend. In fact, kids like to pretend to be almost anything.

Kids will pretend to be a fire truck if you're talking about little kids. And some of these kids might have pretended to be animals. There was a story out of the Round Rock ISD just north of Austin where there was a claim that the... tables in the lunchroom.

At one of the campuses in the school district that the tables were being lowered down to almost to the floor so that the kids who pretend to be animals could, you know, they could be on all fours and they could eat off of the tables. Well, of course. The school district had to say, no, that's not true at all. We're not lowering down the tables so that furries can eat in the lunchroom. In fact, the spokesperson for the Round Rock ISD had to go as far as saying this, Jeremy. They had to say...

those tables don't even, they're not even equipped to lower down to the ground. The tables don't even do that. So these details that have been put into these stories and it ends up in a fever drain for some right-wing people to then use to push a school voucher. proposal, have to be knocked down all the time. And in a lot of ways, I've been thinking about this, in a lot of ways, the traditional media as it is constituted isn't set up to deal with a lot of this, because there's just an avalanche.

every day of stuff that is completely made up. And the governor putting it in a speech to pastors this week saying, oh, there are furries all over Texas. There are these kids who are pretending to be animals all over the place. And if you don't agree that kids ought to be dressed as animals, then you ought to be able to put your kid in a different school. He's making that argument. If you go on social media, you go on some of these right wing websites, there's just an avalanche of this stuff.

every day and the one story that appears in the newspaper or our discussion here on the show isn't going to knock that down because guess what as soon as we say that that didn't happen And we can prove that it didn't happen. And no one can. Here we are in the position of trying to prove a negative, right? Oh, that this never happened. Of course, there must have been some kid somewhere who maybe one time pretended to be a cat at school.

And if you listen to the concerns from that woman, yeah, that kid shouldn't be licking or biting anybody. Maybe that happened once somewhere. But this turns into a whole big deal where the governor of Texas is telling people that this is a reason to have school choice. It's ridiculous.

It gives you the impression this is happening at schools everywhere in the state of Texas. That's what he said, that it's prevalent. There's some first grade that's filled with kids who are dressed like this and roaming the school like a pack of wild, well, like furries, I guess. I don't know whatever that would be called.

But look, this kind of points to a bigger picture, right? I wrote about this a little bit in the newsletter. This is the moment of truth, right? Think about all the noise and all the times we've talked about this on the show for the last couple of years on school vouchers. This is it.

This is everything Abbott's been doing for 15 straight months, right? From that time that he thought he had the votes in the House but never did to get school choice done, right? Like our school vouchers, whatever you want to call it. He thought he had the votes there. It lost then, and he vowed vengeance.

Right. And he went after all these Republicans who were on his side on all these other issues. He cleared out members of the House. He made his presence felt on all of this stuff. And here he finally has the moment where the Texas legislature.

is now, you know, the Senate's already passed here. The House is finally bringing it up. They're having a full hearing on this thing. He has Dustin Burroughs with him earlier in the week saying that it's going to happen this year. It's going to happen. And so, like, he's got... all of this going so you can see where Abbott it's like you know when you get this close you're like you're throwing everything out there right you're trying to make sure you don't like like have any daylight so it's like

I think he's just taking liberties now. When you get this close to the finish line, maybe he was up all night too, and he just starts saying stuff. It's close to something. But it was pretty specific. It's not like he just said, I saw a story. No, he's just saying that, making it sound like the schools are overrun with kids who are doing furry stuff. And I'm just not sure where it's coming from.

Right. When his office was asked about it by Ben Wormund, who did that story, the spokesman for the governor just says, well, if people have any concerns about this, they should complain about it. In other words, they can't point to any real examples of where it happened. If it was happening all over Texas. there would be video of it, right? I mean, this is happening at a school. All the kids, I mean, people complain all the time. Every kid has a cell phone. There would be video of it.

There would be pictures of it. You would be able to see it, right? So it almost feels, and I told my publisher this the other day, Mr. Kronberg, I said, you know, some of the things that get said now in public discourse around politics and policy. The things that are being said are so just so blatantly false that to knock it down, to debunk it almost feels gratuitous when you're doing it. This is obviously not true. This is obviously not happening. And if it happened once.

then it gets blown up into a big controversy. But beyond that, here's what it tells me. is that all of the arguments that have been made in favor of quote unquote school choices, school vouchers that we've talked about here ad nauseum, as you said, the governor's been on this campaign for the last 15 months and a little bit beyond that before, you know, before. before what happened in the last legislative session, all of the arguments he's made.

And the arguments that Republicans have made in favor of this and not all Republicans, this is still divisive within the Republican Party, as you're going to hear, because we're going to go through what happened in this hearing that I stayed up all night for. And, you know, if I'm if I'm a little punchy during the show. It's because we're going to stay with the theme, sleep deprived here, that those arguments haven't worked, Jeremy. That all of the things that they've said about this so far.

aren't working, that this is education freedom, that this is choice for parents, that this would lead to. And here's the thing. A lot of the arguments that have been made by these folks have just been... knocked down one after another, that this would be better for student outcomes. Well, you look around at the other states that have done this.

It's not the case. If you look at the studies of the numbers, this would be better for state budget situations. Not the case. If you look around the country, places like Arizona and elsewhere have seen this be a budget buster. This is... Republicans, some of them, including the governor and his $10 million sugar daddy from Pennsylvania, this guy Jeff Yass, they're pushing this and they're running into Republican opposition. Look, the Democrats on this.

I will say, and I may say a harsher version of this later. For now, I'll just say Democrats in the Texas House in particular basically gave up any leverage they had on this when they chose a speaker who will appear alongside Abbott and promise to pass this, right? So if it still doesn't work out, it will be because of Republican infighting, right? And Abbott's having to make this argument.

to a right-wing crowd and say, oh, this insane situation with furries is unfolding. He's having to say this to still persuade Republicans that it's a good idea. Right. By talking about furries, he's not convincing any Democrats of this. Right. By talking about furries, he's not convincing, you know, the poor black mother in Houston who may need some help with their kids education. He's not convincing.

that person about this by talking about furries, right? Instead, he's trying to convince people who spend all their time on right-wing social media. And people who listen to conservative talk radio, he's convincing those people, he's working to convince those people that this is a good idea. It tells me that this is, you know, despite all of the progress that he may have made for his side in those primaries last year, he knows.

And his consultant knows, Dave Carney, sort of the political mind for Abbott. Both of them know that they still haven't won over the Republican base about this. Because this argument about furries is targeted at them. And look at where he's going with these messages, right? It's like, this was a pastor's group. This was like, he's making the case there. And look at where all those school choice rallies he's been holding. Where are they? They were at private schools today.

mostly Christian schools. So he speaks... It's basically preaching to the choir, right? This is literally a case of preaching to the choir of people who are already on your side. But that's where you can stoke fears of things that may not be there. You're just kind of feeding into something of people who don't. don't have kids in the public school, but what they think is going on in the public school, right? So you get this disconnect. People in the private school almost want to believe.

that stuff's going on already, right? Because they wanted me to make the case, yeah, we got our kids out of a bad situation. And again, sometimes, you know, I have no fault on parents who do pick a private school for the kid. You know, that's their choice, you know, but... To think that the other side, like public schools are just rampant with just absolute lunacy.

You know, is this not... It's just not true. It's just not true. I mean, it's just not true. There'd be evidence of it. Yeah, and it would be interesting. And would Greg Abbott say that if he was at a rally, you know, in, I don't know, let's just pick Northside Independent School District. Would he say... All those same things about what's happening there.

You know, it's like, would he say that juries are overrunning, you know, the schools here at, you know, at Holmes High School or John Jay or like, no, I don't, I just don't think that's the case. So let's get to this hearing that went on forever. It started on Tuesday at 8 a.m. And it ended on Wednesday at 6.30 a.m.

And they had, Evan, they had a break that was maybe about an hour and a half or two hours, something like that. So it amounted to a 19 to 20 hour hearing about this. And there were some arguments that were made that we have not really heard on this show just yet.

I think some of the Democrats who are on the committee, James Tallarico, Gina Hinojosa, they were doing a good job with the arguments that we've already heard them made. So you won't hear as much of that in what I'm going to go through right now. I want you to hear arguments that you haven't heard before.

And in particular, I want to showcase for you some of the parents who were there to testify and some of the students and former students who were there to testify. People who were, let's take the politicians mostly out of it for the moment, Jeremy, and really focus on real people.

for just a little bit. I want to give a shout out here to Chuck Lindell, who's kind of a legendary reporter around here in Austin. He was at the Austin American Statesman. And is he still doing some stuff for the Dallas Morning News now? I know he had gone over there for a little while. Anyway. He and I were in the basement of the Capitol years ago, and Chuck would often cover.

abortion hearings that would go on forever just like this one that would go on for 24 24 or more hours in the texas house and i said to him one evening he was down there he was in the basement he was listening to the live stream of this hearing

And at some point I said to him, Chuck, haven't you heard every argument that they could possibly make? And Jeremy, he said, you know what? And he was a very, he is a very kind man. He looked at me and he wasn't ugly about it. He just goes, Scott, those people came all the way down here to be heard. And I'm going to listen to him.

OK, so that's why I stayed up till 630 the other night, taking some inspiration. Right. But let me start with somebody who didn't show up. You know, this guy, Corey DeAngelis. And he thinks he's famous, but I have to explain who he is, so I guess he's not. Corey DeAngelis calls himself the school choice evangelist.

almost rhymes with DeAngelis. DeAngelis, Evangelist, anyway. He's the one who runs around Evan, always saying that the state of Texas needs to fund what... Let me see. How does this go? He was at... See, I can't even remember the slogan. You're going to have to play it. He was at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and he's trying to get this crowd to say his slogan with him. How does that go? It's time for Texas to fund students.

Not systems. So he says that it's time to fund students, not systems. Okay, so sometimes, Jeremy, he makes other people say the slogan completely. Like here he was with Representative Kerry Isaac. It's time for Texas. to fund students, not systems. Here he is with Representative Brian Harrison, an insufferable grifter who has no problem

doing a little school voucher soft shoe to kick it off. Texas should be leading on education freedom and every other freedom. So it is past time that Texas funds students, not systems. Not systems. Okay. So when it's convenient for...

Corey DeAngelis to show up at a lunch or a dinner or just a quick meeting with a state representative. That's one thing. But when it's time to actually do some work and hang out during a 20 hour hearing about the issue that he makes, it looks like he makes all of his money off of. Well, he didn't even show up. Here was the chairman of the committee, Brad Buckley, calling out DeAngelis' name to come up and testify, and he's not even there. Corey DeAngelis.

We'll show Corey DeAngelis registered on behalf of himself, registered for the bill, but not testifying. Now, Representative Alma Allen. who is a Democratic educator from Houston. She was pressing Chairman Buckley, Chairman Brad Buckley, about this being a school voucher bill. There's all this argument, Jeremy, about whether it's about what to call it, whether it's a voucher bill or an ESA, as we have pointed out here.

It's basically the same thing. It's structured a little bit different. But as you have pointed out, it's a coupon. They should just call it that. And that's caught on with some people, Jeremy. Keep saying it because that's how it works. You got to keep saying it. for people to actually also start doing it. I mean, look at Corey. He had to keep saying that slogan over and over again. I had forgotten what it was, but he got some people to say it with him.

You have Buckley and Allen going back and forth about exactly what this is. Is it a voucher or an ESA or what? Education savings account is not a true voucher. It can be used. A voucher typically pays for tuition. Education savings accounts allow for more flexible spending by parents. Do we have another bill beside this bill? No, ma'am. This is a voucher bill. This is the ESA bill. This is the voucher bill. Thank you.

Whenever I hear Alma Allen, who, as I said, is an educator, whenever I hear her correcting someone, it's like you're in class. He's the student and she's the teacher. He said, well, it's an ESA. She said, no, it's a voucher. Thank you. No, it's a voucher. Thank you. Have you seen the programs that are used to manage the ESA, Jeremy, the way that it works on it? It just looks like your account.

If you were shopping online at Lowe's, like you were going to go on the Lowe's or Home Depot website and you're going to buy different things and you go on this website. And it shows you how much money is in your account. And you can only put things in your shopping cart that are approved by the state.

And there are these different companies that will manage that. And those are the companies, watch for this, those are the companies that will make money off of the administration of the voucher program. This guy, Jeff Yass, who's spending all this money on this $10 million that he donated to Greg Abbott to attack Texas House Republicans who didn't agree, Yass stands to be standing in the flow of that money.

This is a guy who made his money off of – or a lot of his money, a lot of his wealth off of TikTok. So I can maybe make an educated guess that he doesn't have the best interest of children at heart. Now, during this hearing, I thought one of the things that was – of note, is that for a lot of Texas House Republicans, you've seen them tweeting and putting on their Facebook pages and elsewhere, Jeremy, you've seen some Republicans in the House say that they support school choice.

And I wouldn't say that they've been in hiding, but this hearing was the first chance to really hear them make arguments about it. As far as guys like James Frank, who we'll get to. He's a state representative from Wichita Falls. Representative Jeff Leach, who has been supportive of the governor on this, addressed the argument from Democrats like James Tallarico and Gina Hinojosa.

who I mentioned, that when it comes to vouchers, it's not really the parent's choice, it's the private school's choice, which of course it is. But Leach said, and he was thoughtful about it, he said that he's been kind of struggling with how to... address that criticism because on its face, it seems pretty valid. I've heard the rhetoric that this is about the, it's the school's choice, not the parent's choice. And I've thought a lot about that.

Kind of wrestled with with what my reaction is and and I think where I am this morning is what's the problem with that? Why are true? Why is true freedom? choice and competition something that we are afraid of right now the fact is public schools have choices that parents don't have We have over 1200 independent school districts in this state, each of whom the state has empowered to make certain decisions that many parents in those districts disagree with.

Jeremy, he's talking about things that independent school districts do like, you know, whether whether they're going to participate in the merit pay allotment for teachers, whether they're going to, you know, increase pay for certain teachers, but not do it across the board.

Those are decisions that are made locally. He's also talking about, I'm not sure that he said this, but he's also talking about decisions like setting tax rates that people might not agree with or having certain policies on discipline that people might not agree with.

But here's the problem with the argument that he's making, and I respect Chairman Leach. He's a thoughtful guy, as I said. The problem is that, as you have pointed out here on the show, Jeremy, these private schools do not, under the law... Now, and there is nothing in any of these proposals to change this, they do not have to accept all kids the way that the public school has to do. And the public school has to make certain accommodations.

for ADA and other things like that, that the private schools just don't have to do, right? And there was a really, just a really emotional example of this that happened later in the hearing. where this young girl who was in a wheelchair appeared before the committee in just an emotional five minutes or so.

where she and her mother talked about the challenges that their family has faced. Let's see, her name is Felicita Pignon, and she's a sixth grader, so that makes her what, like 11 years old, something like that. She's a little hard to understand here, and again... You might even have to slow down the recording. Evan, people can do that, right? Some people listen to us on the faster setting, which I don't know why they would do that. You should sit there and bask in our wisdom.

Maybe slow it down. For this, turn up the volume a bit, maybe slow it down a little bit. It's just a little hard to understand, but you need to hear what she's saying. She's saying that as a disabled person... who is young, 10, 11, 12 years old, that finding the right... fit for her education has been very challenging. And you should have seen the look on the lawmakers' faces as she was talking, Jeremy. My name is Felicitopedia. I am in sixth grade.

And I use a power wheelchair because I have cerebral palsy. I love school dancing. So she likes school and she likes hanging out with her friends, a setting that she can be in. because there's a public education available to her. She told the committee that school vouchers will not work for her or other kids who are in a similar situation. She said that her mother did explore some private school options for her and that didn't work out.

My mom has tried, has looked at private schools for me, but they turned away. because I'm in a wheelchair then don't want to deal with things like ramps having a nurse to help me or making sure I could move around. Now, this was a really striking moment, Jeremy. And Republicans on the committee who support the governor's position on this.

I wouldn't say they were necessarily being cute with the mother of this girl, but there was one exchange between Representative James Frank, who I mentioned, where he was asking this question. And I would say it's a fair question. He was saying this, look, if the public school is so good for your disabled daughter, then why were you even looking for a private school option, right? I mean, if the public school system is fine, why were you doing that? Well, this is why you listen to these.

hearings and go through the whole thing, Jeremy, because there's an answer for that, right? I don't want to say he was being cute, but I know he was trying to make this argument, and I don't even think the question's unfair.

But to paraphrase what he said, and I'll let you listen to what he said, but to paraphrase it, he's saying, well, the public school is so great. Why are we even looking around, you know, for something else in the first place? So here is Frank with the mother of that girl and listen to. her answer to his question. You mentioned that you were searching all over for private schools. Why were you searching?

When my kids were newly diagnosed with a disability and knowing the issues that Texas have had with their special ed departments programs, wanted to explore okay but as soon as I went to those programs and mentioned anything and these even specialized special needs schools so he goes on to ask her if and this is almost unbelievable I thought the first

question was fair from him. But the second question here that you're going to hear, Jeremy, is kind of ridiculous. He says, look, if the facts were different, if your experience had been different, would your testimony be different? Well, duh. If you'd have been able to find an option.

And there are some private schools that specialize in those, and you didn't find them. But if there were a school that specialized in that and you found them, might you have a different opinion? I know you didn't, but... You might have a different opinion because I would have had to waive my rights of my students now I know that who was it and McKinley at the Chronicle was looking into this Jeremy the special needs stuff that goes on at the private schools and had a report about that

Yeah. Edward McKinley and Isaac, you had this great story looking at, you know, how these, you know, programs are going to affect, you know, we have some hundred eighty thousand students with special education needs. Right. And what he was saying just there.

is somewhat true, right? Again, somewhat. Focus on somewhat. There are some options, yeah. So in a place like Houston, there are like two dozen schools that specialize in taking care, private schools, that specialize in taking care of kids with very...

special needs though you know that could be anything from dyslexia to autism to hearing loss and things like that but then you go to a place like san antonio which again a very big city but they only have like four options to kind of pick from in those private schools so as you can

imagine, as you get to smaller communities, you're not going to have the same kind of options. And even the ones in Houston, you're probably going to have to be on the west side of Houston, the more affluent areas, to get into those schools and to be close enough to those schools.

to make it worth the travel cost. So I thought their story, really check it out at HoustonChronicle.com and ExpressNews.com. They really did a good job in kind of showing what the options really are for families who are... in special needs since they've become part of this conversation. It's a central part of the argument Abbott has made. It's what Brandon Creighton has made, the state senator from Montgomery County. They've made this case that they're trying to give options.

children with special needs. And here you're just hearing this mom who just didn't have it. good options outside of the public school. And so you can see, well, so what is a solution? And I think, you know, that's where I kind of really like what they had done in their story to kind of focus on this and people really should take a look at it. Well, and repeat that in the, in the, and let's underscore this for people.

Houston is the largest city in Texas. And in that story, how many options did they say there are for this? About two dozen schools. Right, right. So even in a giant city like San Antonio, that's not the same case. Yeah. Big place like Dallas. Not the same thing. Not the same thing in Austin. Not the same thing.

In Fort Worth, I'm naming our larger cities for a reason. Some of these other people who are coming to the Texas Capitol from three hours away, five hours away, some people coming from as far as seven and eight hours away to testify on this don't have any options for. any of that and a lot of people who work in public ed will say you know this whole deal has been phony this is why the governor's talking about furries

Because they have made this argument before. In fact, when the original – well, not original, but when school voucher programs have been pushed previously. In, you know, sessions past, I'm going back two, four, six, you know, eight years ago. I remember all of these initial proposals that were trying to get the foot under the door, the camel's nose under the tent, as they say.

Which, why would you let the camel in the tent? In the United States, how often does that happen, that a camel gets under the tent? We don't even have camels around here. Maybe we should retire that one, but you get the point. Just to get the foot in the door. Did we mention that Scott's a little sleep deprived today? Yes, I'm a little punchy. Some of those initial proposals were only centered on special needs kids. Yeah, right. And that argument just didn't fly. It doesn't fly.

Because of what was in that story, which is there's no options for that at this point anyway. And even if you give these people a school voucher for $10,000, it's not going to help them. There's nowhere to take the voucher. Well, and look, I'm going to play the other side of this thing.

Coming from Florida, when they first started their program, they built it around that. It was special needs kids first to try to get them. If there was a specialized school somewhere – Well, maybe they have different – options in Florida that I don't know about. If you have a specialized school somewhere and your kid wants to be able to go there, or you want your kid to go there, if you really kind of focus on it, that's a great concept in theory. But again, as Isaac and...

Edward pointed out, we just don't have as many of those options even in the major cities. So when you start getting to places like, let's say we go down to McAllen or to Del Rio or Laredo, how many choices are you really going to have for your special needs kid? you know they have you know whatever disability

facing. It's like, I'm just not sure we have as many school options as are presented there. And the Republican argument, you can see that's where that exchange was going eventually, was, well, maybe if there were more of those schools, if there were more incentives to build schools dealing with special needs, maybe there would be more choices. I can see that's the Republican thought process on it. In theory, that sounds good, but building a school...

You know, that's not going to be something that gets done in a couple of years. We're talking a decade of work. Right. And let's get real. It's a privatization effort. The whole idea is to put these private institutions in line for money from the government to maximize profits. It's not going to...

be a big moneymaker to set up new schools for special needs kids, right? The big moneymaker, the way this legislation is written, the big moneymaker would be to take the voucher from people who already have their kids in private schools, the wealthiest Texans.

That's the easy way, right? Now, the other way they could do it, the other way they could do it to make a whole lot of money is, and I wouldn't put this past any of these folks, in places like Houston and San Antonio, there will absolutely be little schools that will pop up in shopping centers.

in strip malls. And guess what? The tuition at that school will be the exact amount of the voucher, whatever it is. If it's 10K, your kid gets in and it's a fly-by-night thing that is gone in three years. And according to these... According to the legislation, they wouldn't have to meet any of the accountability standards and do any of the testing, the same kind of testing that the public schools do.

There would be no reason they couldn't just be in operation for two or three years and then get out of there and make their money. And on top of that, the companies that will administer the voucher will be making their money all the while. Remember the fiscal note.

for Senate Bill 2, that's the Senate's version of this, which wasn't, you know, the fiscal notes were not all that different between the House and the Senate. Those private bureaucrats, the private bureaucrats that are going to administer this, they're going to make up to 8%. of this $5 billion program. That's what it's expected to grow to over the next few years.

No, no, I like what you said there in terms of, like, look, by its nature, a private company wants to make profit, right? They're going to want to find a way. Right. the story from these guys really kind of showed that like so where are those schools predominantly where are those private schools catering to special needs in wealthier more affluent areas where they can make that profit in san antonio you want to guess how many of those special needs schools are

in the south side of San Antonio, zero. Right. It's like you kind of get the sense. It's like they're going to go where they can tap into. wealthier parents who have this option. And again, you can see where the argument then would be, you know, look, in a perfect world... This $10,000, you know, school, ESA, whatever you want to call it, would help get those kids there. But again...

How many of those options are there and how realistic is it going to be to send a kid from the south side of San Antonio to north of 1604 or from the east end out to River Oaks? I just don't see it. Right. And nothing wrong with private business trying to maximize profit and make money. But that doesn't mean that our tax dollars should be going to that. Now, all of that stuff, looking out for kids who have disabilities.

and looking out for poor people. That all sounds like Democrat stuff. That's liberal stuff, right? Now, during this hearing, we heard from staunch conservatives, Republican activists who have been at it for a long time. who are dead set against school vouchers and what the governor's trying to do

And I do think there's been this disconnect, Jeremy, because in some ways the governor has had some success, as we mentioned, in moving the needle in his direction and making this sound more like a purely partisan fight at the Texas Capitol. And if it's a partisan fight only.

If it's Republicans versus Democrats, how do you think that would go in the legislature? It would just pass. It'd be like anything else. It'd be immigration and border security, certain tax policy, all this anti-LGBTQ stuff, all of that. The stuff about DEI that you've written a lot about, that stuff would just pass because that's Republican versus Democrat stuff. They just have more votes in the legislature.

But if it's still a fight among Republicans, that's different. So Republican activist Lynn Davenport, who's been at this for a long time, this is the thing that she focuses on is education policy. Lynn is from Dallas County. She's been... really outspoken on this and testified before the committee late into the evening. The very government that helped break the system, the body here for decades has helped break the system.

And then we're presenting this counterfeit solution of subsidies, which for those of you who are in the Republican Party like I am, it does violate. the party principles, the priorities, the platform, the plank. All of it. Now, the governor, as I said, has had so much success in trying to make this just a partisan fight that there are Democrats at this point who don't even understand why a Republican would be against it. So, for example, John Bryant.

who's a progressive Democrat from Dallas County, wanted to understand that. So he asked Davenport, he said, just tell me, why is it that you as a conservative Republican would oppose this? I'm just... asking if at the heart of your whole approach is that classically no conservative would be in favor of using government funds. Correct, because we're against universal health care, we're against universal basic income, but universal school choice, which is not universal because it doesn't serve.

all kids and so yes it it flies in the say in the face of conservative principles oh but then jeremy she connects one last dot on this that the governor is getting huge campaign donations to do it, right? You can talk about all these other things, all the, you know, all of the public policy questions and all the philosophical things, but at the heart of this.

is that abbott didn't care about this until he was getting huge millions and millions of dollars worth of campaign contributions uh to be in favor of it because of the money that is uh pumped into these campaigns like i think representative Schoolcraft should recuse himself because of the money that the governor gave him to buy that seat.

No, I'm serious. I think this is a really serious issue. Hold up just a second. Yes, sir. Don't make a personal attack against a member on the committee. Was that personal? Yeah, pretty personal. That was public. That's all public.

Go to Transparency Texas website. That is not the bill before us. The bill before us now. It's all about the bill. The only thing the governor wants is school choice. So I looked that up, Jeremy, for Alan Schoolcraft, who she was upset with, and she said that he ought to have to recuse himself. he got so much money from the governor that the governor was pumping money into his campaign to get him elected um the the republican who schoolcraft defeated

Kyle Casale from Seguin, Texas. He had, from the governor's campaign, he had about a million dollars spent against him in the Republican primary and the runoff, putting him in the top. of the list of Republicans who had money spent against them by the governor to take him out. Now, that doesn't mean that Schoolcraft has to recuse himself, but it does tell you.

You know, what what has reshaped the legislature in a big way in the governor's direction. Right. I mean, that should come up in every one of these discussions. And as some other conservative activists have pointed out, Senator Brandon Creighton. you know the author of this in the senate has basically said a version of this that every bill that comes before the legislature is quote a vendor bill that and that's not

quite true, but he has sort of said a version of that, that people are going to make money off of the public policy that's passed at the Capitol. I had a veteran Democrat say to me a few years ago they said you know you come into the legislature as a freshman and you have your ideals and you think you're going to change the world and you know you're ready to rock in your first session and you get to the capitol and you quickly realize

that really the job is centered on calling balls and strikes on who's going to make more money. But that happens all the time across issues, whether it's, you know, inter-industry fights. whether it's the hospitals versus the health plans on some other issue, whether it's this guy, Jeff Yass, fighting with the public school system in Texas, which is really what's going on, a guy looking to, you know.

in my opinion, cash in on the billions of dollars that are spent on education in Texas in a privatization effort. That's what it's really, it's about money at the end of the day. It doesn't mean that it's not also about kids. Because it is, it's going to affect them. But yeah, this is a big business fight.

Yeah, it's like there's always going to be winners and losers in a political fight. It's quite honestly why I have an up and down stock market in that newsletter. It's like because every day there's somebody who's going to profit off this stuff, right? It's like who is it?

In this case, it's going to be private schools that are already set up, already collecting $16,000 per parent. They just might be able to get more out of those same parents now because those parents are getting an extra $10,000. You know, so you can see who benefits there. And this, like, you know, again, theoretically doesn't do much to families in poor communities who can't.

possibly get their kids transported to those higher end schools, you know, that are private schools. It's like they they're going to be in the public school no matter what we do here. Yeah. Here's somebody else who was punchy in the middle of the night, a retired superintendent from Lufkin.

roy knight who didn't mince words at all about this i'm too old and too tired to waste many words here this bill is a skunk that we're trying to pass off as a kitty cat now i've got to tell you guys the quote of the day was

We want the money, but I don't want you dictating terms. What a load of garbage. Now, for the other side of this, Angelina Tamez told the committee that only 7% of kids in the Rio Grande Valley, where she grew up, are college ready and she said that she had heard about this during a presentation at school and that her family could have benefited from

a voucher program. She said that it would be a game changer for families like hers who just can't afford to send their kids to private school. Like the amazing mother I have, she began researching local private schools to get me out of my class. However, they cost. And with two toddlers in the home, groceries and gasoline were priority. And like so many South Texas residents, my...

quality education didn't make the budget. In the RGV, 90% of us are Hispanic and so many of us are first generation college and high school graduates like myself. Abuelos, our parents, make numerous sacrifices to give us the American dream, yet so often the public school system fails to meet us there. It sounds like the public school system actually did her okay because she said she was among the first in her family to go on to college.

one of those who maybe defied the odds in that area. And in South Texas, there are some very small, poor... School districts like we have talked about, not just in the Rio Grande Valley, but further up toward Kingsville and along the along the coast, Jeremy. We've also heard about some of those school districts that are out toward not in the valley, but out toward.

the Big Bend area, places like Presidio County, which as we have pointed out here is the poorest county in the state where their median income is around $15,000 to $20,000 a year. But I do want you to hear one more thing from this. Because like I said, I was up all night, so it's like you're up all night with me listening to all this testimony. There were just some of these folks who said things that I just hadn't heard before. And by the way, I've covered this for a while.

I was thinking about it, Jeremy. I've covered the school voucher fight in Texas for at least about 20 years. This comes up all the time. As you pointed out previously, Governors Bush and Perry.

attempted much smaller initiatives on this and couldn't be successful. So I feel like at some point, I feel like I've heard every argument, but like that reporter from the Austin American Statesman said to me, you stay up and you listen to these people because they have stories that you haven't heard about. This guy, Dr. Alejo Salazar, is the superintendent of the Lasada ISD, which look it up on the map. It's kind of near Raymondville.

down in South Texas. And he's also part of the South Texas School Alliance, which is schools all over from there down to the valley, back up toward Harlingen and back up toward the district where he works. What he told one of the members of the committee was that he had seen on the on the lawmakers tick tock that folks needed to come and tell their stories. And so he wrote down his story and he's against.

Listen, it didn't sound like he's against school choice. He's against the school vouchers, which is different, right? The school choice thing, that's a marketing term. He's against the voucher that would take money away from the public school. where he works i'm a dad right i have four kids my and i have my oldest daughter did phenomenally well in catholic school then comes my son and my son and my middle daughter were in catholic school at the same time well

He wasn't doing well and he needed speech therapy. So they said, nope, we don't offer that here. And I think I had just finished college and didn't know any better. So we started looking for help. And so no help was around. And so we took them. We took them to public school. We took them to Harlan. That's where that's where we lived. He testified at about 4 a.m., Jeremy. I was looking at my notes when when people talked and it impacts your speech. As you said, we're.

We're sleep deprived. For a lot of his testimony, I just want to describe this for you. For a lot of his testimony, and they each got, every person who was testifying, they each got about two minutes. And a lot of his time was eaten up by the fact that... He kept taking these long pauses because he had to gather himself because he was getting emotional about the experience of his son who needed speech therapy to be able to be a successful student. It took...

It took a little time for him to get the words out. And as he's trying to talk about it, you start hearing the beeper because it's time for him to wrap up. And as he kept freezing up, he said that... They took his son to the public school in Harlingen where he got the help that he needed. This was a kid that they really had concerns about. He was going to need a certain kind of special education. And he ended up, his son ended up finishing eighth.

Out of 500 kids in his graduating class because he got the help he needed at the public school in Harlingen. We did that. A public school did that. I do that every day. Day in and day out. That's all right. Finish up. What I want to say is we look at those kids as if they were our own. And we're good people.

You know, those of us who work in public education, we're not, he said, we're not pagans, we're not demons. They feel demonized all the time. He's such a nice guy. He tried to say, like, none of y'all are saying that we're evil. but he has had people say that they're evil. Clearly, how did we start this show, Jeremy? That the governor is saying that people like this guy who's testifying at four in the morning, a superintendent in a school district where they have, I think, 300 kids.

that he's somehow the kind of person who would allow children to dress up as cats and put litter boxes in classrooms and do things that would embarrass the other kids who were there. and embarrass the parents who are there, and that they need to establish a school voucher program so that these people who are doing what I would call, people are doing God's work, the Lord's work.

in some of these schools dealing with these kids who have every problem under the sun and in the public education system they don't get to say oh You, you know, we can't deal with you in your wheelchair. Oh, we can't deal with you in your speech impediment. Oh, we can't deal with you in whatever the issue is. In the private school?

They can do that. And there is no law that's being proposed in Texas to tell the private schools that they can't do that, right? No one is saying that not one Democrat, not a pro-public education Republican, not me, not you, not Evan. Why would Evan weigh in on this? But not anybody. No one is saying that they should do away with private education in Texas. People have all kinds of options.

Right now, what these educators who are showing up at the Capitol are proving through their testimony is that with limited budgets and in situations where all these school districts, so many of them are facing. You know, deficits where they're laying people off, consolidating schools, as you pointed out previously, closing down schools in San Antonio at what may be a record pace there, as you highlighted during that.

Live event that you did the other day in San Antonio at the Express News office. Even facing all that, budget cuts everywhere. And they're still dealing with this stuff day in and day out. And taking care of kids, as he said, you know, we're not trying to be their parents, but we look at the kids like they are our own. We care for them in that way. And so we'll keep an eye on where this goes in the legislature.

I'm not 100% convinced that this is going to turn out exactly the way the governor thinks that it will. And we'll see if this means multiple special sessions. What's going on with Wes Hunt? Is he running for something that's not? His congressional seat, Jeremy, because I saw this ad. It was running, I guess, two weeks ago. This was happening around the state. It's airing on conservative talk radio. And it makes it sound like he's a candidate for.

something this is wesley hunt as the first congressman to endorse president trump in 2022 i am thrilled with this presidency from securing our border to cutting fraud waste and abuse i couldn't be prouder to be an american I'm Wesley Hunt, and I'm calling on all Texans to continue supporting our great president. As Texans, we fight for what's right. And with President Trump at the helm, there's no stopping America.

Paid for by Hellfire Pack. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate committee. Hellfirepack.com. Jeremy, as you and I talked about, this commercial would probably be the first time that a lot of folks ever even heard about Wesley Hunt at all. They wouldn't even... know who he is. And in the meantime, in Houston, Charles Blaine, who's a conservative commentator, saw this ad on television and recorded it and posted it to social media and listened closely. to who's paying for this ad.

I will continue to fight for our conservative family and Texas values. I won't let you down. Pay for with official funds from the office. Congressman Wesley Hunt. Sounds like they're stretching a little bit there, Jeremy. I don't ever remember hearing an ad or seeing an ad that looked and sounded like that, that was then paid for. with office from tax dollars to promote someone who looks like they're running for the U.S. Senate.

That was a lot of the chatter this last couple of weeks. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And that's what made me write about it this week. It's like once I saw that those radio ads that he was airing was on conservative radio statewide. way outside of Houston. And I'm thinking, okay, what's going on here? Remember, this is a guy who last year spent a lot of time campaigning with Donald Trump in other states even. He ended up getting a primetime speaking spot during the national convention.

He was with Trump for the Army-Navy football game. So you can kind of see he's been kind of gearing up for something, right? And what's that something? That something feels like a 2026 run to the point where there's – I'm still working on some of this reporting, but he clearly went to the National Republican Senatorial Committee to see if they he could get support from them or at least acknowledge that he might be running for that. The NRSC, that's right now run by Rick Scott, you know,

they're kind of behind Cornyn because he's an incumbent, right? They typically protect the incumbents first. So it's not like they were going to say, yeah, go ahead, go for it. It's clear that, you know, in fact, Rick Scott has already endorsed. John Cornyn for re-election. So that's to look for in the future. But kind of file this under what I've been saying for a long time, certainly on this show and beyond, is if you think you're going to beat an incumbent...

a statewide incumbent particularly. If you think you're going to beat somebody like that, you better be running well in advance of a year. You need a year to get your message out, especially if you're not really well known outside of, say, Houston, right? How do you get your message out? People don't even know who he is in Houston. I mean, he's one of like 10 congressmen from Houston, right? Exactly. It's that much more of a challenge.

start early. These people who wait until the fall to start their campaign for a March primary, you're already facing it right now. You're not going to be able to make that case. At least give yourself a shot. serious about doing it you've got to be fundraising and on the ground and spreading your name way in advance of that right and so so i think he checks that box where he's trying to i'm not saying he's successful but at least he's trying to because we know what what ken

Jackson's talked about getting into this race. We've had Ronnie Jackson talking about getting into this race. We've had – there's a lot of people who could get into this race whether or not – John Cornyn says he's running again, right? But a lot of people are going, hey, do I need to get into this race? raise in case he doesn't right you know it's like right but but to that point i just want to point out he just had a big fundraiser in dc

just two weeks ago, and he has a huge fundraiser in Houston on Monday. And so John Cornyn is clearly raising money like he's going to run again. And so now the question is, okay, if he is going to be serious about this, if he is going to the NRSC... behind him, who's going to take him on? And clearly it sounds like Wesley Hunt wants to kind of get in there. And we've heard Paxton say a couple weeks ago that he needs a little bit more time to figure out if he's going to do it or not.

And I think, don't be surprised if we hear something more from Wesley Hunt really soon on this. Well, I think probably part of what's going on is that people just are hedging, right? I mean, you have the people that you mentioned, Paxton, Hunt, Ronnie Jackson. There'll be others who may ramp up their efforts to build name ID and build any kind of a campaign potentially for Senate. Some of those folks will probably back up and not do it if.

you know, Big John, if Cornyn said, you know, he makes it clear that he is really running for reelection. Some of them are operating under the assumption either that he won't or that they just don't know. And so they want to be ready in case he doesn't run. Right. I think if if a race was to shape up where it's clear that it's going to be Paxton versus Cornyn, some of these other people will back down like a hunt.

Or Ronnie Jackson, potentially, you know, whoever they are, because that's a different dynamic. If you have two people who have been elected statewide going head to head in a Republican primary, that doesn't leave any room for someone like Wes Hunt to make any kind of a real campaign. you know, to do anything over the next year, you know, before that happens. But if Cornyn steps aside, it's not just going to be the people that we just named. It's going to be, you know.

10 to 15 Republicans who jump in a wide open, you know, wide open race, wide open Republican primary for the U.S. Senate in Texas will be expensive. You can guarantee it'll go on to a runoff, whether Paxton's in it or not, or whether a West Hunt. Ronnie Jackson, whoever's in there. It's something that just doesn't happen. I mean, look, go back to the last time we had this was when Kay Bailey Hutchison stepped aside. Wide open primary.

And, of course, that ended in a runoff election in the middle of the summer because of a redistricting lawsuit where the then lieutenant governor, David Dewhurst, who was – and this is just a good reminder of how anything can happen. David Dewhurst, who had been elected statewide as a Republican officeholder more than once and to multiple offices.

He was what? He was ad commissioner and he was lieutenant governor. And he still lost to a guy who people didn't had never really even heard the guy's name before that year in 2011 and 2012. That was Senator Ted Cruz, who before that. had been in private practice as an attorney. Before that, he was the Solicitor General for Texas, which again, Jeremy, most people don't even know what that job is.

Right. Somebody who worked at the time as an I'll just say it the easy way to think about it. He worked for as an attorney for Greg Abbott when Abbott was the attorney general. Other people didn't know who Ted Cruz was. And so anything can happen in these races. When you have a race that gets extended. because of a primary um and you head into uh you know the the part of a campaign season where the only voters who show up

are those who are some of the most rabid conservative Republicans who would, as the saying goes, they would crawl through broken glass in the rain to be able to vote for somebody like Ted Cruz. That's when you end up with a Senator Ken Paxton. a Ronnie Jackson, maybe not somebody as much like, you know, Wes Hunt or, or a Dan Crenshaw, who is, by the way, who is also somebody who's been mentioned for that seat.

Well, as you mentioned, you played out the – if this is a wide-open race, anything goes, right? And when you get in a wide-open race, these races get crazy. Everybody's in that. Remember, you had a former NFL – running back in that race, you know, uh, you know, back in, and he actually had a little run there for a little bit where it looked like he was a legitimate candidate, but you have, yeah, I'm Craig, Craig James. Uh, that's right. I'm sorry. I apologize to the Craig James.

family for forgetting who he was. Don't worry, nobody else remembers that either. It's okay. But okay, beyond that though, but okay, let's just assume for this sake that Cornyn stays in the race. And so I started thinking, I wouldn't be doing my job as part of this. teamwork we have if i didn't bring up some arcane history right it's like so look incumbents don't lose in texas in any primary it just doesn't happen

regularly, certainly for statewide office. For the U.S. Senate race, the last time this happened that the incumbent U.S. Senator lost a primary, you have to go back to 1970. You know, when Lloyd Benson meets Yarborough, you know, it's like that's how long ago it's like the nationwide, if you look at the success rate of trying to take out.

somebody of your own party, an incumbent in the U.S. Senate, is really, really low. It's almost 100% re-election. Now, if I'm challenging Cornyn, the good news is Cornyn has a lot of dings. on him right now. Obviously, he got booed at the Republican convention a couple years ago. A lot of people question if he's good enough with Trump. Trump has said some mean stuff about him in the past. They look like they smoothed around. So you can see the opening there.

Where did you hear in that ad that Wesley Hunt's coming from? Where would Ronnie Jackson be coming from? Where would all these guys come from? They want to be – who's closest to Trump? Trump world. Trump has changed American politics. So even though – a primary challenger hasn't been successful against a sitting u.s senator since 1970 in the state of texas trump changes all that right trump can bring you know heat onto anybody he chooses at any given time so if trump decides ken paxton

his favorite person or wesley hunt it changes the dynamic of a race like almost overnight you know and so i think that's what everybody's being gunning for just assume going into this race that no matter Who is running in this race? It's going to be a race to see who can most prove that they're with Donald Trump. And you hear John Cornyn. John Cornyn's comments of recent have been that he is going to be working hand in glove. with Donald Trump.

He supports everything he's doing. He backed all his cabinet picks. He made a big press release every time he supported one of the cabinet members to prove that he's with Trump on this stuff. You can see everybody's going to make this. race about

Who's closest to Trump? And unless somebody can prove to Trump that he can't support John Cornyn, he should vote for somebody else. Cornyn is going to have an advantage. You know, that's where a guy like Wesley Hunt is going to have to hope that he can get not only. Trump on his side, but for Trump to come in and campaign for him against the city. And, you know, and to that point, we have seen in several statewide campaigns at this point during the Trump era, that one thing that has not worked.

is trying to be the trump candidate when someone else in the race has already secured the endorsement. Correct. So if you think about the governor's race, when Abbott was challenged by Don Huffines and Alan West, those guys were all trying, everybody challenging Abbott.

was trying to still act as if they were the Trump candidate or the Trumpy candidate when Abbott already had the endorsement. And that just didn't work at all. By the way, you mentioned Lloyd Benson. One thing I want to check out, there's a new podcast called The Benson Blueprint.

Someone sent me this info, and I haven't listened yet. I promised this person that I will stop. It's going to be part of my weekend listening this week, and I'll report back about how it is. It's supposed to be pretty cool, but apparently you can hear it on Evan. It's like our podcast. You can hear it everywhere. It's not going to be the number one podcast for politics in Texas.

But it could be interesting. So I'll check that out. Go ahead. Interesting note. So Lloyd Benson, when he wins that primary, he then takes on a guy in 1970 that you might have heard of, George H.W. Bush, who's a congressman. And he defeats George H.W. Bush. temporarily putting george bush's political career on ice right right now we're getting late in the show and i'm still sleep deprived but i need to let me turn on the tv that'll keep me going because i think i i think um

Wait, what am I seeing here? Let me flip over to Fox News Channel. Look at that. It's Jeremy. It's your face, Jeremy. I see you. And who's this guy? Who's this guy you're talking to? That's Will Cain. Will Cain. I'm going to turn up the volume on this. But before I turn it up, what were you all talking about? He's he looks really animated about something. And you in in, you know, in normal Wallace fashion, you look a little more even keel than the than the Fox News host.

Yeah, this is this is all an outgrowth of the whole Doge effort right up in D.C. where Elon Musk and his team are going through trying to find what they say is government waste. And this looked like a free for all. They found this like program in Texas.

that, you know, like, ah, see, this is a clear case of, you know, fraud. This is a boondoggle that Will Kane actually, that was his word to me in this interview. So that's what you're, that sets us up with what we're about to talk about here. Yeah, let's hear what Will says. had to say. Jeremy,

Thanks for being with me. That history, I hope, is accurate, and you'll correct anything that I got wrong there. But it seems amazing, first of all. $18 million a month. And even at its most, even at its busiest, it looked like it was $100, $200. kids in this facility that could be built out to 2,000, but empty much of that time. How am I not supposed to see this as a massive boondoggle?

This is a part of what I like to call the immigration industrial complex. Now, what did you mean by that, Jeremy? Yeah, well, look, certainly during the Biden administration, we saw a lot of money going out. throughout South Texas and around the rest of the border to become places to have migrants particularly.

unaccompanied migrants right you know the the children particularly we saw that like nobody wanted a repeat of the tent cities in torneo nobody wanted to repeat of seeing you know kids sleeping in border patrol stations and cramped quarters and so the biden administration

Well, no Democrats wanted to see that. Absolutely. Some Republicans do want to see that. Yeah, absolutely. So you can see the Biden administration was under some pressure. So they decided like, look, we're going to do this. We're going to have this set up. So if we do get another surge. We're going to be ready for it with a place that looks humane, that's teaching kids stuff, that's giving them health care, that's taking care of all the needs.

The point I didn't get to in the show was that a lot of these kids who are coming to the US as unaccompanied minors, we can only imagine the trauma they're going through. So they need a lot of services to kind of help them out and kind of get them on their way, right? It's like this isn't just like, oh, kid, you're in juvenile detention. Deal with it. No, no, no. These kids have been abused along the way. They're coming from lives that we can't even fathom.

And so that's what this was. But the bottom line of this one, what Elon Musk was centering his attacks on was that this... A faith-based group in San Antonio called Family Endeavors was getting $18 million a month to have this facility on standby.

to be ready to take care of kids. And they go, that's a waste of money. That's a lot of money going to something that doesn't have any kids into it. But what I tried to point out, and I did it subsequently in the story, you probably saw in the newsletter and on our websites, was that that this faith-based group, again, organized by ministers to help...

originally to help with homeless and to help with veterans, that's where they're coming from. So it's not like this is your typical boondoggly type group, right? This is kind of a faith-based group that's trying to do this stuff. And look, and you can make the argument. And Will Cain really made the argument really well that like this kind of insurance policy.

It's probably not a good use of government money. You can make that case. You can say, look, this is over insurance. We don't need to do this in preparation for something that's not coming. I get that.

But this group that's doing it was clearly, at one point, they had about 44,000 kids go through this thing. So they... cared for 44,000 kids and kind of help them get where they need to be with other family members or whatever the situations were, take care of them, give them education, give them something to do, make sure that they're just not left out.

Again, we're talking sometimes 10-year-olds, 11-year-olds, 12-year-olds. You can't just throw them in a cell every day for a couple of weeks. They were giving them services. There's a part of it where it's like family endeavors, you might... be able to criticize the contract that the federal government sent to them but the group I think had decent intentions of trying to avoid

a repeat of what we saw with the kids in cages during the Trump administration. Of course. Nobody wanted to do that. Not even the Trump people want to do that. It's a question of... priorities is a faith-based group that is on standby in case they get a bunch of kids. Let me put it this way. The hosts on Fox News Channel would not have a problem with it if it was a faith-based group.

that was running pregnancy crisis centers that where no women were showing up but they would want them to be in towns in case that they did right because they were trying to avoid abortions It's just a question of people's values. Do you want to put this infrastructure in place such that we can avoid something that certain people don't want to have happen? In this case, with what you're reporting on. What you don't want to have happen is the mistreatment of these children.

And in the case of the faith-based pregnancy centers, which they have done this in Texas, they have spent millions of dollars on all this stuff. And we've seen the results on that, which is it doesn't actually get used that much. But I don't hear Will Cain talking about that.

Well, and I had a good Republican friend tell me that, look, it's like the amount of money we're paying per kid, even if it's $44,000, is still a lot of money to take care of those kids. But it's still a fraction of what you – It costs the state of Texas to have a kid in a juvenile detention facility. It's a fraction of the cost that it costs to take care of kids for just a day in any sort of...

you know, system like a juvenile detention center. So it's like, so what these people were doing, this is like in another world, this is a Republican's dream. This is a faith-based group doing something the government would normally be doing, but they're doing. They're privatizing something that would cost the federal government. twice as much, if not 10 times as much to do on their own. And so they farmed it out to a private group run by...

again, at least started with pastors, and they clearly have a faith-based mission that they're working off of. So in a different era, you can see why this would have been celebrated. But now even these guys are on the wrong side of Elon Musk.

and the whole doge effort right now they don't even get any slack in this stuff and maybe that's a good thing maybe it's not i don't know maybe everybody needs to get a double check on it but they just cut this contract off midterm so if we do get another surge

These kids, who knows where we're going to put them. So much short-sighted stuff happening with all this doge. And I'm reminded of the fact that during the Trump era – There has been a lot of legislation that's been passed in the moment where – and Trump is very good, of course, at dominating news cycles and getting all of national media to – all of them.

conservative and more liberal, liberal outlets, everybody in between to write about a certain topic. And so that's sort of the flavor of the day. you know, thing that everybody's talking about. So what will happen at the Texas legislature is while he's talking about something and making a big, you know, a big deal about it, legislation will be filed and it'll go through the process and pass.

And then six months later, he doesn't even care about it anymore, isn't talking about it anymore, or completely reverses himself about it. I'll give you an example. Remember during the debate on the sweeping elections bill in 2021. the one that the Democrats fled to Washington about. Yeah. Trump had railed against those drop boxes for people to just leave their ballots, you know, basically in what looked like a mailbox during COVID.

Because people didn't want to have to interact with anybody. They didn't want to be around anybody. Can you imagine we all lived through that, Jeremy, where people didn't even want to be in the same room with anybody because they might catch COVID. And they put this in this legislation. And they're banning these drop boxes in Harris County and wherever else. And then a few months later, Trump says, you know, actually, that drop box, that's not a bad idea.

And so there it is. It's in the law. Now, they change the law every two years around here. I try to remind folks that it is a big deal, but it's also not a big deal because they can just change it again. But when you're legislating... where you're doing this doge stuff on the whim of a guy who just changes his mind sometimes in mid-sentence, maybe that's not the best way to do public policy. Did you see that...

Little Governor Dan Patrick, his new side mission. We've talked about a lot of his side missions recently. You know, he was on a tear about the lottery and we talked about that. And then he was on a tear about... bail reform and a bunch of other, and on a tear about still trying to figure out how much money was spent on the impeachment of Attorney General Paxton, which we already knew the number.

Patrick put out a video the other day where he was bragging about the fact that he now had some documents from Speaker Dustin Burroughs that showed that the cost of the impeachment was around $4 million, something like that. I would point out that the... bargain basement price for the acquittal was only $3 million in some contributions that were made to the little governor. His new side mission is...

That he wants to rename the Texas Strip steak. He wants to rebrand it the Texas Strip from the New York Strip. The steak that's always been the New York Strip. He wants it to be the Texas Strip. Despite the fact that his crew, I mean his political consultant and others, despite the fact that they usually dine downtown at the Capitol Grill, where in my opinion, at that steakhouse, the food is better.

than at Bob's Steak and Chop House. Although Bob's is more cigar friendly. I will point that out. That Patrick's giving a boost to the chewier option for steak in this town. The last two times that a friend of mine and I went to Bob's, we almost couldn't even eat the steak. But Bob's took the lead of Patrick recently in renaming...

The New York strip as the Texas strip. Not quite. Patrick might have fibbed a little bit about this. Imagine that. He posted a video of himself, Jeremy, on his social media. Where he's bragging about the fact that it bobs now. You can get the Texas strip. And it even comes. with something a little extra. Take a listen. So the house thought they were going to bust our chops over the Texas strip. Let me just tell you, it's already on the menu. It's the Texas strip. And it says...

You can enjoy it with shrimp from the Gulf of America. New York, Texas house, come and take it. We win with the Texas strip. Thank you, Dustin. Thank you, Ken King. Good try, but can't beat the Senate when it comes to steak. There's a little bit to unpack here. So number one, Bob's did not change their menu to say that there's a Texas strip. Patrick was at a special event, a private event.

where they customized a menu that steakhouses will do this. They customized the menu. Like if it was your birthday, you could have it called the Jeremy Wallace strip, you know, if you want to on the menu. By the way, the Texas strip, the Gulf of America shrimp, and your choice of potato was $99. It doesn't sound like a bargain to me. And for what is a chewy steak.

in my opinion, at Bob's. Go ahead. Do they have freedom fries? Because I don't want any of those French fries. I think everybody's passed that. I want freedom fries. Are people, are we still, Evan, do you even know what he's talking about? The Freedom Fries. That's a generation ago at this point. Yeah, right. It's a good reference. I guess you could get the Texas Strip with the Gulf of America shrimp and the Freedom Fries.

as your choice of potato. Perfect. I guess. But Bob's went on the record, Bob's Steak and Chophouse went on the record with the Houston Chronicle and said, no, we didn't change our menu. It's still the New York Strip. That was just for a special event.

The picture that Dan Patrick put out about that was just from a special event. He was also there talking about the Texas House leadership who had weighed in on this. And Speaker Burroughs, I will say, and I wrote it this way at quorumreport.com this week. Burroughs brought some excellent taste to the discussion because Burroughs and Texas House leadership thinks that the New York Strip is an inferior cut of meat to a ribeye, which I would agree. That's where the flavor is. But come on.

A ribeye, Jeremy? The marbling? I mean, if you want real flavor and not just political rhetoric. You would go with a ribeye. And of course, we know what Patrick's doing is trying to stick his finger in the eye of people in New York. You might have also seen that this has already drawn a million dollar lawsuit from some New York based steakhouses who say, no, that is the New York strip.

You can't go rebranding it. That lawsuit, one of the plaintiffs includes Delmonico's. So we'll see if that goes anywhere. Probably not. But if Patrick was telling the truth... Which it looks like he's not. If he was telling the truth, the government wouldn't need to do anything. Private business could just rename it on their menus, right? That the Bob's and the Capitol Grill, where his folks like to go, they could just rename it the Texas Strip.

As I pointed out on my friend Chad Hastie's show this week in Lubbock, the ribeye is definitely a superior cut of beef, and someone who's really from Texas would know that. Chad says, oh, he went there. I will say this as a semi-serious comment, Evan, about it. Patrick is not telling the truth about the menu at Bob's changing. changing to rename the steak. When someone will lie to you about the smallest thing, they'll lie to you about anything. All right, let's do the up and down of the week.

Each weekday, Monday through Friday, Jeremy tells us in his newsletter who he thinks is up that day and who's down that day. It's kind of a stock market report about politics and what's going on. And honestly, it's a good way to do it because people think of... Think of whose stock is rising and falling in politics. Who's getting the win that day? Who's taking the loss? And so here on the show, we do the up and down of the week. Jeremy, what do you got for up this week?

Well, I'm going to go a little east of Texas and grab Mike Johnson. I know he's from Bossier City. He's the U.S. House Speaker, but he was able to keep... Texas Republicans together on the budget vote for this temporary spending bill, which will avert a government shutdown. Not only did he get Chip Roy...

going on saying, look, I'm not going to vote to turn off the lights on the government. Like Chip Roy. Chip Roy, the guy who six months ago was saying, let's shut it all down. You got Chip Roy on board for this temporary spending package. Not only did he do that, but he got... He got Chuck Schumer to agree to the spending package. And the Democrats are going to vote for the thing too. And so...

Congratulations, Mike Johnson. I had no hope that he was going to get this passed in time to avoid a Gummer shutdown, but he did it with Texas help. Didn't you already name him the up of the week at some point before? I don't know. I seem to remember. I'm going to go through the archive, Evan. I want to go through all the transcripts because go through the transcripts because I think this Louisiana native has been the up of the week in Texas before.

Which might be a record. A lot of people from Shreveport, people in places like Nacogdoches, they consider that all the same area. There may never be another Bossier City person ever mentioned as a Texas take-up. He can take two victories in two laps. Oh, man. You know that song, Bossier City, right? Yep. Bossier City, you know, going to go...

Drink my cares away. When you're just sitting at the slot machine, you can just gamble like it ain't nothing, as they say in the song. Who's it down for the week? All right. Again, he's not a full 100% Texan, but who is really? Elon Musk. I know, look, he's having a lot of fun with Donald Trump and everything. I get this. He was selling Teslas at the White House this week, but...

Listen to this week he's had, y'all. It's like Tesla's stock is down 52% since December. 52%. That's not working out. It's plummeted. And his SpaceX rocket that they just launched blew up over the ocean again. Right. And so he even... had this interview on Fox News where he sounded just plain dour and they were asking about everything going wrong and he said, yeah, it's tough sledding right now.

It almost felt bad for him for a minute if he wasn't cutting all the programs for children and veterans. Yeah, I don't feel bad for Elon Musk even for a second. And this is why business guys typically just don't do this stuff. You don't get into it. People have questioned the brand new position that they put Musk in. And it just sort of made up a position for him, this doge thing. And he's so – I mean –

People who have previously been giant donors to presidential campaigns, they just don't do this, Jeremy. They work in the background. Or they get some appointment that... is a little more innocuous, like Tillman Fertitta, who is the ambassador to, it's not a difficult ambassadorship, you know, to Italy. We're okay with them for now.

I mean, I guess for now we're okay with them. Maybe the next big fight they'll pick will be with Italy. But business guys don't do this. Was that the interview with Larry Kudlow? Where they asked him about the one you're talking about with Musk, where he was acting like, oh, this is so hard to be in government and the businesses. And I heard where Musk was asked, well, how is it going running your other businesses while you're also doing all this in Washington?

And Musk said something like, it's just, you know, it's really hard right now to be able to do this. But when you're a business guy, maybe you should focus on that. And just get an ambassadorship like Tillman. Yeah, on top of all that, remember he had that outage of X, too, at the beginning of the week. So he had his rocket blow up, the outage of X, and his stock plummeted this week. People were so mad about that. You see he's taking all ends.

You make a really good point. A lot of these business guys get in there going, hey, I'm going to treat the government like a business. But we know... Those guys get frustrated really quick because it turns out the government is not a business. There's no profit being really made off of a lot of things that the government does. It's like, you know, you just do it because you're trying to make sure the public is safe.

Some advice for the wealthiest guy on the planet. Focus on what you're doing wrong. Don't tell us all what we're doing wrong. Let other people figure that out. There you go. I have my own up and down for the week. It's going to be... Hit the music again, Evan. Do you have it? I'll do a little Braddocks up and down of the week. It's going to be food-focused. Ready? This will be very short. Up this week is Capitol Grill Steakhouse. Because...

Patrick and his consultant can keep eating there if they haven't changed the menu at Bob's. Bob's is down. Because I thought they were going to get a boost out of Patrick's thing, but it turns out that they didn't actually rename anything to Texas Strip, so...

It's not working out for him. I'll still go, you know what, I'll tell you what, as a peace offering, once all these South by Southwest people are out of this town, once they're gone, see, I won't even leave the house till Sunday, Jeremy, but once they're gone,

In fact, I may not leave the house until Monday because they'll be flying out of here, right? Saturday and Sunday. You couldn't even drive around Austin. I'll tell you what else is down this week is Austin traffic. You couldn't get anywhere. And I know that people who live, and we have listeners all over this state, people who live in Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio, etc., they all think they have traffic. Austin is the worst, and it's not...

Even close, Evan. And people will say, no, no, no, we have traffic. Jeremy and I do this all the time. We're in all those cities all the time. It's the worst, hands down. I mean, it was like being stuck in flypaper trying to get anywhere for 35, 40 minutes to go one mile in downtown two days ago. Get out of here. All right. Check out Jeremy's newsletter.

This was an incredible show, Jeremy. Check out that newsletter. It's where you find the up and down of the day. And you can find the link for it. on Jeremy's X page, at Jeremy S. Wallace is where you should go for that. For the inside story on Texas politics, be a subscriber at quorumreport.com. It's quorum report. dot com. And of course, you should be a subscriber at Houston Chronicle dot com. And we'll see you next time.