Hello, and welcome to the Texas Tribune trip Cast for Monday, June twenty third. We are coming to you with an emergency trip cast because less than twelve hours ago, as all of us were getting ready to go to bed and get ready for the week, Greg Abbott vetoed the Texas THHC band and ordered a special session for July twenty first, later next month. We are throwing out our trip cast plans and talking about this because it's the big story in Texas politics. And I am joined this
week by politics reporter Kayla Gwow. Hello, Kayla, I Kayla. We were talking before went to sleep around three point thirty last night after all that news, so I want energy from all of this. And then Jasper Sharer, Hello, Jasper, good to be with you.
Guys.
I know you were watching the NBA Finals last night, So is there at least a little bit of you that was happy that he waited until that was.
Over a little bit?
Yeah, And it was.
It was kind of overall just like a rude welcome back from my vacation where I was wistfully, you know, not paying the usual attention of this kind of stuff. But here we are.
I'm back in the game here we are. Indeed, I for one, was very happy that the NBA Finals game was starting at seven o'clock. It meant I was gonna be able to go to sleep at a reasonable hour. And then I'm brushing my teeth and I think it was you, Kyla who dropped in our slack channel Abbott's vetoed SB three and that blew up everything. Let's just start. Oh and by the way, Eleanor Clemenov, you may have heard of her. She's the co host on the show.
You may remember a couple of weeks ago when I was in Aspen and I knew I was it's too important. I got to join the trip Cast as a zoom. Anyways, I don't want to disappoint our listeners. Eleanor also now an Aspen, and she didn't care at all. She was like, I'm skipping it. I'm hanging out in the mountains, so you know, e clipping off at text tribute dot com. If you want to email your disappointment, we're here. The true trip Cast stands giving you the information that you
need to know. But anyways, anything y'all want to say mean about Eleanor before we move on, I mean.
Come on, Yeah, just the worst timing she could have possibly picked, obviously pre engineered.
So all right, well, it was a wild night last night, so let's just start, Kayla. Can you just sort of like walk us through what happened last night to get us to the point we were in here.
So we got an earlier round of vetos earlier in the evening of twenty five bills total, including a couple from earlier in the session, and that was it. I don't think I didn't feel off the hook yet at that point, but I had sort of prepped for two opposite outcomes if the governor vetoed it or let it pass. And then I think it was around eleven fifteen that the SB three veto on its own sort of quietly came out.
Fifteen, which is forty five minutes before the deadline to beat veto bills.
Yeah, forty five minutes before the deadline eleven forty five on it or eleven fifteen on this Sunday night. And that was that. So we rushed to get that up. And then, in a really strange twist, Governor Abbott responded to a tweet by our friend John Moritz of the Austin American Statesman, in which Moritz had said that a bill by Simpronia Thompson had been vetoed and Abbot rushed in.
This is just minutes after the SB three veto, says there was a flaw in miss Te's bill and he put it on a special session, which was our first indication that maybe we were heading to a special session.
But it was bizarre because it was in reply to eight reporters tweet, so minutes after that then her, I guess it was more like thirty minutes after that, around midnight or just after midnight, after the veto deadline passed, Abbot officially announced a special session, with SB three at the top of the list.
Right, Yeah, I think I can confidently say that this is the first time a special session has been announced in a reply to a tweet and an Austin reporter. Pretty wild, I what I'm struggling to even come up with a question here. What do we think explains Abbot waiting until, I mean almost literally the last minute to do this. We've known about this bill for weeks. Why did he wait until you know everyone was going to sleep on Sunday night to act on this?
I think some it was genuine indecision about how to handle this kind of a hot potato politically. I mean, I think he I don't know if that explains fully why he waited until forty five minutes before the deadline, but at least you know that there were some other bills that he vetoed, you know, much earlier on that were just obviously clearer calls for the governor.
And I know.
His you know, folks on his his team have said he was he really didn't, at least initially know how he was going to handle the veto versus you know,
sign decision. And I think you know, you also saw that his veto proclamation was unusually long and detailed, sort of laying out you know, both his his reasoning and sort of a you know, I think the governor had previously said like he was going to put on his judicial hat to kind of decide this, you know, harkening back to his time as a text of Supreme Court justice, and you you know, his part of his his proclamation kind of read like a legal decision where he was
saying like he didn't think that SB three would you know, stand up to legal scrutiny or at least it would get tied up in the courts. And then he even went as far as to suggest, you know, kind of the regulatory framework that he'd be okay with when you know, when he calls lawmakers back in July to sort of
reconsider an amended version of SB three. So I think kind of the combination of like indecision and then wanting to have as bulletproof of a explanation as possible to kind of make clear, look, you know, I still want to do something on this, but you know this, I think he went to great lengths in his proclamation to say, you know, it was sort of targeted at Dan Patrick to me in some ways. I think he was like, look, you know, I'm kind of with you on this to
an extent. I just I'm trying to help you not get your your top priority tied up in endless litigation.
Right, Let's let's actually step back and do a little bit of a history of how he got here. Right, So Dan Patrick had been calling for this thhe ban, Well, actually, let's sit back even farther than that. Right, These THH stores, these products have been available in gas stations, you know, all over the place for the last couple of years after the action taken both by the federal government and
the state government to legalize him. Right, This creates a situation where these sort of like marijuana like substances that can get people high are now essentially legal, almost by accident. I think everyone sort of agrees that was not the intent of the original law. So Dan Patrick comes into this session and says he wants to ban these substances.
These are dangerous for folks. The measure passes the Senate, but the House sort of like significantly amends the bill in committee, right, Kayla, basically saying, you know, we're not going to ban this, we're going to regulate it. Then what happens, Kayla, Well, the House.
The House has this bill, They've been through committee. It's Chairman King's Bill out of State Affairs, obviously a very powerful committee. That bill is, you know, it contains a lot of what Abbott ultimately recommended in his proclamation explaining his veto have barred sales to minors. It would have barred marketing to miners and put some more restrictions in testing and bolstered law enforcement, all those things. It was a pretty substantial regulatory framework and then drama happens on
the floor. We saw Representative Tom Oliverson, who is an anesseciologist and also Dan Patrick's neighbor, introduced an amendment to substitute the regulatory framework for the full out band that the Senate had passed months before. We saw kind of a hodgepodge of people sign on to that, some Democrats in addition to a bunch of Republicans, and the House managed to do that. And at the same time all this was happening, there were some negotiations about school finance.
Speaker Burrows has said that you know, they were independent and there was no hostage taking, and the school finance package was just a tough, big, complex piece of legislation to put together. But I think there was definitely some criticism after the fact that school finance and THC got tied up together and we saw the House pass this full on ban and that is what ended up making it through the legislature, in addition to an expansion of the medical marijuana program.
Right, and so then there were all these calls for Abbot to build. People upset about the economic impact, people pointing to maybe the use of these substances by veterans dealing with various issues. Abbot kind of remains completely silent on this until this happens. So Jasper, are you surprised by Abbot's decision here?
You know, I would say I am. I mean I sort of from the beginning was that he would he would rather than sign or veto it, just kind of let it take effect. But you know, at the same time, if you just think of kind of the volume, the pitch of the opposition to this, you know that was coming from I mean, really the key is that that was coming from the right, which is you know what just you know, dictates a lot of the decision making by by Republican lawmakers who are running the state right now.
It's it's is this how is this issue going to play out in upcoming primaries in you know, I think Governor might have sensed a you know, potential political liability for you know, folks in his own party. So I think it's he just saw that like they kind of needed to not go back to square one, but just like sort of reset and come up with a version
of this that might be less politically toxic. When you know, the march in May primaries roll around I'm not sure if this would have really been like a political killer at by itself as an issue, but so, you know, I'm surprised based on like what I expected at the beginning, but just given the kind of the volume of the chatter over the last few weeks and just the intensity of the pressure on the governor, you know, it sort of makes sense in retrospect.
Yeah, I've said this on the podcast before, but it's it's one of those things right where it's just very easy to draw a direct line to lawmakers decisions and impact on people's lives. Right, Like, these these products are
available kind of all over the place. There's these stores everywhere, whether in like city downtowns or you know, small towns and everything like that, and they're going to be gone, right or they were going to be gone before this veto, And you know, people were upset about that, and they knew who to blame. It's not like one of those situations where you're having to kind of wade through and point fingers and explain like the complexities of school finance.
Right it's like, this isn't going to be here, and it's because of these lawmakers that this happened, and maybe that has something to do with the decision. The question now is what will happen next, Kayla. Governor Abbott was pretty prescriptive in terms of what he wanted to see from lawmakers on this issue. Tell us a little bit about what he laid out for wanting to see.
He got about a long list of possible regulations. He suggested that lawmakers consider an approach similar to the way alcohol is regulated, with a particular agency looking over at certain rules, like again baring the sale of THHC products to miners, barring marketing and packaging that is meant to
attract miners. I think he had, you know, something about not having stores in your schools, requiring testing at every phase of manufacturing and processing, you know, funding extra funding for law law enforcement to be able to enforce all these rules. So he has a fairly comprehensive list of proposed rules, and there are more than what I just listed. Again, a lot of them overlaped with what was in ken
Kings Bill. But yeah, I guess they'll come back July twenty first, and this is the first thing on the agenda. I will have to see how open damp over clearer that it was a ban or bus throughout the regular session, you had forced to threaten a special if you didn't get his way if lawmakers did pass a regulatory bill. So they're gonna have to work through that.
Yeah, I will say, just jumping in real quick on Cayla mentioned the fact that it's on the table to you know, ban the sale to minors of these products. I think the fact that that needs still needs to be done for this industry really underscoes how it's kind of a free for all, you know, ad hoc system that's you know, that's been operating over the last six years, and why there has been kind of this clamor for
something to get done this session. Just the fact that, you know, they passed the bill that ultimately allowed for this industry to proliferate, intending to boost the agriculture industry, so they didn't even bother to set you know, an eighteen or twenty one age limit. I think that just underscores how, you know, how much you know, regulatory clamor
there is. And it also if we're thinking about what might come next, you know, I think even Democrats generally have been pretty on board with doing like some sort of regulation and the debate has really just all along been about the band versus regulation conversation.
Yes, but as Kayla kind of waived that there is another very influential and powerful statewide leader who will have a say in this, and out of course is Dan Patrick. You said in your story last night or I guess early this morning, Kayla, that he had listed this is what one of his top five bills of his career in terms of most important. He you know, called a press conference in which he was really blasting the media and other folks for you know, what he perceived as
being critical of this bill. How is he going to react to this? Do you think how has he reacted already?
He seems pretty mad. Yeah, I don't think he's thrilled. Yeah. I mean he put out a pretty blistering statement immediately on Twitter last night after the Veto came out, called it a quote unquote late night Veto that he argued would leave law enforcement and people whose loved ones have been affected by high potency TC products leaving them feeling abandoned. So he's clearly disappointed. Some of his allies, like Tom ulliverson have come out with other statements saying they're disappointed.
I'll be headed to his press conference in about an hour and a half from when we are speaking right now, and I think one of the main things we'll be looking at is just measuring like just how mad he is.
Well, you know, be careful. We all know that he threw some products that reporters the last press conference, so you know, just keep your head on a swivel as we go from there. I mean, it does seem though jasper like Dan Patrick might be unhappy about this, but he's going to be fixed with the decision of no regulation at all or regulation more aligning with what Governor
Gravig Abbott does. So I mean, you know, he is not one who's afraid to play a game of chicken with the governor, but it does seem like the governor holds, you know, the most leverage in this situation.
Yeah, I think, I mean, it's going to be fascinating to see how he handles the situation, how Dan Patrick does, just because he has I think found success in the past kind of playing hardball on these seemingly intractable disputes, like if you think about the the property tax debacle after the twenty twenty three legislative session, that was kind of the only other real example of Governor Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Patrick really being publicly and very directly at
odds over like a you know, a major policy issue. I can't I think of another example that really comes close to the THHD situation here, you know. But to your point, Matthew, like, it's you know, if tenant Governor Patrick comes out guns blazing and you know, just trying to take down Abbott over this issue, he risks you know, getting less of what he wanted you know, in the first place. So I think it's and he's a crafty politician, he's no doubt like considering you know, the stuff that
we're talking about here. So I wouldn't be surprised if he comes out with, you know, at least by by the Dan Patrick standards, maybe a little bit more of a measured tone, just trying to you know, express his disappointment, but saying, you know, like he still does have another chance to you know, try to move the ball on
this issue in you know, a month from now. So I don't think he's going to want to you know, establish a you know, kind of needlessly antagonistic relationship with the Governor heading in if it's only gonna you know, sour his chances.
Well, by the time most people are hearing this, that press conference will likely have happened. So check out text tribute dot or Kayla will have her story on it and you'll find out what happened there. It might be horribly wrong, who knows. Yeah, we'll see, we'll see. Well, you know, Jasper, I believe the last time you were on the podcast, you and I both predicted there would be no special session, and I think maybe even kind of rubbed it in with Eleanor that she predicted otherwise.
And I don't know what you're talking about.
Yes, we were wrong, and maybe it's for the best that Eleanor couldn't couldn't make it to this podcast. I mean. The other thing that sort of caught my I and I'm sure a lot of other people's eye about Abbot's announcement last night was the word initial when he said the initial list of agenda items. I guess first before we go on whether something might be added, Kila, did anything jump out to you about other things that will be on that initial list?
Not particularly, I don't think you know some of them. Looking at the veto statements there were just flaws in the bill or you know, some sort of tweaks that could be made. And I mean overall, there was a bunch of criminal justice bills that he vetoed entirely that are not on the special agenda yet, but you know, like none of them were major, major, major bills that anyone any of us have been following throughout the session.
But like you said, that's an initial list. I think I wouldn't be super surprised if we saw something like bail pop up on there, or taxpayer funded local municipality or government lobbyer, and maybe redistricting. So I think we'll we'll see, and one of the means.
One of those Vito proclamation is nodded at that, Kayla, right, the possibility of a bail special session item. You know, he was kind of citing the failure of one of his bail priorities as you know, something that needs to happen first before one of those bipartisan criminal justice bills could get through.
So yeah, I think the big thing people are going to be wondering and talking about between now in July twenty first though, is what you mentioned, Kayla, redistricting, Right, It has been reported by US and others that there's been some pretty strong pressure from the White House to consider a mid term redistricting, specifically redrawing the congressional lines in an effort to maybe help Republicans nationwide hold on to the House. That is not on the list, but
maybe it will be. Jasper, what do you think the state of play is there right now?
Yeah?
I think well, first of all, you know, baseline understanding here is like the governor can add an item to the special session call at any point. You know, these things can last up to thirty days, sometimes less. But you know, this very much is not that's not necessarily the end of the agenda. I think, you know, it's been pretty clear that Abbott is kind of waiting to take his cues from what however, you know, kind of the Trump political team and the Texas Republican delegation in
DC kind of how they work out this situation. You know, I think the Governor has kind of been signaling you know, you guys handle this and I'll just go with the sort of the way the winds are blowing. And what we have seen is that the Texas Republicans are you know, not super jazzed about the idea. They are worried about spreading them their districts too thin ahead of you know,
it could be a tough mid term cycle. So it's you know, but we've also gone some medication that you know, they might not be thrilled about it, but they're still likely to go along with it if if Trump the Trump folks stand their ground, which is kind of I don't know a microcosm of how most of these congressional White House relations play out, so all you know, kind of the the expectation right now is that this is going to happen and that it probably would get added
to the special session call, you know, at some point. But you know, it's also possible that this is done in a separate session. You know, we had what four of them last year and earth and then three of them the year before, so it's this could just be the first of multiple I don't want to jinx us, but it's always a possibility. Yeah.
It's just such a fascinating dynamic because I can't say that I've spoken to any Republicans rely who think this is a particularly good idea for the Texas delegation. Right many look back at last decade. We wrote a story about this back at the time about how, you know, Republicans got really ambitious in the Texas House, trying to hold on and expand their majority by drawing a bunch of seats in Dallas County that were attractive to them.
But what they did was they spread out their voters so much that by the end of the decade, Democrats had essentially won every seat in that county. They got a little bit overly greedy when they redrew the lines this past time. For the current district lines, they really emphasized longevity and you know, as opposed to adding more seats, and that was a conscious decision to avoid being put in a tough position at the later part of the decade.
But I think the big question is, right, when the president, who clearly controls so much and has so much influence over your voters, is asking something, can you say no to them? I'm very excited to see. I think the other question here is, you know, how would Democrats participate right because they still have the ability to do a quorum break. I was in San Antonio last week interviewing some members of the San Antonio delegation. I asked them
about this possibility. Senator Menandez, I'm quoting him. He said, I don't know why any Democrat would show up to a special session where that's what you would do. Speaking of the redisserting Representative Ray Lopez coyly saying, I've been known to leave before when the issue is a BS issue, when democracy is at stake, you cannot put a penalty on me that will keep me from exercising my voice, and if that means walking away, not showing up, and
then he sort of tailed off. But I mean, pretty strong signals that they would not be interested in playing a game. But it's interesting because now they need to come back to deal with some of these issues. So I think there will be an interesting little game to be played here about you know, who shows up, when do you disappear? If you add it to the call, When do you add it to the call? We don't know, but it's going to be incredibly fascinating to watch.
Yeah, you could easily see some of those congressional Republicans, you know, going along with this because they don't want to upset the Trump administration. Then almost kind of hoping or banking on the Democrats, you know, holding out in
Austin so they don't have to worry about it. And it's also interesting that like for example, Pete said, you know, you were talking aboutthew about past examples of Republicans stretching themselves too thin, like Eat Sessions is one of the kind of the more seasoned Republicans in Congress from Texas, and one of the leaders is MI understanding of, you know, in some of these talks, and he is like a prime example of somebody who lost his seat in twenty
eighteen to call it all read after that, you know, in a district that radically changed from you know, reach from when the lines were drawn at the beginning of that decade. So, you know, I think there's there are some fresh memories in the delegation about you know, Lizzy Fletcher beating John Colberson as well. I think they're trying to avoid those situations.
He saw Hakeem Jeffries, who's the Democratic Minority lea leader, also sort of he wasn't necessarily bullish, I think, but he pointed out, you know, like this could actually potentially benefit Democrats if they're not careful enough, and you know, you create situations where Democrats do have an edge and possible opportunity to win.
Right exactly. It's really both sides will have their own kind of like, you know, how much do you want to gamble on this decision to make? If indeed they go through with that, there will be plenty of time to talk about that if they do. Lots of everyone's favorite topic, redistricting that you know, few things can cause someone to buck their president or you know, decide not to show up more than you know the lines that determine whether they get to keep their seats or not.
So that'll be a fun one. This THC fight will be a fun one. I'm sure we will see other fun things coming up in the meantime, but we will talk about those later because Kayla's got to go cover a press conference. Thank you Kayla for joining us, and thank you Jasper. Thank you to our producers, Rob and Chris. We will hopefully be back to our regular schedule next week and hopefully we will not be working until three am the night before. Talk to y'all next week.