Welcome to the Tribecast.
I'm Eleanor Klibanoff, women's health reporter here at the Texas Tribune. I am here with editor in chief and my co host, Matthew Watkins.
Hello there, Hey, how are you. I'm doing okay, Yeah, okay, we'll talk more about that.
Yeah, we're trying to keep the mood up. But we're also here with a politics reporter for now, James Varagon, also known as the Great Betrayer. Hi, Eleanor, Hello, you know we should say we're taping this on Friday. It is also James's last day at the Texas Tribune, and his last day is co host of the tripcast.
And last day is friend to me and Eleanor.
True exactly last day a person we look at, talk to engage with at all. The shunning begins at five pm, and then your happy hour begins at five thirty.
Okay, we'll wait.
It's a brief shutting, yes, but no. For those who don't know, James is leaving the Tribune to go host Capital Tonight at Spectrum News. We're very very excited for you. Glad you're staying in Austin and sad to lose you at the Tribune.
Yeah, I'm sad to go before before we get too far ahead of ourselves, I would like to say happy birthday, belated birthday. You missed the last trip cast, so happy birthday. Yes, very sad to be leaving the TEXTA Tribune had a great opportunity to hop over to Spectrum and be a host of Capital Tonight, which is a program that we I think we've all been on. We love and respect and yeah, excited for new adventures and a new medium.
I feel like this is largely Matthew's fault because he said, hey, James eleanor do a podcast.
It will put on YouTube. James got it. Yeah, they were like, oh my god. He was like, I gotta be on TV full time.
Cut the camera off.
Yeah, this was no one else can get the taste of fame.
We will miss you, James.
Then, you've been a lot to the Tribune and you've done amazing work and we're really proud of you, excited that we'll still get to see you and watch you.
Thank you very much. I'll miss you, guys, and I hope to have you guys on the show sometimes.
Yeah, tell us a little bit. I mean, you've been Tribune a long time. What is uh was a memory that stands out to you from your time here?
Favorite coworker Patrick v Tech.
To us also to us that you guys can join your little alumni council.
No, I mean, I don't know that I have one favorite memory. The treasure, as we say, is the friends you make along the way. My co host Eleanor Klibanoff really has become a great friend of mine. Kate McGee also a great friend. It's just a great group of people to work with, a very supportive newsroom. Yeah, like I said, uh, I've done a lot of great work here, had a lot of personal growth. And I'll miss you guys, And I'll miss the readers in the audience because they're
so engaged and so vocal and so supportive. So I will miss that.
I think most of our readers know this.
But if and listeners know this, but if they want to keep watching you, how will they be able to do that?
Yeah, you can watch on Spectrum TV on cable and the show is on it's called Capital Tonight. If you don't know it, it's at seven o'clock Monday through Friday. And I'll be there. I'll be doing a couple of weeks of training doing just on the job reporting before taking over the anchor chair in early to mid April.
Do you how long have you been covering the text legislature?
Been covering the Texas legislature since twenty seventeen.
Okay, eight years and I know you're not leaving the Texas Legislature, but eight years.
Four sessions, five sessions, five sessions.
Do you feel like you have any sense of like, have things changed in that time that you've been covering it?
Seen any big shifts?
Yeah, I mean we've had three different speakers, four different speakers in that time, so that's changed. We've talked a lot on the show about the right word lurch that the Texas House has taken. You know, when I first came in, it was under Joe Strauss, who was a much more moderate speaker. That was a bad word back then,
but he certainly was a moderate. Stopped a lot of the kind of legislation that we're seeing now with bathroom bills, and I think it just speaks to how politics have moved in the state of Texas, to how the House is built and what bills are being taken up. But you know, that's how life is. I mean, things change, but it's still one of the best state houses to cover, probably the best state house to cover in the country.
So much consequential policy passes, and so I'm super excited to keep covering it and for to keep following your guys' work because you guys are the best day Well, thank you.
I agree.
No, But turning now to the Texas Legislature, I mean, this week, I think we're just kind of gonna run through some of what we've seen happening. We've done a couple of episodes sort of focusing on specific issues, and while we've been doing that, a lot has happened at the Capitol. So you know, things are really starting to fly now. The Senate is moving through its priorities, sparks are flying in House committee hearings, and we're going to
really start seeing things move now pretty quickly. Matthew talked about sort of where we are right now and what comes next.
I think as I've talked to people who work in the capital in recent days, the big thing that people are talking about is how calm and friendly it's been so far. I mean, we've had a few little moments of flair effs, we'll talk to you. But I think after this just incredibly tense primary season back in March to the Republican primary, a lot of members ousted, then a incredibly intense run up to the start of the session fighting over the House Speaker, we get Dustin Burrows.
He is on the other side of the sort of you know, insurgent wing of the Republican Party, but he has taken a lot of effort to reach out to that wing, but even maybe more so Governor Abbott and Dan Patrick and try to kind of make peace. He's been, you know, appearing on stage with Abbott on voucher meetings, rallies. He's been, you know, working kind of in concert or at least not an opposition to Dan Patrick in the Senate.
And I think that there's a lot of optimism among people in the Senate and just around the legislature in general, at least on the Republican side, that that maybe we can get through a sort of calm, peaceful legislation session instead of one that breaks down into fighting.
You know.
The caveat is that it's you know, early March, and where we will really see that test is later in the session when things go through. But I mean, you know, and there's lots of potential areas for it to blow up. You know, there's still things that need to be ironed out in the voucher bill. I'm sure we'll talk about that. There's differing views on property taxes and everything like that. But so far they seem at least willing to work with each other, the Big three having their you know,
weekly breakfasts, which wasn't happening last session. And to me, the big question is well that stick.
Yeah, I think that it's still early on. I did have that realization like this week where I was just talking to somebody at the Capital Cafe shout out Capital Cafe, and they were like, Wow, things are really getting going now, Like there's deadlines are coming up. Bill foundin deadlines I think are next week. So things are getting going. At
the same time, things haven't moved that much. I mean, we're talking about vouchers, we're talking about the Senate priorities flying out of the Senate, but that kind of.
Is always right, almost administrative.
Yeah, yeah, and then like the Senate voucher Bill hasn't moved in the House. The House is moving its own thing. The committees are barely starting to meet and have their organizational meetings, so nobody can really say like, wow, my bill hasn't moved. Nobody's really has that anger in them yet. Everybody had nice committee appointments, so everybody's like in this
feel good era. But I think maybe over the next month or two we're going to start seeing people outside of representive Brian Harrison and his crew start getting upset. If things don't start.
I just want to just remark briefly though, on what seems to be a talent of Dustin Burrows to make peace with folks. Right, we all remember, or many of us, I'm sure remember the scandal that brought down Speaker Bonnin back in twenty nineteen where he has a secret meeting with Michael quinn Sullivan, the conservative activist, in which Burrows comes along with him, presents a sort of secret list of Republican members of the Republican Party who MQS can target.
Michael quinn Sullivan secretly records this meeting, it goes out, it creates this big scandal, Burrows has to resign as Republican Caucus Chair, and Bonnin ends up, you know, losing his speakership. Over that that I think, you know, you have to look at as a pretty low point for Burrows. He found a way to kind of bring himself back up into leadership, ended up winning the speaker's gavel, which is a pretty amazing thing just in and of itself.
Then you have in the early session, you know, the billionaire Alex Fairley talking about how he's gonna essentially, you know, signaling that he's going to go after people who vote for the sort of leadership wing of the GOP in the House speaker's race. And then right before that vote, he puts out a statement that seems to kind of back away from that and almost give people permission to vote for Burrows Fairli's including Fairly's daughter who casts that vote.
And now you know, again at least it's early. I will again acknowledge that, and we have to acknowledge that every time we talk about it. But now he seems, at least for now to be getting along with Dan Patrick. And that is an impressive skill by this speaker to to you know, that I think will help him accomplish things and just sort of like put the House in a different position than maybe it has seemed in recent years.
Do you think that to some extent just comes down to like personality, like who he is, Like you know, is he more of a peacemaker maybe than Daid feel and you know, who was very much at odds Or is it the political landscape that they're the sam they're in.
I'd be interested in hearing your opinion on that. Jams.
My thoughts are that he's not new to this, he's true to this and so.
This is how you get a TV contract.
No, I mean he is a very very savvy political player. One thing that you did point out, Matthew is that a couple of the people on his pledge list or people that he targeted in that twenty nineteen styles So you look at folks like Drew Darby, you look at folks like Stan Lambert and say, man, what did this guy do? How did this guy talk to them? What has he done in the last couple of years to get those guys to come over to his side? That is remarkable for a politician to be able to do
that that turnaround. He's very savvy. He we had a profile of him talking about how relentless he is. He's very organized. He doesn't just sit around and wait, and he also is it's not I wouldn't say he's the friendliest personality, but he is a very straight shooter, and when it's a no, he's going to tell you it's to know. When it's a yeah, he's going to tell
you it's a yeah. But he doesn't stop at no. He's like, Okay, it's a no, now, but here are five, six, seven, eight, ten things we can do to get it to a yes. And that's the kind of person that you need to be in the capital to get stuff done. And that's the person that he has shown to be.
Yeah, this is the kind of person you need to be, particularly in the speaker's chair, right, because we always talk about how the Lieutenant governor is perhaps the most powerful person in the state, particularly during the legislative session. And one of the reasons for that is structural, right, because he's elected by the people, right, he's not elected by the other members of the Senate, so he can preside over it without worrying about angering enough lawmakers that they'll
end up voting him out. And that's a much more comfortable and just ap perch with more leverage than the House speaker, who has to you know, I mean, we've seen this repeatedly over recent years. Has to keep those members happy in order to keep them going, and he just seems to be pretty good at that.
You've got to serve two masters, and serving the people who elect you to your House seat, but then also the other one hundred and forty nine members who are going to elect you as House Speaker. And he again, he has this political talent for turning nose into yeses. And that's kind of what you need when you have that dynamic between the House and the Senate, which is often at odds, especially with the Lieutenant governor like Dan Patrick, who is just we've talked about this, we've used this
phrase before. He rules with an iron fist. But you know, Dennis Bondon was also really good at this. He was wiley, he was very smart. And it's because they had been chairman of big committees and had led had authored big bills, had known where the levers were to pull to make things go. And I think this is the dynamic that there is. And importantly, Lieutenant Governor Patrick respects that he knows that he's a player. He knows that he can't just go above his head or bully him on Twitter.
We haven't seen those kinds of messages, and so that is a dynamic that is playing out now. Of course, again the caveat what is going to be a relationship, Like in June, you can play this back.
I was going to say, right, roll this right back. Yeah, yeah, no, certainly. I mean I think we're seeing at least like friendlier. Also, there is a lot that they are in agreement on, right, Like, it's easier to be friendly when you are all you're at least in you know, the Big three are all saying we all want vouchers, we all want property text cuts. We're going to have some conflict over how we do that, but like we're all kind of on the.
Same People sleep on this. But Dustin Burrows is a very strong conservative. I mean people will try to in certain interests, will try to convince you that he is not. But I mean I get emails from people in his district saying like this guy is a dyed in the wool like red as blood conservative, And that's why they get along. That's why they are in such agreement on these issues. Whereas, again going back to our earlier comment about when I started covering it was Joe Strauss. He
was not as conservative. He was a more traditional like Reagan Republican, George Bush Republican. Uh, these are much more socially conservative lawmakers. And that's why they're don't want right.
I mean, the gap between Joe Strauss and Dustin Burroughs versus Dustin Burroughs and say David Cook is you know, Strauss and Burrows much wider.
Right.
Yeah, speaking about vouchers, you know, we're not going to.
Get into the whole segue.
That's what we call a segue.
And in the biz, uh, you know, we've got all the big three, we're all agreeing on vouchers.
Everybody's all so happy.
James, where does that stand right now? In this pre uh you know, the warm up period.
I think it's uh, you know, when you're making pasta and like you got to let the water boil a little bit. That's where we're at right now, because everybody is like, Okay, this thing is moving.
Uh.
The Senate bill has passed the Senate. Now we've got the House bill. Weirdly, like, tell me what your thoughts are on this, man, but like the education advocates are sort of kind of quiet. Yeah, and Jayden had a really great story about the the Democrats, like top leaders on voucher stuff, sort of saying like, you guys are being too nice, like if you need money, you come
out swinging right. And it's it's sort of a Dayton or a little bit of an under the radar kind of battle that they're fighting because they don't want to tick off the state officials who basically control their purse strings because they really desperately need the money. But also it's like vouchers could really hurt their public schools, and this is what they say, maybe not publicly, but they certainly say it privately to us, right, And so I
think it's it's that part. But then there's and I think Republicans are pretty confident that it's going to pass. But then you're also seeing folks like Cody Harris and Brad Buckley getting booed on stage, getting shouted down at their own town halls. I saw Carl Tepper isn't even doing a town hall. He's doing kind of a moderated
radio appearance. Because there is starting to be some pressure, and you know, things are starting to the rubber is hitting the road, and so we're really getting to see like what the actual proposals look like, what impacts it's going to have, and I think the fight is just beginning.
Yeah, I think going back to the comment about the schools maybe not being you know, fighting as much, I think that's an interesting observation and it kind of goes back to something I've talked about on the podcast before, which is, you know, they successfully quote unquote successfully blocked vouchers last session, and what it got them was, you know, losing access to billions of dollars in additional state funding, about a dozen of their strongest school's strongest supporters in
the Republican Party losing their primary seats, and you know, vouchers likely getting passed two years later. Anyways, Right, And so I wonder I haven't talked to anyone about this, but I wonder whether there's a sort of like, Okay,
this is probably going to happen. Let's stop this fight and let's focus on getting what we can get, which is basically that since twenty nineteen, when the state passed you know, a major campaign or sorry, school finance overhaul and really significantly boosted up school funding, that funding has not kept up with inflation since then and if you watch from twenty twenty where it kind of hit a high water mark until now, if you're talking in real dollars,
and you know, twenty twenty five dollars accounting for inflation, the school funding has dropped about ten billion dollars from the state during that time, and so these schools, and it's important to note that that happened during really, really financially healthy times for the state, where there were unprecedented levels of school of state surpluses and funds. Right, and so if I'm a school official, I'm thinking, you know, we're not in great shape during really strong, you know,
economic times for this state. We're not always going to be in strong economic times. We need to be getting as much money as possible right now, and we probably need to do it by not antagonizing the people who actually control the purse strings. And you know, there is a good amount of money on the table for these schools this year, and maybe the equation here is let's focus on that and not the one billion dollars on vouchers.
Of course, the other side of it is, well, do we take the money in the short term and then, according to them, allow vouchers to pass, which will in the long term hurt our schools in our school districts. And that seems to be the decision that they've made, like we need this money so desperately right now that we are willing to sort of just be quiet, take the money, and we'll deal with the voucher stuff later. And I think they're also hoping that other people will
fight that fight for them. I think even within the Democratic Caucus there's that feeling of like, well, it's going to pass anyway, so let's, you know, get the victories that we can. And then there's like the three you know public education people, Taller Rico, you know, Hosa and
John Bryant just going to the mats. But even they were frustrated in that here and they're like, if you guys need the money, then you guys might like, we're not just gonna be out here for well at least you know, you know, hosts said that we're not just gonna be out here fighting if you guys aren't going to fight. So it's a very interesting dynamic.
James, do you what do you think about these town halls, like is that do you think lawmakers are worried about them? And do you think they should be they.
Should be worried about them. I mean, I was very interested to see Cody Harris's town hall. I mean I saw some videos of that one, and yeah, I mean, I mean, these are rural districts, and and you know, the messaging from the governor's team and from Republican leaders is like the polling works. The polling people in rural areas support that. The town halls showed that perhaps not everybody supports them, that there's a very vocal group of people who don't support it. So I think that does
sort of worry legislators. I mean, do I think they're going to change their mind? I don't think so, but it is starting to show some of those cracks. And I think we've talked about this before, but some of these new freshmen who are newly elected and say yes school choice, school choice. Well it's easy to say yes
school choice when you don't have specifics. But then when you have a school superintendent or a school principal saying I got to close three schools in the district and you're only going to have one school district or a school in the district left like, it gets a lot tougher when you get the specifics.
Right, I think you can get kind of that like dome blindness, like you're under you know, you're like, oh, the only thing that matters is like what's happening here and like trading votes and all that, and then you go back to your district and you're getting yelled out the town town at all, Like.
The person who like, you know, does your laundry is like.
Right, I mean in a area like the superintendent you know, could be like a very powerful person and.
Your or your friends and neighbors are mattitude. It does, you know, it does make you think.
So there's a little more like logistics, you know.
But the other thing too is that like some of these lawmakers could also add tweaks and amendments to the legislation that could and I think they're probably looking to do that that could assuage some of those concerns. So there's probably that, But it's awful to take the heat obviously.
Yeah, it definitely feels like there's a little bit of like critically you know, from some Democrats, also from some of the education activists, like just sort of a sense of like this is going to happen like, let's just like find ways we can tweak.
Yeah, but I think also there's just a lot of we're what these town halls are reflective of is the energy starting to re emerge in the democratic or more moderate area of Texas politics, right.
And those are rural Republican areas.
Yeah, yeah, and I mean exactly. You know, you know when Trump was first elected in twenty sixteen, you saw that kind of you know, the Women's March all this, like people literally out in the streets, and we did not immediately see that this time, but we're starting to see that in the And you know, if I'm a Republican, I might worry a little bit about that, right because twenty eighteen was not a great election year for them,
and you know, maybe they're some energy popping up. Maybe I want to get some bills out there that I can point to and say, yeah, you maybe not might not like school vouchers, but look at this, you know, five thousand dollars rais we did for teachers. Look at this, these billions of dollars we put into public schools.
Anyways, Yeah, and the other thing that I don't want to like let pass before commenting is as the details come out, like what you're talking about, the detail about the prioritization that there is in the House versus the Senate, where there isn't a real prioritization. But a person who or a family that makes one hundred and fifty six thousand dollars can still qualify for these school vouchers and
they're calling that a low income family. I think that's going to rile a lot of people up and people say, like one hundred and fifty six thousand dollars is low income, Like it really kind of speaks to sort of the.
Design of the bill, right, and that does seem to be where the tension is right, Like the thing they need to figure out the most in order to get this across the finish line is that.
The send it seems to think like it's fine, we want to offer it to everybody like that. This is this is in fairness, it's universal, it's universal for everybody. And the House is being a little bit more like maybe more careful about those optics because they're getting lit up by their districts.
Hi.
I asked for a brief update on vouchers, but that's okay. I just want the listeners to know I am fighting for them.
I do want to jump.
Ahead a little bit and talk about another big story from this week. We saw State Representative Brian Harrison. There was this committee meeting where things got pretty tense. He was sort of repeatedly pressing the Texas Water Development Board chair Loreal Stepney about the role of race in state hiring practices, and this really sort of blew up. I mean, Stepanie, who is black, was visibly distraught, very upset, wiping tears from her eyes while Harrison sort of continued to push
on this issue. We saw a big outpouring of support for you know, the board chair Stephanie, from Governor Abbot, Lieutenant Governor Patrick, Speaker Burroughs. Harrison did not back down, you know, claim said his he felt like his questions were perfect.
That's a familiar word to describe things like that.
Yes, right.
It reminds me of another politician, James.
What did you make of I mean, this seems like an outlier in terms of the kind of clash we tooplacy between an agency head and lawmaker.
Yes, and I think there was calls from leaders.
Uh.
Speaker Burroughs kind of called it out, uh in terms of like being on a committee and the kind of decorum and respect that is expected. But I thought it was noteworthy that both Patrick and Abbot, who are no snowflakes on de I. There's certainly no supporters of de I.
There i Abbot's executive order, that we're talking.
With their opponents of DEI. But they were saying that this, I mean they didn't. For example, Abbat didn't say like this went overboard, but he did express sort of support for Stepney, and I think you have to read him between the lines.
Now.
The other thing for listeners is like Representative Harrison is one of like the most conservative social warrior that there is, and this is his his I don't know, pep issue, Pep.
Yeah, he's like a bomb thrower kind of and he's.
He's like, I'm going to be the DEI guy. I'm going to track the police every at every stage. And the questioning was I sort of see where he's getting what he's getting at saying like I didn't say anything specifically about her or that she was a.
D He was like threading this very fine needle, right.
But the the takeaway from it was very much sort of like are you a de I hire are you supporting DEI hires? Is DEI a part of your system? And I think because she's a person of color also, it sort of was putting her on the spot, maybe unfairly, and people on the committee called it out. I mean Representative Harrison obviously said he felt like the questioning was perfect, but seeing so many other lawmakers say, hey, this went too far, I think you've got to pause and think
about that. And making an agency head cry who's served for thirty years and this has not happened to her, I think you've got to pause and think about it.
Yeah, Harrison is a really interesting example of would you agree with me that it's fair to say that he's a bit of a backbencher in the House in terms of influence. Yes, he has still managed to with this DEI push that he's doing anti d I de I push that he's doing, have a lot of influence on state government. I mean, he's really up in some university leaders heads.
Texas A and M.
Yeah. Yeah, his alma mater.
He you know, as you know, finds these emails or individual program starts tweeting about them, and it draws a response. It draws a response from the port of Regents at times,
the governor and everything like that. He's it's a sort of like modern something you see in DC frankly a lot someone who's maybe not necessarily like getting a lot of legislation through, but getting a ton of attention and actually being able to create some movement on things just by sort of activating a certain wing of the party on the internet by pointing to these things.
I mean, he's done this with like very specific both subtly dying.
He's done this I think on like really like before the session, you know, in the interim, like on very specific things. I like, you know where he's like posting on Twitter about you know, this is on you know, a policy on some agency's website, and then he's calling out the governor, telling his.
Supporters to call out the governor.
He's like calling and then the governor will sweep in and change things right.
One thing that was different this time is that it wasn't on Twitter. It was face to face with a black woman in a position of power, and you kind of got to see how she was reacting to that and how it felt to her to be kind of receiving that line of attacking.
Twitter is in real life, as we say, and like Twitter, Like I mean, this agency head is clearly very busy giving the state like water. She's probably not on Twitter all the time listening to these things. But then you got to see exactly what you're saying, like the reaction when people say these things to you and to your face,
and it's it's hurtful stuff. I think I want to shout out a Jundra Martinez, our colleague, who I think did a really really great job of saying, this is sort of a build out of the atmosphere that we're in with diversity, equity and inclusion, where politicians are targeting it, folks like Representative Harrison screamed from the rooftops, and then are higher officials then react and do something, and so there it becomes a cycle, right, it becomes a cycle.
And so this this is the natural build out of that. And perhaps it's a moment not just to say that moment was bad, but also to think about the broader issue here.
But you know, I mean this whole you know, yes, this is representive Brian Harrison sort of, this is his m O kind of, but it was he was citing and building on the momentum around Governor Abbot's executive order removing DEI from state agencies, and you know, yes, like Governor Abbott stepped into the you know, board chair Stepanese defense basically saying like she's the best expert we have on water on this hugely important issue.
But it is like that meme. It's like who would do this right, right, right right?
The underlying thing is that, you know, I think Governor Abbot has certainly empowered this crusade of Brian Harrison's through this executive order, and you know, I think we're probably just going to see more clashes like this. I think,
you know, my sense, at least on Twitter. Again, Twitter is not real life, but Governor Abbott has been much more assertive and vocal on Twitter on like a range of issues, and you know, I think that comes from the very very top right we're seeing, you know, President Trump is sort of engendering a lot of that rhetoric, and so I think Governor Abbitt stepping in to say, like in this case, that was maybe too far, even if you wouldn't use those words, is something.
But you know, the underlying.
You know, I don't think we're gonna anticipate Brian Harrison being sort of chagrined by that. Yeah, yeah, Matthew, what the hell is happening at the lottery?
That is an excellent question.
So the this this is like, this feels like just like a fun old school It really does.
I'm like, this is like a joy.
It really is like one of those things that you're like, it feels like a heist movie that now the Texas Legislature has to get involved in. And I think we one every session, get one little treat story like this.
So the background here is that we have this concept of lottery couriers, which is basically a you can go on to an app you can be anywhere, I guess anywhere in the world, not just in the US, and buy a lottery ticket and someone will will go buy the ticket for you and take a picture of it for you, and then you know, I guess if it wins, they will either go collect the money for you and send it to you or mail the ticket to you wherever you are.
And so this is one of those things that until we find out about what happens next, do you think.
Like, who is that Who's that desperate to play the lottery?
That they're like, I need someone to do this third hand for me, but you're kind of like it seems inoffensive, especially.
Because they don't even let it paid for my tickets with a credit card, like I have to pay them with cash. Then I hear about this.
Yeah, are you a lottery player, James?
Not anymore?
Okay when it gets big? Yeah yeah, yeah yeah.
I buy lottery tickets and put them in my children and wife's stalking every Christmas. So I'm once a year.
And that's Christmas in the Watkins house and make your own luck, keep them right.
So anyways, lottery couriers. So what has happened though, is that there was this particular situation. The Houston Chronicle wrote a great story about this where essentially some folks essentially found that they could game the system. And there are times where you can essentially buy a massive volume of tickets in order to essentially like work the odds and you know, I think, like practically like sort of guarantee that you're going to win something. One of them.
They bought every single number, yeah, exactly everything, combination numbers, and so this.
Has now raised concern. There's this one place, a store called Winner's corner in Austin that in twenty twenty two sold eighty nine million dollars worth of lottery tickets, which is about eighty three million dollars in lottery tickets than the second highestwhere else. And so Dan Patrick, you know, this has come up a little bit. The Chronicle has
done some good reporting on this. The Sunset Commission wrote a report on this in the in the state, leading Dan Patrick to show up to the Winner's Corner again on Twitter with making a video kind of talking to the folks seeing what he described as sort of a massive number of these lottery lotto machines, which I can tell as a tell you from a Christmas buyer, are not very reliable and sometimes only come halfway torn up so you.
Can't even read the numbers.
Then your your daughter is really upset on Christmas because she doesn't know whether she's gonna win the lottery or not.
Santa's complaints are reaching new levels.
But ultimately this has led to the resignation resignation of one of the lottery commissioners. There is a lot of talk about possibly banning these couriers, other kinds of legislation investigation. There's a Texas Rangers investigation. Yes, so just a lot of concern about the Lottery Commission here, and you know, whether it should even continue to exist. There are some all makers who would like to get rid of an.
Entirely now a priority item for the Lieutenant Governor. And I think it's going to get heard in Former Speaker Feelings. A similar issue is going to get heard on speak Former Speaker Feelings Committee. So it's moving.
Yeah, it's definitely moving.
You know.
We should say Eric Dexheimer and the Houston Chronicle did a lot of this reporting initially, and you know, we owe him our thanks because we love a little heist story.
And if there are any agents out there, Eleanor is looking to sell a screenplay.
Yeah exactly.
I'm like, I've got the wheels already turning, and I feel like Eric should get first bite at that, you know. But yeah, it's a crazy story that is moving pretty quickly through the legislature.
There's been this, you know.
The interesting thing of the Lottery Commission for a long time has said that they cannot regulate these couriers. Now there we can regulate these careers. It's been a little yeah.
Yeah, it is interesting that it's coming along in a time where there's also a big push to expand gambling the state. I think this probably doesn't do great for that cause.
One thing that it will point out is that the Sunset Commission had pointed out all these issues with the Lottery Commission, like their their last report I think last year was like this is this is not going right. So, you know, I think lawmakers can sort of be upset and yelling and doing some investigative reporting on it, but these problems existed and they existed under their watch.
Feels like a strong endorsement for you know, things are only a problem once the media gets involved. You know, we create problems, No, but I do think you know, they shine a light on it, and it's one of those things that is like pretty shocking when you get into the details involved, like Malta and some Brits and people. Yeah, and the screenplay rights itself is all I'm saying, you know, one last thing to sort of throw up, just to
discuss before we you know, wrap this up. A lot is happening on the federal level that is trickling down into Texas as all we saw. Vice President Vance was here this week at the border along with Governor Abbott and Attorney General Paxton. You know, we obviously saw the speech from President Trump in which immigration was front and center. Anything standing out to you on that that we feel like is gonna you know, we've got a Doge committee now.
Definitely feels like Texas is following in some federal footsteps on on that. I mean, even the DEI executive order.
You know what's next in the Texas Trump love affair.
Well, you know, encounters that the border are way down, right. I think there's maybe a little bit more concerned about tariffs as we continue to go on the tariff coaster up and down. I actually think though, it feels like maybe as the temperature has turned up in d C, the temperature in Austin has kind of gone down a little bit. Maybe there's like a feeling of a less need to be like you need to be the tip of this spear now and now that we have Donald Trump in the President's office.
So I don't know.
I mean, there's still a long session to go, and there's going to be a lot of social issues that come up in between now. But so far, I mean, it's like we're talking about school finance, We're talking about the lottery commission. We're talking about water and all those types of things that it seems like the craziness, the high temperature type stuff right now is.
Happening elsewhere that.
A simmer a little bit here in Texas. Yeah, which, you know, we would take a boring session. I think I think all of us would be, at least Matthew and I would you know for.
TV you need the it bleeds it.
Yeah, exactly, Yeah, but no, it's definitely hopefully a little bit more of a.
Low key session.
Well.
That brings us to the end of our episode.
James, we want to thank you so much for your time at the Helm of the Texas Trip guest.
Thank you so much.
I'll miss you, guys, We'll miss you James.
Yeah.
You can find all of the episodes of the Tribcast on YouTube or wherever you find your podcasts. Even though James is leaving, we are continuing on, so do not you know, don't look away from YouTube or wherever you subscribe to podcasts like subscribe Share. If you'd like to get in touch with us, you can reach us at Tribcast at Texastribune dot org. Our producers are Robavila and Chris Phobada. Our theme music is composed by Rob and two of us. We'll see you next week.