While national congressmen put up a major fight and won major concessions, less than 10 members in Austin challenged House Speaker Dade Phelan’s direct assault on GOP priorities.
Transcribed by otter.ai
While DC conservative lawmakers fought hard and achieved some very strong rules changes in Austin, we had a number of conservative workers who fought for rules changes, but were thwarted by a Democrat and liberal Republican alliance that we expose on today’s podcast.
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Welcome to the look, Misia show, I will tell you something first and foremost, I am thinking about during the legislative session, having a couple weeks of two week episodes, one of the things that was very clear as we went through the first week of the legislative session was just that there was a lot going on, and more going on historically than would have happened in a normal first week. And I thought man, I probably should do an episode towards the end of the week, and then bring you some more information for this week. And so
I’m throwing around a couple ideas. One is that we either will start to have our episodes be a little longer than normal, or, and or a combination of coming to you more than once a week. So I want to put that on your radar. If you have any feedback on that if you want to let me know, or respond to my email that goes out every single week or just, you know, go to Luna ceus.com. And fill out that contact form. If you would be open to that one of the things I get kind of a mix of feedback from various different people, a lot of people like that I try to keep my episodes under 30 minutes because you can get the most important information to you with less of a commitment in general, we’re not trying to pull a Joe Rogan you know, three hour long conversation. And then when we sit down and have conversations, we try to have a little more meaningful conversation. So less, less rushed. Content anyways, all that being said, putting it on your radar, be aware, you might be getting a little bit more Luton CEUs for the next 135 days because the legislature is meeting and a lot is going on the title of this week’s episode is that DC best Austin when it comes to rule reforms. And that is absolutely true. The reality is that in Washington, DC, you had 20 Strong patriots who stood up and said we want to see something different. And we brought you a conversation with Congressman self last week who talked about what they were able to accomplish through their reservation of support. They said we’re not on board unless something real happens. And we have a little bit of a different process in Texas. First and foremost, conservatives don’t have that kind of leverage, because David feel and cut a deal with the Democrats early in his leadership career that has solidified their support behind him from before, you know, he was even the caucus nominee. And so that support takes away the leverage from conservatives. But what conservatives still have the ability to do
is say, Hey, we’re not going to get on and say and defend and publicly praise this leadership with an and or vote for rules that are not reflective of conservative values that we have.
And so we had the election of speaker which some of you saw if you have not watched Tony Tinder hold or Brian Slayton speech during those during that floor fight, I would highly recommend that you do so Nate Schatz line also courageously got up and both nominated gave a speech. I mean, I will tell you, there are some bright spots that came out of this week. And it really is the new fresh conservative blood that is in the Texas legislature. And I’ll get to that even more so in a second when we get to the rules fight. So Tony Tinder home, Brian Slayton set the tone for the session, they basically said here is what success is and is not. And that is probably one of the things that takes off leadership the most because the Republicans in the Texas House work very hard to control the narrative so that they can tell you whether they do or do not succeed. They want to decide what a touchdown is not you, not conservatives, not the Republican Party of Texas.
And so when Tony Tinder home, Brian Slayton get up and say this is what we have to accomplish this session. If we’re to be successful.
It sets the bar higher.
And it is something that they fight very hard against
the day after the speaker’s election.
After three conservatives Nate Schatz I’m Brian Slayton and 22 year old voted for Tony.
There was a rules debate.
And a lot of conservative lawmakers will tell you Well, I’m not going to oppose a feeling but I am going to fight on the rules. I’m going to fight for conservative rules, just like all these national congressmen did recently.
And so we come up to our rules, debate, Dade feel in, made a determination, he really traded. He gave something in return for all of these Republicans that have basically praised his leadership. So he’s there cutting deals with Democrats killing conservative reforms. But all these Republicans are gonna hook line and sinker, say this is the leader, we want to be in charge of the Texas House of Representatives. And so his trade for that was I am going to keep you from having to take votes
that are publicly in opposition to what the people in your district one.
This is what they work very hard to protect themselves from. And this is why the Democrat share issue has become such a big issue. Because in most House districts, it’s over 85% of Republicans in their district that say, I don’t want there to be a such thing as a Democrat chair in the Texas House of Representatives. And such a clear vote to give away power to Democrats becomes obviously bad. Now almost every single one of these Republican representatives has already voted to ban or has voted for Democrat chairs and against a ban. So he’s not really protecting many of them. And they all voted for him as speaker, who then said, I’m gonna protect you from the vote. And how did he do that?
There were a ton of grassroots people that came in for the for the rules debate, but they came in the day after it was scheduled because they’d moved it up Dade got to decide whether it was Wednesday or Thursday. And the session before it had been Wednesday or Thursday, the session before that it had been on a Wednesday, he could decide when and the truth is he was likely to just schedule this thing for whatever day, the grassroots, we’re not coming to make it harder because they’re all these buses filled with over 1000 Republicans that came in to the legislature to view the rules debate. So he moves the rules debate up a day and says we’re going to debate this before everybody gets here.
And then, when Brian Slayton gets up to lay out his amendment, the exact same amendment he laid out two years ago.
Charlie Garen from Fort Worth gets up in calls a point of order that, Charlie just so y’all kind of understand how this works. Charlie Garin, the senior, one of the most senior members of the legislature, from Fort Worth, very liberal Republican, did not research and build a case for why he thought this was not going to be acceptable. leadership decided, it’s like, it’s like if the judge is also the prosecutor, the judge, jury and executioner, okay, because either that’s the situation in the Texas House. So leadership will say, hey, we don’t want to vote on this amendment. Hey, you remember, here’s information, you get up and make a point of order on this amendment and say it’s wrong because of these reasons. And then you come forward to make the case. And then we’ll act like we listen to your case. And then we’ll make a ruling. And then it’ll be like, this is just where we’re at right now.
And it’s all a show.
So the Texas Constitution prohibits taxpayer money from being used on political purposes. And an easy way to think of political purposes is asking for your money or your votes. Okay. So it is a good thing that when you call your state representatives office to talk about a bill or to talk about, you know, an issue you’re having with the state agency, or you have a licensing issue with your small business, that that legislative aide who’s talking to you can’t also say, Oh, by the way, early voting is going on next week, please make sure to get out and vote and please cast your vote for representative Guaran. It’s a good thing that that doesn’t happen. And there’s a constitutional prohibition that says, you can’t spend money on political purposes these you can’t have the government
spending money on political purposes.
Well, David feelin has decided that because there’s a constitutional prohibition
against political expenditures, that also prohibits him from having even considering a rule. He has said the Texas House is incapable of even debating and voting on a rule, because it would be unconstitutional for us to even say that Democrats can’t share committees. Now. This is insane.
This is ridiculous. According to this ruling, like you’ll see the republican or democrat caucus chair, get up at the front mic during the house and just say, Guys, I just want to remind you, we have a Republican caucus meeting in e 2017. See you there at 3pm. According to now date, feelings new rule that he made up that’s like an illegal constitutional violation. The fact that they’re meeting in a government building that’s also illegal and unconstitutional. Okay. It’s so insane. It’s like
You can’t do anything political in a politically elected body. Okay? It’s crazy.
But what was the trade he was making? I want you to think about this, he already had the votes to kill it. My estimate is that that vote was probably going to be like 30 to 120. A like 117 120 somebody. So I bet you there was going to be about a 90 vote discrepancy, which was going to be a huge growth from five votes to ban Democrat chairs two years ago to 30.
He had the votes to keep Democrat chairs in power.
So his, his actions were not to keep them in power. His actions were, hey, all of you, who championed me being in power, you did so because I work to protect you. This is the system that exists. You scratch my back, I scratch yours, you tell everybody, I’m awesome. I make sure nobody knows when you’re not awesome.
And so I’m going to eat this vote. I’m going to take it all on myself.
Because if I fall on the sword of the Democrats right here, here’s the idea. His idea was I’m going to fall on the sword. So none of y’all have to. And then y’all will look and go see that’s the kind of leader we need. We need. So the legislature when they’re praising date feeling you don’t understand. It’s because he does what they want him to do.
He covers for them, right? We’ll tell everybody, you’re awesome. And you make sure anytime we might look like we’re not awesome, you work really hard and abuse the rules to protect us from being outed as such.
So that’s what he did. And he didn’t do it just on that issue. Because then
Tony Tinder hold had an amendment that said, Okay, well, we’ll get around the Democrat chair ban. He said, I want any chairman,
to have to
affirm if they’re going to chair committee that they understand that there are only two genders. This was a great idea. Okay, as Attorney General lays out this amendment and says, Hey, I’m gonna get around your Democrat chair ban. It’s not political party, it’s just that in order to be a chairman, you have to think there are only two genders? Well, they feel and says, Oh, that’s a violation of free expression. We can’t even vote on it. Now understand what he’s saying. He’s not saying I don’t like this policy, because it’s a violation of free expression. Now, all of you lawmakers decide how you’re going to vote on it. He’s saying, Aha, this is a violation. We’re not even allowed to vote on this. The Texas House is setting its own rules, what rules are we going to use to govern our legislative bodies, all of our legislative activities. This is a blank canvas. This is where there should be a debate about ideas, but see Dade feel and can’t have a vote on this. Because if he has a vote on this issue, it’s going to look horrible. So he has to make up rules that say we can’t even debate these issues. And that’s what he did.
Understand that if you want to get a teaching certificate in the state of Texas, you have to pass a basic, like you have testing that goes on. At some point, you have to know that one plus one equals two. And if a teacher failed to answer certain questions correctly, she would fail her to get her teaching certificate, okay. And that is not a violation of free expression. That is a requirement to say in order to do X, you need to understand why
we do this all the time. And these are not government violations of free expression.
And this rule wasn’t a government violation of free expression. And then they had areas issues of substance. I mean, they had like four or five different made up things that they would use for any reason to say we are not going to vote on anything that’s going to make members make a tough decision. Because many of these votes, were going to give each lawmaker an opportunity, am I going to vote with the people who elected me in my district, or with this group of lawmakers who wants me to vote a certain way? And date feel and said as often as I can, I’m going to protect you from ever having to vote that way.
There are a couple of times that he wasn’t able to do it. And that’s what we’re also going to talk about today. So all these federal congressmen just had a great discussion about how many members it takes to vacate the chair. Okay.
And Tony general had a great amendment. In fact, I’m just and he got up and laid it out. So currently in the US Congress, it’s been moved down to one member can make a motion to vacate the chair you
used to take five of over 400. Congressman so like you’re talking about you got over 400 Congressman, you only need five of them to vacate the chair. They’re taking that down to one. And in Texas, we have a similar motion. Okay. And that motion is the motion to
remove the speaker and elect a new speaker. That’s essentially the motion to vacate the chair. And there’s been controversy in the past over this motion, not getting recognized. Tom Craddock, when he was a Republican Speaker and the Democrats and the rhinos were trying to take him out, wouldn’t recognize them to make this motion, okay.
And so, Joe Straus, when he came in said, I’m going to reform this and make sure that you can never stop people from making the motion. And his way of doing it was to say, if the speaker won’t recognize you to make a motion to have a vote on removing him as speaker, then you can get 76 members of the legislature is not a majority. This would be like the motion to vacate the chair in Congress, taking 218 members or whatever, like it just insane. It’s a stupid rule.
It basically means that the motion is never going to get made unless the Democrats team up with some rhinos, to make the motion.
And so Tony general just said, Let’s take that number from 76, down to five.
And a majority of the Texas Freedom Caucus voted against it. Like they literally kept the like, it is crazy. If you want to understand why the rules discussion in general is just in a very different place in the Texas House, the Democrat chair issue, the way we govern ourselves, like, constantly these Republicans are choosing rules that are bad, like conservatives are voting against rules that would be better for them.
Because in the legislature right now, the environment is such that either every single vote you take is either a vote in loyalty to a speaker who doesn’t even have a conservative agenda right now. Or it’s an if you vote against him, you’re like you are jeopardizing your own ability to operate within the building by their rules. Now, I’m not telling you that they’re actually jeopardizing that ability, because every single lawmaker has so many ways of making a huge impact. But that’s what you’re told in that building. If you vote this way, if you sign this,
then we’re not going to let you make a difference, which they don’t get to decide that and the Sooner State Legislators realize that they’re not allowed to decide that the better every single one of these state reps can do the right thing. And that gets to the final push, which is that when David feeling was going to make his ruling, everybody saw you’re going to make this ruling. And it is a perversion of truth, like you are just twisting and bending however you can to not have the legislature take a vote on the issue of banding Democrat chairs.
There was a move and Tony general started a move to challenge the ruling of the chair. So here’s the really cool thing in the Texas House. I’m getting a real kind of insider view right now. But in the Texas House, if 10 Members of the Legislature decide they disagree with a ruling that the speaker has made, they can challenge his ruling. Okay. And that’s all it takes is 10. So you think of 150. All you need are 10 conservatives to say, hey, no, no, we’re voting on a ban on Democrats. We’re voting on a ban of Democrat chairs, period. That’s what we’re doing.
And there were only six.
And I know many people who said that Terri Leo Wilson also wanted to sign and so that has been put out several times. She has not publicly said that in any way. But that has been said by by a number of lawmakers who have said that, hey, we’ve talked to Terry Terry has said that she wanted to sign so let’s say seven, but not 10
and the six were marked Raziel Richard Hayes Nate Schatz line Brian Harrison, Tony Tinder Holt
and Brian Slayton.
So these are one of the positive let me talk to you about the positive takeaways from this last week, the grassroot showed up in force, even the day after the rules debate. They completely flooded the chamber.
I’m going to play for you
a short clip. This was a really cool moment.
Brian Slayton was on the House floor. And there were some of his constituents were in the gallery and so he went up to the gallery just to see these and all lot of state reps were like state reps are going up to the gallery to see different Republicans that were from their district that were there. So they go up and talk to him. And Brian Slayton went up and the the entire chamber just went wild. And it was remarkable to see just how excited these Republican activists were to see somebody who had been
Standing up for them every single day, who was fighting for their interests, over the interests of
the elected politicians on the floor, who aren’t trying to push things that are in line with those voters. So I’m just going to play this clip real quick for you.
So the bright spot is that Republican activists are engaged and they’re increasing in their engagement, regardless of what date feelin does the brightspot is that of the six people that signed a challenge to the ruling of the chair. Four of them are freshmen. And that is an indictment on everybody currently there, right?
When you show up to the legislature in Austin, all the members who have been there for a long time really want to tell you how it really works, right. And they really want these freshmen to come to them and say, we’re going to tell you what to do, how to operate in this legislative body.
But most conservatives recognize that the people that have been there have done a poor job. And what that means is that the legislature as a whole has done a poor job protecting Texans, we haven’t stopped the sexualization of children. We haven’t even been able to ban sex change surgeries, on minors. For six years, we’ve known that these we are pioneering this genital mutilation.
And we’ve been okay with it. Not only do we not ban it, we still fund it all the entities. We know our universities are turning kids into Marxist, we give them more money every year, there’s a lot of fundamental problems. The teacher unions have more influence over the
public education K through 12 policy than conservative educational reformers that in almost every other red state, have a lot more influence on the K through 12. Policy.
Why? Because the current system has not served things. Well. Your property tax bills have gone up and they continue to go up on a regular basis, because the legislature hasn’t served your interests well. And it’s not to say see so many Republican long term members there, they take offense to this, you’re telling me I didn’t do a good job?
No, I’m telling you, the legislature as a whole has not served the people well. And if you recognize that, then you would recognize things need to change. They can’t be done the way you’re saying they should be done to have always been done. Because how they’ve always been done has led to failures that are unsustainable for a free society.
We have to do better.
The good news is four of these people to sign on two thirds of the people that challenge the ruling of the chair. It was their basically second day in the legislature, Brian Harrison is like his 11th or whatever. But like guys, that is great news for conservatives, that the people who are newly coming in are saying a son needs to change.
Terri Leo Wilson, who also wanted to sign on, she’s a freshman. That’s five of the seven
guys, great news from a new fresh blood coming coming in great news from a presence in the grassroots organiz organized efforts.
And I’m telling you, it’s not going to slow down is not going to stop. It’s only going to continue.
And this is a good thing.
So DC bested Austin, the DC conservatives did a better job actually supporting strong conservative reforms. And here’s the thing you have to understand. If the conservatives in DC had failed to get the rules that they wanted to get, it still would have been the right thing for them to fight for those rules.
And unfortunately, we have a lot of people who don’t want to fight for anything that they don’t think they’re going to be on the winning side of
the conservatives in DC started fighting and then got lambasted by everybody. I mean, Sean Hannity, Hugh Hewitt, all these people are just coming out from Laura Ingram, trying to denigrate them trying to attack them try to try to get at their motives. They stood strong and said, I don’t care, we’re going to do the right thing regardless of what people say, and we might win, we might lose. But you know what, either way we have a country we need to save. And that’s the same perspective that clearly some conservatives have in Texas, and we need more.
Thank you for engaging, continue to engage. Please don’t stop. We have 130 some odd days to try to make a difference in Texas. And if you don’t know what’s going on, you’re not going to know how to make a difference. I hope every single one of you are
Stepping up like never before God bless you and God bless Texas
Thank you for listening to the Luke Misia show to find out more information about what’s going on here in Texas visit Texas scorecard.com
