Greg Abbott has significantly increased the list of conservative policies being addressed this special session.
Today we overview all of those policies and what their passage would mean for Texas.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Welcome to the Luke Macias show. Last week we talked about the fact that colony ridge and school choice we’re going to be addressed this week in the special session that begins for the month of October. But the reality is the Governor Abbott has now put several other items on the call, which are great opportunities for conservatives to pass policy that the Texas House killed last session. These are bills that Dade Phelan and worked with Democrats to kill in the lower chamber. Many of these policies were passed in the Texas Senate. So we’re going to break that down for you today. Let’s get to the show.
We are just beginning a special legislative session. The way a special session works in Texas is that the governor of Texas has to call this special session for those of you who don’t know, most of you understand this, but basically the legislature can only work on the issues that the governor says they need to work on. He puts on the call. Governor Abbott historically has not been super favorable to special sessions, Rick Perry was a lot more favorable to them more friendly.
He basically embraced him constantly. If something didn’t happen, he’d throw in a special session, it was kind of assumed, Hey, Rick, will call us back on special sessions anytime, anytime he wants. Governor Abbott’s been a little different than that. Governor Abbott has avoided them in general because once you open Pandora’s box now all of these different potential issues need to be addressed. He did put the screws to Joe Straus in his last session when he basically came out and said, You’re killing my issues. And I’m going to call back a special session and put a whole heck of a lot of conservative policy on the call.
And he’s doing something somewhat similar during this special session. We knew that school choice was going to be addressed, he came out and said we are going to have a special session and give the legislature an opportunity to address school choice. He did wait until the acquittal of Ken Paxton so he let the Senate come together have their two week trial and acquit the attorney general. He waited for that to conclude before dealing with a special session. He was acquitted. But Texas senate is in the driver’s seat for the most part when it comes to actually determining what policy agendas are enacted.
They won when it came to the property tax battle we had in the last special session. And then they acquitted Attorney General Ken Paxton, by the way, if you missed it, last late last week, Ken Paxton came out with his first round of endorsements and let’s see if I can remember off the top of my head but I believe he endorsed Andy Harper who’s running against Lynn Stuckey.
He endorsed Mike all caught who’s running against Glenn Rodgers in Parker County, Stevens Palo Pinto and he’s running in wise and Denton he endorsed Matt Morgan, who’s a conservative running in Fort Bend County against JC jutaan, one of the most liberal Republicans in the Texas House of Representatives and we’ve done shows on JC because JC is the one who led the fight to protect Social transitioning of minors funding, literally the expansion of facilities that are socially transitioning these kids and Tony Tinderholt just put an amendment tried to put an amendment on that said, Hey, we don’t want taxpayer money going to build more mental health care facilities, if those mental health care facilities are socially transitioning kids with transgender ideologies, and JC opposed that and convince 10 of his Republican colleagues to join him.
So Ken Paxton endorsed Matt Morgan he also endorsed John Perez, who’s running against mando de Ayala, a man who only won his election by a couple 100 votes. last election cycle. John Perez is a sitting school board member there. The important thing with that race is that after the impeachment of Ken Paxton mando de Ayala came out with a statement. And his statement basically said, Hey, I’m looking forward to working with the Attorney General who I voted to impeach. And by the way, the Senate didn’t dismiss all the charges and not have a trial. Therefore, that justifies my vote to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton.
So he didn’t say, hey, now knowing what we know, there clearly was some things that the Texas House could have done better and knowing the information I know, I would have done things differently. He didn’t even say how he would have voted whether he would have voted to acquit or convict. But he’s definitely right in his decision to impeach according to mando de Ayala and John Perez is a sitting school board member in that district who’s running against him and seems to be in a very strong position. He also endorsed Westford, Dell, who’s running against Andrew mer, who of course, led the impeachment of Ken Paxton. It was for Dell ran last election cycle. If you are a conservative grassroots person in Texas, you probably know Wes, he’s been involved with Gun Owners of America in the legislature fighting for our Second Amendment rights and is just a very well connected well known person who’s working really hard in that district.
And he also endorsed David Covey who’s running against Dade Phelan himself in that district and and David served on the SRC for time he was actually County Chairman of Orange County, which is the largest county in that district. That district has Jefferson, which is a larger county but they doesn’t represent all of it. And then Orange County. He represents the entirety of it. And Jasper, so I’m trying to read member if there’s anybody else, but I think that was the list of endorsements if I happen to remember somebody else or I forgot someone, I will let y’all know.
Let’s get to the special session call that Governor Abbott put forward. Because I think that’s actually really important to break down for you. I told you he was going to address colony ridge and I told you that we were going to address school choice that is still happening. And that is still true. But what he is also added to the call is ultimate oh, by the way, there’s one other person I’m just remembering this now I pulled this up Brent money is another person who Ken Paxton endorsed who’s running in the special election for House District Two, which covers hunt County, Van Zandt, county and Hopkins County, just east of Dallas and Brent money is the conservative Republican in that race. Jill Dutton is running. We’ll actually talk about this more maybe next week. But Jill Dutton is a person who’s very clearly tied to a lot of Democrats in that district Texans for lawsuit reform came out and endorsed her 30 minutes after Ted Cruz endorsed Brent money. And then Ken Paxton came out and endorsed print money as well. So that is one of those very clear, distinguishing lines where Brent money is clearly conservative. And Jill Dutton is clearly the liberal Republican. So Ken Paxton, getting involved in these early primaries.
Now let’s go to the governor’s proclamation. I’m going to read this for y’all I Greg Abbott, governor of the state of Texas, by the authority vested in me, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, etc, etc. call a special session. Okay, that’s all you need to know the rest of it. It’s just a paragraph with a bunch of legal legalese. But it says here’s the issues that are going to be addressed to consider and act upon the following first legislation providing education savings accounts for all Texas school children.
Now the important thing about this line that he’s drawing is that the Texas Senate passed a near universal school choice program last last session, and it wasn’t fully all Texas children but it was most Texas Children that it would apply to the Texas House didn’t get any bill out of their committee, and the one that they were discussing was only going to address like two to 300,000 children. This is Governor Abbott saying hey, we need education savings accounts for all Texas Children.
So this is Abbott directly pushing back against what the House has said remember Matt Shaheen came out and he was the one that kicked Brian Harrison off the committee and Dave Hill and created a new committee and brought Matt Shaheen on in the matching went on TV and said, hey, the only people that really need education savings accounts are like in inner cities, and in bad schools and maybe special needs kids. So Matt takes this position that says there’s only a couple 100,000 kids that even need an education savings account. And that would be basically a talking point used to undermine parental empowerment for all parents, right?
No, I mean, basically, the funny thing is matching goes I’ve got a great district. So he’s saying the parents in my district, there’s they’re so good, the monopolistic system that they can’t get out of is so awesome that they don’t need to be empowered. That’s when that changed position was that’s not Governor Abbott’s position. This is the other issue. He said he wants legislation to do more to reduce illegal immigration by creating criminal offences for illegal entry into this state from a foreign nation and authorizing all licensed peace officers to remove illegal immigrants from Texas.
So again, this is Governor Abbott drawing a line in the sand saying we want to put a policy in place where peace officers if they witnessed someone who starts in Mexico and comes across the river and comes into Texas, that they are then taken and put back into Mexico because the federal government is not securing the border. Remember, the least humane thing you could have is an open border. It is literally an invitation for mass human trafficking and mass drug trafficking.
I have met people in the last two weeks that had their children die of fentanyl overdoses. And it is getting so real to me, because I’m meeting these people and they really have real children who are dead because of the massive amount of fentanyl that we are allowing to be poured over our southern border. And if it’s not fentanyl, it’s people and those people are trafficked. Those people are abused as people are lied to these people cannot come across the border if they’re not being shoved like cattle by cartels who are getting paid and profiting off of the open border that we are letting happen.
So Governor Abbott has set in motion policy that should challenge the constitutionality of basically the Supreme Court telling Arizona they can’t enforce immigration law. So this is going to set a new challenge to the Supreme Court. That is probably the most important piece of legislation. We’ll have to see how all this gets done. drafted. And by the way, next week, I’m actually on vacation. So I’m not going to have an update for you on the special session, some of these bills haven’t been filed yet. And so in two weeks, I’m going to come to you with kind of an understanding of what these bills actually look like as they’re being filed. Okay?
Are they actually going to do this thing, because the legislature, as you know, often sometimes tries to write a bill in such a way that it looks like it does something, but it doesn’t actually do it. So we will let you know what it actually looks like. As the special session progresses. The next thing Governor Abbott wants to address his legislation to impede illegal entry into Texas by increasing the penalties for certain criminal conduct involving the smuggling of persons or the operation of a stash house. Now, this is basically directly getting at the cartels. So this is saying, I want more legislation to make it easier for the state of Texas to go after cartel members who actually doing all the human smuggling. I have to remind people about this several times, but I’ll say it again, no one walks across the border without paying a cartel member.
I believe that strongly from everybody I’ve talked to on the border, nobody walks across the Mexico Texas border, unless they have paid a cartel member likely are still in debt to that cartel. So they’re going to pass they’re going to get an asylum hearing set in a year, which means they can legally get a Texas job, they can go take a Texas job from a job that would have otherwise gone to a citizen of this country. And then they’re going to make money and they’re going to take that money. And they’re going to send it back to the cartels because they still owe the cartels a bunch of money.
And likely the cartels have access to family members that they could hurt if this person doesn’t send the money back. So that’s the reality. And this Governor Abbott saying we’re going to start getting into cartels specifically. Next, he says legislation to impede illegal entry into Texas by providing more funding for the construction operation and maintenance of border barrier infrastructure. This is some more wall infrastructure. This is buoy infrastructure. This is barbed wire, all the various things that we need to put in hopefully, this money is actually spent mostly on actual wall that the feds can’t just come and open up because we’ve seen this we’ve seen Biden literally tell people to go out there and cut the barbed wire that’s put up and and opened the border even more so that the federal government is not just not stopping people, but they’re actively working to open up the barriers that Texas is putting.
So we’re gonna spend our money building barrier border, you know, any any border barrier infrastructure, and that’s going to be an additional money that they find. And the last few things that Governor Abbott has asked them to work on is legislation concerning public safety, security, environmental quality, and property ownership in areas like colony Ridge development and liberty County, Texas.
So this is going to basically deal with governing this Colonia that’s north of Houston that is facilitated and ended up being this centralizing hub of a ton of illegals coming into this country and finding a place that is advertised to them that they can live and potentially even own property. And there’s whole complications there. We’re going to bring more information to you about colony rich, but that is going to be dealt with in this special session. And last but not least, legislation prohibiting COVID-19 vaccine mandates by private employers. This is what’s important. The Texas senate passed this bill, the Texas House killed the Texas House killed their own house bill, and they killed the Senate Bill, Dustin burrows, Stephanie, click all these people work together in concert.
At one point I remember Tony Tinderholt who basically called out Stephanie, click saying she’s dragging her feet on this. And she’s doing it because she wants to make sure that Dustin burrows has enough time to kill this bill. And then Stephanie click out all mad, but ultimately she passed the bill out, not after, not immediately, she drugged her feet a little longer, just to hold it a little longer. I tell you all this all the time. But these bills are like hot potatoes. So you just hold on it just a long before you get really burnt and then you toss it to the next guy. And you have to hold on to it long enough so that the calendars committee doesn’t get their hands fully burnt with that bill.
And that’s just my analogy that I’ll use. So this is the governor saying the Texas House shouldn’t have killed that bill. They have to come back they have to address it. So it makes it harder for Stephanie click and Dustin burrows to cut the deal they did with Democrats last time and killed this bill. That is an overview of what we’re going into for the legislative session. And while I’m on vacation, I would encourage you to be following Brian Harrison. Tony Tinderholt Steve Toth. Nate Schatz line a lot of these lawmakers that are there fighting on the frontlines of these issues.
They’ll likely be putting out information and so stay tuned them be reading Texas scorecard scorecard is going to be reporting on all the things happening with these bills getting filed. What happens to them, what do they actually do? What do they actually say? So stay in tune with what’s going on. This is what’s happening right now. I’m excited about the time we’re in because Governor Abbott’s forcing some more wins and the Texas House is still distracted. They’re distracted by the ken Paxton impeachment, they’re on their heels that they are trying to find any way to make any Texan think about anything other than their failures. And even after they pass these if they pass all of what the governor has asked him to pass, they still killed dozens of pieces of legislation that are conservative that would make Texas freer and protect innocent people who are being harmed.
That’s who we’re up against. That’s who we are fighting and this special session is getting You got an opportunity for us to get a couple more wins on the board. I’m excited about it. Hope you’re excited about it. Hope you have a great week and I am going to be in the mountains for a little bit with all my kids. So if you happen to want to reach out to email back or anything like that, just know I might be a lot slower to respond, because I promised my wife that I will be far less connected to technology than I sometimes am on our vacations. And with that, God bless you and God bless Texas.
Thank you for listening to the Luke Macias show. To find out more information about what’s going on here in Texas, visit Texas scorecard.com.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
