Inside the Center-Right Influencer Pipeline with Young Voices' Sam Raus

Want to know how a 20-something op-ed writer ends up on Fox News and in your local paper? Garrett sits down with Sam Raus, the David Boaz Resident Writing Fellow at Young Voices, to break down exactly how young center-right writers turn one op-ed into TV hits, radio spots, and a media career — plus a wild pitch to let Gen Z opt out of Social Security entirely.

Then Garrett runs down the week in Texas politics: the razor-close Paxton-Talarico Senate race, big Hill Country flood relief for Corpus Christi's water crisis, a court loss (and a Discord win) for Ken Paxton's AG office, and another data center fight brewing in East Texas.

Topics discussed:
- What Young Voices is and how the fellowship/contributor pipeline works
- How to pitch op-eds differently in red states vs. blue states
- Sam's viral pitch: let Gen Z opt out of Social Security
- Intergenerational "economic injustice" — boomers vs. Gen Z/millennials on taxes and benefits
- Preview of 2027 Texas legislative fights: data centers, kratom/marijuana regulation, property taxes
- How to apply to Young Voices (joinyv.org)
- Paxton vs. Talarico Senate race: ad spending, polling, and turnout strategy
- The Sherman "Red River Roll Call" GOP rally and statewide turnout push
- Hill Country floodwaters easing Corpus Christi's water crisis
- A Texas appeals court ruling against Paxton's office in an abortion-clinic case
- Paxton's win forcing Discord to add child-safety protections for Texas users
- A rejected East Texas data center project and the corporate welfare debate

Guest: Sam Raus, David Boaz Resident Writing Fellow, Young Voices (Twitter/X: @samraus1). Young Voices: joinyv.org, @JoinYoungVoices.

Chapters:
0:00 Welcome & episode preview
0:34 Meet Sam Raus, Young Voices
2:52 Center-right media's big tent
6:02 Pitching red states vs. blue states
8:42 Let Gen Z opt out of Social Security
16:07 2027 legislative preview: data centers, THC, taxes
23:56 How to join Young Voices
27:18 Paxton vs. Talarico: money & polls
35:42 Flood update: Corpus Christi's water win
37:25 Paxton's court loss on abortion clinic case
40:28 Discord forced into child-safety fix

Sources:
- Texas Tribune — By Alejandra Martinez — July 27, 2026, 10:49 a.m. Central — Floods delay Corpus Christi's water emergency until 2028 — https://www.texastribune.org/2026/07/27/corpus-christi-water-texas-floodwater-emergency/
- KLIF 570 — July 21, 2026 — Fort Worth: Paxton Surrounded By Law Enforcement, Blasts Talarico Over Defund Police Ties — https://www.klif.com/2026/07/21/fort-worth-paxton-surrounded-by-law-enforcement-blasts-talarico-over-defund-police-ties/
- Houston Public Media — July 23, 2026 — Appeals court overturns order closing Houston-area midwife clinics accused of illegal abortions — https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/court/2026/07/23/557809/texas-midwife-ken-paxton-appeals-court-ruling/
- Office of the Texas Attorney General — July 24, 2026 — Attorney General Ken Paxton Secures Historic Legal Victory Forcing Discord to Protect Texas Children — https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-general-ken-paxton-secures-historic-legal-victory-forcing-discord-protect-texas-children
- Texas Tribune — June 30, 2026 — Abbott calls for ban on data center development in rural Texas — https://www.texastribune.org/2026/06/30/texas-abbott-data-center-development-ban-rural-communities/
- KTEN — Texas politicians meet one-on-one with Grayson County taxpayers for Republican rally — https://www.kten.com/news/kten_news/texas-politicians-meet-one-on-one-with-grayson-county-taxpayers-for-republican-rally/article_a83a0e8f-5ed5-480a-acb9-2a4dfbbcfce7.html
- ProPublica (co-published with The Texas Tribune) — July 7, 2026 — Ken Paxton's Voter Registration May Violate Texas Election Law — https://www.propublica.org/article/ken-paxton-voter-registration-election-law

Find us at seeingredpodcast.substack.com for full episodes. Follow us on all socials at @theseeingredpod and online at our website Seeing Red Podcast. x.com/gwfulce 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Welcome back to another episode of Seeing Red. I'm your host, Garrett Folks. Thank you so much for joining us today. We have a lot of topics, a lot of things going on this day from the Senate race to data centers, all sorts of stuff humming along. But right now we're going to jump straight into our interview with the David Bose Resident Writing Fellow at Young Voices, based in the DC area. I have Sam Rouse with me today. Sam, thank you so much for joining me. How are you today?

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Good. Thanks for having me on.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Absolutely. So quick question. What is a David Bowes Resident Writing Fellow? And what is Young Voices?

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Yes, Young Voices is a talent agency for young people that want to get into the media space, writing, doing broadcasts, all this digital world now. And the IMR David Bose Resident Writing Fellow, which was a position endowed by the late great senior vice president of the Cato Institute, David Bose. And so I've fortunately gotten to be a full-time writer with Young Voices over the past year, continuing on now at our New York office. So we now have two offices in New York and DC, when I cover predominantly tech and economic related issues, things around AI, housing policy, healthcare regulation, really everything in the in the top of the news items on domestic policy these days. There's something I've probably written about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

Okay. Well, you and I got introduced because I was a I wasn't a fellow, I was a contributor, and then I was a senior contributor for Young Voices. So I had gone through the program, and that's how you that's how you get your in. You come in as a contributor, and once you've completed that program, which is a six-month program, you end up uh having other opportunities that you're eligible for. So I've been familiar with your work since I joined, I guess, a year and a half ago. I I no, excuse me, correct me if I'm wrong. I know that it's basically anyone from the age of 18, like what it's a young voice, 35. Until 35. And I just cleared it. I was like, I clarified, I was like, hey, if I turn 35 during this, or turn 36 while I'm still a contributor, does that make me aneligible? It's like no. Like, here's the cutoff date. I think you're the first person to ask this question, but yeah, you're good. It's like, okay, thank you, thank you. So somehow I'm still a young voice. So I'm gonna take it while I still can. And it's you know, I think it's open to anybody, but the organization's values end up aligning center right towards the libertarian leaning, correct?

SPEAKER_00 2:45

Correct. Yeah, we we have a pretty uh big tent of people focused on uh different topics, coming from a lot of different perspectives. You know, I don't put things just in an ideological box along the you know, center right classical liberal framework, but also you know, people approaching things from you know different lived experiences, different elements of business and culture. So there's a really a diversity of viewpoints, but it is people that are generally of the conservative libertarian bent that are generally not seeing the same kind of opportunities, I think, in the media sphere as young people. It's kind of a difficult world to break into. There's this dominance of left-leaning, you know, cultural institutions, education systems, etc. And so we're we're countering that a little bit here.

SPEAKER_01 3:39

Well, I know here in Texas, I was in the program. I know I I've either in my class or immediately before, I saw some folks that were aligned with the Texas Public Policy Foundation here in Texas that had gone through the program. And so I know that Young Voices, for me, like it was a great opportunity because it, like you said, it helps get you in the door. You work on your your media relationships to get things pitched or get myself pitched to on different shows. But I think the the most interesting part is like it helps like kind of demystify just how to do it. Because it's not an extraordinarily terribly difficult thing to do to get an op-ed published, right? You write an op-ed, you pitch it, and they take it or they don't. But I think part of that is just what makes a good op-ed, like what makes a good news hook. There's a lot of you know, doing the first 80-85% is not that difficult. It's that like not that next 10 to 15 percent that's like really pushes you over the edge to kind of make you a decent person to be on call for different shows or different interview opportunities. And I had a great uh experience utilizing all of the tools at my disposal when I was a contributor and senior contributor, senior contributor at Young Voices. So I guess my kind of question for you is as a resident writing fellow, I know you I've just Googled your name and saw a lot of things popped up. You know, you're writing on a lot of issues. Talk to me a little bit about how you know you're you're getting into national papers, you're getting into kind of regional papers as well, and and uh web only and web only, internet only distribution distribution as well. But what would you say makes the difference between like a red state versus a blue state for what you're trying to pitch? Like if you're gonna talk about an issue, like use a case study, use something, use it from if there's an example from recent let me let me know. But like how are you attacking an issue to try and persuade people in red states versus blue states?

SPEAKER_00 5:48

Yeah, I think the way in which we talk about the issues is is really core to media strategies in different parts of the country. In yeah, in a place like Texas, you can talk rather openly about your beliefs and you know where you're coming from, the very conservative policies, uh, you know, things that I think are going an extra step further than you know, light touch, you know, cutting some taxes here and there, rolling back some excess regulation. I mean, you could really see things transform. And your state and Florida and many others have really seen a true cultural and political transformation towards the right, and I think really since COVID. But when you're talking about these issues up here in New York or in other blue states, it's really important to highlight the root impact that policy has on people. And something I like to talk a lot about is how so many of these socialistic proposals you see in places like New York City and places like California are promising economic outcomes, upward mobility, educational outcomes, all sorts of things for, you know, usually people that are less well-off, different minority groups, et cetera, and then they don't achieve those outcomes. And so pointing out things like on the affordability issue, things on equality and justice related topics, and using those words specifically. I think some people on the right hesitate to talk about those topics with that verbiage, it really frames the debate in a whole other different way. Something I think we're gonna get to a little bit later is with social security, but I think that our social safety net issue is a huge economic injustice to young people. I mean, it's really set up for a much wealthier older generation. And economic injustice is usually a leftist phrase. It's usually used by progressive candidates pushing the expansion of the social safety net. And yet, as you just saw, I used it in the complete and opposite way. And I've I've I've done a lot of the same thing when talking about affordability in places like New York, talking about how the policies that we believe in, less taxation, less regulation, a smaller government, playing less of a role in the marketplace, actually achieves affordability a lot more, better off than socialism can.

SPEAKER_01 8:21

Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's dive into it. Like you just I think you you nailed it on the head. Like, let's talk about the safety net issues. Yeah, you had a recent piece out, talk about on social security and the fact that it's so damaging to young people and like probably won't be, you know, they've always had solvency issues. Talk a little bit about that piece, and then but I also let's let's springboard from that. Talk about like what you use that piece to do. Like, have you then like you wrote the piece, you pitched the piece, and then the piece, then that piece got pitched out to radio and TV folks. Like, talk about the process that Young Voices goes through to turn one op-ed into multiple opportunities.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

Yeah, so I've actually had this kind of thought in my head for a long time that Gen Z, which is myself, should be allowed to opt out of Social Security. We're clearly not going to see the returns from it. It's not gonna work for us. It's a big tax burden through payroll taxes as it is. And it's always just kind of been lingering in my head. It's like, well, that's what I would do about Social Security right now. And so I tweeted it out a couple of weeks ago and it blew up. I think it got, you know, at least 200, 200,000 to 300,000 views. And a lot of people agreed. A lot of people were like, yeah, this is a pretty obvious policy solution that not a lot of other people were talking about hadn't been really written about. I think it kind of has came in passing in in the 2024 GOP primary, but never really developed from there. And so I wrote a piece about it that got some syndication from some pretty big web services, I think Yahoo News, a few others. And then, yeah, we've taken that and ran with it to try to try to talk about it to different audiences on podcast shows, radio shows, talking more about it online, talking about it here, sharing it with other people just in person and in the kind of spiral that things take once you publish an article. Um, I think that's really the one of the more interesting things about my work is once I write something, you know, it it will come back up, even if it's years down the line. Somebody will say, Oh, I remembered when you or I was Googling about the and your thing came up, and then it, you know, it kind of takes on a life of its own in its own way. The reason why I suggested Gen Z should opt out of Social Security is exactly what I was saying about economic injustice. If you really do an analysis of the generation's, you know, kind of financial stability and asset ownership. The boomer generation owns very expensive houses that which they're no longer taxed on for the most part with property tax exemptions. And then they get Social Security, Medicare, a whole host of different state and local level programs giving them, you know, free bus rides, free train rides, all sorts of other services. We're now really setting up a senior care social safety net, et cetera. So they're there the money is just kind of sitting in the coffers, not only being used kind of sparingly as consumers. And yeah, they're they're getting all sorts of special tax exemptions, whereas young people are really bearing the brunt at this point of really subsidizing social security, frankly, through payroll taxes and then dealing with housing on affordability issues, inflation, you know, the turbulence of the job market these days, et cetera. And so I think it's it's a pretty obvious policy to reorient things towards taking a demographic of people that isn't usually thought of when it comes to the kind of lower income poverty metric. But it but it objectively, you know, has very little money. Their name is only making so much regularly, usually entry-level salaries, and and and shift shifting the safe net back towards them.

SPEAKER_01 12:32

Yeah, so like I think what's interesting on this issue in particular is you know, in the 2000s and in the in the Bush administration, there was a huge effort to try and reform social security and Medicare and all those other things. Some stuff went through, some stuff didn't. One thing that didn't was privatizing some accounts to index basically into the SP. I believe it was the SP, but like into the stock market generally. And people keep looking back to that being like, if we had done that, social security would be fixed for generations. Just based off of if we'd done it at that time, and then just mapping it out over how the stock market has grown over that time period. And you know, looking at those sort of solutions to that problem, you know, that's I am of a similar mind when it comes to these tax taxes, these these tax programs that are getting geared towards seniors and all these benefits going towards seniors at the on the backs of Gen Z and my as a millennial. I think it's just always something that needs to be pointed out is the fact that like the median voting age in the Republican primary, at least in Texas, is something like 73, 75 years old. And the median voting age of a general election voter is also closer to 65. That's the median, which means more than half of people just on its like on out the door are going to be impacted today if we're to kill you know, cut it off. Now, I know your your your solution is to like pull them out of the program, but if they're a payer into the program, they're the ones who are funding it. And they're not coming out to vote. And it's like they may make that up a sort of proportion of the demographics. If they're not voting, I I don't see that that changing anytime soon, or having any politician wanting to to you know grab that third rail. But that's not to say we shouldn't be talking about it. And this is the kind of thing that if you talk about it enough and start that bull that's that ball rolling down the hill, well, maybe those people start to turn out to vote and they don't like it, and they're trying to fix those fix those programs, or at least make them solvent so that they're they can stick around for other more generations. So, you know, you've you've written on a lot of different topics. Like you said, like I've had a similar experience where I get calls because I wrote op-eds on things years ago. Even things that were at current events at the time, when there's an anniversary of that event, I've gotten calls to come on and talk about what's what's happened since. In Texas, you know, our legislative session meets once every two years for 140 days, with special called sessions called typically only in the year that same year. What sort of issues in Texas? I mean, you may not know this, but like what sort of issues are you seeing coming down the pipeline for our next legislative session here in Texas in this next January? And is there anything that Texas can learn from other red and other blue states, from conservatives in those states, of the type of legislation that like what what so what should we all be on the lookout that come down the pipeline for?

SPEAKER_00 15:36

Sure, yeah. I mean, I think Texas generally follows a lot of a lot of the policy trends that we see happens in a number of states like it. I imagine you are gonna see attempts to regulate or restrict the development of data centers, which I just think is a really bad idea. I think there's really you know smart things around the margins that will be done on the state and local level to, of course, you know, address uh the impact on different resource usage impact on communities, and really, you know, figure those things out with people, you know, how they want it to function within the state. But these attempts to kind of do blanket bands across the state, things that are trying to just, you know, kind of create sweeping restrictions on them on the basis of little threads being pulled. I think that's a rather misconstrued. But I definitely imagine data centers is going to be a hot issue coming up soon. I also know that Texas is one of those states that sees a lot of attempts to hyper-regulate and restrict different types of new alternative treatments and drugs. I imagine things with marijuana and cradum will continue to come up, and the lieutenant governor's crusade against both of them in every way, shape, and form. Also, which something I've pretty vehemently disagreed with in every single state that it's that it's happened. I think that again, there's smart policies that can be enacted to protect people, to regulate things, to make sure that products are safe and not harming consumers directly, but also give people a level of choice in what they're using to address different medical concerns and as well as recreational usage. I know that Texas will also be a part of this push on property taxes, which is, I think, a really interesting debate. Something we're definitely not even touching in blue states at this point. Property taxes are very, very high. That's some of it's really the core of the tax base in a lot of these states. But in you know, in Florida, you're seeing a push to completely end them. I imagine Texas will also have people talking about it the same. And I think it's a really interesting shift on property rights and economic frameworks that will will pop up in the next year. But yeah, I'm I'm not from Texas. I've only flown through it so far. So I yeah, that's probably about as much as I'm familiar with. But I'm curious, yeah, if there's there's other things you would add that are uh topic. Well, I think you nailed it.

SPEAKER_01 18:21

Datacenters are gonna be a big issue, I think. This really depends on how much momentum that keeps through the election and into January. But I I don't know how much momentum data centers are gonna keep having in say a year from now. But that's a that's a too to be seen question. The way it's gonna be fought or not fought is going to be kind of on a local control level. Texas passed a bill that significantly restricted or made clear that there was already existing restrictions that local county and cities didn't have the right to regulate certain industries. The state did, and the state had not given that right to the cities and the counties, which were a creation of the state. And so there's some pushback on that. On there's some stuff going through the courts on that that'll probably end up in the state's favor. And it's gonna come down to how do the states want to do it. And they're probably, I mean, they're gonna look at a few different things. There's a lot of it seems to me they're gonna try to ameliorate some concerns by trying to pass certain legislation to minimize tax breaks that were given to data centers, which fine. I don't I'm I'm I'm always for getting rid of corporate welfare, wherever it may be. With with the caveat being, if every other state's doing it, then we also have to compete. And so to minimize it, because we don't live in a you know idealistic world, we live in the real world. But to the extent where that makes sense to cut those out, they're also going to do probably some sort of noise restriction on industrial or whatever they end up being classified as to kind of minimize the fears of generation noise, which is what the hum is from data centers that you hear about occasionally from some from some of them. But my biggest issue on the data center issue, and less so in Texas, but more so in these other states, is that this seems like a good boogeyman for politicians to blame for the fact that they have not invested enough in grid infrastructure or water infrastructure. If you don't have enough water and power for these things, then it's probably an issue of you probably don't have enough power. Like California's had rolling blackouts forever. Texas had it for like one year, and we ended up increasing our like our output by like 20%. Like two summers ago, three summers ago, I'm seeing tweets about this. Like we were had 85, we had like 86 gigawatts of power that were that we were using, and we only had like 89 of capacity, so like we were asked to like turn off our ACs, and very few people did. But you know, it was it was close. That was the record. We just broke that record in the past few days. We're hitting like 90, 91. There's no calls for anything because we upped our capacity and we're having 110, 115 dispatchable gigawatts of power ready to go, and we're putting more and more on, and a lot of these data centers, not all of them, but some of these data centers, are bringing even more dispatchable power to the grid. It's dedicated to their center, they have access that's going on to the grid. Like, if if you're gonna do anything, like in Texas, my view is just make them part of the system, ensure to the best of your abilities that they are good neighbors or have the impetus or the incentive to be good neighbors. But if they're not, and if they're not, and they're you know, they that there are tools to kind of force them into the right direction. That's where I fall on it. And then the property tax fight. I had an op-ed out last year where I was like, tell me what you're gonna cut. Because if you're gonna just because you're gonna get rid of a tax doesn't mean the spending goes away, which just means you're gonna shift that spending. And to Governor Abbott's credit, like he's doing a big thing of like he, Lieutenant Governor Patrick and Speaker Burroughs sent directives with their butt with the budget writing process of saying, you gotta cut your budgets, send us lower budgets because we're going to cut taxes, which means that we're gonna cut spending. And so I think that's at least moving in the right direction of if we're gonna move these taxes around and we're gonna basically start phasing out property taxes which are levied at the the state level at the local level by having the state pay for those services, we're gonna have to cut state services and local governments are gonna have to cut services or you know make them more efficient at to some degree as well. So that's where I'm landing on all that stuff. I think, you know, I guess let's get to get back to what you've been you've been writing on. You're kind of always kind of in the weeds on this, and it might be good to have you on when we're actually in the session to see what you're what bills you're interested in. But like if somebody, you know, young Republican here in Texas, staff or whatever else wants to kind of start getting their name out there, start getting their writing chops up, how are they gonna find information to join the Young Voices program so they can start, you know, so they they can join the join the Young Voices?

SPEAKER_00 23:34

Yeah, absolutely. Young Voices applications will yet again reopen soon. So you can find us at joinyv.org or follow us on Twitter at joinyoungvoices. The application is just you know kind of highlighting who you are, what your work experience is, you know, what you want to work on with us during our program. It explains a little bit more detail about the writing process, what other services we offer, kind of our focus right now on certain issues and media fronts, which is you know constantly evolving with this online world. And yeah, and and just kind of help us understand who you are and what you're working on. On the Young Voices website, you can find myself and a number of our other contributors, you know, profiles to see the kind of work that we've been doing, the kind of articles and interviews and stuff. And that also gets shared on Twitter.

SPEAKER_01 24:35

Excellent. Well, where can they find your information and other ways of like where what are the handles people can follow you all at?

SPEAKER_00 24:44

Sure, sure, yeah. I'm on Twitter at SamRouse1. That's really the main place I spend my time on and share things on. So that's usually the best bet.

SPEAKER_01 24:54

Well, I highly encourage anyone to join that's you know eligible center right and wants to get involved. So go ahead and apply when those open up. And I will also say if you're kind of college age or you're really young in your career, still apply. They definitely in my cohort, there were a few folks that were still in school or just out of school who were trying to get in and break through. So you're definitely eligible. They're not they're not kidding around when they say it's 18 to 35. So feel definitely, definitely apply. And I would encourage anyone to do it. I had a great experience, and I hope others from Texas use it because we need more folks writing op-eds, getting involved in the the discourse, going on podcasts, going on TV, and talking about the ideas that make the you know of us of the center right of conservatism. So thank you so much, Sam, for coming on. We'll we'll we'll hear from you down the road, I'm sure. But for now, we're gonna jump into other issues talking that they're happening this week. Thanks again to Sam for joining us this week and talk a little bit about young voices and the opportunities available to people across the right side of the spectrum to just get involved, talk about the issues they care about, and you know, just tell people about where they're coming from. We're gonna jump into the main portion of the episode or this kind of talking about what's happening in the news this week. And we're gonna focus a lot this week on the on the Senate primary between Paxton and Talo Rico. It's been real quiet, but at the same time, more negative stories have been coming out about Ken Paxton. Palo Rico's on air, spending a lot of money. I haven't seen any really polls saying whether that's being effective or not, but gut check of whether that's actually gonna matter when it comes to election day. So, like, as from what I can tell, Talo Rico's spending a ton of money on air. I'm seeing his ads, there's a couple of them out. They're positive. They kind of make him sound like a Republican, talking about cutting taxes and all that sort of fun stuff. It's fun to see Democrats run like they're Republicans whenever they have to in Texas, because whenever you hear someone like Talo Rico talk, whenever he's state rep on a committee, he just sounds as lefty as possible. So it's it's always fun to see that that side of the Democrats come out whenever they want to get elected, they start talking about issues that actually matter to everyday Texans. But the Paxton campaign's been kind of quiet. They're not really on air yet, and they're not really rattling any cages or anything like that. Some stuff's coming out. There, there's been some negative reporting, some continuation of stuff that's been, you know, the stories have been haunting Paxton for a decade at this point, just a current iteration of them. More talks about his divorce and then where he's actually living and whether he's registered to vote in the appropriate location. You know, all that fun stuff. My guess is those are basically just being dropped into the news cycle to help with negative ads that are coming down the pipeline so that you can have a citation to talk about them. I don't know how how they're going to, I don't know how they're going to bake into the people who've already made up their minds. So it's it's interesting to see for sure. But from all intents and purposes, right now, the polling is pretty dead even. A lot of people left undecided. The other Republicans are running above or ahead of Paxton as expected, but that's partially expected just because of how brutal the primary was for Paxton and how it wasn't brutal for the other Republicans. So kind of whether Paxton reverts to the mean or whether he stays tagged and below is really going to come down to can Telarico spend the amount of money necessary to keep Paxton's negatives up. But you gotta keep in mind, Paxson's run this style of race every time. He pretty much always gets outraised, it seems, and outspent. And he's won. So it's it's inadvisable to as somebody on from the outside to say, hey, you you shouldn't raise more money, or like you definitely should raise, you should do more if you can. But when you know, kind of figuring out what's going to happen in the race, whether people should be worried or not. I mean, yeah, there's a reason that all the other Republicans are worried and that they're doing their best to turn out turn out voters. There's a lot of efforts by the governor, Lieutenant Governor, and the Speaker. They're all meeting right now, the day before this episode airs. There's a big event in Grayson County where I'm from that has, I think the whole ticket is at least advertised to be there, including the speaker, all the statewide candidates. It's a big rally in Sherman. It's going to, you know, they're they're doing what they can to drive the numbers. In order for Republicans to win, they gotta turn out their voters wherever their voters are. A lot of voters out and outside of the big big metros. So turning out those voters, getting them excited for November. So we'll see how all this plays out in the long run. My guess is that we're going to see stuff coming in to boost Paxton, whether it's directly through his campaign or from the outside eventually, as more numbers start to come in. We'll see more of that spending post Labor Day, but we'll start seeing the polling and stuff that will indicate where that money goes coming soon. A lot of that will also come into effect. One of the big things that's going to kind of also play into this is how does Glam Plattener's removal from the ballot in Maine impact Democrats' chances in Maine and how much money they feel like they have to spend there or they won't spend there. And whether that money, a lot of the Democrat money ends up going to focus on Maine, where you can get more kind of value for dollar or vote for dollar than Texas. And so that's one of those big questions. That's kind of a big question mark that's outside of anyone's control. As of as of recording, as of taping, my guess is Paxon's still going to win by three to five points. And but we'll have a better idea as this kind of new polling starts to take shape, as what where the where we'll have a better idea of where the race sits now in August and September when this that new polling comes in. Paxon has attempted to do a couple of press gaggles, kind of take questions from the press at a couple of events. He had a big law enforcement endorsement rollout route endorsement event. People kind of made fun of him for only having 23 sheriffs. But I have something who's had to wrangle sheriffs for a statewide event before. That's not that's not bad. A lot of times you'll do those events where it's like you try to focus like in the geographic area. Because you gotta keep in mind, Texas is really big. Those sheriffs represent a county, and at the end of the day, they have a job of law enforcement, and these events happen during the workday, so it's not every sheriff who can go and you know get to Dallas, Fort Worth, or the border, or Houston, or wherever you're having that event. You try to get however many there you can. You try to get a sample of what your endorsements, and you just try to roll out as many as you can with the people there, plus other people who have endorsed. And so I think that's an important thing to note. But uh there was one of those events this past week, and uh he took some questions afterwards. He tried to do the kind of pivot to the top of what he wanted to talk about, but the press hadn't really been able to ask him questions in a long time, so they were asking him everything, and uh those events got shut down, that created some stir. But he's starting to talk to folks, he's starting to talk to the press, and we're gonna we'll see how that how that goes. I I think what's interesting is a lot of what he's been able to do from a comms perspective as an attorney general has been to just do things through the press office over the years, campaign or otherwise, not technically campaign PR, but it is what it is. And when you're a senator, you have to end up being a little bit more friendly with the press. You end up seeing all those gaggles pop up. Plus, you the press has more access to you as you're walking from your office to the floor. So Paxton needs to dust that rust off of him. It seems like he's a little rusty, he needs to get that rust off of him and start getting used to that, especially if he ends up winning. That's gonna be how he one of the big ways he's gonna have to learn how to, in order to get his message out to people about what he whatever he wants to do. He's not gonna be able to rely on his old kind of press release and go standpoint and just try to go on air, like on Fox News or something. He wants to get his stuff out, he's gonna have to figure out how to how to turn that to his advantage instead of his disadvantage. So a real inside kind of baseball look at the about the current state of the race, but that's because very little is happening outside of the inside the baseball stuff, except for some ad spending by Telerico. So interesting to see those those those developments play out. Other big stuff going on right now is we once again, we had the flooding we've covered in the past couple weeks. Those floodwaters, so that there's now a third confirmed death. So three people died during the the big storms a couple weeks ago in the hill country. But those waters are surging towards the coasts where they should they should land in the Choke Canyon and Lake Corpus Christi reservoirs and start to fill those up. Choke Canyon has already tripled in the amount of water that it had. It was very low. I think it went from like 8% to like 25%. That has surged over the past three or four days. They're expected to have more coming through through August, early August. What's happening is that water is trickling down, it's filling crevices, it's you know, it's it's wetting the ground as it goes along. But it's also recharging the Edwards aquifer and other areas that re- that those things recharge off of the same water systems, too. And so it's until it hits certain points, I'm not really sure how much water is gonna make it to the to to the river, sorry, and to the lakes. But as of now, from the storms they just had before this, they have pushed their kind of doomsday date from this past May to next September. And now this is even more water that's gonna push that further along, which gives Corpus Christi time that it wasn't sure it was going to have to try and find alternative and new water sourcing to you know fix the water crisis that they're already know they're gonna face because they were facing it recently. But it's a much much prayed for, much needed amount of water to really keep the eighth largest city in Texas from having a huge cataclysmic style water emergency. But kind of back to Paxton, he's had some reporting on him where uh there's been some reporting from I've seen it from Michael Quinsullivan of of uh of uh the Texas scorecard talking about how the Texas business court was on the side of abortionists on a recent court ruling against Ken Paxton. I want to talk a little bit about this case. A couple years ago, uh last year, I don't know, time slips away from me, but after Dobbs came down and different laws triggered in Texas, the outlaw at abortion in Texas, again, a couple of people came under suspicion, and then ultimately indictment by the Attorney General's office for performing abortions against a counter to the law. Well, those those one was a midwife, and this is what the case we're going to focus on. The apparently the original source of the accusation was from one anonymous email tip that was what got the that ball rolling. There are criminal indictments and allegations moving forward in that case, but in a case specifically against the the clinic itself, the business, there was not enough evidence presented thus far to warrant being shut down. And so the 15th Court of Appeals, which is a statewide court of appeals below the below the the highest level, ruled that that injunction couldn't or whatever couldn't stay in place. There wasn't enough evidence. But that doesn't mean that the the the business isn't going to reopen because all the people are still subject to they're still subject to their own ongoing litigations and injunctions and whatnot. And so it was a technical issue that is part of whatever legal strategy the Office of the Attorney General and the prosecutors in the case are pursuing. And so I I it feels to me like it's just undue bad faith from Michael Quinn Sullivan to talk about how this is somehow going to be some anti-conservative thing when it's a purely legal distinction and as fact-based, not it was a fact-based issue about what has been presented versus what those facts mean. So sorry, not fact-based, it's a procedural issue instead of a fact issue. And so if you don't follow the procedures as a rule of law, then there's things that are gonna have to, you're gonna lose cases where they're, you know, what the that the judges are gonna rule on the outside of their own personal politics. You can't just rule on something because you have good vibes. You have to follow the law, and it doesn't seem like on that particular part of the case that the law was being followed. But the attorney generals also appealed out to the Supreme Court and will have a better idea of where the law actually stands. You also got to keep in mind you're trying to apply case law to a new area of law. And so the Supreme Court is going to have to make some decisions, and it's not unusual for appeals courts to make a decision based off of what is currently in the process in the law from uh how the laws were written and so on before. That when you have a new law come in, you try to apply that framework as best you can, knowing full well that the final decision is going to be the rest of the Supreme Court. And so that's something to keep an eye on. That whole case is something to keep an eye on as it moves forward. He did win, but he did win at an injunction against Discord. I'm sure they'll appeal that. But Discord has some age verification uh tools they have in place for other countries like the UK, the similar to the type of age verification rules that are under statute now based from things that have cleared and passed through the Fifth Circuit. And so our act of law, and that the Attorney General's office has won approval for to make Discord implement those within the next 90 days for Texas residents. But we'll see if that how that 90 days plays out. Again, whenever you have these wins, you have these court cases, you have these rulings, like you'll there are things along the way that indicate which way the case is going, but it's not until you get final judgment where you have final like win or loss, and we're very much in the process on all of this. And so these are just things to keep in mind. Keep whenever you're following the news, when you see somebody wins or loses, it's often they've lost like a point or a part of a match. They haven't lost the whole tournament, they haven't lost the whole game. It's just how things are processing through the system. We have another data center fight. Data center decided didn't get approved in East Texas. It's the governor's claiming it's because of or not claiming, the governor is saying it's because he of his new directive to make sure that the data centers that are on coming online are following the rules of the state. And there's still more talk about moving those removing some of the incentives that are in in statute away from data centers back when there were data centers were a much, much smaller industry. And you know, I think we need to take a critical view of a lot of corporate welfare we have in Texas. I also, as I mentioned with with interview with Sam, the key thing when it comes to corporate welfare is that I'm generally opposed to it. I don't think we should have it. Unfortunately, not everyone has that opinion. And so if Texas wants to remain competitive with other states on just corporate welfare is generally, not whether what it's bringing or not, then you know we have to remain competitive or find other ways where that if we're not to incentivize or show that Texas is a better place to go, despite what other states' incentives are bringing in. And so we just have to keep that in mind that it can't just be a carte blanche issue. That's an issue I think we need to find at the federal level to minimize because it really becomes an interstate commerce issue, a true interstate commerce issue. If you're inducing companies to leave one state to another with tax abatements or whatnot or tax dollars, that is influencing how interstate commerce commerce is interacting. And so there's a good federal cause to say to push it on that level. But so long as the state of play is that that's all allowed and all every state for themselves, then we have to take a strong look at are we going to lose business or business opportunities if we're not playing the same game as other states? And if we are, we should do it to the best of our, you know, we should do it best to make sure we're the winners. And that's kind of been the Texas mentality. We can't do it, we can't dictate what incentives California or Montana are going to give, but we can dictate how Texas is going to play in it, and we have a pretty good winning success. So while I'm generally against it, like on a concept, I understand why it exists and why Texas still uses it despite our general kind of conservative revulsion or repulsion to the idea generally. I get it. So that's where that stands. Another thing coming down the pipeline, Midland IC is challenging the Robin Hood recapture system uh school finance system. That's on the there's some ish defects with the case itself, but is a notable case in that Midland is itself a conservative area, conservative state funded by conservative industry, conservative-backed industries. And so having them challenge this, the Robin Hood recapture process and school finance system might be enough to start a bigger conversation about how schools are financed in this state, and especially with how the governor is talking about and lieutenant governor on the big three are talking about how agencies statewide need to cut spending if they're gonna take on more of the burden for school finance. Well, how schools are financed in the current Robin Hood system are gonna need to be heavily looked at if we're talking about property tax reform as a whole. And so those two conversations are inextricably linked with one another. And so we're gonna be talking diving into that more. Yeah, I know people love talking about tax policy, but we're talking about property taxes, we're talking about spending, and this is a this is a Texas politics show. This is going to be the major thing we're talking about during session to get across the finish line or or to to really make a big change in the state. And so I want you to be aware that this is this has kicked off anew with this court filing for Midland IST. So we're gonna keep be keeping our our our eye on that. But until then, I'll see you next week. All right, bye guys.