Alleged Mistress in Court, Hacked Road Sign, and Ike Dike Drama

Hey everyone, an alleged mistress, a Starbucks meeting worth $14,000 and a kitchen remodel. These aren't storylines in a Netflix crime drama. That's just the latest in the Ken Paxton impeachment trial. Pulitzer Prize finalists and political commentator Evan Mints joins me to recap the latest news stories impacting H-Town. It's Friday, September 15th, 2023. I'm Raheel Rumsonely and here's what Houston's talking about. Okay, Evan, right out the gate, I'm going to put you on the spot, alright? Because earlier this week on Westheimer and Montrose, one of those digital road signs got hacked and somebody put, due to the weather, go F yourself. So I need to rewrite that, okay? If you hacked that sign, what are you putting on there? What would perfectly capture Evan? Oh, it would obviously say, Bill the Icedike. I'm pretty sure that's what it would say. Absolutely, right? That is your thing. So I kind of set you up there. That was an easy one. That was an alley. You did. And I appreciate it. I think maybe a few other things would just be like more sidewalks, please, or drive slower or it's hot, microchip melting, something like that. Mine would be slow drivers to the right because there's nothing more frustrating than somebody going 15 below in the left lane. Ugh. No, I agree. But I am a firm believer that city driving should be like 20, 25 miles an hour and freeway driving should be 85 miles an hour, like no middle either you're going so slowly that if you hit someone, they're fine or you were going so fast because I'm going to get there and nothing is in my way. Oh, my gosh. I like that. Okay. Let's get into the biggest story of the week for you. I have a feeling. I know what it is. So let's jump into it. Oh, it is the Ken Paxton trial, not to repeat myself from last week, but I remember in middle school in the middle of the Clinton impeachment and we would have this teacher every day would come in and say, we are living in history, people. And now I feel like I am that guy. We are living in history watching this impeachment proceeding happen. It is incredible. So what stood out this week because there was a lot of drama. There were a lot of twists and turns. What stood out? Give me some highlights. You know, there were some Hollywood moments. There was when Laura Olsen Paxton's woman on the side showed up. We thought she was going to take the stand. It turned out that she was planning on pleading the fifth. And so both sides found a way to just not have her take the stand. There was this picture of Angela Paxton, Ken Paxton's wife, who is a state senator, staring at her wedding ring, sitting there on the Senate floor, oof, girl, you deserve better than him. There is also an excellent write up in Texas Monthly that I highly recommend explaining why does Ken Paxton, in spite of this impeachment trial, in spite of his felony charges, in spite of the fact that he's not particularly good attorney general when it comes to moving conservative causes or supporting the Republican Party, why does he have all of these supporters? And what he explains is that it's not in spite of his crimes. It is because of them. His supporters own him and he owns them because he is so deep. He really has used his office to gut the Texas Ethics Commission in service of Tim Dumb, a big billionaire political player in the state. And his entire ecosystem of organizations that serve to grow his power, like they need each other. That's why this happens. But when it comes down to what is happening on the floor, what is happening in this impeachment, we've got some really great moments. You have Ryan Vassar, his former deputy attorney general, testifying that when they went to the FBI, that they had a good faith belief that Paxton had committed criminal actions. But as he said, no actual evidence. A lot of Paxton's supporters seized on this, but you know, that's sometimes how investigations go. Someone's doing some really shady stuff. They don't know why that he's selling out the AG's office to Nate Paul, but they go to the FBI. Something bad has got to be going on there. But one of the big things that came out this week, though, was learning that branding is a panic who was serving for Ken Paxton as the special appointed prosecutor to investigate the FBI and all the other folks who were going after Nate Paul really earnestly believe that he was working in service of the attorney general's office and wasn't part of this weird Paxton conspiracy that he was a young attorney who really had stars in his eyes about this moment. And at the very end, he gets called up to Austin, Paxton takes him out to Starbucks, not in his office, sits him down and basically says, we're not doing this work anymore because Kamikah is being investigated at this point by US marshals for what he's doing. He's getting cease and desistnosis from Paxton's own office. He has no idea what's going on. He's freaking out. And Paxton basically sits him down and says, you're not doing this anymore. Kamikah says, well, what about all this money you owe me from the work? They say, well, you're going to have to eat it. And then they almost leave him at this Starbucks where they've driven him to. And he's got a stamp and say, hey, can I at least get it right back to my car? Like, ooh, I feel bad for the guy. Oh my gosh. So tell me what's happening with this kitchen remodeling because I keep seeing that come up and $20,000 regarding that. Any information on this? No. And that's something that's really been weird that from the very beginning, supposedly Nate Paul helped pay for the Paxton's remodeling their kitchen. And we've heard at the very beginning, Tony Busby say that, well, we're going to see pictures of the Paxton shopping to show you that they're the ones who did this themselves. But then the pictures they kind of wanted to show us were like these undated screen grabs of them scrolling through like the Home Depot website or something like that's not shopping. So it seems like neither side has the evidence to say, well, clearly, there's pay for play here. And then on the other side, they don't have anything to disprove it. But throughout all of this, you kind of figure out like even if there wasn't this direct bribery from Nate Paul, like even if there wasn't like clearly pay for play, even if his woman on the side got hired by Nate Paul on her own merits is probably fine. Why is Paxton doing all this? And one of the things that we have learned is that Paxton just really doesn't trust the FBI, doesn't trust the Texas Department of Safety, doesn't trust the police. And so when Nate Paul is being investigated for his various white collar crimes, Paxton is just there and basically saying, a cab, I'm going to protect you, Nate Paul, from the cops. Like you almost expect him out there with like black block garb on throwing Molotov cocktails at the FBI headquarters, like Paxton for being the highest law man in the state doesn't trust the law. Oh my gosh, this is so wild. Now last question, what happened with Rusty Harden this week, right? It looked like a trial was going to end there for a second, but it hasn't. Yeah, I've heard plenty of swarling rumors about whether the house is flubbing in some ways, didn't prep their witnesses right, wasn't prepared for this kind of show in front of the public spotlight. Rusty Harden's getting up there in age and then he accidentally arrested the case when they didn't intend to and said, like, oops, I messed up. This is some odd behavior and you're really hoping that it's not the sort of thing that can undermine their case. Man, all right. So we'll see what happens. What are the next steps for the trial? When is this going to end? Each side just has a few hours left. So it seems like this might be the sort of thing that we can wrap up this week if not very early next week. And then you're going to have the jury, the senators deliberate. And then we're going to get an answer as to whether Paxen is going to be impeached or not. But the Senate is also debating whether to change the rules of impeachment to say not only if he's impeached, is he removed from office, but that he cannot run again. Wow. All right. We'll keep an eye on that. I'm going to go to my biggest story. Now I know government agencies are going to delay releasing reports and government agencies will have delays and a lot of things. But the TEA, the Texas Education Agency, is delaying the release of their new school accountability rating systems due to a lawsuit by multiple school districts. The new system was supposed to be more accurate than the 2017 system that was put in place. But a lot of districts worry that this new system is going to penalize them and lower their ratings. In a Houston Chronicle story, Spring Branch ISD Superintendent Dr. Jennifer Blaine said, not only have they changed the rules of the game, they've yet to release the accountability manual to even tell us what the rules are. Evan, this is unbelievable. How do they not tell the school districts what they're using to create these accountability ratings that will impact all these school districts? This is the craziest thing I've heard. It's almost as if, and call me shocked, but it's almost as if the state of Texas really doesn't care all that much about public schools. And that's a shame. They're so critically important. But they keep on piling on more and more regulations to them, more and more standardized tests. Without even thinking, is this measuring the thing we want to measure? Is this getting the outcomes we want to get? I feel like this is such an easy thing to fix. Just give them the manual on how things are going to be calculated regarding the new accountability rating system. And then number two, listen to the teachers, principals, counselors who are on the ground working with the students and implement changes from them. This is such a hard pill to swallow when it comes to education because we could be so good at this. Yet, there's still issues with little things like this and what I mean little because this is just an accountability rating system and big things like special education. So it's frustrating, it's something that the TEA needs to fix, and I hope they get it right. But I don't think they will, unfortunately. I think the most overlooked story this week was an article in the Texas Tribune about how U.S. Representative Randy Weber has been breaking from the Freedom Caucus in a budget fight over funding for the Ike Dyke. Weber is one of the top requesters for earmarks $686 million in earmarks this year alone more than any other House member by a wide margin and taking part in a long history of Galveston representatives pulling down those earmarks. Notably Jack Brooks, one of my favorite representatives. But a big fight within the party has them shutting down a lot of this spending and they're kicking the can on getting the money necessary to start the design phase of the Ike Dyke. It is absolutely necessary to protect all this oil and gas infrastructure, all this trade infrastructure, not to mention the millions of people who live in the region. And it is just maddening, I think, that you can't get the Republican party to say, yeah, this is the sort of thing that deserves some funding. Meanwhile you've seen folks like Lizzie Fletcher stand up and point out that 15 years ago we had Hurricane Ike and we need to get that funding here. Same with Representative Sylvia Garcia and Matt Lanza, Houston's own space city weatherman has been yelling that we need to get the money here to protect our region because every single passing hurricane season we are rolling the dice. Yeah, not only are we rolling the dice, but we're not even moving forward at all with the design phase. Right? I mean, we can't even get a real design that is studied and made sure that yes, this is going to work and not having environmental impact, we can't even get that far down the road. Yeah. And the Army Corps of Engineers has put out some preliminary designs, but the folks I talked to in Galveston say they are no go, that they are just not going to work when it comes to building a gate across the mouth of Galveston Bay, that the design they have would be too disruptive. At the same time, you hear from folks saying that the design that the Army Corps has also isn't big enough to protect from the category four, category five storms that we really need to protect from. That they have this idea that instead of using walls will build big sand dunes, but those sand dunes are going to need to be way bigger than they currently are in the design to protect from those huge storms. Wow. We'll see what happens with that one, but another stall, another road bump here with the yike deck. Okay. I'm going to get to my most overlooked story and we've heard about this a lot in the last few years, but federal judge Andrew Hannon ruled that the deferred action for childhood arrivals or DACA, as everyone knows it as that program is indeed illegal. The judge is ruling was ultimately expected to be appeal to the US Supreme Court, according to a Houston public media story. Now sending the program to the high court for a third time, this is hopefully where we'll get an answer. We've seen it hit the Supreme Court in 2016 when it was deadlocked for four, four over expanding DACA. And then in 2020, the high court ruled five, four that the Trump administration improperly ended DACA, allowing it to stay in place. And now it looks like it's going to be heading there for the third time. Will we finally get an answer on DACA, Evan? I think that the answer is that Congress needs to act and I think it's been the answer from the very beginning that really it should not be on prosecutorial discretion or executive action to write the immigration laws of our country. And I think that anyone with a heart in their chest or any small amount of economics knowledge is going to say that we need to make sure that the folks who are here and living here and raising families here and working here are Americans and they belong here and no bureaucratic barriers should stand in the way of that. Congress needs to sit down and write a new immigration law. It almost had one in 2013 where you had a bipartisan coalition in the Senate. It would have passed the House if they brought it to the floor, but Republicans controlled the House and they didn't want to pass it without a majority of their majority. And you had a rump who would just oppose anything that would allow more people to stay here. And I think that is wrong. I think it is immoral and I think it is un-American. There's no chance something is going to get done bipartisanly with Congress. Now when it comes to immigration, it's impossible it seems like. I think you could get something out of the Senate. I don't know if you could get it through the House and a bipartisan basis. I mean, you could write a blank check for border security, but if you give one more visa than when we currently have some folks freak out about it. And I think that's terrible. All right, Evan, let's get to your moment of joy. What made you happy this week? Oh, what made me happy was the fact that Rice University is now a football school. Who knew? Who knew? Last week, Rice beat the University of Houston to claim the Buy You bucket for the first time since 2010. They dominated four touchdowns in the first half and then in Rice tradition collapsed in the second half, but finally won it in double over time. It was amazing. And now I'm excited to watch Rice Play TSU this Saturday. Yeah, that was a crazy game because I'm watching the Texas Alabama game and, you know, we're keeping track of all the scores and we see, whoa, Rice is of 28 to zero. We weren't shocked because as we've mentioned on the podcast before, we were watching Texas versus Rice. So I saw what Rice could do. And again, they have a good quarterback. These are your JT Daniels. And they were looking good and they got the big win. And now they are on the hunt for a ball, but hey, five games away. You get those six wins and Rice is a ball team again. And that's what we want to see. Rice belongs in a bowl. I'll just say it. Okay. For me, my moment of joy, I can finally announce this, but Carly on Jones are awesome producer. And myself, we were going to be on a podcast panel called Mike up pod Houston put in conjunction with pod fest and pod Houston. So we're going to be on this panel talking about city cast Houston, what we do right and what we do wrong as well because there's going to be some questions regarding that. But I'm just so excited that we are receiving some love around the podcast community here in the city of Houston. And we're going to be on this great panel on September 27th. And if you want to attend it, it is free. So if you want to learn more about podcasting or just come meet us at this panel, you can definitely do that. I've put the link in the show notes. I'm so pumped. And I'm excited because Carly on Jones is going to be up there with me. Carly is the best and I'm about she's getting recognized for this as well. Well, congrats to y'all. That sounds like a lot of fun. I'll be there. Nice. It's going to be a good time. All right, Evan. That was a lot of fun and the best part about this week, Evan. We got rain. I know. I know. So happy. I am dancing. And the weather is finally getting bearable to be outside. So hey, it might be a good weekend here and I'm excited for that. Evan, thank you so much. Have a good weekend. See you later. That was Evan Minz. You can follow Evan on Twitter with the link in our show notes. That will do it for this week here on CityCats Houston. Our lead producer, Dina Kespah. Our producers, Carly on Jones, our newsletter editors, our Adrian Gonzales and Brooke Lewis. And the host is me, Raheel Ramzanoli. Our music is by the band, All the Camonos. We'll be back on Monday with an episode examining why HISD is falling behind in special education. Thank you for listening and I hope you learned something new. And now that was, yeah, sorry, go ahead, pick up, pick up.