From Ken Paxton’s WPATH Lawsuit To Harris County Flood Control Chaos

A million dollars in cocaine gets seized at the border and the first feeling is relief. We get why, but we also ask the uncomfortable follow-up: if nearly 74 pounds is caught in two stops, what’s slipping through the cracks, and what does that poison do once it hits Texas streets?

We start with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton joining a multistate effort against WPATH, alleging deceptive practices around pediatric gender medicine and the way “standards of care” get marketed to parents. From there, we pull the thread on institutional credibility: what “trust the science” has meant in recent years, how risk gets minimized, and why ordinary people have to become far more informed consumers of medical claims.

Then we go local with the stories that hit your wallet and your neighborhood. Harris County Flood Control faces leadership upheaval while Harvey mitigation money and project deadlines hang over the county, and we break down why that chaos matters in a region where flooding is not theoretical. We also cover Conroe ISD trustees rejecting a TASB governing seat, and Charles Blain from Urban Reform joins us for the weekly local recap covering alleged homestead exemption fraud, the World Cup tourism hype falling flat for restaurants, and new data showing more Harris County households renting instead of owning.

We close with the Texas GOP’s 2027 legislative priorities and a blunt border reality check: drug seizures are a warning sign, not a victory lap.

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Transcript

Welcome And Stories To Watch

SPEAKER_10 0:06

Hything Ris of Rising, joka Surgery Michael Wilson.

SPEAKER_18 0:31

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I'm your host, Michael Wilson, and you're listening to the Lone Star Conservative here on Patriot Talk 920, wrapping up the weekday day days today. That's what we're doing. We're here to wrap up the weekdays for the weekend this Friday. We're going to have Charles Blaine on at the top of the second hour to go over our weekly local recap. We also have lots of stories to get into this morning. Other than that, and I wanna kind of tease just a couple of those that I found that were were quite big stories. First and foremost, it's not gonna be first. The first story you'll you'll hear we get to here in the first segment. But the Texas GOP has now announced their top priorities for the upcoming legislative session. So we'll go over all of the priorities. I'll see if I like them, if there's ones I wish were added. You know, that kind of thing. Can we rank each priority out of 10 and then based on its wording and what that actually means? It's also worth noting that we talked a little about TASB yesterday and the sort of manipulation and coercion and bullying that they put forward to trustees, especially conservative trustees. Well, in Conroe, the conservative trustees are declining a district seat on the TASB board. They voted against nominating a member to the Texas Association of School Boards governing body. Um, and they essentially said that they wanted nothing to do with the left-leaning ideological organization. That that's that was that did not interest them, even though they could have gotten on. So interesting to note that that Conroe at least is kind of sick of their guns and not only in their policies, but saying we don't even want anything to do with these left-leaning organizations. Also, there was a massive, there was a massive cocaine seizure uh at the border. Um it was it was two different seizures that resulted in, I think it was something like s nearly 74 pounds of cocaine, which is valued at nearly a million dollars. So we'll go over that as well here in the first hour, potentially. Maybe the second if we get into it in the first hour, we'll get to it in the second hour. Uh, but there's like I said, there's lots to get into, and I want to actually kick it off this morning.

Paxton Targets WPATH Over Deception

SPEAKER_18 2:51

Uh, going over Ken Paxton. Because and, you know, it's not really going over Ken Paxton. Ken Paxton's office does so much at this point. Uh, it's just unbelievable how much I I said this before. The guy is in the middle of campaign season, and whether or not he's individually, you know, doing these lawsuits, he's putting out statements. He's directly involved with the day-to-day operations. And bar anything else, the fact that his office is operating so efficiently, even if you made the argument that he's out campaigning, is just, I think it's evidence yet again of how phenomenal Ken Baxton has been in this role. Uh, you know, separate from anything else, this role particularly, Ken Baxton has done just such a great job with the office. And so, yet another lawsuit. Uh in this case, Paxton is suing this trans health association over what he's labeling deceptive practices. Uh the organization is being sued by not only Kent Paxton, but the Attorneys General of Alaska, Iowa, Nebraska, as well as the Federal Trade Commission. They're all suing the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, otherwise known as WPATH, for intentionally deceiving parents in the promotion of gender mutilation procedures for children. Paxton said any group that illegally promotes irreversible, life-altering transitioning procedures to kids as safe and necessary, will face the full force of the law for harming children. The complaint, which was filed in federal court in the Northern District of Texas, alleges that WPATH marketed its treatment guidelines, known as the Standards of Care version 8, as it grounded in strong scientific backing, despite no evidence supporting their claim. A report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, uh Health and Human Services found that the evidence base, kind of like the actual like foundation of evidence underlying their standards of care, version eight, were exceptionally weak and noted that international guidelines had relied heavily on WPATH's own recommendations. In other words, not only were they citing uh the standards of evidence as proof of why they're doing what they're doing, the evidence wasn't real. And then they also said, well, this is also the international understanding. But the international understanding was quoting them. And so literally it was just trust me, was essentially their whole evidential standard for their whole system was, hey, just trust me, dude. That that's what their claim was ultimately. And so Health and Human Services, the re the review they did identified significant weaknesses in the evidence base and the guideline development process surrounding pediatric gender medicine. And so the Admiral of the Assistant Secretary for Health at Human Services said, we welcome FTC efforts to examine those findings and take action as appropriate to protect patients. The association also failed to disclose information about significant risks and the lifelong side effects associated with the drugs, surgeries, and other procedures, which can, of course, carry significant harms for minors, including mood disturbances, vocal pain, pelvic pain, pelvic floor dysfunction, uh other forms of discomfort, persistent sexual dysfunction continuing after the end. Even if you stop, you're done. It still results in, again, lifelong problems, um, other types of pain, all of these effects that can be permanent. All of those can be permanent. And so, citing sworn declarations from both patients and parents, the complaints state these misrepresentations and deceptive omissions have caused unspeakable physical and psychological harm to countless children. I don't know how people even, you know, read stuff like this and they're not immediately just angry. I I have to if you're hearing the pauses, I have to take a minute after I'm reading what they're doing to not be incredibly angry. Uh clinicians were also allegedly telling parents that sex rejecting procedures were the only alternative to a gender-confused child's suicide. And that parents would be to blame if their child dies, despite no evidence that life-altering surgeries reduce suicide risk in multiple documented cases. Providers asked parents if they would rather have a live daughter or a dead son, or vice versa, even while the child in question was sitting there. The child is there and you're asking those questions. And I know we've all we've all, you know, I don't want to say joked about, but we all know the medical establishment asked questions like, would you rather have a living daughter or a dead son? But I don't quite think we realized that it was happening to real parents here in Texas. That it was actually happening behind closed doors. It wasn't just some political thing that was happening in a far-off land and we were like, oh, that's bad. That sounds like a bad thing to say. That's crazy. It's actually it was actually happening. They were deceiving parents by saying the evidence is solid that this is safe. They didn't advertise any of the side effects, including the permanent ones. They didn't explain any of the ev because there wasn't any evidence, any of the evidence for their claim about suicide risk being mitigated, which, by the way, it's not mitigated. Just so everyone understands, there is, again, no evidence. All of the evidence that's been studied on suicide risk in gender dysphoric patients, gender affirming care, it's about equal. If they get, if they quote unquote gender affirming care, if they get if they mutilate their bodies to line up with what they are confused about, the odds of suicide do not go down even remotely. It's the same. It's 0% success on that front, plus everything else associated. And so, again, incredibly deceptive and manipulative. Additionally, they removed any age limitations for breast amputation, uh, the removal of, of course, the male appendage or any other procedure except one specific type of surgery for girls. Again, no age limitations. One surgeon and WPATH member quoted in the complaint said, quote, the biggest reason for why everyone is doing it now is the money is flowing because now insurance is paying. The complaint notes that WPATH former president, Dr. Marcy Bowers, earned over a million dollars in a single year, and the WPATH members have profited immensely from the organization's work at the expense of children and their parents. In a statement responding to the suit, WPATH denounced the new complaint, of course. They argue the FTC has no medical role or jurisdiction over the organization's noncommercial speech, and says both the federal and state claims are legally and factually baseless. Sort of like treating transgender issues uh with mutilation surgeries. That's also pretty legally and factually baseless. But you did it. And and really this whole thing is bigger than the single lawsuit coming out of the Paxton, FTC, and other attorneys general kind of situation here. This is more importantly going back and remembering, hey, are adults is it okay if if these, you know, the really I don't even say adults in authority, though that's part of it. But the medical establishment, is it okay if they lie to parents, if they pressure families to do what they want, uh, and then they prop they profit off of that, especially off of confused children, and then they get to say that they're the good guys while they do all of that, right? They bully you, they intimidate you, they coerce you, and then once they've done it and you have lifelong side effects, they're the good guy for doing it. They were the compassionate, loving, accepting ones. Right? And so I I think for years, and again, COVID, I I say this often, but COVID did a lot of the heavy lifting in this regard. For years, families sort of felt like the medical establishment was what there was. You you trust the science, and trust the science didn't mean that you actually knew the science yourself and trusted that. It's not that you had actually done the research yourself, found out what the you know, if the scientific method was followed, what the peer review says, gone through their actual study methodology. No, no, no. Trust the science meant the doctors interpret the science and then relay it to you, and whatever they say is gospel truth. And that was just the the assumption. That was just how things were. And that's why if you disagreed, you were automatically crazy. Right? You know, they they they they still, in in modern mainstream circles, will make jokes on TV and TV shows about the token anti-vaxxer, young living essential oils mom. They do that all the time on TV shows. You know why? Uh, because they don't trust the science. And I'm not saying that some of those some people go crazy with some of this stuff, right? Of course. It happens on every side of every issue. But for years, we were just told, hey, trust the science. And then turns out the science wasn't even what they said it was. It turns out not only is it difficult to trust the science because a lot of it we just don't know, but they just straight up lie about the science and then use it as a tactic to get you to do what they want you to do. Right? Families were were being told that that if they questioned things like chemical castration, they call them puberty blockers, but chemical castration, cross-sex hormones, the the the augmentations of the chest for girls, that that essentially you were dangerous, you were hateful, you were ignorant. America didn't get quite as bad as some other countries. Look up in Canada and you have a guy who was arrested because he was quote unquote dead naming his daughter. In other words, his daughter wanted to be a boy, and he refused to use the boy name for his daughter. He used his daughter's name that he gave her, and he was arrested for it. He lost custody of his daughter. Right? So that didn't come here. Things could have been worse. Uh, but I don't think that Canada should be our metric for if we're doing okay. Right? We have better than Canada, yeah. That should be an automatic, but we should be doing much better than Canada. And this is kind of the point here, getting back to the science issue. So they're saying, hey, this is settled science, right? Living son, dead daughter, living daughter, dead son. What do you want? Right? Even though there is no scientific basis for that whatsoever. Right? The the risks were not talked about. The side effects were were not presented to families, to parents, and uh they're they're saying all these things that are not rooted in any sort of fact at all, manipulating parents into consenting to these horrible procedures. And so, again, this is what comes out of the medical establishment all the time. Right? We have to understand this, that children, people, I don't need to say to children, people are not experiments, right? People are not revenue streams for your newest surgery that makes you money, right? People are not trophies of your ideology. People are image bearers of God. Entrusted, you know, as children, of course, to their parents, but entrusted as parents to God, not to the doctors and the political organizations or the medical groups that that just want the I mean, she said what, the insurance, the insurance money, looking for an insurance payout. Right? And this is this is my point. Right? When they say, would you rather have a living daughter or a dead son, that that's that's not science at all. That's not doctoral, that's not any sort of do no harm. That is literally just blackmail. That is just emotional manipulation and blackmail. That's all that it is. And so, and again, a lot of us are looking at this, of course, from a perspective that we know it's evil, but we're just we're just realizing, hey, man, I would never have done that though. If the doctor said that, I would have immediately just been, you know, done and said, you're insane. But you have to understand what a lot of people went through, right? This is going on in peak wokeness, right? And in the time of our country where if you weren't already in conservative circles, you kind of just bought it, hook, line, and sinker. And that doesn't justify you having bought it, because you shouldn't have, you should have been wiser than that. But for a lot of these parents, they're this, their mother or father, they're terrified, right? They're listening to their doctor, and their doctor says, You're if you if you don't let him her become a boy, she's gonna kill herself. So let us get you the surgery, insurance will cover it. That's that's what families are hearing, right? And so, as I've said before, this is not compassionate, this is not loving, right? None of this is love. I've said before, you know, love is is not some sort of affirmation, never has been, never could be. Definitionally, that's not love. And it's certainly not compassion to affirm someone in their sin, in in what's evil, in what will ruin their lives, right? And again, this goes right back to the question of science. And I'm gonna say something that might come across a little bit traditional in the sense that I'm gonna sound like a wacko, but I'm gonna say it anyway, because it's true. If science and objective morality, aka the Bible, the word of God, what God has commanded us to do, say, and believe, if those things are in conflict, I'm choosing God every single time. And that's because of two main reasons. Reason number one, the scientific establishment, as we've just discovered, straight up lies. They say trust the science, and I'm required to, but then it turns out they were they were just not being honest about what the science was at all. Right? That's that's obvious. That is exactly what was going on. But the second reason isn't necessarily nefarious intent. It's also that science is an imperfect science. I know that sounds a little redundant, but there have been lots of discoveries, quote unquote. Lots of either discoveries or hypotheses, theories, whatever they were, that later got just proven down the road, of course. And you'd expect that, right? We're again, we're human beings. We're gonna make mistakes, we're gonna see that we're gonna experience and observe something, and we're gonna reach wrong conclusions. How many times have you made a false assumption about what somebody was saying? How many times have you heard someone say something and you got your feelings hurt, or you thought, hey, that wasn't very nice, and it turns out you just completely misunderstood what they were saying because you observed it in a certain light, and then you hear the quote back and you realize, okay, so I made some assumptions, and of course, with those assumptions in place, what you said was rude, but if those assumptions weren't right, then I guess what you were saying wasn't so bad. We do that all the time. The scientific community has been doing that for millennia, where they they observe, they make some assumptions, and that's why we have the scientific method to test over and over and over and over and over again to verify truth. And so when we have a lot of these standards, and there should be, they should be rather rigorous, and then you find out, hey, you know what? They have not gone through very rigorous standards to prove these things, right? Why do you think that Darwinian evolution has been the prevailing theory of the scientific community for what, a hundred years? And yet somehow, despite having over a hundred years of the of the of the ball in their in their court, they still it's still a scientific theory. You want to know why that is? Because it doesn't matter how long you give them, they can't prove it. It's impossible to prove. They want to find the missing link, or they want to find uh verifiable evidence that the earth is millions to billions to hundreds of billions of years old, but they can't. Because, in at least my opinion, it's all made up. And you'd expect, if they were right, and they had so long to prove it, that they would have proven something. That you could give me more than than random assumptions about it. That you could give me more than, hey, we think this is how it happened. Yeah, I just we don't know how else it could have come. It's not like there could have been a creator who voiced all of this into existence. No, so we need another answer, and our other answer is something that doesn't really make sense and we can't prove it all, but is the second best answer behind creator, and we don't like creator, so that's all we can really come up with. That's where we're at. And when that's your position on science, which it has been, then the science can be down and they say, Well, the science really wants me to make a lot of money. So I guess the science says that transgenderism and transgender surgeries are good because they're expensive, insurance will pay them and I make bank. That's that's the whole line of argumentation here. And so God or science, always pick God. Because really, you're not actually picking between God and science. You're picking between let me rephrase that because the reality is that you're actually picking between God and the limited modern understanding of that particular science that will be discovered later down the line. The other thing too that I want everyone to keep in mind is do your own research. I know that's no fun. I know reading studies is not a good time, unless unless you're just crazy. Going online and reading peer-reviewed studies to s to understand what methodology they used, what their standards were, what their cases were, that's not fun for anybody. But if you want to be safe, healthy, and learn and be educated and be aware of what you're talking about and be aware of the decisions you're making, that's the way to do it. I mean, when I take, you know, I come out and I say, hey, I'm an anti-vaxxer, and I know how people say, well, I'm anti-COVID vaccine, but not all the others, like you, right? I go, no, no, I'm anti-all of them. And I get kind of these wild looks. They go, but are you really? You're one of those weird anti-vaxxer people? And I go, yeah. I mean, I am weird, uh, but I'm not anti-vaxxer because I'm weird. I'm anti-vaxxer because I've looked across dozens of studies. More likely, I've looked across all of the data from the past. I've looked across all of the different evidence from historicity to scientific metrics to safety to the heavy metal content to risk of disease and death. I I've done all of the digging. And at the end of the day, I'm not saying that it's evil to vaccinate your kids. I'm not, I'm not overtly incredibly passionate saying you can't do that, like I would be for something like transgenderism or the COVID vaccine. But in my own, my own home, I don't think it's wise. I think it's unwise to do. I think it's dangerous. And I think it's rather pointless. And so that's but in order to reach that, you you have to be informed. You have to be educated. You can't be moving with the whims of the culture and the claim of the medical establishment whenever the wind blows. You can't be. COVID should have taught everybody that. You need to be your own doctor. Right? Not in the sense that you can never go to the hospital, not in the sense that you can't see a doctor when you have an issue, but in the sense that you study, you read, you learn. You're aware of what you're talking about. The only thing that separates you and a doctor is they attended school that gave them information that by the time that they're your doctor is 10 years old. And you'll have access to new information. And in a lot of cases, the doctors don't care to do the new research. So you're actually probably better off. You're probably like legitimately, you probably will know more about the modern studies on whatever topic you're talking about. If you study them, then your doctor will. Which is how it works. And so study. Be aware. Don't be manipulated by the whims of the medical establishment, especially. And also, every single person involved with the transgender stuff, under the jail. Right? That's that's the standard. Done. Done with those people.

Trust The Science And Do Research

SPEAKER_18 23:12

With that being said, we get back from the break. Harris County is set to name a new chief of the flood control district weeks after the most recent resignation. We'll talk about that just for a minute in the next segment before we uh jump over to the GOP top priorities for the OP legislative session. As always, if you would like to text into the show, the number is 713-779-5978. That is 713-779-KYST. You're listening to the Lone Star Conservative. I'm your host, Michael Wilson, and Lord willing, I'll be right back at the top of the next. No, the top of the next segment. I mean, that's duh. I'll see you soon.

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Harris County Flood Control Leadership Turmoil

SPEAKER_18 28:03

You're listening to the Lone Star Conservative. I'm your host, Michael Wilson, and it's good to be with you this Friday morning. So I want to talk about a little something that sounds uh it does sound a little bureaucratic, and maybe maybe it is a little. But it's also it's also one of the most uh potentially important local stories that is going on in Harris County. I mean, this entire week. And I'm sure Charles Blaine is actually gonna mention it at the top of the hour. I just wanted to go over it in advance, which is of course the resignation of Tina Peterson from the flood control district, and now the subsequent appointment of Marcus Stuckett planning to take over. Now again, flood control uh is is not here in this part of the state, here in this part of the country, is not an abstract policy debate. It's very real for us here in Houston. Right? This is not a nice little county department that exists where the bureaucrats can have another acronym on a business card. Uh this is Harris County, right? We understand this this we live in Southeast Texas, right along the Gulf Coast. And we live in a region where a little extra rain is shutting down roads and flooding people's houses and destroying people's neighborhoods, right? And even sometimes costing people's lives. So that that's where we live. And so this is a very important job, a very important position, a very important agency. And so when the flood control district for Harris County is is kind of undergoing a chaotic transition, very important to see, very important to look at and keep an eye on, right? Uh when the leadership is being pushed out, switched around, there's something that we should know about. Uh, when hundreds of millions of federal dollars are at risk because projects got delayed, we should know about that and be paying attention, right? And that's the story of of kind of what happened. Uh Tina Peterson Tina Tina Peter Tina Peterson, who was the executive director at the Harris County Flood Control District, resigned a little over a week ago. Uh that was June 11th, so what, that's that's a week one day last last Thursday, after county commissioners had discussed her job performance in a closed door session. So they talked with her behind closed doors and then she resigned. The issue hanging over all this was, of course, how the county handled the federal Hurricane Harvey recovery and mitigation money, with strict deadlines attached to those dollars. Now we know that Harris County's been trying to protect something like $322 million in Harvey aid while managing more than $800 million in other federal flood-related projects. And again, some of those projects are at risk right now because they're not meeting spending deadlines in time. And so remember, I mean, uh Hurricane Harvey was what, almost a decade ago, 2017? So yeah, yeah, it was almost a decade ago. Right? Harris County has had almost a decade to cover these projects. We got the federal dollars pretty quickly. And now, despite all of that, uh nine years later, we're still dealing with delayed projects and federal deadlines and grant compliance issues and leadership turnover nearly a decade later. If that's not one of those situations where you look and say, this is this is like just total incompetence, I don't know what to tell you. Uh the county's plan now is is basically this this rescue maneuver. Uh, they want to move some projects that are unlikely to meet the earlier disaster recovery deadline into a mitigation funding category with a later deadline, and then using the earlier money on projects that can move fast. In plain English, they're trying to shuffle the money around so they don't lose it. That that's that's what they're doing. Uh and now maybe that plan works, right? I hope it does. That'd be good for the people of Harris County. I think nobody should be rooting for us to lose the money. Uh, but let's be honest, because this is a last minute scramble. It is not some super identified, well done, organized, you know, group effort. Right? This is the same local government that is consistently lecturing us about compassion and equity and the the climate and all these things. But then they are supposed to be delivering basic flood control infrastructure with free money to do it. It's not free money to us, right? We understand this is still tax dollars, but I'm saying to the county in terms of spending, free money given to them, and they just fall apart. And at some point, I think it's fair that the adults in the room, not including Leonidalgo, have to ask, what are we paying for? Because the people of Harris County approved the 2018 flood bond after Harvey. We were told that help was coming, the federal government sent money, the county had all these great grand plans, consultants got paid, they held all their meetings, they put out all their press releases for what they were gonna do. And now, again, nine years later, we're being told that key projects not only are not completely finished, but are so behind deadline that the federal money we were given years and years and years ago could be at risk. Because, oh, well, the deadlines are coming too fast. No, they're not coming too fast. I promise you, this is like the slowest moving train of all time. The deadlines are not sneaking up on you, right? Calendars exist. Okay, you can you can see the calendar on your fridge or on your phone or on your computer, and you go to commissioner's court every week, and you go, so you go four times a month, so you go 48 times, you go 50 times, you go 50 times a year to commissioner's court, and you had nine years, so you've gone, if you were elected that whole time, you'd you'd have gone what four hundred and fifty times? That's not sneaking up. At some point in the last 450 meetings, you might have thought, hmm, should we talk about the flood thing? You think that's maybe important so we don't lose federal dollars? And this is what I'm saying. Like, I have deadlines for my job. Contractors have deadlines for their jobs, small business owners have deadlines they have to meet. Parents have deadlines for their children. If you forget to pay a bill, if you forget to pay your taxes, the government does not say, Well, we understand that your process was complex and stakeholder-driven, and therefore everything's fine. Uh no, you get penalized. That's what happens. Uh but when the government does it, when when especially the local government does it, involving, again, hundreds of millions of dollars, suddenly, well, it's complicated and we just don't understand. It's everyone's fault, and at the same time, it's no one's fault, and we'll figure it out. And look, I'm not saying that Tina Peterson is like the sole villain of the whole story. In fact, I actually think she's quite literally a scapegoat. Right? I think that it's a I I think she was not the only reason. And I'm not saying that she wasn't part of the reason at all, but I think it's easy to write everything off on her only and say, well, we'll replace her and it's gonna be fine. I don't think that's the case. I think that's a deeper problem. The system is tangled and slow and and bureaucratic. It's broken. And now they're gonna put this guy, his name's Marcus Stuckett. This is the guy they're gonna put in charge. Uh they're expected to name him executive director in uh less than a week, next Thursday's meeting, two weeks after she resigned. He's a longtime flood control district figure. He worked for the district back in 2015, and most recently he served as the director of engineering. He's also a former H uh Harris County Flood Control District engineer. He's emerged to lead. And so that report described the agency as facing, again, chronic delays. And so what do we make of Suggett? Right on paper, stabilizing pick, right? Not some random political operative. He's not, at least as far as we know, some activists being put in. Uh he has the engineering experience. He knows the district, he knows the projects. So maybe it'll be good. Uh, but the warning I would give is that the real issue here is not just who's in charge of the district in terms of flood control. Harris County needs delivery at and cooperation with government agencies and to get off their butt uh and to get off their butts and actually do their jobs. That that's that's what Harris County needs. And that means commissioners, county judge, the districts, the agencies, all of these things have to work in tandem if we want to see any success. And making one lady who maybe maybe was problematic, but not the sole problematic person, making her resign and scapegoating it off. And in fact, Don Buckingham literally talked about this. She said, Hey, we don't need scapegoats here. We need solutions, right? I uh I'm good if you got to fire somebody and whatever, but at the end of the day, I don't want to play this game where we're just shuffling the blame around so that no one gets in trouble as you lose $800 million. That's not great. That's kind of my position. With that being said, when we get back from the break, we're gonna jump over. I actually don't want to talk about the priorities of the GOP because the next segment's gonna be very short, but since we had the weather report right after that. And so instead, uh we're going to talk about the conservative Conroe ISD trustees and their relationship, or should I say, lack of a relationship with TASB and what they're doing right now. We'll talk about it when we get back from the break. As always, if you would like to text into the show, the number is 713-779-5978. That is 713-779-KYST. I'm your host, Michael Wilson. You're listening to the Lone Star Conservative, and Lord will I be right back after the break with this conservative trustee declining of left-wing influence. Stick around.

SPEAKER_00 37:18

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Conroe ISD Rejects TASB Influence

SPEAKER_18 41:27

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I'm your host, Michael Wilson, and you are listening to the Lone Star Conservative. So we don't have a lot of time. Actually, we have a very short amount of time. I want to get into this. Conservatives on the Conroe Independent School District's Board of Trustees declined to seek a seat on TASB's governing body, citing disagreements with the organization's left-leaning policy positions. And so the group is governed, TASB, by a by member-selected officers and directors. The 40 directors are school board trustees chosen to represent each of the state's educational service center regions. So Connor ISD trustees considered selecting somebody to represent Region 6. Trustee Melissa Semler asked the board to nominate her for the position. Semler argued that filling the seat would give the district an important voice to ensure our community's values are represented in conversations that influence public education across the state. That motion failed. She voted for herself and got one other lady to support her, and then that was it. Trustee Nicole May said that Conroe ISD citizens elected local board members to govern the district and argued that joining the TASB board would not advance local control, accountability, or fiscal responsibility. She noted that TASB has accumulated tremendous influence over district policy, governance, training, risk management, and day-to-day operations, and that trustees too often adopt TASB recommendations uncritically. She said, I do not believe the solution is to become more integrated into that system. Quote, I was elected on a promise of transparency, accountability, and local control. Conroy ISD is fully capable of evaluating policies on their merits, seeking compare competitive services in the marketplace, and making decisions that reflect the priorities of our community. And for anyone concerned about having a voice in the legislature, the solution is simple. Get in your car, go to Austin and participate in the process. That's a right we should not give to a statewide organization. I love whoever that is. I I have I have never met, I have, I have never ever met Nicole May, the trust one of the trustees in Connor IST. Uh, but legend. That's all I can really say. Well done. That that would exactly be the argument I would have. That's the that's the best argument you can make. That, okay, yes, we want influence in statewide organizations, potentially. Why do we want influence in that one? Well, because they're helping make decisions. But shouldn't we be trying to end that process? And you can't end it from inside their organization because you're just going to get influenced by them. We don't need to integrate with them. We need to be standing against that sort of influence and saying, no, that's not how we work. That is not how school boards operate. We're not playing your dumb game. We're separate. You can't bully us. We won't do it. That's exactly the right answer. And that perfectly sums it up. With that being said, and we get back from the break to wrap up the first hour of the show. We're going to get back talking about the weather report, what we have going on today through this weekend, now that the rain's kind of moved out, and it's just going to be I mean, I could I could summarize it and give you a spoiler alert. It's going to be hot. That's that's the that's the end result of the weather report. And then we're gonna have Charles Blade at the top of the next hour going over the weekly local recap, everything from the homestead exemption, fraud that's going on. We'll talk a little bit more about this flood control stuff, the World Cup tourism, more people kind of becoming renters, and then a couple people who are being paid and it doesn't seem like doing their job. All of that at the top of the hour, but in the next segment, we'll wrap up the first hour with the weather report. So stick around, text in 713-779-5978. That's 713-779-KYST. I'm your host, Michael Wilson. You're listening to the Lone Star Conservative, and Lord willing, I'll be right back to wrap up the first hour of the show, give you a weather report, and all so much more. So stick around. We'll talk soon.

SPEAKER_07 45:05

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Houston Heat Dome Weekend Forecast

SPEAKER_18 49:01

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I'm your host, Michael Wilson, and you're listening to the Lone Star Conservative. So our first really prolonged stretch of really high heat is arriving just as the weekend's getting here. Another round of triple-digit heat index values is expected today as deep Gulf moisture combined with lingering moisture from this week's former heavy rainfall to make the atmosphere atmosphere feel a lot more like late July than mid-June. Few thunderstorms could provide this brief sort of localized relief by the late afternoon or evening. But most of our area is going to spend another day under this heat dome, which is particularly important for those attending, you know, any sort of events all around the city, whatever's going on. If you if you're celebrating Juneteenth, right? If you're if you're going to them Juneteenth celebrations, you might want to know. I'm not being sarcastic at all. If you want to go to that, more power too, I suppose. I heard a joke by I I'll get right back to the weather report. I heard a funny joke. He said, you know, and by the way, it's it's historically inaccurate that all the slaves that that was the last, that Gallison was the last place the slaves were afraid. That's just not true. Just so everyone knows, there were still slaves. It was it was not as commonly known. Gallowson was the last big point, uh, but there were still slaves elsewhere. But even if it were true, you know, Gallison's like the birthplace of Juneteenth, as if that's good and a celebratory thing. You guys are like the last holdout of slavery. You realize that that's that's the point of Juneteenth. You guys were really still fighting back and saying, no, I don't care that everyone else has ended it. We won't. That's that's not, I don't know, is that something that you want tied to your city? But nevertheless, today's forecast calls for temperatures in the mid-90s. Humidity is gonna push it up to 108, 112 feels like temperatures. Most of the day should remain rain-free. But again, we get a few random thunderstorms isolated and sort of sporadic. Um and then over the weekend, we're gonna have again temperatures in the nineties, it's gonna be very similar to today, heating's values up to 105, up to 110. And so you should be aware of all of that. And as intense as this week's heat might seem, our hottest weather usually arrives later. So average high temperatures peak near ninety-five degrees uh in July and August. And so if triple-digit temperatures are kicking us off here in June, um then we're gonna have in other words, this week's heat is arriving ahead of our warmest peak. And so while we might have a few sporadic storms that offer some sort of relief in the upcoming days, the period that usually produces our most persistent intense heat is still weeks away. But hey, we're in mid-June now. We're getting into the summer months, and so you expect it to be warm, you expect it to be hot, and for most of us, this is I I know that, you know, transplants will often complain, and I'm not saying it's not hot, but for most of us, this is this is every year, and so we're kind of rather used to it. With that being said, we get back from the break at the top of the next hour. We're going to have Charles Blaine from Urban Reform as we do every Friday to go over the weekly local recap that you will not want to miss. Stick around, text in 713-779-5978. I'm your host, Michael Wilson. You're listening to the Lone Star Conservative, and Lord willing to be right back with Charles Blaine at the top of the next hour.

SPEAKER_10 52:15

From deep in the heart of Texas, Coach Houston's God-loving patriot, the voice of reason. This is Ostar Conservative, Michael Wilson.

Charles Blaine Joins For Local Recap

SPEAKER_18 52:42

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I'm your host, Michael Wilson, and you're listening to the Lone Star Conservative here on Patriot Talk 920. Joining me this segment as we do Fridays at the top of the second hour of the show here at 7 o'clock. We have Charles Blaine from Urban Reform coming on for our weekly local recap. Welcome to the show, Charles. Thanks for having me. Good morning. Good morning. I found out today that that Charles is 36 years old. Um and I just wanted to kick off the segment saying unbelievable. Uh, not in a maturity perspective. You you certainly can act like you act like you're 36, so we're not going to insult your maturity at all. But I could not, I thought, I thought late 20s. So I'll take that as a compliment.

SPEAKER_20 53:20

Well, I will take that. I will take that very happily and use that to start my weekend. So thank you very much.

SPEAKER_18 53:25

I'm I'm giving you a good weekend starter with some compliments. Um so uh let's let's kick it off. Another compliment. I think a lot of this kind of came out because of research you did, and it's kind of making the rounds, and I actually haven't talked about it at all, so I'm excited to get into it here on my show with you. Um this is actually the thing I'm most excited to talk about because it's you know kind of some research you've put into this and kind of driven and it's not been covered. So I'm excited to talk about it. Can you walk us through this?

Homestead Exemption Fraud In Harris County

SPEAKER_18 53:51

I think it's fair to call it homestead exemption fraud. What's what's going on here?

SPEAKER_20 53:55

Yeah, so there's this this this why and I've been using the word alleged because people haven't really been found guilty, but when you look at the numbers and you look at this the records that are actually available on the Harris County appraisal district's website and other appraisal districts, you'll see that it is, I mean, pretty much widespread fraud. And so what it is is that there's um a number of ways that people are gaming the homestead exemption system in Texas. And so for those who know or don't know, the homestead exemption is meant to serve your primary residence if you are a homeowner and you're um it shields the first $140,000 in value so that you don't have to kind of pay tax on that and then $200,000 procedures, and then everything beyond that is what you pay for. And so this, what we're seeing is it's there's two areas in which we're seeing it, but there's others that are happening as well. So two of the areas are in the homestead exemption system, you only just have one. You you can only have one homestead technically, but there's a lot of folks who have multiple homestead exemptions because they're not being checked against other counties or out of state or even within county, because there were some we found that had two homestead exemptions in Harris County. And then, secondly, there's a lot of LLCs that have homestead exemptions, and a business technically cannot be a resident or homeowner, and well, it can own the home, but the they cannot be the resident. And so technically, if you have an LLC that owns your home 100%, you cannot have a homestead exemption. Yet there are hundreds of those as well. And so I pulled a small set of Harris County uh properties, and it was about 20,000. I think it was 1.8 million um in the entire system, but 20,000. And in that you have a number about 600, 700 that are improperly or look like they're improperly um claiming homestead exemptions. And I mentioned a couple of them to HCAT and they looked and they agreed that there was like one called Doors Holdings, which had 19 homestead exemptions. Either way, you're an if you're an LLC, you're ineligible, or if you have you're if you have more than one, you're ineligible. So they're wrong on both fronts. And so it's uh it's a widespread issue going on.

SPEAKER_18 55:47

And you're telling me, just so I understand what you're saying clearly, and I don't want to misquote you, so I want to make sure we get this clear. You're saying you only looked about 20,000 and we had six or seven hundred potential fraud cases, and that's out of something like 1.8 million.

SPEAKER_20 56:00

That's yeah, that's out of the 1.8 million total parcels, if you will, that um that HCAT oversees and kind of appraises every year. And the 20,000 we looked at, isn't we didn't even really kind of I mean I should say we, it's like media like AI, but we it didn't go through all the 20,000. What it did was it started kind of pulling the ones that could likely be it. So obviously all the ones that had an LLC as a registered aim just got pulled immediately to check against. And some of those weren't actually ineligible, some of them were family trusts or different weird little mechanisms in which you can still technically have an LLC and have a homestead exemption, but a lot of them were not that case. A lot of them were just straight up LLCs, house flippers, these like i buyers who come in and buy a bunch of homes for cheap and then flip them. And what it seems like, I this is just me kind of going on a limb to kind of paint a picture, is it seems like a lot of these i buyers are buying them to flip and they only need to maintain a homestead exemption for like a year or two, maybe to make a profit so that they can kind of rebuild the home or whatever they're gonna do to it and then sell it. And so that's what it seems to be the case, is that they're getting it and then they're holding this exemption for a year or two before they offload the home. And so even if it's a short period of time, you know, if a renter or had a homestead exemption for six months, people would be like that's inappropriate. So why is it that LLCs have it? And so it's uh it seems to be a big issue and it's in every county, it's not just Houston and Harris County, it seems to be going on everywhere.

SPEAKER_18 57:15

Yeah, and I'm a little bit frustrated because again, I I think in a lot of cases you see this sort of fraud, and I I've said this so many times, corruption is not usually the villain in a kid's movie. I know that or or like an Oceans 11 film where it's like this grand scheme. In most cases, it's just straightforward fraud that you might not even pay attention to. Oh, they're just getting a homestead exemption they shouldn't be. But that's so much money uh that's being really it's being stolen from every other taxpayer that's bearing the burden. Uh because if we had the same spending and they weren't getting that exemption, we would be paying less.

SPEAKER_20 57:46

And so exactly. Exactly. Yeah, and there's that's the point I want to make because I think it could be conveyed that, like, oh, you want people to pay more in tax relations. No, I don't want people to pay more in taxes. I want everybody to pay the taxes that we're supposed to be paying, and for the exemption, if you treat like I don't even think exemptions are the way to go to give property tax relief, but if that's the way we're gonna go, let's make sure that people aren't stealing them and then making everybody else pay more. That's like that's ridiculous.

SPEAKER_18 58:09

Right. And I think that drives back into the main issue of a lot of a lot of what goes on in our system is that people are disenfranchised because there's so much fraud. Again, you looked at, I mean, that's that's what? Less than one that's one percent basically.

SPEAKER_20 58:22

In in one Texas County, you know, and and also that's let's say one Texas County, and again, if there's just two avenues, there's other things where there's a lot of people who pass away and they have a homestead exemption and their children either move in or um or just kind of take over the home, but then never remove the exemption that run off for years. There's like a lot of different ways in which the homestead exemption can be um gamed, and these are just two avenues in that. So when you look at the whole scheme of things, it's I it's incalculable what the the amount of fraud that could be happening is.

SPEAKER_18 58:52

And I think that's why we need serious investigation. And again, I think it also highlights like the good of urban of urban reform. I think it gets into the good of what you're doing, what we're doing here at the station, because if we don't have this sort of investigations, you know, independent journalists doing this stuff, it doesn't appear like anybody else is going to. That's uh another actually that's actually a problem. It's actually not a good thing, but it's at least a good thing that somebody's gonna do it.

SPEAKER_20 59:15

Right. Yeah, and I mean I encourage everybody to start doing stuff like this too. We've got different tools at our disposal now, which are a lot easier to kind of investigate your local government and you don't have to go and do any sort of massive project, but do something because yeah, this is this is something very simple. Like it didn't take much effort or much work to kind of really get to the bottom of it. Certainly didn't take much cost, and yet the the count the appraisal district didn't do it, you know, elected officials who just you're curious about this issue didn't do it. The reporters who were supposed to be reporting about various things didn't do it, you know, and this is not new, it's been in existence for a long time. And so you would think that people would have taken an opportunity to actually look into this stuff before, but it doesn't seem to be the case, and so you know, the rest of the past year.

SPEAKER_18 59:52

Right, and I'm sure we're gonna stay updated on what the results of that are, more research that you do into it, and where that actually goes from a because of course the reporting is step number one, and then action is what needs to come after. So I'm sure we'll keep updated on that with you on Fridays. Uh, I want to jump over and talk a little bit about the flood control

Harvey Money Deadlines And Flood Delays

SPEAKER_18 1:00:09

district. I covered this a little bit this morning, but I want to get your take because I'm hearing some some competing details. I didn't want to say competing, but but different details that I had not heard. Um can you kind of walk us through what's going on here?

SPEAKER_20 1:00:22

Yeah, so um, you know, your listeners might remember that Tina Peterson, the former Harris Heading Flood Control Director, was uh actually she wasn't released, she resigned last week.

SPEAKER_19 1:00:32

Um, okay.

SPEAKER_18 1:00:33

She resigned right after a closed uh closed meeting where they had about performance. She was come on.

SPEAKER_20 1:00:40

Listen, they let her get to the mic if they resigned, so that's that's now what's on the record. Oh, okay. So yeah, but yes, after a closed door meeting, following a lot of complaints about um frustration surrounding her uh perceived or actual lack of ability to move forward flood control projects and actually run the department, she resigned. And so um it hasn't been a very long time, and and I think that there was a question, lingering question of what's gonna happen now, because at the point that she resigned, it was in this conversation where we had all these flood control dollars that were being um that could potentially have to be returned to the federal government and or the match wasn't gonna come. And so we were gonna lose out on a lot of flood control dollars. And so uh without without a director at the helm, that grew, that potential grew. And so now they're it seems to be moving towards appointing a person named Marcus Duckett, who um, you know, kind of I wouldn't say popped on the theme, but it certainly like popped up in the conversation more recently, um, even though the whole conversation has been recent. And uh they they're gonna appoint him seemingly next week, and it's just kind of following a series of rapid appointments after uh vacancies vacancies at the county, you know. Counselor came in, well now county attorney David was appointed uh really quickly after Christian Menifee technically resigned. And so we've been seeing a lot of stuff like that. And um Marcus Duncan, his background is in engineering, and I think that's a promising uh thing to move forward on. I've been hearing that he is uh kind of like an LS appointee, similar in the the vein that we've seen with Erica Jackson, um Erica Lee Carter, excuse me, uh is Sheila Jackson Lee's daughter, who is appointed county attorney, very I mean county uh administrator very rapidly in that position. And so we'll see if this is just yet another kind of extension of of reach into Harris County government and or if this is a better move. I don't know. I don't want to judge him too soon, but that's just what we're hearing.

SPEAKER_18 1:02:27

Right. And I I I always say, like, I would much rather be optimistic and be wrong than be pessimistic and be right. I I I don't want this to be bad, right? I I want to walk away saying, oh, good, good. The things you're hearing, wrong rumblings, still worked out. That's that's of course what we we all desire. I said that before about like John Whitmeyer. It would be easy to say, hey, John Whitmeyer's a Democrat, he's gonna fail, and that'll make us look good. I don't want that for Houston. I actually would like whoever's in charge to be doing a good thing. And so I hope this works out. His background is promising and hopefully, I mean, it really shouldn't be, as long as you're organized, it shouldn't be the way that it is. It's not like these are massive, uh difficult issues. They're massive, easy issues. And it just requires a level of organizational standards. And it's just so frustrating that we've been a lot of this is tied back, of course, to all the federal dollars for Harvey that are still just going unused and are resulting in the potential loss of hundreds of millions of dollars. Hopefully, someone with an engineering background can say, let's let's get that figured out.

SPEAKER_20 1:03:23

Yeah, I really hope so because it does not make any sense that this is where we are, and I hope commissioners stay on top of this because what we often hear or we heard in this is that like if you it goes quiet for a bit and then suddenly it's like surprise, we just found out that all this bad stuff is happening and now we have to fire someone. It's like, well, there should be some monitoring of what's going on in the interim. Why has it been 10 years since we passed the bond for these flight control projects and we're kind of just now finding out maybe last summer when it first broke, that the projects weren't moving forward as fast as they need to be. Like that's stuff that we should be monitoring it on top of more regularly.

SPEAKER_18 1:03:54

Right, absolutely.

World Cup Tourism Hype Meets Reality

SPEAKER_18 1:03:55

So I want to jump over now and talk about the World Cup because we know we talked last week about the Paxton stuff, how there's frustration over the ticket sales and all these sorts of things. Well, now there's another issue because a lot of the promise of the World Cup was an economic boom from the tourism we'd get. How big has the boom been?

SPEAKER_20 1:04:13

The boom's in a bus. From what I've hearing, it's you know, well, one, I think anecdotally, I I would assume your listeners can probably relate to this is that I've just not been seeing it around the city. You know, I don't it it's usually when the when the rodeo is here, I avoid that area at section of 610, I just don't go over from going to the rodeo. It doesn't even feel like that. I've not seen that, I've not seen that traffic. But then also talking to a lot of the restaurateurs around town, they are they're really struggling right now because they were led to believe that there are gonna be seven Super Bowls worth of kind of tourists here. And one of them that I was talking to yesterday, he said when things like that happen, when they have a Super Bowl or they go or he was calling it the Beyonce effect, like when Beyonce comes to town or something like that, they invest heavily in a lot of food, they've got all excess, they might staff up if it's gonna be a long-running thing, they might invest in kind of redesigning a menu or something like that. They might put more uh into it because they know they're gonna get the benefit of it, but they might not necessarily go out and promote themselves because they know they're gonna get spillover, but so you're kind of having these two things working against you, and now when you don't have the the people materializing, you invested all this money into what you thought was gonna be uh kind of rot spillover, and now you have no one actually coming, and you also didn't invest the money into promoting yourself, so the two people who are coming may not be making it to you. And he said a lot of them are struggling right now, and unfortunately, um it was kind of because they were uh misled by Rosie projections about seven Super Bowls hitting Houston.

SPEAKER_18 1:05:34

Yeah, I have two quick things I want to say on that. Number one, anecdotally, not only have I not been seeing the effect in terms of you know news reporting and headlines that you'd expect to see, but furthermore, just driving. I mean, just driving through Houston in general, I uh the traffic has not been noticeably worse. Um I had the there was the big fan fest and opening stuff going on, and I was going to the GOP convention, and I I thought the traffic was actually maybe better than it normally was. I mean it was it was not. Notably it was not noticeably worse for sure. Yeah, yeah. And so I think there's the thing, yeah. Yeah, there's there's concern there. Uh the other thing I think this ties back into that I just want to highlight very quickly is the reality that this is the issue with projections in general. And when our government is run on projections rather than actual cash flow, it it this is the result. When they say, hey, pass this bond and we're gonna have these growth projections, how many times do we have to hear, oh, so we didn't actually meet those growth projections? Actually, we had a drop in enrollment and now less people are having to pick up the slack to cover the cost of what you guys approved based on our I mean, it wasn't intentional lying, as far as I'm aware. But again, why are we running the the fourth largest city in the country on projections that over and over and over again are just not correct? Can we get some like day traders in here to do projections and stuff? What are we what are we doing?

SPEAKER_20 1:06:51

Exactly. I couldn't agree more. And this is the same thing I've been saying for a while when it comes to Georgia R-round redevelopment. You know, we keep hearing these Rosie projections, the economic benefit it's gonna bring. We just kind of start being a little more serious and sober-minded when it comes to talking about this stuff because the elected officials and appointed officials are not going to be. So we just have to kind of take everything they say with a grain of salt, as we always should anyway.

SPEAKER_18 1:07:09

Yeah, to wrap up, I have one more quick thing I want to talk about here, and that is uh more people are becoming renters in Harris

Homeownership Declines And More Renting

SPEAKER_18 1:07:16

County. Can you kind of walk us through that data?

SPEAKER_20 1:07:19

Yeah, so Kinder uh Kinder Institute had a story that came out, or not story of a research that came out that pointed to the fact that um their 2026 housing report found that 19,000 fewer Harris County households lived in owner-occupied homes with um 30 with nearly 30,000 more people renting than in 2024. That's a matter of 52 years, and the county's owner occupancy fell from 55% to 52%, I believe a larger for 2015 to 2014. And so it's now, I mean probably combination things from property taxes to general cost of living, to the flooding issues that you deal here with your Houston, and all the other things that we might be dealing with if people are kind of opting for to rent uh opting for renting more than um, and also I think it's because of the um aging population, you probably have a lot of older folks moving in and uh not as many younger families funding. I mean, you're just not seeing the the kind of population growth as we used to. So it doesn't pretend well for Harris County moving forward. Um, hopefully we start to see a shift because we know that uh trends always say that renters don't necessarily vote in uh the best way or vote frequently enough either. So uh let's hope that does it end up uh indicating where Howard County's political uh politics is going to continue to go.

SPEAKER_18 1:08:32

Not only that, but I've said a long time that the average age of a homeowner is consistently going up. I think the average age is now 40 years old. I said there's so many major concerns about when young people don't own a home. For better or for worse, they often don't have the same sort of stake in the nation as a home, uh which is, I think, part of the reason why politics are like you're mentioning, because they don't feel the same sense of ownership and stake in the nation and and its results. Uh, but that's dangerous. That's not good. Our priority should be hey, we actually want young people to get married, have kids, have families, and have a home that's theirs, that they can put marks on the walls their kids are growing older. And renting is not suitable for that. And I'm not saying that renting isn't a good option for some people, but I think there's a real concern when renting is going up, homeownership is going down, people are committing homestead fraud, big companies are buying up single-family housing, and people are becoming more disenfranchised with the system. I don't think that that bodes well for anything.

SPEAKER_20 1:09:26

I I agree, could agree more. And I think that the thing is, you know, we see the legislature always talking about property tax relief and reform. And like I mentioned before, the homestead exemption is 140,000 for every for anybody and then 200,000 for seniors. We need to see more encouraging of the younger generation to purchase homes. Like we need, I'm not gonna say we necessarily need a homestead exemption for younger people, but if we're gonna be doing that anyway, then we should probably be looking at homestead exemption for younger people to begin family formation or to have them move closer to elderly parents who might otherwise be put on the safe system because they can't, you know, take care of themselves or different things like that, um, rather than trying to just keep people in their homes as they as they age and and get older. And so maybe technical look at it, but uh we'll see.

SPEAKER_18 1:10:08

Absolutely. That being said, Charles, how can everyone find all the reporting you're not doing when you're or all the reporting you are doing when you're not reporting it here on the show? How can they find all that?

SPEAKER_19 1:10:18

Oh, don't laugh at me. I fixed it. You don't need to laugh at me. I already fixed it. We can ignore that I misspoke a little typo in my language. Wasn't even gonna bring it up. You know, just gonna let that.

SPEAKER_20 1:10:33

Check out Charles, um uh Charles Blade on social media, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. You can find me or Urban Reform.org anywhere on social media.

SPEAKER_18 1:10:41

Perfect. Well, as always, Charles, we appreciate you giving us your time this morning, coming on, being a part of the show, and for all the reporting you're doing and will continue to do. And Lord willing, we'll talk to you again next Friday.

SPEAKER_20 1:10:50

We're looking forward to it. Thanks for having me. Talk to you next week.

SPEAKER_18 1:10:52

Of course. That being said, when we get back from the break, we're gonna come back and talk about the GOP announcing their legislative priorities for 2027. You won't want to miss it. Text in 713-779-5978. That's 713-779-KYST. I'm your host, Michael Wilson. You're listening to the Lone Star Conservative, and Lord willing to be right back after the break. So hang tight.

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Here's Jim Dotton, host of Texas Home Improvement and owner of Dew West Foundation Repair.

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Texas GOP Sets 2027 Legislative Priorities

SPEAKER_18 1:15:34

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I'm your host, Michael Wilson. You're listening to the Lumpstar Conservative. Usually I come back before the voice comes in our songs, but I I I got it, I was listening, I was kind of vibing out to that song, and I let it go along a little too long. But I want to get into this next story because the GOP has announced their priorities, signaling where grassroots activists want lawmakers to focus efforts. They announced just yesterday the eight legislative priorities chosen by delegates. According to a letter sent to state Republican Executive Committee members by the new chair, Duranda Randall, who we've had on the show, by the way. If you missed that because it was during an afternoon segment, that podcast is up. I think it's GOP Convention Day Two, is the name of that podcast episode. If you just search for the Lone Star Conservative on Apple or Spotify, and you can find that interview. It's at the end of that two-hour show. So you can find that on Spotify or Apple if you want to go back and listen. But she's the new chair of the Republican Party here in Texas. And so they still have to get formal review by the Legislative Priorities Committee, but these are the issues that rose to the top of delegate voting. One, secure Texas elections, two, don't sharia our Texas, three, completely eliminate all property tax. Four, ban taxpayer funded lobbying, five, secure Texas grid, water, energy, agriculture, and property sovereignty. Six, border enforcement, seven, protect Texas kids, and eight, protect life. Of course, each of these has substantial subsections, which you don't have time to get into because I wanted to address each one just as a full topic. But for example, securing Texas elections includes strict voter registration and eligibility requirements like proof of citizenship, uh, for voter registration, rejection of commercial or mailhouse addresses, residential locations, protecting the party from Democrat interference, meaning closed primaries. They want clarifying that courts and government agencies cannot enforce foreign law, blocking any backdoor attempts to import Sharia or other foreign code into family law, contracts, or civil disputes, uh property taxes, not just trim rates or reform the system. Delegates want a plan that includes tight limits on spending, growth, and constitutional protections, a full ban on cities, counties, court districts, all these things from hiring lobbyists with public money, uh protect taxability to feed itself, power itself, control its own land, grid reliability, all that sort of stuff, border enforcement backmeasures to block illegal crossings, expand state enforcement against cartels and even smugglers, uh further and shielding children from cultural and medical harms, uh strengthening bans on child gender mutilation, stripping explicit or sexualized material out of schools, stopping ideologically driven curricula. Predict life is defending pre-born Textans from conception, enforcing the pro-life laws already on the books, stricter penalties and better enforcement against illegal abortions, abortion and do abortion-inducing drugs, and trafficking women across state lines. And so again, Randall wrote that the full legislative priorities report will be released after review, but emphasize that unity drives victory. And I want to go into these particular things, right? The eight priorities are worth walking through because I think they tell us exactly where we think that we're the most vulnerable, and I want to address each one. The first one is secure Texas elections. And this is the foundation, right? If our elections are not secure, nothing else is relevant. You can have the best platform in the world, but if the process doesn't work, if the rolls are dirty, if people can just cross over and manipulate a primary, right, then voters are losing control of our own government and we're not a representative government at all. And so the big question is, are we actually going to close the primary? I think that's the biggest part right now, actually, of securing our elections. I think that's a bigger deal actually than the illegal voting. I think that's a much smaller I I think we should focus on that, right? You can you can walk and chew gum at the same time, as a lot of people like to say, as I like to say, which essentially means you can do both. We should be saying, hey, no illegal should be voting, no of these weird, weird P.O. boxes, right, and all of that, keep our voter rolls clean, while also saying our main priority is closing the primaries. Right? We have this bizarre system where you don't register by party. Uh you can show up and choose which primary you want to vote in, right? But that leads to the problem of people who do not share Republican values influencing who the Republican nominee is. The Republican primary should be for Republicans. That's basic political self-government, that's basic freedom of association, right? If Democrats want to choose Democrat nominees, they can do that, they should do that, and Republicans should choose Republican nominees. Um, but election security is of course bigger than primaries, it does mean all those other things as well. Second priority is don't sharia or Texas. Um, and this one needs to be handled very seriously, because the easy response will be, well, there's no Sharia court running Texas, so there's just fear-mongering, but I don't think that's actually the real issue, and it's certainly not the one we should be trying to address. The real issue is whether we're gonna stay governed by American constitutional law, rooted in our own legal tradition, or rather whether these foreign legal versions, these religious systems are gonna be allowed to creep into our law. Right? And so we should be honest about the big issue, right? You can't preserve a Christian-influenced Western legal order if you're importing millions of people who don't share the assumptions that made that order possible. You just you can't do that, right? Law follows culture, that's inevitable. Government follows the people, especially in a representative form of government. That's just how it works. If the population if the population changes enough, then the politics of that population are also going to change. And so if the politics change enough, then the law is going to change. And so the point's not really do we have Sharia law today, because the answer is of course we don't. The the question is, are we building the conditions where it becomes politically demanded tomorrow? And and that's a bigger question, one that I'm, again, not seeing the party addressing as I want them to. Or any other code for that matter. And so it's very important that we address that wholesale. Uh the third priority, eliminating property tax. And again, I understand this, right? Property tax is one of the most offensive taxes because it's it it means in in logical terms that you never really own your home. You can pay off the mortgage, live responsibly, raise your kids, build a life, and then the government still shows up every year and says, hey, you have to basically rent property from us that you supposedly own. But the practical question that you have to answer with anything is, how are you going to do that? Because in Texas, property taxes are local taxes. They fund the schools, the cities, the counties, the emergency services, the debt, the special districts, right? So if someone says eliminate all property tax, the next question that has to be, what spending gets eliminated? What debt is getting paid off? What services are getting restructured? What revenue is going to replace those taxes? Uh, what is preventing them from creating that same burden under a different name? And so the answer can't be swap it all into sales tax, because then you have the same amount of pain. Actually, I would argue potentially worse pain. I know I've heard the argument, well, I can limit my consumption. Yeah, but for everybody under the age of forty, because that's now the average age of a homeowner, for everyone under the age of forty that is already arguably struggling just as much, if not more, you're now shifting that burden primarily onto that group of people and yourself. And you're setting up a system where we haven't fixed the underlying problem. Because the underlying problem is not the type of tax, it's the amount we're being charged unfairly. That's the issue. And so the better conservative answer starts with spending restraint, right? Cap the spending growth. Stop using growth as this automatic ATM you can just pull money from whenever you want, crush this bloated local spending, stop the bond abuses, right? Rein in all the bureaucracy and and justify every dollar you spend before you collect a single more dollar. That needs to be the answer, right? Property tax elimination is kind of a a worthy end goal, but you can't just shell game it and say, hey, we're gonna do, we're gonna just have the same spending and it's all gonna be under sales tax. That's I I promise you, in ten years, if you do that, no one's gonna feel any better. And it's just gonna present resentment and bitterness, and it's just it's not gonna work the way that people want it to in the in practice, the way that it would in theory. Uh the fourth priority is banning taxpayer funded lobbying. This one I should not even be controversial, right? It is absolutely insane that we're forced to fund the cities, the counties, the school districts, and then other entities that then turn around and hire lobbyists to go and charge us more. To then charge us. It's like a uh the most vicious cycle imaginable. You pay your taxes, your local government takes your money, then they hire someone to lobby the legislature against tax reform, election integrity, and parental rights. That's taxpayer funded opposition against you. That's you paying to defeat yourself. It it's it's absolutely evil, right? The fifth priority is securing the Texas grid. Uh, this is a big one. I think we need a lot more details on it because this can become a vague sort of catch all, or it can be a very serious sovereignty agenda. Both, both are options, and of course it would be good in one and just worthless in the other. If it means actually protecting reliable energy, right, stopping the war on this sort of dispatchable style power and making sure that we have enough gas, coal, nuclear, dependable generation, handle demand, right? If it means asking our questions about these data centers, good. If it means protecting the farmers and the groundwater and private property rights from other developers or any foreign interest, not just China and Iran, but any foreign interests, that's good. Uh, if it means banning or severely restricting, again, hostile foreign ownership, great. But who benefits? Who's gonna pay for it? Are we protecting ordinary Texans or are we just creating another structure uh that people who are connected politically are able to just do whatever they want and then small landowners are gonna get crushed by it, right? Texas should be able to feed itself, fuel itself, power itself, and defend our own land. That's if you can't do that, then you're not actually a sovereign state at all. So that's good. Uh border enforcement, obvious, still urgent, but obvious, right? The lesson of the last several years, I think, that a lot of us took away or should have taken away is that we can't just assume the federal government's gonna do its job, right? If Washington refuses to defend the border, we have to be prepared to do it ourselves. We have to be, which means physical barriers, state enforcement, our own specific targeting of cartels and smugglers, stash houses and trafficking networks. It means making sure there aren't any sanctuary policies in our state, um, any of this sort of stuff. That's very important, right? We we need to create you you can't build a border policy that only works when the right president is in office. That's not functional. You need a system that that could survive the next hostile, you know, federal administration. Because eventually Washington's gonna go off the rails and we can't be caught just holding the bag. We have to be prepared for that. The seventh is protecting Texas kids, uh, which means education, justice, indoctrination. It means no sexually explicit material in school libraries, no gender ideology in our classrooms, uh, no secret social transitioning behind parents' backs. It means no gender mutilation, no activist curriculum, all those sorts of things. It also means protecting kids from abuse and predators and institutional cover-ups. Uh it should be very clear, our position on this. Children belong to their parents, not the state. Schools exist to educate, not to force their own ideological worldview on your kids. And libraries exist to serve children, not to sexualize those children. Medical institutions exist to help and heal children, not experiment on them. And finally, the last one, protect life, which again cannot just mean putting pro-life in your your mailing campaign, right? It can't just be like, oh, campaign brochure says pro-life, we're good. Right. If we believe that unchild unborn children are the human beings made in the image of God, which we do, then the law needs to reflect that. That means real enforcement. It means that abortion-inducing drugs can't be just random drug contraband, right? It's it's actively murder contraband. It means that illegal abortion networks, we can't let them just go on. And so, and equal protection, right? If the unborn child is a person, then the law must protect that child as a person, right? Not as some fundraising slogan, as a real human being with a very real right to life. Right? That's essential. That means we can have the argument all you want. Well, what about women? If you're committing a murder, you face those charges. It should be that simple. We do that with any other type of murder. We should do it with with the unborn as well. And that's the larger point. All these eight priorities, I think, show that the grassroots are not asking for mild management. They're they're not asking for a better press system. We're asking for Texas that's actually governed like we're conservative, because we are, and we should be treated that way. Uh, another I'll add another priority to that list, making sure that we're actually still the Wild West and we're still the free estate, which requires becoming a member of our sponsor, Gun Owners of America. Gunners of America understands that whatever the legislative priorities are, their legislative priority is defending your Second Amendment rights. Uh that means right now campaigning, but it certainly is going to mean lobbying. Not taxpayer funded lobbying, your choice to fund them, by the way, by being a member. That means lobbying for bills that will continue to bring back your rights that have been stripped from you. It also means making sure your rights are not stripped further through the law, and if they are being Willing to sue and go after the establishment that is trying to take those rights away. If you want to become a member, you can go to G-O-Ahouston.com. That is G-O-A-Huston.com. It is a $25 annual membership, $25 per year, which goes right back to the continued defense and support of your God-given, constitutionally enshrined Second Amendment rights. That is GOAHuston.com. With that being said, when we get back from the break, we're going to talk a little bit more about border security, specifically because South Texas Customs and Border Protection agents have now seized almost a million dollars, 984,000 to be exact, in cocaine. These were two seizures that resulted in the capture of nearly 74 pounds of cocaine. We'll talk about it when we get back from the break. As always, if you would like to text into the show, the number is 713-779-5978. That is 713-779-KYST. I'm your host, Michael Wilson. You're listening to the Lone Star Conservative. And Lord willing, I'll be right back after this break for the rest of that story. So hang tight. We'll talk about it soon.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:09

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SPEAKER_06 1:31:06

Here's Jim Dotton, host of Texas Home Improvement and owner of Dew West Foundation Repair.

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SPEAKER_08 1:32:37

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Nearly A Million Dollars In Cocaine

SPEAKER_18 1:33:28

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers seized 73.72 pounds of cocaine in two incidents at the southern border, where drugs, of course, continue to flow through. The seized narcotics were valued at $984,000. The first seizure was at the Columbia Solidarity Bridge in Laredo, where they deployed drug dogs around the vehicle and then deferred it to non-intrusive search systems capable of detecting concealed masses using technologies like X-rays, which resulted in agents uncovering about 50.75 pounds of cocaine. The second seizure was at the Camino Real Bridge in Eagle Pass when CBP agents deferred a 53-year-old Mexican man to secondary inspection. The recently deployed non-intrusive search systems were uncovered several packages of cocaine weighing 22.97 pounds. Homeland Security agents arrested both drivers and seized the narcotics. The Department of Homeland Security is currently investigating both seizures. UN Director of Field Operations, Donald R. Cusser of the Laredo Field Office. He said these back-to-back cocaine seizures at different ports of entry within the Laredo Field Office area of responsibility underscore not only the reality of the drug threat that we face daily, but our officers' keen ability to apply inspection experience and technology to take down these drug loads. Just for reference, CBB has seized 28,000 pounds of cocaine total in the 2026 fiscal year, surpassing 25's 2025's numbers by about 6,000 pounds. Illicit drug seizures increased 62% in 2026 compared with 2025. Agents last month seized 88 pounds of cocaine at the Progresso International Bridge, valued at more than $1.1 million, which was again found using the non-intrusive search system after the passenger was deferred for secondary inspection. And I I want to be clear, just because we've heard, well, there's no crossings, we're good to go, everything's fine and dandy, the southern border is secure. I don't want to pretend like everything is fine and dandy. I think that's that's actually a really horrible idea. And again, drives us further towards complacency and just being okay with whatever happens. It's not true. There is still a lot going on. And I I have more to say than that. So actually what we'll do is we'll wrap up the show going over these drug seizures, how important it is that we continue to do more work on the border from a state perspective, a federal perspective, that we deal with this. We understand that drug trafficking is one of the biggest problems we've consistently had. It's not just illegal immigration, it's also immigration of drugs. How that's contributed to our homelessness epidemic, our lack of productivity, death from overdose, a variety of different things we'll talk about in the in the final segment. If you would like to text into the show and let us know your thoughts on anything we're covering, if you say, hey, I know you have one more segment and there's actually something I really want you to cover, you can let me know, and I'll be happy to switch gears a little bit and wrap up the show for today and this week doing that. Um otherwise, when we get back, that's what we're gonna cover. So text in at 713-779-5978. That is 713-779-KYST. You're listening to the Lone Star Conservative. I'm your host, Michael Wilson, and don't go anywhere because we will be right back to cover the rest of that commentary and to wrap up the show for not only today, but for this week as well. In the meantime, enjoy this quick break, and Lord willing, I'll be right back. Hang tight.

SPEAKER_07 1:36:42

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Why Drug Seizures Should Not Comfort Us

SPEAKER_18 1:40:51

When you hear a story like what we just covered in the last segment, it it's easy to have one of two reactions. The first is fear, and the second is complacency, right? You hear C BPCs, nearly a million dollars worth of cocaine. And the and the first thought for a lot of us is probably good. Uh the system worked, the officers caught it, the technology worked, the dogs were whatever it is. Praise God for that, right? But the second thought should be hey, how much is getting through? Because the danger with a lot of these big seizure stories is that they almost create a false sense of security for us. We see the headline, we see the dollar amount, and we think, okay, they're handling it. But are they? I think that's a fair question we should ask. Because if nearly 74 pounds of cocaine is caught in two incidents on two consecutive days at ports of entry in the state of Texas, that's not a sign that the problem is handled, right? That it's solved. That's a sign that the pressure is constant every single day. That the the criminal pipelines and networks are still active and moving what is only known as poison into our country. They're still testing our border, they're still looking for weak points, and still waiting on us to get tired or politically numb or just again complacent. That's why we can't afford to grow complacent as a state or as a people. Uh okay, and this ties back into the priority of the of the Republican Party. Border enforcement can't just be something simple, right? It it can't just be something that politicians say. It has to mean that we are prepared uh both structurally, infrastructurally, legally, whatever the case may be, we have to be prepared to handle that and to defend ourselves if the federal government ever fails to do its job again. Because we've already we've already seen what happens when when Washington decides not to enforce the the law in this regard. We've seen what happens in an administration acts like the border is a processing center, not a sovereign boundary. When we treat it like a welcome mat, James Talarico, we've seen what happens. Um, we see when there's cartel activity and human smuggling and illegal crossings and drug trafficking, when all those things are allowed to just grow unfettered for years while people are arguing, right? We've seen that. And and yeah, illegal immigration is dangerous, right? It's dangerous for national security, public safety, a variety of things. Basic civic trust, right? Basic cultural cohesion. A nation that does not know who's entering, where they're going, or who they are is not good. I mean, that's not national security based at all. But we can't let the immigrant side of things also blind us to the drug side of things. Uh, because the drugs pouring across the border are not a secondary concern, right? They're not, well, there's a lot of people, there's also a couple drugs. There's also a couple drugs coming in. Right? They're not just numbers, right? They're they're they're broken families that produces overdoses. They're kids getting hooked on drugs and becoming lifelong addicts before they're old enough to even understand what's going on. When you look at the homeless encampments, I said before, chronic homelessness is undeniably a pri the primary driver of of chronic not just like you're out, you know, you're out of luck and you got evicted and you need to find a new place and you're out for a couple days. That happens to people sometimes. I'm talking pr like long-term permanent, you know, homelessness. Drugs are the main driver in that. Right? That means that people can't use the parks or the sidewalks because addiction is taking over. Right? There are men who should be working and building and providing and leading, but instead they're enslaved to these sorts of substances, right? Burying your children, losing the productivity of a good functioning first world country. Drugs are one of the main versions of and engines and drivers of collapse that we're seeing in American cities all across the country. You can't talk about homelessness or overdoses or crime and theft and disorder and productivity without talking about drugs. And so Texas needs to take a stand. We have to continue doing this and get even stricter, continue to enforce border security and build up bigger infrastructure. We have a lot of places to go and we can't let ourselves get complacent saying, look how good we're doing. But while also saying, we're doing pretty darn good.

Final Takeaways And Weekend Sign-Off

SPEAKER_18 1:44:38

That'll do it for the show today and this week. Thanks everyone for tuning in, being a part of the show. I greatly appreciate it as always. Lord willing to be back bright and early on Monday morning for next week's edition of the show. In the meantime, enjoy your weekend. It should be hot, relatively dry, other than the muggy conditions. Enjoy your weekend and Godspeed.