Texas Legislature

I've spoken with you all before, but this is sort of a new...

The new game in town, the 90th Texas Legislature is around the corner.

I think there's probably a lot of updates.

I'm excited to hear about all that.

And so we're going to try to fix that too this session.

That's wild.

So let's talk about the 90th Texas Legislature.

I think you've clearly outlined why this is a big issue and how it affects regular everyday Texans, whether you're in an injury or in an accident or not.

[chuckles] Every criminal prosecution, state criminal prosecution in this country, so every one done by, say, the state of Texas, gives the defendant two shots, not one, to stop the prosecution.

Every state law passed by the Texas legislature, every executive branch order by the Texas governor, you have two shots, not just one, to shut it down.

So you can use the US Constitution, which most people are familiar, or you can use the state constitution.

And what's so striking to me in American law is it's like a math problem.

And right now, the US Supreme Court in some areas is very rights protective.

It's, it's pretty rights protective when it comes to religious liberty, but they're not as protective, say, in substantive due process or prohibiting, you know, partisan gerrymandering or some other areas where you might do better in the Texas Supreme Court.

So that to me, um, you know, the Lochner era, I mean, the US Supreme Court doesn't seem likely to identify new constitutional rights to own a business or not be regulated in your business, whereas the Texas Supreme Court decision in Patel limits that very type of regulation by the Texas legislature.

So the other thing is, if you go for the home run and you strike out, I mean, you just have two options.

I'm David Brown.

First elected to the Texas legislature at age 22, by 26 he was Speaker of the House, and LBJ was predicting he'd be president.

Today, still something of a political kingmaker at age 88, former Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes has a new book, Get It Done, Seven Decades of Lessons from a Political Legend, reflecting on mentors like Johnson, Governor John Connolly, and colleagues like Barbara Jordan.

Barbara Jordan was a shy person who had tried to run for office in Houston and had been defeated for the state legislature two or three times before their Senate district was drawn where she had a chance to win and she won.

And there she was, a very young person coming to the Texas Senate, the first black woman to serve in the Texas legislature, the first black woman to serve in the Texas Senate legislature.

And I was a 26-year-old Speaker of the House, and we were both young, and we both had our doubts in some ways about how effective we were going to be.

And maybe we kind of cried on one another's shoulders sometime when we were talking and trying to determine what we should do on a particular issue.

And he, too, is a social worker.

And he brought us in to learn about public policy work at the Texas Legislature.

And I'm one of those crazy people who fell in love with the Texas Legislature.

Signed me up for that.

I know.

The funnest thing I got to work on last session was a food truck bill, actually, in Texas.

It was House Bill 2844 by Representative Brooks Landgraf.

He's awesome.

He's based in the Permian Basin area.

That's a lot of change in 140 days.

Yeah.

And the Texas legislature is almost designed to kill ideas and slow government down, which In a lot of ways, it's a good thing.

A lot of people have bad ideas or they react rashly to events or emotionally.