March 23, 2022 – Second Reading Podcast

Welcome to the second reading podcast from the university of Texas at Austin, the Republicans were in the democratic party because there was only one party. So I tell people on a regular basis, there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s called Texas. The problem is these departures from the constitution.

They have become the norm at what. Must a female Senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room. And welcome back to the second reading podcast on Jim Henson, director of the Texas politics project at the university of Texas at Austin. I’m very happy to be joined today by two journalists.

Parature VSO and Andrew regas parallel is affiliated with the Texas Tribune and ProPublica and Andrew with the Marshall project. They’re both part of an innovative investigative team that is a collaboration of all three of those organizations. Um, and I invite you to go to any of those websites. I’m most familiar with the Tribune website, where there is.

Roundup. And you can find sort of an index of all of the work that this team has done. And it’s a really impressive body of deep dive, investigative journalism. And I recommend you all have a look at that. I invited them on after the publication of some results from a major project that they’d been working on for several months.

That is focused on the funding and execution of operation Lonestar in Texas, which is, uh, most people listening to this will know is governor rabbits border security initiative. That was unveiled last year. So Berlin Andrew, thanks for being here. And I’ll let, I’ll let you guys sort out, you know, and go back and forth as you please.

About the project till tell us a little bit, give our readers an outline of the story and kind of how it came about. Yeah. Cool. Which has start, Andrew, do you want to hit a software? How about you kick this off? I guess. Sounds good. Um, so first of all, thank you for having us. Uh, we’re glad you joined you to be here.

So we, you know, separately, both the Marshall project and a ProPublica and the Texas Tribune has started looking into operation Mellon star, and it was kind of a given, right. You have this massive operation being launched that involves millions of dollars and, and a lot of resources. So when, when we start hearing the news conferences are seen on social media, the number of arrests and pounds of drug seas, I think we both have.

Separately started requesting for the data to back up those numbers. And, um, we, we learned that we were working on this on the same thing and decided to partner up instead of, you know, doing this separately and, and I’ll let Andrew take it from here. But very quickly we started, we started learning about the issues with the data itself.

So while, you know, avid or DPS officials would write. Tout, uh, numbers of arrests and again, in press conferences. And so on the data that we were getting was a lot more complicated and not as straightforward. And, and, and again, I’ll let Andrew then talk about the issues that we started. Yeah, I’m happy to talk about the data.

Um, and just, just for some context, I’ll say that like the, the outcome of our investigation was that we found that, um, the, the metrics that the department of public safety and governor Greg Abbott were using. In order to, um, claim the success of the operation really seemed to have no connection with the border.

And so far as there were crimes that were being included in the data that didn’t really have a clear border nexus to use a term that often the department of public safety used. Uh, we also found that a lot of the work conducted by troopers stationed in targeted counties prior to the operation was being.

Counted as a part of the operation success. So there was no clear distinction being made between what the new influx of resources was accomplishing distinct from what was already being accomplished by troopers that were, um, stationed in the counties that were the focus of the operation prior to the initiation of the operation.

And there were also a lot of. Arrests and drug seizures that didn’t really, it didn’t really seem to be clear how many of those were being conducted by DPS versus other authorities in particular federal authorities. And so in many instances it seemed like a single arrest or a singer seizure was being double counted by multiple entities.

And to get to all of that, Had to submit numerous records requests. I think the majority of which Perlick and correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the majority of which we actually didn’t get, um, records responsive records for, because on multiple occasions, GPS, the Texas military department, as well as, um, the governor’s office would tell us that we.

We’re not allowed to see any of those records, even though the information that we were requesting was usually based on public statements that were being made by one or multiple of those agencies. Um, what we were able to get was raw data of arrests conducted under operation Lonestar. And initially from July, when we started requesting the records through to November, we thought that we had.

The totality of the arrests, but then it turned out, uh, in an interview that we did in November with the department of public safety that we had actually only been getting arrested for region three. So, you know, a particular set of counties that were subsumed under the operation and not for all of the counties where the operation was being conducted.

So then we kind of had to go back to the drawing board and then we got new data from them. And then even after we got that second round of data, after they said that they had corrected it, that then told us. The data that we were now going to be getting had been modified yet again, because the charges that they had previously been, including where they were no longer, including in some ways, because they had made decisions about what kinds of charges would be most reflective of the operations mission.

So exactly. And so, and so it, it honestly was just. I I’ve never had this happen before where as you’re doing the work and as you’re working with the data, the data is shifting kind of like sand out of your hands. And, um, it was, it was incredibly frustrating, but also really reflective of how, um, this operation was being sort of put together as it went along and it, and it didn’t, it didn’t seem clear.

And I think even in the interview that we did, it was made clear to us. Yes. There were certain aspects of the operation that had been thought out prior to it being initiated, but, or announced, but that it wasn’t thought out in its totality and that they were constantly making improvements, quote to the, to the operation as time went on.

You know, I, I’m curious, you know, and I’ll, I’ll direct this back to you parallel. I mean, how do you guys sort out the degree to which these were operational adjustments in the actual execution? Of the sub the enforcement strategy of we’ll call. We can call it that for now and on one hand. And on the other hand, the data strategy and the, you know, the, the execution of metrics, um, I thought that was one of the real interesting subtexts of this story.

That those two things seem to merge at times, but another times in at least in the narrative of the story, as I read it there a little bit distinct. Yeah. And I think that that’s the hard thing, right? Because as, as Andrew said, in interviews with us and, and back and forth correspondence, they, anytime we had a question, they, you know, DPS or governor Abbott’s office would tell us that, you know, the operation is continuously changing as they assess what’s happening on the ground.

But at the same time, that was really hard to back up because. You know, there’s a lot of other things going on. Uh, as you said, the subtext, you know, there’s a re-election we had, uh, Issues where, you know, they were resources being shifted from some counties in the Rio Grande valley for their west to the Del Rio area.

And, you know, while the agency’s telling us that’s happening, because we’re assessing the situation at the same time you had, uh, you know, several democratic that border counties who declined to participate in governor Abbott’s. Border security, disaster declaration. You have counties that, and I think here it’s, you know, we’re where you come in, uh, James as well, more, you, you know, you have resources being shifted to counties that former president Trump won and the border.

So I think that the story does this combination of you, you know, we’re telling you what’s going on with the data and what we’re seeing and based on documents, but at the same time, there’s this underlying. Situation that I don’t think can be ignored. And while Abbott’s office said, you know, all those decisions are not political they’re made based on facts.

And in assessing the situation, the theirselves. The reality of what’s happening on the ground and the context of that. Yeah. I mean, I think it’s, it’s, uh, you know, I think the desired strategy I’m sure from a political point of view is, is to see that as, as secondary. But I, you know, as I was thinking through this and listening to you, what begins as subtext, the more it seems to me as, as your.

Reporting and in research process unfolded, it’s hard for the Subutex not to become as you, as you said, context, or if not the text itself, because you start, it seems to me, you guys must be looking for reasonable hypothesis for these shifts and you start, you know, it’s hard to throw out the political piece.

Um, so, so I’m curious. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. No, no, no, I know. Yeah. And that was going to say, you know, and it’s, it’s hard. Um, You know, we, we, we, we, again, address this with DPS. We address this with governors Abbott’s office, but even then, it’s hard when you have even local officials saying, you know, as I was driving back from the real local fish from where their GVR, I saw cars heading the other direction.

And when they’re telling you that, you know, the, the focus of the resources, isn’t the areas that are. Threatened the most. And a federal data shows that some of the counties in the RGV are the ones where you have the most drugs and, and immigrants, um, dreads seasoned immigrants, apprehended, but yet the additional resources that come from.

Operation lone star and the national guard deployment at one period of, you know, at one point in time of the operation, we’re not focused there, but in shifting, uh, further west to, uh, quote unquote, a more politically friendly county or area.

I both don’t want to ask you, ask you to give up future plans too much, or to give up the secret sauce, but I’m very curious about how far back the data you guys have on arrests enforcement or, you know, the, the various metrics that you guys have harp, how far back it goes, because it’s also interesting to me, you know, Pearl, as you talk about.

You know where the problem is, where it is and how they’re shifting in response to local cooperation, et cetera, you know, to, to, to back up for a second. I wonder what the metrics look like from, you know, the years running up to operation lone star in terms of justifying the operation to begin with, have you guys requested or have any of the, the data from the preceding.

Yeah, so I can, I can speak to that a bit. So we, we were focused on requesting data specifically from operation lone star and, and I think like a historical view that would like appropriately compare, you know, some subset of data to that operation. Lone star data, I think is a bit difficult because then you’d be trying to find other data points that somehow kind of are indicative of.

The, the issues that Abbott says that he’s responsive to. We did get data from the department of public safety on, um, traffic citations that we might be using, um, later on. And like that certainly seemed to show. You know, during the pandemic traffic citations typically went down. Um, also if you look at the uniform crime report from the FBI, you know, uh, generally like the crime categories, they follow also went down during the pandemic.

That’s true nationally, but then it bounced back up. Um, but not beyond what, like the historical, maybe like 15 past 20 years I’ve looked like. So, but, but it happened in a lot of places. And I know this from, you know, reporting that the Marshall project has done since, you know, we focus on the criminal justice system.

It happened in a lot of places, including in New York where I am right now. Well, after the pandemic, when different kinds of crimes started to go back up again, there was this big conversation about crime spiking up. And I don’t know to what extent, cause I haven’t been following the politics in Texas. I wasn’t following the politics in Texas that closely at that point in time.

But I don’t know if that was a similar conversation and maybe, um, that was some of the justification for. For this operation. I do know that there was a big focus on migrant apprehensions, which is typically, you know, used as a proxy measure for how many people are trying to come into the country from, you know, through Mexico and from many different parts of the, of the world.

Of course. And like those numbers have been continually increasing. I think I can say for. I mean a while now, like I think over, over 10 years. And what was really interesting in our investigation is that as those, you know, the number of people coming to the border were going up once the operation increased the number of migrant referrals and the number of drug seizures actually.

Trended down. So if you, if you, if you believe what Abbott is saying, that migrants are coming in and bringing crime or migrants are coming in and bringing drugs, you would expect the drug seizures and the referrals to increase. If you know, the number of migrants coming to the border are increasing, but we actually saw the opposite.

Um, I, you know, I don’t want to put myself in a position to say, What that means conclusively, but I think it certainly raises interesting questions. Well, let’s, let’s look at some of those questions then and Perla, when you and I had, you know, had talked about this story as you guys were working on it a little bit, you know, I do want to talk a little bit about the factors that you’re being careful about Andrew, um, in terms of what the, what the contributing factors are.

Um, one of the things, you know, that’s in. You know, and I don’t know this data nearly as well as you do Andrew, although I’ve looked at some of it, the Trump presidency and the Trump policy approach to the border seems to have a real impact on this data. Just like it has a real impact on the policy. And I know that you were thinking a lot about that as you were working on this story, Pearl, and I wonder, you know, where you kind of.

You know how you’re sorting that out. Where’s your thinking on that right now, in terms of how the Trump intervention and that the presence of Trump and its impact on national politics, on politics in the state, you know, how do you, how do you make sense of that right now? Yeah, I mean, I think that’s why we rely on experts such as yourself to help us sort out.

Through all of this. Right. But I think when, you know, when you go back, cause obviously operation Lonestar, it’s not the first, uh, border operation launched by. Governor and you know, it from us as much as we can tell, you know, we, we go back to 2005 with, with governor Perry, but you do see the language changing over time.

And, and you, you know, even, even when Perry was launching the border search operations, you know, similar to operation Lonestar, the, you know, You would have press releases, but also talk about Mexico being our neighbor and, and the importance of trade for, for Texas and Texans and so forth. And I, I do think, and that’s why I reached out to you when we were reporting this, because when you, when you start seeing more Lonestar, the rhetoric also changed.

You start seeing, you know, there’s always been this kind of underlying of immigration crisis immigrants, crime. Uh, but you, you do start hearing, you know, for the same, you know, the first time a border wall, you know, I, I even found a press release back from Perry where he, you know, he clearly opposed a border wall project, uh, back into the.

Five or six. And now you see avid actually using the border wall. Right. And even before Trump, we wouldn’t yet say border while we would say border fence. And you start seeing the, the, the language, uh, reflect more of what president Trump. I was using it at the time. And, and so again, it’s hard to know, but we know from, we know the, the, the elections, we know that, you know, governor avid was seeking Trump’s endorsement.

Trump came to the border, they had a press conference together. So. Again, we rely on people on you like you to help us understand that. But I do think there’s clearly that connection that we see both reflected in the actions and the use of language. Yeah. I mean, I, I think going back to the peri period is a really interesting comparison.

You know, I mean, I think, you know, what I, and you know, I think several people pointed, certainly pointed out at the time that you’re talking about. And as you know, the early kind of, I would call it the early pre Obama, two thousands. When, when. Perry was governor. It seemed that one of the really, you know, the political needle he was trying to thread was to break it, to make sure that he could make some kind of a distinction between border security and immigration.

And talk about border security in the kind of terms that you’re talking about, but also somehow separate that and be able to hold the line on some of the other, you know, trade issues, um, you know, making some kind of gesture towards, you know, acknowledging demographics in the state. And I, and I do think that has become a lot less common.

I think. You know, I never thought, honestly, I never thought I’d quite say this about Rick Perry, but I think it rang a little more true coming from Perry. You know, we still hear sort of nods in that direction from Republican leadership. It feels a lot more proforma to me now, you know, as, as we move forward on this, you know, uh, another piece of this that, um, You know, seems to be, you know, is big in the story.

And that I think folds into this, this narrative about though, or, you know, trying to explain the, the shift in rhetoric and the escalation of the policy is the spending. And it seems to me, you guys worked really hard and were you did a good job of accounting for the increase in spending in, in the state, on the border security, on border security related projects.

Tell us a little bit about how you dug that. Yeah, I’ll get us started. And then if, if Andrew wants to chime in, since he has been working, actually, you know, we, we have some other pieces coming out as part of this package and we’re going to be putting out some visuals on that. But yes, we, you know, using LBB reports, uh, our colleague Lummi Creel, who’s also part of my team has spent a lot of time talking to policy analysts from different groups and the, you know, legislative budget board to kind of.

A better sense of what’s been going on with funding over the years, because as you said, you know, we’ve got. You know, started again like Perry asking for a hundred million. At some point they started asking for 800 million and then it went to 1 billion. And this last round between the special session and a general session, lawmakers approve more than 3 billion for border security funding.

And then earlier this year, you know, the Dallas morning news first reported that, um, a handful of agencies have. Uh, given the governor’s office, uh, another 480 million to cover the national guard deployment because it had surpassed what the lawmakers had allocated for that purpose. And one interesting shift that has happened, uh, as part of this, is that a bigger share for the first.

Went to the governor’s office as supposed to DPS. And, you know, we were told by, by policy analyst that, that, that was interesting because there’s less transparency and reporting that goes on, you know, in terms of money that goes to the girls office. When we did ask avid, uh, epitaph is, uh, about that the, you know, the response was that.

The money that, that goes through him then goes to other agencies such as, um, you know, what they’re using right now to build a border barriers or local law enforcement agencies or local cities and counties across the state and that they in turn are subject to the reporting process. Yeah. I mean, I, you know, the budget politics of this are, are fascinating.

I mean, I, I think it’s, um, You know, it’s a sign of the success of this, as well as a political strategy that, you know, we can tell a story, you know, that you just told very well in terms of the, you know, what the plot, you know, that the plot line of the spending levels looks like. But I think it would be very hard.

Look at the Texas budget and find any other item in which spending did, you know, increased threefold plus in the space of two sessions. And the, I think the way that that happened really does kind of point to just how. You know how central the politics of this are to Republican candidates in the Republican party right now.

I mean, you know, to use a non-technical term on the face of it, it’s just crazy to think of any kind of expenditure that would increase from a little less than a billion dollars to over three in such a short period of time. And I, and I think, you know, when you look at that, it makes it hard, you know, to not have some hypotheses, as you guys were playing with about the role of politics in this, do you foresee this continuing at this low, once you get, you know, it has been increasing and, you know, somewhat quote unquote more gradually, but now that it’s reached at the three plus billion, do you expect this to be the new base level that we were we’re working from?

In terms of border security. Um, well I liked the way you turn now, now I’m answering questions. You’re very, you’re very good at your job. Um, you know, I, you know, as I think about it, I suspect in the longer term, probably not. But I also do not, would don’t expect that it will ever return to pre operation lone star level.

In other words, I think sustaining three plus billion dollars and, you know, per biennium is a hard thing to do, but I, but you know, given the broader politics of this right now, I mean, it, it’s a, it sounds strange to say this about Texas and the budget, but you know, the state is a wash in money right now between federal funds.

You know, I mean, when I left the house this morning, oil was at one 14. And, you know, the fact that tax revenues have have outstripped, you know, the, the comptroller’s projections in the state, you know, there’s not going to be a lot of fiscal pressure to reduce that spending, and there’s not going to be meaningful political pressure.

Um, you know, we’ve done polling on, on what Texans think about spending on border security and. You know, even allowing for the fact that if you AF, if your average Texan, you know, how much is the state spending, they don’t have any idea, but, but nobody has a sense that the S no Repub, very few Republicans have any sense that the state is spending too much.

And if anything, the majority response among Texans is that the state isn’t isn’t spending enough. And I think the contextual politics of the situation are that are such that well as you guys cover very well in the story, Democrats have had a lot of questions about how the money is being spent about the metrics about accountability.

Um, it’s one thing to be a watchdog on that. It’s another thing to stand up in public and say the state needs to be spending less on border security. It’s politically very difficult. I mean, is that, you know, is that consistent with what you’re seeing, even among the people resisting, you know, cooperation on the.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it was, it was interesting as part of reporting this, because as you said, you know, Democrats, especially Democrats have been, um, more consistently vocal questioning the spending, but, you know, as, as we were wrapping up reporting, uh, we were, I guess at first I thought we were unlucky, but then it turns out we were fortunate that there was a Senate committee hearing, looking into.

Operation Lonestar a year later. And it was very telling that, you know, we have lawmakers and actually we have even the Republican asking, like, what, what metrics are we using? What, how do we know what we’re getting for all this money that we’re spending, which are very important questions. But also the fact is that this is a year into operation Lonestar, where we’re still asking those questions and, you know, months after lawmakers themselves approved.

Of record $3 billion for border security purposes. And a question that, you know, I found references from back to 2005, 2006 law makers asking questions about what metrics are we using. And so while you’ve had, you know, very vocal voices, especially on the democratic side, it seems that at the end, we, you know, lawmakers are still asking themselves some of the questions that have.

That have been part of, of border security operations almost from the beginning. And if I might just add something on the accountability angle, you know, when we approach GPS with our findings, essentially, especially from the data of, you know, from the operation Lonestar arrest data that we were requesting, essentially what they said to us is that it’s a black box that.

You can’t compare the data releases from one point to another and say what’s changed, or what arrests have, have been added or what’s been released or how they’ve increased that every single data set is sort of an entity unto itself because it’s a quote live database. And it’s, you know, if you think about it, that, that.

That’s sort of contradicts the nature of a database. You know, most, most databases are live databases and are changing and you know, you certainly can do historical analysis on them, but it’s, you know, on its own, it sounds. Uh, absurd, but, but to be honest, it’s not dissimilar from what even McCraw has been saying in these legislative hearings where I, I think at one point, um, he, or maybe it was a Republican outnumbers remembering said that, you know, you shouldn’t be like asking what, you know, what’s changing or what the mission is accomplishing.

You should just be asking how much money is being put in and there’s more money needs to be.

And correct me. I think I might be, hopefully I’m not incorrectly paraphrasing that, but if I am pleased, so I guess from a cross point of view, the, from what I’ve seen in the last hearings or meetings that I’ve been listening to, there, there seems to have been a shift of. The emphasizing the reliance on arrest and drug seizures, two more, um, you know, they, they started using a new metric or a different metric that for the first time I was hearing of, of actually securing, uh, so-called border patrol selves.

And so they were saying, you know, you can really rely on the numbers because what do the numbers tell us? And I think it’s true from, from talking to experts, right? Like if the numbers go up or the numbers go down, DPS itself has claimed success both times. And I think you can make a case for numbers are going up.

That means we’re being affected. Numbers are going down. That means we’re being effective. Um, but that is a shift in, in metrics. And that Sandra was saying with data, if you can’t use the data, then you know, if it’s always changing and the area of operations is always changing and everything’s always changing.

So how can DPS itself or, or legislators, then it says what operation lone star and the funds is actually accomplishing. Yeah. And I, I think, you know, the methodological appendix to y’all’s story is really does a good job of illustrating that. And I, I would hope, or at least illustrating the mechanics of that.

And I would hope people that read this, you know, make sure it’s like, feel like I’m urging my students to make sure they read the footnotes or something. But, um, The way you described the shifts in the data set and, and, you know, the, the redefining of the variables and the data that appears and then disappears in the way that the, the, you know, the columns are.

It sounds to me like are in rows are redefined really underlines the degree to which it really invites. You know, a sense that something is being frankly, is being hidden here. And I, and as I think back as we’re talking about this to the bureaucratic politics, and you mentioned DPS, um, the only time to my recent memory, that DPS.

Substantive pushback that responded, that resulted in them not getting all the money they wanted was I think in 2017 when there was a legislative hearing and there were both Democrats and Republicans asking for data, and the only data that in the data that people were highlighting was that, you know, the, the previous increase, I think it’s when they moved.

The mid 800 millions to the low nines. And it was the first time they came and asked for a billion dollars and they got rebuffed because. They couldn’t provide data. And it’s hard for me not to feel as if this is partially a bureaucratic response to that experience that, you know, we’ll give you. Sure we’ll give you data, but we’ll also change it continually in a way.

And while we’re making this background or even foreground argument for thinking about it differently, I mean, it’s. You know, I’m really struck by your account of them saying, well, you know, we shouldn’t really be looking at the data we’ve always looked at. We should look at it in terms of zones or. You know, essentially manufactured criteria of, uh, the, you know, it’s, it’s like, it’s like allowing students to set their own grades basically and saying, yeah, just, you know, keep, keep, keep graduating us on.

So in the last couple of minutes, like to the extent that you guys are comfortable talking about it, what are future directions for you all on. You know, with this, this much money at play, I suspect you guys are, or I know you all do not want to let this go and there’s a lot to be done. So what’s next?

Yeah. I mean, I say, Ben, should we have a couple of pieces still coming out in the. Uh, hopefully couple of weeks, uh, as part of this project, but as you said, you know, 3 billion, so significant for taxpayers and, you know, we, we will continue to pursue this story, you know, especially as it, as it relates to, you know, what, what the operations accomplishing and how the.

Is being spent. I mean, border border security is, is a big part of what’s going on in Texas right now. And we think it’s important to, to continue to keep an eye out on it. Andrew. I mean, since we’re, we’re, we’re technically together, but not taking, eh, Andrew, I’m interested given your focus on the data side of this, you know, what have you, what have you learned from this.

Um, what have I learned? Um,

well, uh, I, I, I honestly, it’s hard for me to articulate. I feel like I learned something about the department of public safety, but I haven’t quite figured out how to put it into words yet. But I will say, I will say that in terms of what is interesting to me and what I hope that we can continue to pursue.

You know, I mentioned the traffic citation data and like after operation Lonestar began traffic citations just like shot up across all of the counties where operation Lonestar has been focused. And I’m just really interested to know. What that’s felt like for people who are living in communities that are quite small, you know, we’re talking about, um, counties with like a thousand, 2000 people, and we’re talking about 10,000 troops being depleted.

You know, we’ve, I’ve been reading stories from local news outlets, where there are people, especially undocumented immigrants who are afraid to leave their homes or go to the parks because they see police stations everywhere. And I think, you know, of course like the accountability piece of this and the taxpayer dollar and the state, um, you know, the, the, the state’s inability to account for their successes is a fundamental story, but I also am so curious to know.

Just how people on the ground are being affected and how this has been and how the communities, where this operation is, is focused, have, have been responding to just seeing increased police presence. And I hope that we can do more on that. Yeah, I think that’s, that’s a, that’s an interesting, invaluable intersection of this.

I mean, I w I was thinking, as you were talking earlier about the degree to which, you know, I, it sounds like your starting point here was the way that this dovetailed to some degree with, with work on criminal justice. But I, I would anticipate at circling back to that eventually in a really fundamental way, in terms of the quality of wife.

And as you say, the experience of people, um, on the. Uh, Perlin EDU, thank you very much for doing this much appreciated. I’ve learned a lot. The story is great for those listening. The headline, at least on the Tribune is operation lone star, governor Greg Abbott, brags about his border initiative. The evidence doesn’t backup.

Speaking of subtext being texts, I would urge you to find that story. So thank you both of you for being here. Thanks to our crew in the audio studio, in the college of liberal arts at UT Austin, you can find the article we’ve been talking about today at the websites of the Texas Tribune, the Marshall project.

And ProPublica, uh, some of the polling data we’ve referenced today, along with all our other stuff is find-able at Texas politics dot U texas.edu, the website of the Texas politics project. So one last thanks to our guests. Thanks for listening. Thank you. Thank you. Second reading podcast is a production of the Texas politics project at the university of Texas at Austin.