The old posts are ugly. The larger story is how Jorge Borrego became the Republican nominee in one of the most competitive Texas House districts — and whether the political leaders and special interests who helped him win did enough to vet him.

Current Revolt publisher Tony Ortiz joins Anthony on this week’s Politics with the Big Dogs to examine Borrego’s resurfaced social media posts, his response and the political consequences for Texas House District 118.

Texas activists are challenging Flock license plate readers, but changing vendors may not end surveillance. Anthony Holm examines warrants and privacy.

Some officials are listening. But removing a Flock Safety camera or ending a Flock contract does not necessarily end the collection of license plate data. A city or county can replace one vendor with another and preserve the same basic surveillance system.

That is the central question in this week’s Politics with the Big Dogs: Is the problem Flock, or is it a government policy that records where vehicles travel, stores the information and allows agencies to search or share it?

Editor’s note: The episode says Pvt. Isabella Gonzales of Carrollton was killed in Bahrain; she was killed in an Iranian attack in Jordan. The recording has not been altered. Both corrections appear here and on screen.

Automated license plate readers take a time-stamped image of a passing vehicle and record information such as the plate number, location, make, model and color. Police departments say the systems help locate stolen vehicles, identify cars connected to violent crimes and find missing people.

Those uses are real. So are the privacy questions.

The cameras can create a searchable history of ordinary travel. The policy choices surrounding that history — who may query it, how long it is retained, which agencies receive it and whether a warrant is required — determine whether a targeted investigative tool becomes a broad tracking system.

The Waller County Republican Party passed a resolution asking state officials to restrict warrantless use of Flock cameras and other surveillance technology. The resolution did not itself remove county cameras or create a government ban, but it put Fourth Amendment limits at the center of the debate.

Guadalupe County commissioners voted to terminate the county’s Flock contract in August. The sheriff cited vandalism and public scrutiny, but also said the county could invest in another license plate reader system. That distinction matters. The vendor can leave while the technology remains.

Other Texas communities have taken different paths. League City put the issue on its November ballot as a nonbinding referendum. Austin previously allowed its Flock contract to expire amid privacy concerns, while other departments continue to expand the technology and point to cases it helped solve.

U.S. Rep. Keith Self, a Republican from North Texas, introduced the Protecting Rights in Video and Equipment Acquired Discovery Act in July. The PRIVACY Act would require federal law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant before accessing or querying surveillance data gathered by state and local systems, including ALPR databases.

Texas lawmakers have considered their own limits, including warrant requirements, restrictions on data use and rules for destroying records that are not tied to a serious investigation.

Those proposals get closer to the real issue than a one-company ban. If government continues collecting the same information through a different system, residents still need enforceable answers about warrants, retention, audits and data sharing.

Anthony argues that local officials may replace Flock with Axon and leave residents with a more integrated surveillance network.

Axon does sell ALPR products and operates a large public-safety technology ecosystem that includes body cameras and evidence management. That scale deserves scrutiny. But one product distinction must remain clear: Axon’s current Smart Detection system says it uses object detection, not facial recognition. The company paused facial recognition work on body-worn cameras in 2019 and announced a limited 2026 field evaluation in Edmonton, Canada.

The concern is legitimate without claiming a capability is already deployed everywhere. Voters should ask what a proposed system can collect today, what the contract allows tomorrow and what legal guardrails bind the agency regardless of vendor.

A former Cornyn policy aide has joined Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico’s campaign. Jacob Smith served as Cornyn’s deputy legislative director and is now Talarico’s deputy policy director. Anthony uses the move to ask how much voters should learn about the staff around a candidate.

In Florida, state Rep. Angie Nixon of Jacksonville defeated Alexander Vindman 56.1%-43.9% in the Democratic U.S. Senate primary despite a major fundraising disadvantage. Nixon identifies as a democratic socialist, but DSA did not endorse her. The organization’s 2026 platform should not automatically be treated as her personal campaign platform.

Massachusetts also removed its former list of criteria for abortions after 24 weeks. The new law says a physician may perform an abortion based on the physician’s professional judgment. Texas remains on the opposite end of the policy divide, with no rape or incest exception and a medical-emergency exception for life-threatening physical conditions or serious physical impairment.

The episode closes with Iran, attacks in and around the Strait of Hormuz and Anthony’s argument that the United States must respond more forcefully. Because the conflict is moving quickly and some attacks remain disputed, current claims should be attributed to the government or outlet reporting them.

Changing a vendor is easy. Changing the rules that govern public power is harder.

Gov. Greg Abbott made an unmistakable promise at the 2026 Republican Party of Texas Convention.

Texas, he said, would make clear that only Republicans vote in Republican primaries.

Then came the court filing.

Texas Secretary of State Robert Howden, appointed by Abbott in July, told a federal judge Aug. 10 that the state would maintain the legal position taken by his predecessor, Jane Nelson. Texas continues to oppose the Republican Party of Texas’s effort to obtain a closed GOP primary in federal court and still seeks dismissal of the lawsuit.

That does not mean Howden rejects closed primaries. His filing says the Legislature is the proper forum for creating the system and that the secretary of state’s office would implement a change enacted into law.

But it leaves Texas Republicans with a legitimate question: If the governor supports the result, why is his administration still spending public money to fight the party seeking it?

This case decides more than who receives a Republican ballot.

It tests who controls a political party’s nomination process, whether party-association rights can override the state’s current election system and whether elected leaders will turn a convention promise into policy.

It also puts taxpayer money at the center of the dispute. Republican voters are helping fund the party pressing the lawsuit. Those same Texans also fund the state officials and outside lawyers opposing it.

That is the kind of power conflict Politics with the Big Dogs exists to examine: what elected leaders say, what government does and who pays for the gap between the two.

Houston ISD officials removed conservative activist Bonnie Wallace from a March 19 public meeting after she began reading an explicit passage from Sarah J. Maas’ A Court of Silver Flames. Wallace says the book was available at at least three HISD high schools. She is now suing the district, Board President Ric Campo and Board Vice President Angela Lemond Flowers in federal court.

The lawsuit alleges HISD violated Wallace’s First Amendment rights by silencing her viewpoint and removing her from the meeting. Those claims remain allegations and have not been decided by a court.

Anthony Holm examines the conflict between the school library shelf and the public microphone. He also discusses Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in Michigan’s Democratic U.S. Senate primary, Gov. Greg Abbott’s $25 million effort to improve Republican performance in Harris County and his own prediction that Ryan Patrick may eventually seek the lieutenant governor’s office. No Ryan Patrick campaign has been announced.

The episode closes with the McKinney City Council’s 7-0 approval of a site plan for the McKinney Islamic Association. City staff said the plan complied with existing development requirements and did not require a zoning change.

Anthony Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment at a Senate hearing after the release of more than 1,100 pages from his private COVID-era diary.

Anthony examines the questions raised by Fauci’s private notes, the disputed origin of COVID-19 and the constitutional meaning of refusing to answer potentially self-incriminating questions. Invoking the Fifth Amendment is not an admission of guilt, but it does not end Congress’ responsibility to examine the government’s pandemic decisions.

The episode then turns to Texas, where a state sales-tax exemption for qualifying data centers is projected to cost $3.2 billion over the 2026-27 biennium. Anthony asks why Texas Republicans are subsidizing an industry that places growing demands on the state’s power grid.

Anthony also scrutinizes a poll showing Democrat James Talarico leading Republican Ken Paxton, compares Talarico’s campaign image with his past public statements and challenges Gov. Greg Abbott’s proposed $400 million roof-fortification program.

Different stories. The same demand: ignore the performance, read the record and ask who pays.

Republican interests spent heavily to influence the House District 118 primary. Now Republican nominee Jorge Borrego faces Democrat Kristian Carranza with a reported cash disadvantage of roughly 17 to one.

Anthony Holm asks whether the organizations that helped shape the primary are equally committed to winning the general election—or whether defeating a Republican trial lawyer mattered more than retaining a Republican-held seat.

The episode also examines Robert Howden’s appointment as Texas secretary of state and the fight for closed primaries, criminal allegations involving Arcola Mayor Fred Burton, a controversy surrounding Midland County Judge Terry Johnson, China’s surveillance apparatus and the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision concerning marijuana use and gun ownership.

Anthony begins and ends the episode by remembering Army Pvt. Isabella Gonzales of Carrollton, who was killed at 19 while serving her country and posthumously promoted to private first class.

Context: Charges against Fred Burton remain allegations and he is presumed innocent. Terry Johnson has not been criminally charged. Claims about Chinese influence should not be interpreted as evidence that American vote totals were changed.

This week on Politics with the Big Dogs:

• A $60,000 Texas Tech marketing web developer position raises questions about the reach of Gov. Greg Abbott’s H-1B freeze

• John Cornyn signals he may skip the Republican Party’s first national midterm convention in Dallas

• The National Border Patrol Council endorses Ken Paxton

• Texas officials respond to reports that border hospitals marketed maternity packages in Mexico

• Anthony credits Big Dogs listeners for helping force government action

• A Dallas Fed working paper connects unauthorized immigration to rising home prices and rents

• The constitutional line between a president’s power to repel an attack and Congress’ power to take the nation to war

• What Madison, Gerry, Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson and Buchanan said about presidential war powers

South Texas hospitals marketed maternity packages outside the United States. Anthony Holm has one question: Who was watching?

This week on Politics with the Big Dogs, Anthony digs into the “Billboard Babies” story and marketing tied to maternity services in South Texas. He walks through the Spanish-language website, which advertised birth packages and the questions he believes Texas regulators and state leadership now have to answer after the campaign operated for years.

Then Anthony turns to former state Rep. Nate Schatzline’s move into Gov. Greg Abbott’s office and what it could mean for the fight to close the Texas Republican primary. Anthony is encouraged by Schatzline, but he wants to know whether conservative personnel will finally produce conservative policy.

And in a surprisingly personal moment, Anthony explains why expanded Pell Grant eligibility for workforce training matters to him as a kid from rural Iowa who earned a GED and understands that college is not the only path to opportunity.

The episode also takes on Graham Platner, Democratic double standards, Iran and the political stories Anthony could not fit into the radio hour.

The podcast has more. Listen now, subscribe and visit www.politicswiththebigdogs.com to sign the petition to end taxpayer-funded lobbying.

This Independence Day, Anthony Holm goes back to 1776 and explains why the Declaration of Independence was not just a patriotic statement. It was a warning about government power.

In this special July 4 episode of Politics with the Big Dogs, Anthony walks through the Declaration of Independence as a legal and political document — a list of grievances against unchecked authority, abusive government, ignored petitions, controlled courts, denied jury trials and power that no longer answered to the people.

Anthony also explains why the Constitution came later, why consent of the governed matters, why rights come from God rather than government and why the American experiment still depends on ordinary citizens who understand liberty well enough to defend it.

This is not just a Fourth of July message. It is a reminder that the founders risked life, liberty and property for an idea almost unheard of in human history — that government gets its just powers from the people.

Texas told conservatives DEI was banned. Anthony Holm says look at Texas A&M.

This week on Politics with the Big Dogs, Anthony breaks down why the Texas A&M tenure fight matters, why DEI keeps showing up after Republican leaders said it was stamped out and why conservative wins mean nothing without enforcement.

Anthony also looks ahead to the next Texas legislative session, where casino interests, school choice funding and taxpayer-funded lobbying are already shaping up as major fights. His warning is direct: Republicans cannot campaign like conservatives, then govern like managers of the status quo.

In the extended subscriber-only portion, Anthony keeps going with more than 10 additional minutes on Medicare fraud, the Supreme Court, religious liberty in prison and what he calls an epidemic of Texas teachers sexually abusing students.

This episode is about the fights Texas conservatives were told were already over.