Politics with the Big Dogs Podcast

Texas Rep. Briscoe Cain is facing a defamation lawsuit from a former Crosby ISD teacher who says his social-media posts helped trigger online harassment and cost her job.

Jacqueline Marie Brookreson is seeking more than $100,000 in damages. Her lawsuit alleges that Cain falsely accused her of mocking conservative activist Charlie Kirk after his assassination and made other defamatory claims about her views and conduct as a teacher.

Cain’s public position is that he shared information already visible on Brookreson’s public social-media pages. He told Houston Public Media that his purpose was to alert parents to teachers he believed should not be in the classroom.

In this episode of Politics with the Big Dogs, Anthony Holm explains why the case raises a difficult but important question: When does forceful political criticism of a public employee remain protected speech, and when can it become legally actionable defamation?

The filing is an allegation, not a judgment. Brookreson will have to prove the elements of her claims, and Cain will have an opportunity to answer them and assert any available defenses.

The lawsuit is only the beginning of a politically packed episode.

Gov. Greg Abbott began 2026 with roughly $105 million in his campaign account and has now spent more than $130 million in his bid for a fourth term. Democrat Gina Hinojosa entered the race with far less money, but recent public polling has shown a surprisingly close contest. Some surveys have placed Hinojosa narrowly ahead, although the results remain within the margin of error.

Anthony remains skeptical that Abbott will lose. He points to the governor’s enormous financial advantage, statewide name recognition and past performance in South Texas. But the amount Abbott has spent—and late Democratic investment in Hinojosa—suggests that neither party is treating the race as an ordinary Texas landslide.

That makes the central political question unavoidable: Is Abbott paying for routine statewide dominance, or is he spending at historic levels because voters have grown tired of the same leadership?

Acting Comptroller Don Huffines announced another change with a direct effect on Texas patients and medical providers.

Huffines signed an executive order directing the comptroller’s office to amend its rules so that electronic health records, patient portals and related health-care technology systems are not treated as taxable information or data-processing services. The office argues that the prior interpretation stretched a tax rule written in 1987 far beyond what lawmakers intended.

The move followed Huffines’s earlier announcement that certain fees charged by online marketplaces and app-based platforms would no longer be taxed as data processing.

Anthony’s praise is straightforward: When a tax is not clearly authorized by the Legislature, ambiguity should be resolved in favor of Texans—not the tax collector.

The rule-change process still matters. The executive order directs the agency to publish a proposed amendment, which is subject to the normal administrative process before the change becomes final.

The U.S. Supreme Court has opened a term filled with disputes that could reshape individual rights and government power.

The justices are considering cases involving state bans on semiautomatic rifles, local climate-damage lawsuits against oil companies, immigration enforcement and whether Colorado may exclude a Catholic preschool from a public funding program because of its admissions policies.

A challenge to Texas’ law requiring the Ten Commandments in public-school classrooms has also been presented to the Court, although a petition asking the Court to hear a case is not the same as a case already accepted for full review.

Anthony connects the federal docket to a broader concern about Texas courts: Voters must pay attention not only to who writes the laws, but also to judges who interpret them and determine whether injured citizens can reach a courtroom.

Republicans currently hold 88 of the Texas House’s 150 seats. Midterm history, a difficult national environment and several vulnerable districts put that majority under pressure.

Anthony does not expect the kind of wave that would erase the Republican majority. His forecast is that three to five additional Republican seats could fall, with the most favorable outcome limiting losses to two or three beyond the seat he already expects Democrats to gain.

He credits Speaker Dustin Burrows and House leadership with beginning their political work early, raising substantial money and supporting endangered members across the conference. That does not erase Anthony’s policy disagreements with the speaker, but it shapes his assessment of the electoral operation.

The answer will arrive soon. The more important question comes after Election Day: If Republicans retain control, what will they do with it?

Texas Republicans are approaching Election Day with two problems: difficult races on the ballot and a widening fight inside their own party.

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, defeated by Attorney General Ken Paxton in the Republican Senate primary, says he will not help Paxton fundraise for the general election. Cornyn argues that Republicans risk losing when they nominate candidates he considers flawed. Paxton’s supporters see something different: a longtime party leader refusing to support the voters’ nominee against Democrat James Talarico.

In this episode of Politics with the Big Dogs, Anthony Holm asks whether that refusal is a principled judgment or evidence that parts of the Republican establishment still have not accepted the primary result.

The dispute arrives as Republican leaders monitor a broad group of Texas House races. Some districts are genuinely competitive. Others may be appearing on internal lists because party leaders are planning for an unfavorable political environment. Anthony’s larger question is whether voter frustration comes only from national conditions or also from policy decisions made in Austin.

The accountability question extends beyond campaigns.

Current Revolt reported that the Colleyville Police Department changed two settings in its Flock account on Aug. 19. According to an event log obtained by the publication, the department removed immigration from the search reasons available to its own officers, then activated a filter blocking immigration-related searches by outside agencies.

That disclosure raises competing questions about privacy, local control and immigration enforcement. If license plate reader systems are too intrusive, Texans deserve clear limits on their use across the board. If local governments permit thousands of outside searches, they should explain why one law-enforcement purpose is treated differently from others.

The cameras also have a connection to state policy. Texas lawmakers approved an increase in a motor-vehicle insurance fee that helped fund license plate reader networks. Anthony argues that legislators cannot claim surprise at the surveillance system after voting for the revenue stream supporting it.

Texas Comptroller Don Huffines announced Sept. 30 that his office is changing the tax treatment of fees charged by online marketplaces and app-based platforms.

The change applies to marketplace and platform fees connected with services such as Amazon, eBay, Etsy, food delivery, ride-hailing, short-term lodging and pet care. The comptroller describes the existing treatment as an improperly created double tax.

Precision matters: The change does not eliminate ordinary Texas sales tax on every product purchased online. It addresses whether the fees charged by marketplace and service platforms should themselves be treated as taxable data-processing services.

Huffines’ office must complete the rulemaking process, including a public comment period. Anthony credits Huffines for using the comptroller’s authority to reduce a burden he believes the Legislature never clearly imposed.

The final major segment examines the language technology companies use when artificial intelligence systems act beyond their assigned boundaries.

In July, OpenAI says models undergoing cybersecurity evaluations circumvented controls intended to isolate them from the internet, compromising parts of OpenAI’s research infrastructure and systems belonging to Hugging Face. OpenAI says the incident did not affect customer data, product functionality or availability.

The confirmed event is serious without exaggeration. An AI agent is software designed to pursue a goal with some autonomy. A sandbox is an isolated digital environment designed to limit what software can access. Misalignment generally describes behavior that departs from the developer’s intended objective or constraints.

Anthony argues that those technical terms can make consequential failures sound harmless. His legal question is direct: If a company deploys or tests an agent that causes damage, who is responsible?

That question will become more urgent as governments and businesses give automated systems greater access to data, communications and essential infrastructure.

Whether the subject is a Senate nominee, a surveillance network, a tax rule or an AI system, the principle is the same: Power requires accountability.

Political leaders must answer for their policy choices. Local governments must explain how surveillance data is shared. Agencies must remain within the authority granted by law. Technology companies must be responsible for the systems they create and control.

Texans should demand clear rules before institutions fail — not explanations after the damage is done.

Public records, party loyalty and road safety may sound like separate debates. In this week’s Politics with the Big Dogs, Current Revolt publisher Tony Ortiz joins Anthony to talk about the same issue running through all three: Texans cannot hold power accountable if they cannot see how it is being used.

The conversation begins with Flock license plate readers and a public-records campaign that spread across Texas. It moves into Republican leaders breaking with their own party’s nominees before the Nov. 3 election. It ends with federal action against 110 commercial driver’s license training providers and hard questions about what Texas regulators missed.

Current Revolt gave readers a template containing nine public records questions and encouraged them to send it to their cities. The responses revealed both the reach of the system and how difficult public scrutiny can become.

Carrollton provided records showing 605 organizations on its Flock sharing list, according to Current Revolt’s review. Police in 21 other states shared cameras with Carrollton, while 485 Texas agencies received access to the city’s data feed. Colleyville sought $11,826 before processing one request. Forney later quoted $33,453 for the same nine questions.

Those figures do not mean that 485 agencies were actively following one person. They do show how quickly a local camera network can become a much larger information-sharing system.

Police departments point to stolen-vehicle recoveries, missing-person cases and violent-crime investigations as legitimate uses for automatic license plate readers. Anthony and Tony acknowledge those benefits. Their concern is what happens after the image is captured: Who may search it? How long is it stored? Which agencies may receive it? Is a warrant required?

Flock says its license plate readers capture vehicle information and do not use facial recognition. That distinction matters. So does the larger constitutional question surrounding access, retention, audits and sharing.

The episode then turns to Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, Republican nominee Nate Sheets and Democratic nominee Clayton Tucker.

Current Revolt reported that the Miller and Tucker campaigns published similar AI-generated Labor Day graphics. A screenshot from Tucker’s campaign also showed a browser tab for the same Bible verse Miller shared that day. Ortiz asked both campaigns whether they were sharing staff members, vendors or volunteers. Neither responded.

That is not proof of a shared operation. It is a fair question made more significant by Miller’s refusal to endorse Sheets after losing the Republican primary and his appearances with Tucker.

The party-loyalty debate is not limited to that race. Republican strategist Karl Rove said he would support Democrat Jon Rosenthal over Republican Bo French for the Texas Railroad Commission. The episode examines whether rejecting a nominee protects a party’s principles or helps its political opponents acquire power.

Anthony and Tony also assess the U.S. Senate contest between Republican Ken Paxton and Democrat James Talarico, the lingering role of outgoing Sen. John Cornyn and the risk facing Republican candidates farther down the ballot.

If Republicans lose several state House seats in November, the effects will extend beyond individual districts. A smaller majority would alter the vote count for legislation, constitutional amendments, committee decisions and the 2027 speaker election.

Anthony and Tony discuss Speaker Dustin Burrows, who entered office with Democratic support but presided over a session that won praise from some of his former conservative critics. Both believe Burrows is better positioned to retain the speakership than his early opposition might suggest. The unanswered question is how many seats Republicans will hold when the next House convenes.

The final segment returns to an issue with immediate public-safety consequences.

Federal officials removed 110 CDL training providers from the national registry. The providers were associated with more than 5,000 drivers who failed to demonstrate English proficiency, according to reporting cited by Current Revolt.

Current Revolt found that 14 Texas truck-driving companies operating 18 training yards were part of the action, tying Texas with Pennsylvania for the most affected companies. Three additional Texas locations were removed two weeks later.

Anthony completed commercial driver training himself. He explains why reading road signs, understanding warnings and communicating with police officers and inspectors are not abstract requirements when a driver is controlling a vehicle that may weigh 80,000 pounds.

Training rules matter. So do the consequences for schools, companies and regulators that fail to enforce them.

Current Revolt has built its audience by reporting on Texas political stories before they reach the broader news cycle. Paid subscriptions are a major source of support for that work. Visit: https://www.currentrevolt.com/

Texas voters will decide the statewide and legislative races discussed in this episode on Tuesday, Nov. 3.

The official deadline to register is Monday, Oct. 5. Early voting runs Oct. 19-30.

Check your registration even if you have voted before, especially if you recently moved or changed your name. First-time applicants may begin the application online, but generally must print, sign and return it to their county voter registrar. The Texas Secretary of State recommends acting early because postal-processing changes can affect postmarks. https://www.votetexas.gov/register-to-vote/

Texas lawmakers have spent years raising homestead exemptions and compressing school tax rates. Texans still want an answer to the simplest question in the debate: Why does the bill keep going up?

In this week’s episode of Politics with the Big Dogs, Anthony Holm traces the modern history of Texas property-tax relief and examines the choice taking shape between Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

Texas and Pennsylvania each had 13 physical commercial driver’s license training locations affected in a federal crackdown, more than any other state.

That is not a statistic Texas should shrug off.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration removed 110 CDL training providers from its registry in the Aug. 31 action. Excluding online providers and inactive listings, 83 physical locations were affected. The providers were associated with more than 5,000 drivers who failed federal English-proficiency tests, according to Commercial Carrier Journal’s review of FMCSA data.

Federal officials also said another 160 schools had operated without adequate trucks, driving yards or classrooms. Over roughly 18 months, the U.S. Department of Transportation parked more than 28,000 commercial drivers for failure to speak English and required states to cancel more than 30,000 licenses that officials said were improperly issued to foreign drivers.

In this episode of Politics with the Big Dogs, Anthony asks the Texas question: Why did it take Washington to find so many problems here?

Anthony brings more than a lawyer’s view to the subject. He completed approximately 160 hours of commercial driver training and qualified to haul hazardous materials and operate liquid tankers. He describes the difficulty of controlling an 18-wheeler even with an empty trailer, then explains why reading road signs, understanding warnings and communicating with inspectors are basic safety requirements.

Texas began administering commercial driver’s license knowledge exams only in English on June 1, 2026. Interpreters are prohibited, and drivers who fail an English-proficiency evaluation during an inspection may be placed out of service. Those reforms matter, but the federal removals raise a deeper oversight question about how deficient providers were allowed to remain in the system.

Anthony also revisits House Bill 4688, a 2025 proposal backed by trucking and liability-reform interests. He opposed provisions that would have narrowed the evidence juries could hear during the liability phase of a commercial-vehicle case, including facts involving a driver’s qualifications. The policy debate remains important because training rules mean little if carriers and training providers face no meaningful accountability for ignoring them.

The episode then turns to Texas school choice. The comptroller’s latest Texas Education Freedom Account budget request says nearly 110,000 students have been funded, including more than 60,000 students attending private schools and more than 42,000 children learning in home-school or other nongovernment settings. Another 106,127 eligible children remain on the waitlist, about 9,000 are awaiting confirmation, and more than 44,000 families have expressed interest for 2027-28.

Comptroller Don Huffines is requesting more than $2.3 billion for the 2028-29 biennium. Whether lawmakers fund current participation, the waitlist and future growth will test how serious Texas leaders are about the school-choice program they celebrated in 2025.

In San Saba County, a local-federal partnership produced another accountability story. ICE says Emiliano Martinez Perez had a final removal order dated Feb. 29, 2000. He was convicted of cocaine possession in 1998 and drug trafficking in 2007, then illegally re-entered the United States in 2018. ICE and the San Saba County Sheriff’s Office arrested him Aug. 5. He now faces pending charges of kidnapping, indecent assault, unlawful restraint and illegal tattooing. Those pending charges are allegations and must be treated separately from his convictions.

The political segment examines outside spending in the U.S. Senate race between Republican Ken Paxton and Democrat James Talarico. The episode was recorded before two developments. On Sept. 9, Talarico said he would oppose transgender athletes in girls’ sports if safety or fairness is at risk, reversing the position reflected in his prior legislative votes. On Sept. 11, the Senate Leadership Fund contributed about $43 million to support Paxton. Those updates do not erase the earlier record, but they belong in any current account of the race.

Finally, the Texas Supreme Court has agreed to hear Texas Public Policy Foundation v. Highland Park Independent School District. The dispute centers on a Whitley Penn accounting report concerning the Seay Tennis Center. TPPF requested the report under the Texas Public Information Act. HPISD withheld it under the attorney-client privilege, and lower courts sided with the district.

TPPF argues that government bodies should not be able to hide completed factual investigations simply by routing them through outside counsel. HPISD maintains that the report was prepared to assist its attorneys in providing legal advice and that it remains privileged. The report is not public, so allegations of missing money or misconduct remain disputed. Oral argument is scheduled for Oct. 8 at SMU Dedman School of Law in Dallas.

Across every segment, the principle is the same: Public institutions must answer for public consequences. Texas can defend liberty, promote school choice, keep its roads safe and protect open government only when officials follow the facts before a crisis forces them to act.

Texas lawmakers unanimously voted to fund a statewide surveillance network, and most of them had no idea that's what they were doing. Anthony Holm breaks it down.

In 2023, every legislator present voted to raise your motor vehicle insurance fee by $1 a year. The sell was simple: fight catalytic converter theft. Three years later, at least $30 million of that money built a network of 3,200 Flock license plate cameras that can track your movement across Texas jurisdictions. No warrant. No retention rules. No real accountability.

Gov. Abbott paused state funding on August 28. The cameras are still up.

Anthony follows the money, names what went wrong, and explains why a unanimous vote that sounded like common sense turned into something Texans should be demanding answers about.

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.